I Hate, I Bake, and I Don’t Date! by Alina Jacobs

25

Tess

“And Beck just let you buy all of this?” Holly asked as I showed off my new bedroom on Monday. Maeve looked over her shoulder at the pictures and whistled.

“Wow, you are really channeling your inner thirteen-year-old self.”

“And she is very happy,” I said.

“I love the girls’ rooms,” Holly cooed. “They’re so sweet!”

“Yeah, they tried to use being tired from decorating as an excuse not to go to school,” I told my friends. “But I can’t babysit them anymore, honestly. I’m so behind on work.”

“She says as she has her second cup of coffee of the day and her third pastry,” Maeve teased.

“Hey, I had a hard weekend!”

“All that shopping and pool lounging and going to fancy restaurants must be so difficult!”

“I was babysitting and doing enrichment activities,” I said primly.

“Translation, you were baking and watching reality TV shows.”

“I’m going to make the most out of my brush with luxury.” I ate my chocolate croissant.

“Maybe you could use some of that shopping money to pay your portion of the rent,” Maeve hinted.

I stopped mid-bite.

“Oops! I’ll Venmo it over to you soon. I am now putting all my food and train tickets on Beck’s credit card. I can finally pay all, well, most of my bills on time.”

“Maybe you should just ditch the apartment,” Holly suggested. “You know, save even more money?”

I grimaced. “I don’t think Beck’s going to keep me on as a live-in assistant, let alone a normal assistant, much longer. He’s threatened to fire me at least once a week. That apartment is by far the cheapest place I found in New York.”

“But it has mushrooms growing in it.” Holly made a face.

“I’m going to start mushroom farming. After I get fired, I’m starting an apartment farming YouTube channel.”

Holly gagged. “Sounds toxic.”

“Beck was impressed when I told him about the mushrooms,” I said, grabbing another pastry. “Well, sort of. More horrified than anything, but he reacts like that about a lot of things I do.”

“Maybe he just wants you to touch his mushroom,” Maeve said with a cackle.

“That’s not a thing,” Holly protested.

“It should be! Penises totally look like mushrooms.”

“I’m not sure what kind of penises you’re looking at,” I said, almost choking on my tea and spilling it on my shirt.

“They don’t look like raggedy mushrooms,” Maeve said, “more like the ones that gnomes live in.”

“You mean the red ones with the white dots that are poisonous?” I asked, blotting my blouse.

“It’s just the shape. Pull up a picture of them side by side,” she insisted.

I pulled out my phone. “Against my better judgment, I’m searching for mushroom dicks.”

“Oh, that’s horrifying!” Holly exclaimed.

We watched a TikTok video of this girl detailing how it felt to have sex with that horrifying-looking penis in the photo behind her.

“No. Nope. No way,” I said, exiting out of the app.

“Look up a nice picture of a penis,” Holly said. “I need something to cleanse that out of my brain.”

“Do you have one of Beck on there?” Maeve asked with a snicker.

“I don’t have pictures of Beck on my phone.”

“Yes, you do.”

I shrieked and dropped the phone. It landed with a crack on the ground. Beck reached for it.

“No!” I shouted and dove onto the floor in a way that would make a hockey goalie proud.

I scraped up the pieces of my phone. Whatever hadn’t been wrecked from the fall to the marble floor had not survived my swan dive.

“You could have just asked for a different phone if you didn’t like that one,” Beck said apprehensively. “And I don’t know why you don’t want me to see the picture. You had them printed up and put in my study, remember?”

“I, er… it wasn’t about the pictures. I’m your assistant; you shouldn’t be picking up my phone. I should pick up yours.”

Beck glared at me.

I grimaced.

“I need you to come with me to pick up the girls from school.”

“Already? Did they have a half day?”

“No, they had a ‘we’re getting suspended day.’”

Enola and Anniewere sitting in the headmistress’s office when we walked in. Enola had an ice pack over her eye.

“Enola, did you get beat up?” I asked. I was ready to tie up my hair and throw hands.

“Ha!” she exclaimed. “You should see the other girl!”

The headmistress pursed her mouth.

“Enola attacked a girl, unprovoked, who was just trying to be friends.”

Beck shook his head. “I’m sure it was a misunderstanding.”

“Your sisters are suspended for another week, and I suggest you use the time to teach them how to behave in a civilized society. Unlike the cult where you grew up, we have standards here. Her victim’s parents are big donors to the school, and I assure you, they were not pleased when they had to pick their daughter up with a chunk of her hair missing.”

“I hate this school,” Enola said when we walked out to the car.

“Yeah, I’m not seeing the allure either,” I told her, pressing the ice pack to her head.

“At least we get to stay with you,” Annie said, grabbing Beck’s hand.

“I have a meeting.” He let out a breath. “You girls promised to try to fit in.”

“It’s not my fault. I hate that school,” Enola said vehemently.

“Can you please just tell me what happened?” Beck begged.

She didn’t answer, just climbed in the SUV and crossed her arms.

The whining started back up when we got back to the office.

“Can’t we stay with you?” the girls begged Beck.

“I have a meeting,” he reminded them gently but firmly. “You can do your schoolwork.”

“Already did it. I’ve gone through all the textbooks,” Enola said, scowling.

Beck looked to me for help.

“I’m sure Holly needs some assistants,” I said brightly, ushering the girls to the café.

During the lunch rush, I tried to catch up on my own work.

“I need to go deal with a delivery,” Holly said a few hours later. “Can you all man the counter while I’m gone? It’ll only be fifteen minutes.”

I let Enola and Annie be in charge. They knew how to work the complicated point-of-sale system better than I did. Though if they were going to be out of school for the foreseeable future, they couldn’t just spend all their time baking.

After all, look where nothing but baking had landed me. Even if Beck’s sisters wanted to start a baking empire, they needed business skills, marketing skills, and web-development skills.

My phone beeped with a message from my bank that my account was overdrawn again. I sighed. They definitely needed some finance skills.

Come to think of it, so did I. Not that I’d had the best role model. While I loved my mom, she hadn’t made the best decisions. She had been terrible with money, preferring to let her string of terrible boyfriends and then husbands manage it, or rather mismanage it.

I made a note to talk to Beck about it. He knew a lot about finance and coding and could help his sisters. Hopefully, he would give them time-consuming tasks that would keep them busy so I could work on salvaging the AstraDrone contract.

It wasn’t even clear if that company would even grant Quantum Cyber a second look. The only thing we had going for us was that it wasn’t a formal process. Mark and Finn were simply out contacting companies. I had helped Beck with proposals before for big clients, and I knew that Quantum Cyber’s rates and services were very competitive.

But it wasn’t like Beck was just going to call Mark up and be like, “Hey, we know we screwed up. Can we pretty please do another presentation?”

This situation needed finesse. And baked goods. But I couldn’t just show up at the AstraDrone office with a box of doughnuts and call it a day. Besides, Mark and Finn were probably like Beck, who rarely ate sweets. I needed Mark to have Quantum Cyber in the forefront of his mind, and that required something unique and unexpected.

Focaccia? Pizza? Pastry with a USB drive baked into it? I’d need to think on it.

“What can we make for you today?” Annie chirped to a man who had walked up to the counter.

“Aren’t you a little young to be working behind the counter?”

That voice…

Oh, fuck no!

I jumped up to accost Kaden. “Get away from them!” I yelled.

We were in the slow period of the day, and the lobby was sparsely populated. I wasn’t worried, though, because there was a security guard at the front desk by the tower entrance.

Kaden didn’t seem fazed at all.

“So this is your new babysitting job?” Kaden asked. He was about my height but rail thin and pasty.

“Do you still live with your mom?” I shot back.

He advanced on me. “I told you New York City is expensive,” he snarled, face screwed up.

The girls raced around the counter to stand protectively by me.

“Leave her alone!”

Kaden’s features settled. “It’s all right. Tess and I are dating.”

“We aren’t,” I corrected.

“You said that you wanted to break up because I lived with my mom.”

“We went on two dates, and then I told you it wasn’t going to work out,” I corrected.

“Because I didn’t have my own place,” he interjected.

“More so that you sent me two hundred text messages in the span of a week. It was too much.”

But Kaden steamrolled ahead like he didn’t even hear me, which he probably hadn’t because among his many issues was that he never seemed to listen to a word I said.

“I have a new apartment,” he bragged, “and now you can move in.”

“She’s not, so go away,” Enola snapped.

“You have to move in with me,” Kaden demanded. “I need you to pay your half of the rent.”

“Not happening,” I snapped, trying to use my most authoritative voice.

Kaden’s face screwed up in anger, and he balled his fists. “You led me on.”

“I never did,” I argued. “I blocked you on all social media platforms and told you numerous times to leave me alone.”

“You were playing hard to get.”

“No, I was playing leave me the hell alone.”

“I bought you dinner and drinks. Twice,” he said stubbornly. “We were dating. Then you made me get an apartment.”

Oh god.

“Get out of here,” I said forcefully.

“I can’t afford rent without you,” he whined.

“Get a roommate.” I crossed my arms.

“It’s a studio!” he yelled.

“I’m calling security,” I threatened.

“You’re going to move in with me,” Kaden insisted, shifting erratically on his feet. “I’m going to make you come to your senses.”

“I don’t like him,” Annie stated after Kaden had left.

I made the girls some tea to try and calm them down.

“We need to tell Beck,” they insisted.

“No way!” I didn’t need Beck involved in my stupid dating attempts. He would probably think I was too much trouble and fire me right on the spot, then I might really have to move in with Kaden or be homeless. “Your brother has enough on his plate. Besides, Kaden’s not coming back.”

“He sounded like he was.” Enola was skeptical.

“Don’t worry about it,” I assured them. “I handled it.”

Didn’t I?