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

41

Tess

“Imissed you last night,” Beck whispered to me.

“Last night where?”

“In the living room.”

In the flickering gaslight from the lamps that flanked the large Connecticut estate’s front door, Beck seemed slightly mysterious.

“I don’t just midnight eat every night you know,” I said irritably. “And I’m appalled that you seem to think that’s a regular occurrence for me.”

Except that it had been a regular occurrence for me, and I was embarrassed that Beck kept stumbling in on my secret eating. To solve the problem, I had stashed a midnight snack of leftover fettuccini Alfredo in my room so I wouldn’t have to run into his shirtless chest in the kitchen.

“I just wanted to eat you out,” he said in my ear.

“I don’t like to mix food and sex,” I lied.

“Really, because that seems like it would be right up your alley.”

Licking chocolate off of Beck… yum!

You really shouldn’t sleep with your boss.But we were heading in that direction, right? While drunk me had thought sex with Beck was a great idea, sober me was coming around to it too.

You put up with a lot, I reminded myself. Along with counting all my purchases as a business expense and putting it on his credit card, shouldn’t I also partake in everything that this fake relationship had to offer? I mean, I had to spend every single Friday night with someone else’s in-laws. That had to earn me at least one round of oral.

I tugged at the collar on my dress.

Ethel had said she was having a theme night to introduce the girls to their heritage. Since, in her words, the Goodman family had helped build America, she was doing a whole Early-American theme for our dinner.

I, of course, had to channel my inner twelve-year-old that had wanted literally everything in the American Girl catalogue and was cosplaying Felicity, complete with a stay, multiple layers of wool skirts, and a white bonnet.

You just need a horse to ride… or Beck.

The door swung open. The butler took one look at me, and his face fell.

“Cards?” he asked, holding out the silver tray.

I had come prepared. Last week I had made everyone Victorian-style calling cards, which I proudly placed on the tray. Then we followed the butler into the sitting room.

“Oh,” Ethel said, when we walked into the room. “You dressed up.”

“Happy American History Day!” I curtseyed, wobbling slightly. I was wearing historically appropriate shoes, which really were not meant for feet as wide as mine.

Ethel was obviously horrified when I straightened.

Then I saw the other people in the room—the other well-dressed, very high-society people in the room who were not costumed as Early-American colonists.

Beck cleared his throat.

“I thought—” I said, licking my lips and wishing I had brought a change of clothes. “I thought we were doing a fun living-history event?”

“I invited several members of the Daughters of the American Revolution for dinner,” Ethel said. “We’re having food inspired by the colonial period and engaging in an enlightened conversation.”

I clasped my hands and tried not to seem like a crazy person, which was difficult with my seventeenth-century housewife getup.

“We have my dear friend Bunny, who has a degree in Early-American art history, along with Penny, who works in an auction house specializing in Early-American furniture, and her granddaughter Cressida, who works as the human resources director for—”

“Quantum Cyber,” I finished.

Cressida peered at me, then her eyes narrowed.

“Why is Beck’s assistant at dinner?”

She looked between the two of us as the gears in her brain put it together.

“This is his girlfriend,” Ethel explained. “They met in the Harrogate train station when Tess was drunk and confused and lost her shoes and purse.”

Cressida’s nostrils flared.

Beside me, Beck was tense.

Cressida could derail our whole fake relationship. While the only thing on the line for me was excruciating embarrassment, which, to be fair, would not be my first humiliation rodeo, Beck could lose his sisters if Cressida raised a stink.

“These are mead cocktails,” Ethel explained, “made with honey. The Farmhouse Inn restaurant catered.”

“They were just awarded three Michelin stars,” Bunny told us.

Ah shit. Guess I should not have brought my rabbit pudding.I tried to subtly gesture to Enola to stand down with the pudding.

She didn’t get the memo.

“Tess made a pudding,” Enola announced, holding out the container I’d brought. “For the appetizer.” She whipped the tea towel off of the dish.

Puddings were boiled and didn’t come out of the pot looking all that appetizing. This one was a lifeless beige and squelched when Enola tipped it over onto the platter and proudly placed it next to the delicate serving trays of oysters and clam fritters.

“Annie and I helped,” she said, “We found a cooking video on YouTube.”

“It’s a channel where the lady does period reenacting,” I said, chattering away, hoping that Cressida didn’t blow our cover.

I was willing to fall on the sword of my rabbit pudding if it kept Ethel from fighting Beck for his sisters.

“She lives in a hut in the woods that she built herself, only wears clothes she sews herself, and looks like a walking yeast infection.”

“My word,” Penny exclaimed, taking a long sip of her drink.

The butler came over with a knife and started sawing at the rabbit pudding.

“I had to boil that thing for three hours,” I said as the first slice was removed with a sucking noise.

The butler plated it and handed me the gray triangle along with a fork.

The rabbit pudding had rabbit, duh, along with mushrooms, suet, the leftover bacon from breakfast, white wine, and parsley.

Ethel pressed a napkin over her mouth, and Cressida glared daggers at me over her drink.

“I think,” I said, “if I had baked this, it might have come out a little nicer, but we’re trying to do things the historically accurate way, right?”

“Are you really going to eat that?” Beck asked me as I cut off a piece of the pudding. The dish was room temperature, and everything had congealed into one gray mass surrounded by the fleshy beige pastry.

“I can actually cook,” I assured everyone watching. “This was admittedly a bit of a misstep.”

I took a bite. In colonial America, you had salt to season your food if you were lucky; this historically accurate recipe was extremely bland.

“Not the worst thing I’ve ever had in my mouth,” I said, taking another bite because, hey, if you weren’t going to be enthusiastic about your food, how could you expect anyone else to be? “I once gave a guy a blow job at a Dream Street band reunion concert. Come to think of it, he looked a little bit like this pastry. I er… shit.”

This was why I didn’t do kids, because I had never matured past the age of fourteen. I looked down at the girls. Beck had his hands clapped over their ears.

“Is this really the type of influence you want for your granddaughters?” Bunny asked Ethel as the butler topped off everyone’s drinks.

“Honestly, when you told me that your granddaughters’ guardian and his girlfriend were going to be here, I assumed that you had found someone suitable. Not…” She gestured a limp hand at me. “That. How are the girls going to become future DAR members? Honestly, another few months with Tess, and the girls are going to follow in their mother’s footsteps.”

“Agreed,” Penny said with a sniff. “My Cressida would be a much better option for Mr. Svensson and his sisters.”

I hiked up my skirts. They did not wear underwear in the seventeenth century, and the loose britches were slipping. “For your information, I’m ensuring that the girls are making way better life choices than me,” I said. “In fact, they’re building their own companies. They even have their own office, and we still need to decorate, right, girls? Maybe Grandma wants to come help?”

Points for me, hopefully, because who doesn’t want to decorate their granddaughters’ corporate office?

But Ethel didn’t take the bait. In fact, she was quite upset.

“But what about school?”

“They were expelled,” Beck admitted.

“For no reason,” I added hotly. “They were just defending themselves. But it’s fine because now they’re doing a hybrid homeschool.”

“Homeschool? I think I’m going to faint.” Ethel looked pale. The butler helped Ethel to the love seat, and Penny fanned her face.

“Those girls need to be out amongst the well-heeled members of society,” Bunny said to Ethel, “not locked up in the same homeschooling situation they just escaped from.”

“This isn’t like the cult,” I said defensively. “Annie and Enola are learning computer coding, business management, and investing.”

“Finance and computers?” Ethel pressed a hand to her forehead.

“How will they ever attract nice husbands like that?” Bunny asked, voice shaking. “No man wants a woman who is smarter than him and makes more money than him. They’re only going to attract moochers and losers.”

“They are far too young to be worried about future husbands,” Beck said forcefully.

“That’s exactly right, Grandmamma,” Cressida said, gliding over to stand near the girls.

I bristled.

“This is the twenty-first century. They can stand on their own two feet. Besides,” she added, posing elegantly next to Beck and tossing her glorious curtain of blond hair. “I’m sure there are billionaires out there who want a woman who pulls her own weight and is not a gold digger.”

Beck looked at Cressida gratefully, and my stomach clenched. The HR skank gave me a triumphant look.

“Shall we go in for dinner?” she suggested, placing a hand on Beck’s arm. “We have quite the menu planned.”

“Enola and Annie are reading the Felicity books from American Girl,” I said loudly to the group as Cressida grabbed Beck’s arm to lead him into the dining room while Ethel was helped out of her seat by the butler.

Cressida made a face. “Those books aren’t historically accurate. They should be reading the new Abigail Adams biography, among other works. In fact, why don’t I send you a list, Beck?”

I sat at my place setting, fuming, while Cressida flirted with our boss.

“Shall we serve the rest of Tess’s dish?” the butler asked, coming in with my tray of rabbit pudding.

Ethel waved him away. “Put it in the kitchen.”

I hunkered in my seat. White-coated servers brought out the first course. None of them even made a face when they saw me in my outfit. But I could feel their judgment.

I slurped the fennel and thyme soup that was placed in front of me.

I had picked up a bigger spoon for the soup this time. Except that it still didn’t seem to be correct because everyone else was using a different spoon.

Who cares which spoon is which? I’m going to enjoy my soup.

I balanced a crouton on the spoon, trying to keep my large sleeves from dragging in the soup bowl. I had to grab a bunch of fabric on the sleeve and direct the spoon to my mouth to manage it. Right as I was going to take a bite, the crouton swan dove off the spoon and down my dress.

Shit.

The problem was that I wasn’t just wearing a normal bra; I had gone all out and was wearing a stay. Unlike a corset, a stay was not curve hugging. It instead resembled a piece of armor and gave you a very triangular shape. There was also no way to easily go fishing for a crouton.

I took another spoonful of soup. The crouton slid down to my belly button.

I need to get this thing out.

“Excuse me,” I mumbled.

Everyone ignored me. Cressida was making everyone laugh with a funny story about her great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Alexander Hamilton.

I hurried to the bathroom.

In order to take off the stay, I had to remove all of the overclothes, which included the layers of petticoats, the dress, and the decorative shawl. It was a whole operation, and I was huffing and puffing by the time I had managed to extricate the crouton. I sat on the toilet to catch my breath.

Maeve:How was your rabbit pudding?

Tess:Terrible.

Holly:They didn’t like it?

Maeve:Imagine no one liking a dish that was boiled within an inch of its life?

Tess:That was the historically accurate cooking method. Not that it matters because Cressida is apparently some sort of Founding Father descendent, and she practically planned the meal and is already banking her future on the fact that Beck is going to want to make babies with Alexander Hamilton’s descendant and not me.

Maeve:I’m sorry. Hol’ up, Cressida?

Holly: You better not let her sink her claws into him.

Maeve: Yeah, if you haven’t done the deed with Beck yet, you better do it soon!

Holly: You don’t want his lonely dick wandering into Cressida.

Tess:Maybe Cressida would be a better option for him. At least she seems to care about women being independent, and she does come from a good family, unlike me.

Maeve:No way! Beck cannot be with Cressida. Work will be insufferable. I’ll have to find a new job, and I don’t want to spend time finding a new job when I could eat self-care pizzas and watch Netflix.

I laboriously dressed. The girls had helped me put on the heavy wool clothes at the condo, and it was difficult to put the outfit back on without their help.

I couldn’t even fasten the stay because I couldn’t twist my arms around enough to reach all the hooks. I wasn’t able to reach the buttons on the back of the dress either and only managed to fasten it halfway up my back.

I threw the shawl over my shoulders and inspected myself in the mirror. My outfit looked a little droopier and bag lady-esque, but hopefully people would be too focused on the food and Cressida to notice.

I almost ran into the HR director when I exited the powder room.

“What were you doing in there?” she asked sourly.

“Lots of layers on this historic garment,” I said, crossing my arms. I felt one of the buttons pull out and hastily clapped my arms to my sides, afraid the dress would fall down.

Cressida sneered at me. “No wonder those two little girls are out of control. Expelled from school, short haircuts, talking nonsense about building apps and companies. And now here you are, leading them in some sort of fantastical historical reenactment. No wonder they’re confused disasters.”

Two-faced bitch.

“Enola and Annie are great kids,” I snapped, trying to push past her to go back to the dining room.

“You’re so transparent.” She scoffed. “You don’t care about them. You’re just using them to use Beck.”

“No, that’s not what I’m doing,” I argued.

“I don’t know what bullshit you’re trying to pull,” Cressida hissed, blocking me in the hallway, “but if you think you’re just going to weasel in and steal Beck from me, you have another thing coming. Ethel doesn’t like you. She doesn’t want you to be the mother to Beck’s sisters. And after your little display tonight, I don’t think Beck’s going to want you either. In fact, I think he’s going to be looking for an upgrade.”