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

62

Tess

Ihad migrated from wallowing and eating cake at the Sparrow and Thyme café to wallowing and baking cake in my small apartment—devil’s food cake because nothing says I had a bad day like your own personal three-layer chocolate cake.

“How about this job?” Maeve suggested. “It’s an assistant to an executive at a snack food company. I bet they let you have free chips!”

“Find a position at an alcohol company so we can get free drinks,” I said.

Maeve scrolled through the job postings. “I think we should just apply to all of these and see what sticks.”

I sighed. “What’s the point? Our applications are going to end up in résumé purgatory. They won’t even give us the courtesy of being sent a rejection letter.”

I divided the batter into three pans then opened the oven to check the temperature.

“And of course, it’s not working!” I yelled.

My upstairs neighbor banged on the floor. “Knock it off!” he yelled through the thin ceiling.

What the fuck!

“You knock it off!” I screamed at the ceiling. “You blare your music and wake up the whole neighborhood. Now you get a taste of your own medicine.”

“Turn on your music,” I ordered Maeve.

“You have well and truly lost it.”

“I’m tired of being used and taken advantage of, and I’m not going down without a fight. Josie and the Pussycats, let’s go!”

Maeve rolled her eyes but pulled up the YouTube playlist and blasted the early 2000s soundtrack. My upstairs neighbor responded by blaring his latest and most horrible hip-hop mixtape to date.

“Maybe you need to find us jobs in another state so we have to move!” I yelled to Maeve over the noise.

But Maeve didn’t respond; she was glued to the laptop screen.

“Maeve?”

My friend looked up at me, wide-eyed. “Tess, what did you do?”

My stomach sank. “I didn’t do anything.” I hurried over.

She turned the laptop around.

A headline read, in big bold pink letters, “At the Top of My Hate List Is My Boss.”

I skimmed the article. It was about my being an assistant to Beck, and it had all the salacious details.

“I didn’t write that,” I said, horrified.

“Are you sure?” Maeve asked. “Did you drunk write it? You’ve been drinking a lot lately.”

“I swear.” But then I kept scrolling and saw it.

“That’s my hate list,” I whispered. “But I didn’t send that to a newspaper. Oh my god, it makes it sound like I hate Beck.”

“You do hate Beck,” Maeve reminded me.

“Not like that. And I certainly don’t hate his sisters. Crap! What if they see this? We have to get it taken down. How do we get it taken down?” I raced around the small apartment, feeling like a mouse in a cage. “I need to call Beck and explain. I need to call the girls. Slander! Help! Someone call the lawyers.”

My hands were shaking as I pressed the contact for Enola’s cell number. “Oh thank god,” I said when the call connected. “Enola, sweetie, you didn’t happen to see anything on the internet, did you, that seems like it came from me but it absolutely did not—”

“You mean your hate list?”

Fuck. Beck.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t write—”

“Yes, you did,” Beck cut in. “You did write it. I know your handwriting. You worked for me as my assistant in apparently the worst job in the entire world that you hated more than anything. And as you tell it, you hate me more than anything since I’m at the top of your hate list—not your stepfather, who threw you out, or your stepsister, who tried to screw you over, or your mom, who never treated you like you were worth anything, but, oh wait, who knows if any of that was true because clearly you have been lying about everything from the moment I met you.”

“It was true,” I said through the tears. “People did mistreat me, and you were not the greatest boss, especially since you fired me for actions that you also participated in.”

“I was going to find you another job, Tess,” Beck said after a pause. “I didn’t want to fire you. I’m sorry I lied to you about it. I was afraid of—”

“Yes, I know, your sisters.”

“Not just that,” he said. “I was afraid of losing you, but apparently, we were never anything.”

“That’s not fair. I didn’t write any of that!” I protested. “Well, not the article at least.”

“Just own up to it,” he said in disgust.

“I’m not going to admit to something that I didn’t do,” I said stubbornly. “And I need to tell Enola and Annie that whoever wrote that article wasn’t me and they don’t know what they’re talking about. I adore the girls. Tell them I’ll come take them to lunch. Once I get a new job of course.”

Beck made an incredulous noise. “You’re never going to see them again.”

“I’m a good influence on them! They like me,” I argued. “You can’t just take the girls away. That’s horrible! They’ll miss me!”

“You’re not a good influence,” Beck snarled. “You’re bitter and angry, and they don’t need that in their lives.”

“I’m only acting like that because people keep ruining my life,” I cried.

“Maybe you’re the common denominator,” Beck shot back.

“No,” I said bitterly, “you are. I lost my painting because of you. I don’t have a job because of you. And I can’t even see the children I cared for because of you, because you won’t believe me. Shit, maybe this is another of your crazy lies. Now that the adoption is going through, free and clear, you’re just trying to shovel me out of your life.”

“I never wanted you out of my life, Tess,” Beck said quietly.

“Yes, you do,” I choked out.

“I got your painting back, Tess. After quite a lot of difficulty, might I add. Because you were right—I never should have given it away. It was important to you. And so I got it back.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling deflated.

Beck sighed. “I would say you can have it back right now, but there’s a certain condition.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, the bile rising in my throat. “Conditions like I’m supposed to just forgive you for the betrayal and the lying and go back to being your live-in nanny that you fuck occasionally? No thanks. You can keep that shitty painting. I never liked it anyway.”

I hung up the phone then started crying.

Maeve rushed over to hug me.

“This is why I don’t date,” I told her tearfully as my upstairs neighbor’s shitty music pounded away, the perfectly awful soundtrack to my perfectly awful life.

“That’s okay,” Maeve said, stroking my hair. “You’ll always have cake.”

“No, I won’t.” I sobbed. “Because the stupid oven is broken!”

“We’ll just eat the batter,” Maeve said, patting me on the shoulder and handing me one of the cake pans and a spoon.

I dipped it into the raw batter.

“This is it,” I said from my spot on the couch as I stuffed the chocolaty spoonful in my mouth. “This is the absolute low point of my life.”

“Think again!” Maeve crowed. “We just got an interview offer on our job applications.”

I perked up. “What company?”

“It doesn’t have a name,” Maeve said, skimming the page.

“Address?”

“They said they would get in touch.”

“It’s probably a scam,” I warned.

“But we’re desperate, right?” she said.

“Right.” I put another spoonful of batter in my mouth then cursed.

“Eggshells?”

“No! All my interview clothes are at my ex-boss’s house. Now I’m going to have to go back,” I raved, waving the cake pan around, “and beg Beck for my own things that I bought with my own money. Well, mostly my own money but also partially his money.”

The pan lurched in my hand.

“Shoot!” I exclaimed, reaching to steady it. “Ha, universe, you thought you had me!” I said, resting the pan on my knee. “Not today, Satan.”

It was at that moment, when the batter oozed over the skirt of my dress, down my leg, and onto the couch cushions, that I remembered that this was one of those special cake pans with a removable bottom for easy cake removal.

I tipped my head back and accepted my fate as the batter puddled around my bare thighs.

“Scratch what I said earlier. Apparently, this is now the low point.”

Maeve ran to get a dustpan. “At least now you know it literally cannot get any worse.” She chewed her lip.

“Except…”

My heart sank.

“I need something to wear to pick up my clothes and see Beck tomorrow! And now my only clean outfit is covered in batter!”