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

6

Tess

Plop. Plop.

The rain dripped from the ceiling into the pot I had on the floor.

I regretted not braving the rain earlier and going home to fight the incoming water.

Maeve winced as a drop of water hit her on the head. She held out an empty cup to catch the drips from the new leak.

“Do you think we can harvest the mushrooms growing in the carpet?” she wondered. “Maybe sell them as hyper-locally grown vegetables for a super high price?” Maeve snapped a few pictures of the little white mushrooms with her phone.

“At this point, I’m ready to do anything to make rent,” I said, pouring the batter for the Boston cream pie I was making into a pan and sliding it into the oven. The radiator had broken—surprise, surprise—and since we needed the oven on to heat the apartment, might as well bake a cake!

I took eggs out of the too-small fridge and cracked them, separating the egg yolks for the custard filling.

“How much is a pound of specialty mushrooms?” I asked. “Maybe I could start a YouTube channel where I show people how to farm them.”

“Apparently not a lot,” Maeve said, scrolling through her phone. “If you wanted to be a mushroom farmer, you’d need to move upstate or under a bridge.”

“At the rate I’m going, that may end up happening,” I said with a sigh.

“We will find you a job,” Maeve said, turning back to her laptop. She had a plastic bag over it to protect it from the dripping water from the ceiling.

Our upstairs neighbor’s dog started to bark, and he then began his nightly ritual of playing terrible hip-hop music for the whole neighborhood.

I let out a frustrated yell. “Why does he have to blare his music all night?”

“I’d totally bang the ceiling with a broom,” Maeve said as the pots of water vibrated in time to the music, “but I’m afraid the whole thing would collapse.”

“I need to move.”

“Maybe you won’t get a new job, and we’ll be evicted, and the problem will solve itself,” Maeve said.

“Did you find any job listings?”

“Just the usual temp agencies. There are some firms looking for an assistant, but they want someone with a master’s degree.”

“Figures,” I muttered.

When my mother had died, she had left all her money and life insurance payout to my stepdad. She had told him that he was supposed to use that money to help me in life and pay for my college. Of course, he had promptly spent it all on his daughter and kicked me out of the house when I was seventeen.

Being on my own so young was a learning experience, and I felt like it really helped me grow as a person. I was definitely not at all bitter!

Actually, yes. Yes, I am a very bitter and hateful person, especially because my stupid neighbor will not turn down his stupid music!

“Turn it off!” I screamed at the ceiling.

“Jeez, you really need that cake,” Maeve said in alarm.

“It’s been a stressful day,” I grumbled, stirring the custard. “And I have a new romance novel that I can’t even read because the ceiling is leaking all over my bed!”

“I’m filling out your application for the temp agency,” my friend said soothingly. “You know tons of software. You’ll find an assistant job for sure!”

“Being an assistant wasn’t what I went to school for,” I said dejectedly.

“You can still apply for a marketing job. Loads of people find marketing jobs in this city,” Maeve said.

“Bet they didn’t go to a crappy private college that got discredited the year after they graduated,” I retorted.

The private school had been the only place that would give me a loan without a parent’s signature. Turned out the whole thing was a scam, and even though the school had folded, I was still on the hook for two hundred thousand dollars at a criminally high interest rate.

“But now you have experience,” Maeve reminded me as she typed on her laptop. “You worked at Quantum Cyber—that’s something. While you do some temp work, you can apply for marketing positions or another assistant position. If you find someone more low-key than Beck, it’s not a bad gig to organize doggie playdates, book hotels, and fetch coffee.”

“All those firms make you work as a temp before hiring you full-time. No one just gives you a full-time job in their marketing department unless you’re sleeping with the boss,” I said, fishing out my second double broiler to start the chocolate ganache that would glaze the top of the Boston cream pie.

“Ugh, I hate this apartment! I hate my crappy life. Why can’t things just be… not even easy—I’m not asking for easy—just not suck so much?”

“You’ll feel better after cake,” Maeve reminded me.

I took a deep breath. “Yes, cake.” I pressed my hands together and imagined the beautiful, delicious cake that would be ready in an hour. “Everything is better with cake.”

“You know, now that you do have a little more free time and don’t have Beck sucking all the oxygen out of the room, maybe you can actually start dating?”

“I don’t date,” I reminded her.

“You have to move past Kaden,” she said. “He hasn’t contacted you in months. He probably moved on to creepier stalker pastures.”

“I’m fine.”

“You and Beck were a little too enmeshed,” Maeve said. “He was texting you at all hours of the night.”

“It was about work.”

“You were constantly fetching him his special drinks and meals.”

“Because I was paid to do so. Poorly, might I add.”

“All I’m saying is that you had a very important male in your life who is now gone, and you might want a new one.”

“Never!” I declared, holding up my whisk. “I will die alone, drowned in my leaking apartment, surrounded by cake.”

“You should at least adopt a cat or a pet rock.”

The cake did actually help.The smell permeated the apartment, and the tension in my shoulders eased as I took the first bite of the springy yellow cake with creamy custard and a slightly bitter chocolate glaze.

While I hated my ex-boss, my stepfather, and my upstairs neighbor, I loved to bake. I lived to bake. And to eat.

I cut another slice. The rain had stopped, and the ceiling had ceased dripping water. The steam from the oven fogged up the windows, and the little café lights I had strung up to try and make the apartment feel a little rosier glowed in the humid air. Even the mushrooms growing in the carpet were giving off a fairyland vibe instead of a slum vibe.

Maeve cut her own slice of cake then took the rain jacket off my laptop.

“See?” she said. “You just needed a snack to get your blood sugar up.”

“There’s nothing cake can’t solve!” I toasted her with my fork.

“There’s tons of assistant jobs posted on the temp-agency forums,” she assured me. “You’re going to get something for sure.”

I nodded as I boiled water for tea.

“Totally. It’s going to be way better than working with Beck.”

“Wear something cute,” she instructed.

“I’ll decide on my outfit in the morning,” I said, stuffing the last bite of cake in my mouth.

“You definitely need to do it tonight,” Maeve said, pointing at her laptop. “The website says that you have to be at the temp office by six in the morning, or you won’t get a job position that day.”

“Fuck my life.”