“Someone getting married?” he asks, wiping the tears out of his eyes.
“What?”
“The, um, stuff. Bachelorette party?”
I involuntarily squint at him. “Yes. That makes perfect sense. Absolutely. Liz is getting married in October, so yes. That is exactly what those things were for.”
“Oh, it’s Liz? That’s nice. Good for her.”
“Ace. Now, you said you needed to change next week’s order?” I say, plastering on my best customer service smile. “Well, we’re on a roll here, fella, so let’s get down to it.”
“I can’t believe you told him those things were for my shower,” Liz pouts, stacking a tier of chocolate fudge onto a new platform. “That is so embarrassing.”
“Technically, I said they were for your bachelorette party, and he thinks we got them for you. So he probably thinks we are the dirty birds, not you,” I say with a wink.
The store phone rings and Shannon disappears. Butter adds, “I think this will be good. You’ll go home tonight, get your gear going, and soon you’ll have a happy vagina. Then we can stop making Liz flinch every time we say vagina.”
Liz scowls. I give her a sympathetic look. “You really do flinch.”
“Did you grow up in a house where you called it something else? Like a cutesy word?” Butter asks. “Bajingo? Minge? Foo-foo? Vagoo?”
My eyes narrow at her. “Vagoo? Really? That’s...unfortunate.”
“I dated a guy last year who called them vagoos. Two dates. I couldn’t get past that.”
“Nor should you have.” I shudder. “It’s unforgivable.”
Slapping her piping bag onto the table, Liz snaps, “Okay, fine. No, we didn’t say vagina. We said special, okay?”
“Aww, you called it your special?” Butter asks.
I consider this. “That’s actually kind of genius. I’d grow up thinking my business was like, the key to the universe or something. I wouldn’t let just any man near my special, ya know? I like that. My special.”
“I can’t tell if you’re making fun of me or...” Liz trails off, biting her lip.
I hold my hands up. “I’m totally not! I’m all for proper term usage, but if you’re going to give it an alternate moniker, don’t use something lame like hoo-ha, call it the fucking special. I really like that. Hell, I might start calling mine that.”
Butter is looking down at herself. “My special. Okay, you’re right. That’s got a ring to it.”
Liz looks both horrified and oddly accomplished. She picks up her piping bag and sets back in on her cake just as Shannon comes running back in excitedly.
“Guys, oh my god, guess what?”
“We all just voted and we are all calling our vaginas our specials from now on,” Butter informs her.
Shannon stops midflail and makes an indescribable expression at Butter before remembering that she has news to share. She shakes off her confusion and turns to me and Liz. “Okay, but seriously, guess what?”
“What?” we ask.
“The Coopertown Ravens, the college basketball team? They’re looking for an official bakery for their stadium concessions, and they’ve asked us to audition for them!”
“What?” I trill. “That’s amazing!”
“It’s a huge contract! They’d sell our cupcakes at every event exclusively! We’ve got a month to present the designs, and they’ll do a tasting and make their selection. Guys, this would be massive for us. The advertising alone would be worth its weight in gold, but the actual contract, plus sales? Hello, big fat bonuses and me taking my kiddos to motherfreaking Walt Disney World!”
“Oh my god, a honeymoon!” Liz squeaks.
“I could fly out to see my Noni!” Butter gasps.
I bounce in place. “I have absolutely no grand aspirations I can think of right now outside of getting laid, but yay!”
“Kat, the art is all you, lady!” Shannon says, her eyes gleaming. “We can work together on the designs, and Butter, I’m counting on you for the recipes. We can do this, guys.”
“Who else is in the running?” I ask.
Shannon frowns. “I don’t know. But I’d assume The Cakery is, because of course they’d be.” The Cakery is a pretentious shop in the city that makes all their frosting out of olive oil and sea salt, and absolutely nothing has gluten. “And probably the usual bridal cake shops? Maybe Odessa.”
Butter perks up with a conspiratorial look. “We could scout out the other shops. Go and try their products and make darn sure we’ll kick their asses. We could use fake names and wear trench coats! I call Olga for my name.”
Squinting at her, I say, “Of all the names you could choose for your secret identity, you pick Olga?”
“What’s wrong with Olga?”
Shannon shakes her head. “Let’s call that plan B.” Looking a bit deflated, Butter fidgets with her glitter brush. “I don’t want to know too much and psych ourselves out. It doesn’t matter who we’re up against or what they make. What matters is that we’re going to give Coopertown the best goddamn cupcakes they’ve ever tasted or seen, right?”
“Right!” the rest of us cheer.
“Let’s start researching the team—everything we can find out to come up with colors, flavor ideas, themes, anything. We’ve got a month, so let’s make it count.”
I salute her. “You’ve got it, Captain.” I head over to the teeny desk we have crammed in between the fridge and the wall and open up our shop laptop. A picture of a breast-shaped cake appears. “Uh... Shannon? Why is there an edible tit on the laptop?”
“Oh, yeah. We got an order for a boob-cake for a party. Liz?”
Liz slumps. “I knew today was going too well.”
“What’s the boob-cake for?” Butter asks.
“It’s a breastfeeding support group thing. Their one-year anniversary of meetings or something? Looks doable.”
Liz comes up behind me and looks over my shoulder, wincing. “Yeah, I think I can do that with fondant pretty easily.”
“Boob-cake.” Butter shrugs. “Who knew?”
I sit back in my chair and click open a new browser tab. “I fucking love this job.”
I take my phone out and, for a moment, think of texting Ryan to tell him about the hubbub in the shop. Is that something we can do on a break? I never thought to ask how we’d proceed with the nonsexual trappings of coupledom while separated.
Suddenly I realize that he hasn’t texted me since we hit the bricks. Is he as conflicted as I am? I don’t know what to do with the sad feeling that comes with having to question whether it’s proper protocol to message one of the most important people in my life.
I quietly tuck my phone back in my pocket as Shannon, standing at her station scribbling in her notebook, looks up at me. “Okay, this is just a loose estimate here,” she begins. “But I’m pretty sure that with the money from this contract, we would be able to hire on another employee.”
I