Kissing In Cars

11

It's Monday morning which means I should be working posting things on social media for the bakery, but late last night I had an idea that I just had to try out this morning. So here I am, in almost two hours early at work, icing five small cakes. I thought small cakes all tied together by a mutual theme displayed on the icing would be cool. I'm two cakes in and loving the idea. Right now the theme is seasons, but next I'm going to go onto either Ninja Turtles or Winnie the Pooh.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see a movement in the room, but my eyes stay focused on my cake.

"Hey." Dena greets me as she gets closer.

I glance up from the cake that's two inches in front of me to see her. "Hey, how's it going?"

"Good, I finished those two orders for pickup." she says. She moves to her station to start setting up for the day. 

One of my favourite things about Dena is how organized she is with everything. When I first hired her on, I was worried that, even though she's an amazing baker, that she would be messy and I would be constantly lost in my own kitchen but really the opposite happened. She organized a lot of things way better than I had, even adding a couple of long shelves on each wall to give us more room for ingredients. My personal favourite is the sprinkles section, the colours going from lightest to darkest.

"Cool, thanks." I say, my focus back on my cake. "You got them done quick."

"Yeah, well the orders were similar enough. All I had to do was add marshmallow brownie bites to one and almond cookies to the other, the rest was the same." she explains.

"Even better." I say, half listening. I stand up straight and eye the cake I'm working on, wondering if it does convey the message of summer. I could always add another palm tree.

"What're you working on?" Dena asks, coming to stand beside me. 

"I thought it would be cool to decorate cakes with themes. So four mini cakes that all go together. I wanted to see if the cakes took off, then we could do them on cupcakes sometimes for special events or holidays." I say.

"And this ones the beach?" she asks, studying it alongside me.

"It's summer. I knew it wasn't summery enough."

"No, it is. When paired with spring it makes sense." she says looking at where my other cake is on the counter beside us.

"You like the idea?"

Even though it's my bakery and I have the final say on everything I still value Dena's opinion. She's really good at knowing what's going to work or not and she's had a lot of experience. Before she worked with me she worked in a really prestigious restaurant for a couple of years before she branched off and opened up her own business. She had been doing custom orders, making cakes and other desserts for any event requested. She stopped it after being in business for five years, finding that it was a lot of work to keep up with and was taking over her life. Now she's my favourite baked goods and personal consultant.

"I think it'll be a great success." she says after a moment of consideration.  "We should M&Ms, Like the yellow one is more lemon flavoured, red for red velvet and so on." she says. 

"That's a great idea." I say, turning to jot it down in my notebook. 

Dena goes back to prepping her station. We have four different custom orders for this afternoon that I know of. Three of them are cakes for someone's birthday, the other one is one of our chocolate platter. Its a new feature on the menu, one that seems to be taking off. Since I put it on a month ago we've gotten five orders for it. It's a huge platter filled with chocolate cookies, brownies, mini cupcakes, biscotti, fudge and chocolate truffles. 

Both Dena and I work silently for ten minutes, her starting the first cake and me starting the last of my seasonal cake icing. Once I start my last cake I notice Dena keeps looking over at me. For a second I think its because she wants to see how I'm doing with icing my cake, but it's clear once she starts speaking that my decorating skills are the last thing on her mind.

"So, Emily told me someone came to see you the other day." Dena says. I don't look at her but I can already picture the look she's giving me. 

"Yeah." I say, not wanting to give more details. Dena knows everything about Tony. She knows who he was to me, why he left and exactly how he left.

"A man, I heard." she continues. "And not Jordan which is so weird."

I glance at her now, or rather glare. "What're you trying to say?"

She shrugs at me all innocently. "I just wanted to know who it was. You know me, I'm curious."

I focus back on piping my icing properly. Since she started talking to me about this I've almost messed up twice which isn't usually something that happens to me. My focus is usually razor sharp but right now its faltering. 

 After sensing I won't answer, Dena continues talking. "Emily said he was cute. Black hair. Kinda tall." she pauses for a moment to really draw out her next words. "Covered in tattoos."

I sigh and put my icing piping bag down beside me, careful to not touch the cake that I've been so delicately working on. Crossing my arms over my chest I finally give in to her. "You can stop doing this. I know you know who it was."

Dena regards me with a stoic look which is unusual for her. Typically, she's a happy-go-lucky kind of person, but not now. "What was he doing here?" she asks me.

"In my bakery?" I ask, slightly annoyed by the fact that it seems I can't do what I want in my life without being questioned by everybody.

"How could you let him back in?' she asks me.

"Again, into MY bakery?"

"No, in your life. After the way he broke up with you and-"

"I know how he broke up with me." I say quickly, cutting her off. "I was there."

"You're making a huge mistake if you let him back in." she tells me.

"Who said I was letting him back in?" I demand in an exasperated tone. "Tony showed up the other day, we've seen each other a couple of times since then but its nothing. I'm with Jordan, remember?"

We're both staring at each other now, both of us tense. I get where she's coming from wanting to be protective after what happened, but this is also my life and my choices. If I wanted to let Tony back into it then I would. Not that I am, because I'm with somebody and I have a whole life already.

"I remember you're with Jordan, maybe you should remind yourself."

Now, I would never fire a friend over a petty argument, but I would be lying if I said the thought didn't cross my mind for the briefest of seconds. 

"You're out of line." I say to her.  I hastily start cleaning up where I was working, no longer in the mood to keep working in here at the moment.

"I'm trying to make sure you don't do something stupid!" Dena says.

"Worry about your own life and I'll worry about mine." I reply. "This isn't something I'm going to talk about."

"Okay," she says backing down. "You're right, it's none of my business."

I can tell Dena isn't happy with the resolution of our talk, but she knows that I'm right and this is my life with my choices. The second I feel like I'm making mistakes then I'll take a step back and take inventory of my life, but for now the only problems are how others at reacting to Tony, not Tony himself.