Page 3 of The Baking Games
“Celia? Isn’t that Gary’s wife?” I ask, my eyes wide.
“Yep!”
“Wow! That takes some guts to date the boss’s wife,” I say, putting the bread on top of the microwave.
“Right? Anyway, he’s interviewing new cooks… and divorce lawyers, I assume.”
I playfully punch her in the shoulder. Sadie has a great sense of humor. While I’m perpetually happy, she’s more realistic. She has more emotions. You know, like a normal person.
“I hate that you have to work at that place. I’m thinking of taking a night job again.”
“Sis, I’m not a baby anymore. You don’t have to work yourself to death just so I can go to college. Lots of people don’t go to college. I’ll be fine.”
I know she’s lying. Sadie has talked about going to “real college” since childhood. She wants that whole college experience where she lives on campus and walks between the giant brick buildings going to classes. She wants to join a sorority and go to parties. At twenty years old, that time is drawing to a close. She doesn’t want to be so much older than her classmates.
I feel time moving so much faster with each passing day. I owe her this experience. Her life has been far from easy. Neither of our lives has been easy, but I can still save her. I can still make her dreams come true.
Mine? Well, that is starting to seem like a lost cause, even to a positive person like myself. But you can’t have it all, right?
CHAPTER 2
RHETT
I stand on the dock, staring out over the ocean. There aren’t many places in the world prettier than the Bahamas. The temperature is perfect today, and there isn’t a cloud in the sky.
I’ve spent all morning doing what I love most in the world—creating visually stunning and delicious-tasting desserts for people who may or may not appreciate all the work that went into them.
This is my life. At thirty-one years old, I shouldn’t care what my family thinks about it, but I can admit to myself that sometimes I do. I’m a grown man, but I can’t help that it matters—deep down—that I don’t have the support most people take for granted.
Even surrounded by all this beauty, it’s hard to live with the knowledge that your parents don’t accept you. They don’t think what you do is anything special. They don’t like that a son of theirs has “given up” on being successful by cooking fancy desserts for rich people.
Mom is a respected cardiologist in Boston, and Dad is one of the top entertainment attorneys in the country. He splits his time between Boston and Los Angeles, where most of his clients are. I’m sure that’s where he also keeps his mistresses, although no one in our family would ever bring up that topic.
They’ve been married for almost forty years, and I can’t remember ever seeing them hold hands or kiss. They are more of a partnership, I guess. Their marriage is one reason why I will never get married. Sharing your whole life with someone you don’t love seems pointless.
Then there are my two brothers—Ben and Liam, the stars in my parents’ eyes. Ben is the oldest at thirty-seven. He works with my dad and travels from Los Angeles to New York City on a weekly basis. Liam lives in Boston and is thirty-five. He’s a noted plastic surgeon and keeps my mother looking twenty years younger. She thinks no one notices that her hands are sixty-five years old, but her face is forty-five.
“You on break?”
I look up and see my co-worker, Eric, standing before me, smoking a cigarette. Nasty habit. He smells like an ashtray, but the beach winds thankfully keep the smoke away from me. I’m highly allergic.
“Yeah. I scarfed down some tacos, and now I’m regretting it,” I say, putting my hand on my midsection.
“It’s been a long day, huh?”
“Every day is a long day,” I complain. I’m what a lot of people might call grumpy. I call it realistic. I picked the wrong profession for someone who isn’t a morning person. Pastry chefs have to get up early, and it’s the only part of the job I detest.
“You should take some time off,” he says, leaning against a wooden post adjoining the dock.
“Why? I have no family. No wife. No kids. Might as well make money and sock it away so one day I don’t have to work at all.”
“You’re a workaholic, man. You’re always going to work,” he says in his thick British accent. Eric is covered in tattoos. Both arms are sleeves, and he even has some on his hands. I want to ask what they are sometimes, but then I’m afraid it will cause a long conversation. I’m not built for long conversations.
I shrug my shoulders. “Who knows? Maybe one day, I’ll have a good reason to take time off. For now, it’s pointless.”
“You’ve got those big dreams,” Eric says, taking a long drag off his cigarette and then tossing the butt into the ocean. I want to push him in after it every time I see him do that.
“Stop littering.”