Sure enough, my trusty old alarm clock sounds right at 5am on the dot. I groan and roll over to slap snooze, until I remember that it’s Friday, and I’ve agreed to bake three more wedding cakes than we can conceivably finish by this weekend, and I don’t have time to snooze, I need to get my ass out the door as soon as humanly possible.

So I squint through my morning routine, rubbing sleep from my eyes in the shower. I’m so exhausted I brush my teeth and accidentally spit toothpaste into the toilet, then try to put the brush itself back into the shower caddy. Once I finally manage to get myself in something at least approaching working order, I throw on the same outfit I wore yesterday—we have uniforms at the bakery, so it doesn’t matter if I re-wear it, right? —and jog out to my car.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my job. The fact that I have to stop by a Starbucks drive-through for an XL black coffee before I even make it past the end of my road, and then blast pop music at a near-deafening level in the car the whole drive to the bakery just to wake up, doesn’t change the fact that this is my dream. My best friend Lara and I saved and schemed for years to open this bakery. We expected to be in the hole for at least two years while we built up a name for ourselves.

But now, as we near the second anniversary of opening Red Velvet, we’ve already been named Best New Bakery in Town, Top 50 Bakeries in the State, and been featured on a few really well-known travel websites and bakery blogs. There’s even a whole Pinterest page we once found dedicated to our cakes. We’re more than solvent—we’re more profitable than I’d imagined we could be this soon into the game, and we’ve got a wait-list 3 months long for big event cakes like the weddings and anniversaries that got us this far.

So I’m not complaining. Not at all. It’s just that, with this much going on, everything else tends to fall by the wayside a little. I haven’t taken a vacation, not even a day off, since our opening day. I’ve hardly had time to see my friends and family, let alone meet new people or go on dates.

But I’m living the dream. If this is the price to pay, so be it. I’m happy to pay it.

I pull up to the shop just as Lara is opening the grill out front. She’s been my partner-in-crime this whole time, as we opened and got everything set up. Lara helps bake a little bit, but it’s mostly me heading up the kitchen and the small team of assistants we’ve hired over the past couple years. She handles the front-of-shop things—invoices, customer meetings, balancing the books. All the day-to-day of the business that make me want to rip my hair out and scream bloody murder. But that’s why we make the perfect team. I’m the creative crazy one and she’s the down-to-earth voice of reason that keeps me sane—and keeps the shop ticking.

“Morning!” I call as I climb out of the driver’s seat.

“You’re early,” she shouts back, wagging a finger.

“Need to get a head start on the Deutschs’ 3-tier if we want to be finished in time to knock out the Hendricks’ and the Barrows’ cake all by the end of the day,” I reply as I jog up to meet her at the storefront.

Lara squints at my face, a too-close inspection that she’s all too fond of throwing at me lately. “How much sleep did you get?” she asks.

“Had a late night,” I reply with a shrug. “Nothing I’ve not done before.”

“Uh huh.” She rolls her eyes. “Let me guess. It was not a late night doing anything particularly exciting.”

“Unless you count doing myself exciting?” I flash a grin and duck under the grill she’s still raising so I can skip into the store before her.

“How many times do I need to tell you to take a damn vacation, girl?” she scolds as she follows me inside, heading straight to the register to begin the morning set-up. “Or hell, even just a day off.”

“We have every Sunday off,” I point out.

She snorts. “That doesn’t count.”

I wag a finger at her. “Don’t let any of our religiously-inclined customers catch you saying that.”

Lara groans. “Carmine, you haven’t got a single sanctimonious bone in your body, so don’t pretend that you take Sunday off because it’s holy. You’d work every single day, 365 days a year if I’d let you.”

“And? I’ve got good work ethic,” I reply as I shrug on my apron and dust myself down, getting ready to head into the back and fire up the ovens.

“There’s good work ethic and then there’s excessive to the point of becoming detrimental work ethic,” she calls after me.

I ignore her. There’s too much to do to waste time debating this anyway.

By the time our two assistants, Carl and Jen, arrive, I’m already elbow-deep in a bowl of batter. I shout instructions at them over my shoulder, and together the three of us set about putting together a 3-tiered wedding cake for the Deutsch wedding tomorrow. Next up on the docket will be the 5-tier for the Hendricks wedding, and after that a simple 2-tier for the Barrows, which I’ll save until the end of the day, because their wedding isn’t until Sunday morning. But since we close on Sunday, and tomorrow we need to get moving on the anniversary cake and several birthday parties we’re catering for Monday, I’ve calculated that we need to get that cake in the oven by end of day at the latest.

Things are running smoothly until 10am. At 10am, Carl steps out back for a smoke break without warning Jen. Jen, busy with prepping the fondant for the Deutsch cake, misses the Hendricks’ first tier coming out of the oven, which we set on an automatic roller to save time and prevent over-baking. The cake falls out of the automatic dispenser with a clatter, and before I even turn around to witness the aftermath, I can already tell it’s bad from Jen’s shriek.

There’s cake everywhere. Cake, and the bowl of fondant mix that Jen upended in her rush to catch the falling cake.

I manage to reign in my freak-out. I instruct Jen to clean up, step out back and grab Carl to help, and then get down on hands and knees myself to assist. Together, the three of us manage to put the kitchen back in some semblance of working order. But by the time we’ll have another first tier ready to bake, we’ll already be a few hours behind schedule.

That’s when Lara pops her head into the back.

“Carmine? Can you come help me review the orders for next week?”

“That’s your jurisdiction,” I call back, my voice tight.

“I just want to make sure we’re only taking on the number of orders we can reasonably handle,” she replies. “I was reviewing the books and it seems like there might be more here than we can really finish in time.”

“There’s exactly as many orders as we can handle,” I snap. “No more, no less.”

“Carmine.”

My back stiffens. I recognize that tone. I’ve known Lara since college, and I can count on one hand the number of actual fights we’ve had. She doesn’t get pissed easily, and when she does, I’m almost always the one at fault. But that’s her borderline-annoyed tone. Which means a few more steps in the wrong direction, and we’re going to have a problem on our hands.

I take a deep breath and lock eyes with Carl, then Jen. Both of them have a deer-in-headlights expression on. They’re younger than Lara and me, just out of college, but they’ve been around the bakery long enough to know that my bestie and I never fight. Usually.

Then again, I usually don’t freak out on anyone for something like dropping a cake, either. Shit happens. Anyone that’s worked in the food industry long enough knows that.

So I take a second deep breath, yank off my apron, nod in what I hope is a reassuring manner to our two assistants, and then head out to the front of the shop.

“I’m sorry,” I say before Lara can start. “I’m just stressed—we dropped a cake, and now we’re behind schedule, and…” I stop when she holds up a hand.

“Did I not tell you that you were overbooking yourself this weekend?” she asks with an eyebrow raised.

I bite my lip. “Maybe.”

“And did I not warn you that mistakes happen and we need to build more free time into the schedule to accommodate for them?”

I clear my throat this time. “Also maybe.”

“So when I ask you to go over the schedule for next week and make sure it’s not too insane, your correct response should be…”

I groan. “Yes, okay, I’ll try to cut it down a little. But Lara, we’ve got so many orders pouring in—”

“Right, because we’re doing great. Carmine, we don’t have to squeeze in every single order we receive. People are clamoring for our cakes because they’re amazing, but we can’t meet every single demand we receive. And we don’t need to. People understand we’re busy, and they know they need to book us farther in advance. We can trim down the schedule a little bit without losing business, you know.”

I swallow hard. “I know, you’re right…”

“Are you okay?” Lara squints at me, a little more closely than I’d like. I remember the bags I spotted under my eyes last night, and how hard it was to drag myself out of bed this morning.

“I’m fine,” I mumble.

“You need to take care of yourself too, you know,” she replies. “Nobody’s getting any cakes if you go and work yourself into the ground.”

“I take care of myself,” I protest.

“Carmine, when was the last time you did anything but work?” Lara lifts an eyebrow and fixes me with a sardonic gaze. “Hell, when was the last time you got laid?”

“I…” I snap my mouth shut again, because I’m still counting.

She snorts again. “I bet you’d be a lot less snippy if you’d had sex anytime in the last two years, you know.”

“I’ve had sex!” I protest.

“Oh really? When?” she counters.

I bite my lip again. Shit. She’s right. Now that I think about it, I haven’t been with another person since… Well, since before we got the business loan approved for the store. Before Red Velvet’s official opening day. I’ve been with my collection of sex toys pretty regularly since then, but I’m guessing by Lara’s estimation that won’t count.

“It’s not that long,” I reply slowly.

“Carmine, you’re 28 years old. It’s not super normal to have not had sex with anyone for two whole years. Come on, get back out there, get laid! What have you got to lose besides some of this grumpy attitude?” She grins and slaps me on the shoulder.

I stomp away from her toward the cash register as a distraction. “What’s the point?” I call over my shoulder. “Remember the last guy I even came close to dating?” Derrick Weaver, the nerdiest guy in town. He was hot in a geeky kind of way, but in the bedroom, well…

“Derrick doesn’t count.” Lara leans against the counter and watches me double-check the schedule for next week, purse my lips, and then cross off a couple of the cakes, which we should be able to reschedule with the customers, since they’re for events that are still a few days in the future. “You told me the two of you had basically zero chemistry.”

“Because he wasn’t into anything I was into,” I protest.

“Ah yes, your mystery kink.” Lara rolls her eyes. I glare at her, but she widens her eyes and spreads her hands. “Serious question, Carmine. You won’t even tell me what you’re into. Are you sharing it with the guys you hook up with?”

“I’ve tried,” I protest. My friends all know that I’ve got some kinks in the closet.

It’s been a running joke since high school. But I’ve never felt like I needed to share with my nearest and dearest. The guys I’ve tried asking about exploring my fantasies have shut them down pretty fast—which makes me feel like my friends would do the same if they knew exactly what I like. Being stuffed so full I feel like I’ll explode. It’s not exactly a normal desire.

I lean back on the stool and sigh, counting through my exes—not just the ones I’ve dated, but even the one-night stands. “I’ve talked to more than a few of them about it, Lara. And any guy I’ve ever talked to really openly about what I like has freaked out.”

I can still remember the last time I tried to honestly explain what I wanted. It was with Derrick, after he said he was interested in trying some kinky stuff. I asked him to lube up one of my really thick dildos and use his hands to push that into my pussy while he fucked me in the ass. He turned a shade of red I’ve never seen outside of our signature Red Velvet cakes, and told me he couldn’t imagine doing that to a nice girl like me.

We broke up a couple weeks later.

But it wasn’t just Derrick. Even the kinkier guys I’ve dated, ones who claimed when we first met that it’s hot that I’m open to weirder sex, have balked at my desires. One guy, Patrick, really tried to fulfill my wishes. He went as far as putting anal beads in my ass while he fucked me. But he wasn’t aggressive about it, he wouldn’t use the bigger beads that I wanted, and his cock, to be honest, wasn’t thick enough to really make me feel completely full.

I’ve just come to terms with the fact that what I actually want—to feel like I’m being fucked by two guys, double-penetration at its finest, but without actually having a threesome—is impossible. Not to mention, it makes most guys uncomfortable and feel kind of inadequate.

“I’m sure there’s some guy somewhere who’s into the same stuff,” Lara protests.

I shake my head. She has no idea. Guys get intimidated when I tell them I need to feel full like never before. No guy has ever managed to come close to doing it, either. “I don’t have time to date anyway,” I say by way of excuse. “When would I go out with someone? Besides, I’ve tried the one-night-stand thing, you know that. Random hookups aren’t really my thing either.” They turn out just as uncomfortable as long-term hookups, if not more so. And the couple times I’ve tried it, the guys have had the same reactions to learning about my kinks as guys I’ve known for way longer anyway.

Lara purses her mouth and watches me work on the schedule for a few moments. “What about an escort?” Lara asks.

She says it so nonchalantly, so casually, that for a second I do a double-take. I look up from the register and stare at her for a solid minute before I realize that I heard that correctly.

“What, like a prostitute?” I hiss, voice lowered just in case Carl or Jen pop out from the back of the shop, or a customer walks in the front.

Lara laughs and shakes her head. “They’re not the same—”

“Pretty sure paying someone for sex is the same thing,” I mutter.

“Still! If you know what you want, and if it’s sooo specific that you can’t even admit it to me, or find it out in the wider world…”

“Oh my god, I cannot believe you are suggesting I hire a prostitute just to get fucked so that I’ll be less stressed-out and won’t snap at you.”

Lara laughs again, louder this time. “That’s not why. I’m concerned about you, Carmine. You need to get laid! Girls have needs.”

“And I am perfectly capable of fulfilling my own needs, thank you very much,” I reply with a toss of my head.

Lara shrugs. “Suit yourself. I just meant, if you don’t want to spend the time meeting someone at a bar, and you know what you want, seems like hiring someone online makes total sense. Saves time, gets you the necessary… Maybe you’d actually find someone into the same kinks as you.”

My cheeks flush bright red—especially when the doorbell tinkles and a customer steps inside, coat clutched against the fall breeze outdoors.

I shoot Lara a pointed we’ll talk about this later look and she scurries to help our customer.

As for me, I finish polishing off the schedule—there are a couple things we can shuffle around if I’m honest, and buy ourselves a little more breathing room to play with next week. Just in case we have another cake collapsing fiasco.

Then I pull my apron back on, smile wide for our new customer, who’s currently looking over the cake décor books in Lara’s capable hands, and head back into the kitchen to get this show back on the road.

Escort, I think with a laugh, shaking my head. Lara doesn’t know what she’s talking about.