“I want that entire Corinthians verse written on the cake in Tiffany blue and I want the base frosting to be a deep, dark purple,” the bride-to-be demanded from across the consultation table that sat in the middle of my bakery’s storefront.
My mother’s head bobbed in an agreeable nod, jotting down notes as the potential customer spoke. I sat back in my chair on two legs, rocking with my knees against the table. Instead of making eye contact with the bumbling bleach blonde, I kept my gaze trained on the notebook in my lap, swirling doodles around the page under the guise that I was taking notes.
The cake was generic. So generic in fact, that I’d already made three like it in the past year for brides equally as basic as her. Blondie thought she was being original, over-explaining what it should look like as if it wasn’t pinned on every future bride’s Pinterest wall. I didn’t need to listen to her description—condescending comments sprinkled in to remind us that she still hadn’t technically hired us—to get the cake to look exactly how she wanted. Good ol’ Lynn was diligently taking notes on anything I might have missed, anyway.
“I think we have everything we need,” my mom finally said, standing from her seat for the first time in three hours. Has it really been that long?
“Great,” Blondie replied through a fake smile as she stood, strapping her enormous designer purse over her shoulder. Reluctantly, I was the last to stand. “When do you think you’ll have those taste samples ready by? I have a few other vendors I’m looking into before I make my final decision.”
I hated that we were even catering to her ridiculous demands. Lunar Creations had a waiting list that went nine months out for weddings—thanks to my natural skills and stubbornness over hiring another person to make the cakes—and none of those brides required three consultation meetings before they signed with us.
My mom met the bodacious woman at a bridal show and drooled all over her when she heard that the wedding’s budget was over one hundred thousand dollars and the woman would be requiring a wedding cake and a fully catered dessert bar for over five hundred guests. If we could get her to allow us to cater the desserts at her wedding, the bakery would be able to float on her commissions for three months straight.
But is the money worth the headache? Lynn sure thought so.
“No longer than a week,” I assured, grabbing her hand in a farewell handshake. The samples could be finished in a few hours, but I wasn’t going to tell her that and risk longer interaction. Once she accepted my answer, I disappeared into the kitchen as my mom walked her out the front door.
“Glad that’s over,” Mom huffed when she entered. “You really need to work on your manners. I don’t know what happened, but you used to be so excited during bridal consultations. You need to find that again; people can tell you’re uninterested and it’s going to start losing us business.”
My life was gutted and turned upside down to allow the blood to fully drain from it like a hunted animal, that’s what happened. But okay, Mom, I’ll work on my happy face, I thought.
Instead of responding out loud, I rolled my eyes and grabbed my coat, coldly dismissing her before I walked out the door toward my Jeep.
Rolled eyes and silent walk-offs were as rebellious as I got with anyone these days, and that was only with the people I was willing to hold regular conversation with. There was a time when I would throw fits or give an earful to anyone who looked at me sideways, but that version of myself was long gone. Those reactions never felt warranted enough, mostly because emotions are what triggered them, and I was sorely lacking in that department. Still, I possessed enough fight deep down to stop my mother from thinking she could lecture me about running my bakery.
Lunar Creations was born in my tiny college apartment, where I barely completed small orders for my friends on the broken-down stove my landlord refused to fix. It started off as a way for me to make money on the side, but the more people tried my desserts, the more orders I got. After college, when I moved back home with my parents, the business grew too large to continue in their overcrowded kitchen.
Mom and I scouted out retail spaces, scoring one in downtown Grosse Pointe for a great price through a distant cousin. A few pieces of paperwork later, we were officially a registered business. I loved being my own boss, and while it was a bigger challenge than I could have ever imagined when I started, I wouldn’t trade Lunar Creations for the world. I put my heart and soul into every order I completed, and my customers appreciated it.
Even after The Dog, I still found a tiny shred of joy in the work I did. Eventually, when I realized my life had been sucked of all happiness, I clung onto that shred, throwing everything I had into it. I was rewarded tremendously. If it weren’t for that monster, I wouldn’t be one of the hottest bakeries in the Metro Detroit area.
Before, I was an only child with two very average parents, Salvatore and Lynn Russo. I grew up in an average house in the suburbs of Detroit that was bursting at the seams with pleasantly average memories. My mother, now retired and helping me with the bakery, was a teacher at an elementary school in the city where she dealt with underprivileged kids.
My father worked for a big three automotive factory and I didn’t think he would ever retire from his job. I went to an exemplary private school, received amazing grades while upholding the position of Student Body President, and went off to college at a top tier university in my state. My plain brown hair matched my plain brown eyes, and you wouldn’t catch me dead at a gym, so my body followed the typical curves of a woman who lived off carbs and tomato sauce. My life was painfully average, and I would have never guessed that something so life-altering would happen to me, tipping my world upside-down and shaking out all its contents.
●
After I made the short drive to my apartment, I rushed toward the front door, my key held between my fingers and turned out as a weapon as I always did while walking across open spaces—a new habit I’d formed in recent months. When I entered my tiny solitude, I was greeted by Daisy, my miniature Dachshund roommate. Outside of the bakery, she was the only soul I preferred to see, and I was grateful for her presence in my lonely, isolated life.
In the weeks that followed my attack, I knew my mom could feel that something was off. I usually caught her watching me work with a perplexed stare at times she thought I wasn’t looking. Her thoughts were so loud, it was like she was screaming: “It looks like Luna and sounds like Luna, but there’s no way that lump of skin walking around could be my daughter, could it?”
Sorry, Mother Dearest, it’s all me, I wanted to scream back. But instead, I found excuses to get away; to escape her curious stares and impending questions.
There wasn’t a singular moment when the normalcy disappeared, and anxiety took its place. The panic attacks didn’t begin right away either. They snuck up on me, trickling in when I least expected and disrupting the small sense of peace I had thought I’d found in my solitary. It was as if I woke up one day and it was too late, I was already consumed beyond repair and gasping for my next breath over some menial thing.
The first one happened over a missing sock. I can still remember the feeling to this day, an inexplicable need to wear the one sock that was missing its pair. I recall feeling conflicted, knowing how silly it was to get upset over a missing sock when I had an entire drawer full of them but not being able to tame the hysteria. I ended up missing half a day of work from the attack and stumbling into the bakery to a concerned Lynn demanding answers for where I’d been. I mustered up a weak excuse for her—period cramps or something else that she couldn’t argue—and then stumbled toward the kitchen to work, exhausted beyond belief.
Deep down, I wanted someone to catch me lying so I could confess. The truth of what happened that night burned my throat every time I held a conversation. It felt like I was bottling up a secret that, if left unspoken, would end up exploding inside of me, destroying everything in its wake. No one seemed to notice the weight of it bearing on my shoulders, though, so I held it in and kept my distance to protect them from becoming collateral damage when I finally did erupt.
In the first two weeks, I had large, dark bruises peppered all over, and my body ached from the intrusion it had received. During that time, I was obsessed about keeping anyone from finding the evidence, but I would be willing to bet that no one would have bothered to notice them either way. I sat silently through the holidays, tugging down my sleeves before anyone caught a glimpse of the ugly truth beneath them. Eventually, those faded away and I felt the last crumb of my old self fading with them. My life returned to a numbingly normal routine.
Naturally, I threw myself into the bakery, working double shifts and taking twice as many orders as I had before. The increased business kept my mother satiated and distracted her from my morose personality. I nodded along and plastered fake smiles on while we planned out orders with customers, but always returned to my silent work in the kitchen after they left.
The week after Thanksgiving, I packed up what little belongings I had and moved to an apartment about ten minutes from my parents’ house, and five minutes from the bakery. My move didn’t come as a surprise to anyone in my life. Before, I had spent weeks apartment-hunting, searching for the perfect place to spark my creativity and room with my best friend. What came as a surprise was that I settled on one of the apartments I’d been dead-set against in the beginning, and I didn’t even ask Cara before renting out the lower-level one-bedroom—the opposite of everything we’d discussed in our first place together.
The day she found out, she barged into my childhood bedroom as I packed up the last of my things and gave me the nastiest tongue-lashing I’d ever received from her. I took it in stride, though, ignoring her insults and reassuring her it wasn’t personal. I’d even convinced her it was better this way, and that night she left my parents’ house with her head held high and more confidence in our friendship than ever. She had no idea that every word was a lie. In fact, she took it as an open invitation to pop into my apartment any time she felt the urge.
“That guy from the other night has been blowing up my phone. Why do I always attract the crazy ones?” she complained from my couch one afternoon when I was perfecting Blondie’s sample list.
She apparently couldn’t take the hint when I ignored her phone calls all day, showing up at my doorstep unannounced.
Well, when you screw the entire state, you’re bound to find some crazies mixed in there, I thought to myself, walking over from the kitchen to the couch she sat in to hand her the glass of wine she’d requested.
“What’s he saying?” I didn’t really care what he said, and I hoped she caught my clipped tone. I wanted her to leave so I didn’t have to pretend anymore.
“He’s just pestering me to hang out again and I really wasn’t feeling it the first time.”
She had her nose stuck in her phone and answered in a dull, uninterested tone. I just nodded my reply, knowing she couldn’t see me.
We sat in silence for a while after that, me brainstorming recipes and her stuck in her social media. I wanted to be left alone, and she disrespected that by coming into my home with her nose in her own little world, flirting with who-knows-how-many men.
Why did I have to learn the lesson that she so obviously needs? How can a girl who sleeps with so many random men fly under the radar, while I got picked out of a crowd to be destroyed? Cara should be in this position, not me. I was appalled at the thought, immediately taking it back. This was why she needed to leave.
“Do you want to go out this Saturday night? I’ve missed you lately and Kelsey isn’t as good of a wing-woman. It’s more like a competition with her.” She finally set her phone down and was making eye contact with me, pulling my thoughts out of the dark cloud they fell into.
My response was a curt shrug. Kelsey was a friend from high school that rivaled Cara in her quest for meaningless sex. The difference was that she turned out to be a total possessive psycho when she was drinking, and you didn’t want to step on her toes when it came to men. She was also a coked-up stripper, so she wasn’t someone I’d found myself around in a while.
“Nah, I don’t feel like going out.” And I really don’t care if you get laid this weekend.
“Come on, Luna. You haven’t been out in weeks! And the bakery has been so busy, I think you need to take a break to let off some steam.”
She tried to finish it off with a pouty look she probably thought was cute, but it just bothered me even more.
“I just don’t feel like it.” I focused my attention back on my notepad, hoping she would drop it.
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes at me in annoyance. “Oh my God, I forgot to tell you about this guy I hooked up with when we went out a couple weeks ago. It was so good, like better than I’ve had in a while,” she gushed, and my stomach rolled.
Leave. Leave. LEAVE, my mind screamed, an angry prisoner locked inside a compliant body. My expression was schooled enough to look interested in the story, despite the nausea that was slowly making tides in my gut, encouraging Cara to go on.
“Anyway, I was really drunk, and when we got back to his place, he realized he didn’t have any condoms. Don’t worry, he was clean,” she assured, and I realized my face was twisted in disgust. I worked on returning it to its normal state when she admitted, “So, we just did it without one and holy shit, Luna, it was a-ma-zing.”
While she went on to tell me about the hook-up in disgusting detail, I was pulled back to my night with The Dog. He didn’t use a condom either, and it was nowhere near as good as she was trying to sell it. The longer she spoke, the further I felt the claws of despair sinking into my skin, squeezing me until I couldn’t breathe. Eventually, I mustered enough strength to casually cut her off and changed the subject to something lighter as I mentally pried them off me, desperate for air.
She overstayed her welcome that night, not leaving until after eleven even though she knew I had to open the bakery early the next day. I was practically pushing her out the door when she left, so unbelievably irritated I could have ripped her hair out, one strand at a time. And then when she finally did leave, I was left confused and guilty for the strong negative emotions I had felt toward her.
The visit wasn’t even out of the ordinary for us. Throughout our childhood, Cara and I had spent hours in my bedroom shallowly gossiping about people and making plans with the rest of our friends for the weekend. When I lay awake in bed that night, fighting off the nightmares that were creeping their way in, I distracted myself with the memory of the weekend we both moved back home from college and couldn’t contain our excitement for living so close to each other once again.
“I can’t believe college is over,” Cara mused from beside me on my king-sized bed.
We were both staring up at the posters littering the ceiling from my teenage years. It had been so long since I’d lain in a bed big enough for two people, let alone one that didn’t feel like a wooden plank under my back.
“I know, right?” I agreed. “Don’t you miss when things were as simple as they were before? It’s so crazy that so much time has passed, yet things here are exactly the same as before.”
Cara laughed beside me. “Oh no, you’re getting philosophical on me again. I think I have to go,” she joked.
She always responded negatively when I spoke that way, and I wasn’t sure if the ideas I was thinking out loud scared her or she just didn’t understand them.
Despite the pang of embarrassment that I felt from her teasing, I laughed with her. We sat in comfortable silence before she finally said, “I love you, Luna. Please don’t ever change.”
I smiled, realizing how much I missed my best friend while I was away and grateful to have her back. “I love you, too,” I responded.
We spent the rest of the night the same way we had countless times before that, eating junk food and sharing stories about the past four years. Throughout my time away, I’d yet to find someone who inspired the same feeling of comfort and familiarity that Cara gave. That night, I realized I would probably never find it again, and I knew she was a life-long friend; one I had to hang onto for as long as I could.
●
Lately, I had a hard time keeping my patience with the people who regularly surrounded me. I knew it was my fault they didn’t know what happened, but I still found little seeds of irritation planting themselves when I heard them talk about things that had no meaning or bearing on life. They weren’t enough to make me react the way I would have before, but they were just the right amount to make me dread being around them.
Why should I care if Cara didn’t get to leave with the guy she wanted to go home with on Saturday because Kelsey stole him away? I shouldn’t.
Why did it matter if my mom got home in time to make dinner for my dad, who was content with McDonald’s on the way home from work? It didn’t.
At least not to me.
My mind became an anxiety-ridden battlefield, and I was constantly stumbling upon landmines and dangerous materials. The bakery was the only place I could go to shut it off completely, losing myself in the work I did. I preferred the days where my mom and everyone else stayed away, leaving me to sink my teeth into my orders and forget everything else.
I became a shell of a human, a soulless body moving through time, posing as a girl named Luna Russo. But that girl no longer occupied my headspace, and the only person who knew that was me. So, I pretended to be her.
The weeks following that night, I stood naked in front of my full-length mirror, examining every scrape, bruise, and imperfection that littered it with a detached indifference. Before, I was hardly able to stand glancing at myself fully clothed, quickly rushing away from my reflection when I was satisfied with whatever outfit I was sporting that day. Now, I was capable of staring for hours, taking in every familiar trait I had grown up with and regarding it like a stranger would. The woman who stared back was empty and hard—a survivor. She didn’t deserve the coward soul that stared back.
I tried to continue with a life that no longer felt like mine, and it only caused me to drown further in my lonely isolation.
As time progressed, I started to wonder if anyone would believe me if I did tell them. The story of that night seemed so far-fetched. How would anyone react to finding out the girl they knew and loved was gone, and instead they were stuck with me—a stranger? Sometimes, I even doubted myself, wondering if it was all a figment of my imagination; a nightmare I just needed to wake up from and my life would go back to its normal, happy state.
Eventually, though, things started to feel somewhat right again and though deep inside I felt broken, my body was healed enough on the outside to operate as a normal member of our warped society. That was, until the blue-eyed friend of the man who raped me walked through the front door of my bakery, and I nearly collapsed at his feet.