~Leslie~
It was finally her turn.
Leslie was in the privacy of her car, just as she’d been for the past hour, driving from the college town where she’d been equipped for all that was up ahead, smiling as she headed towards home. Because she was alone and knew that no one would witness her rather juvenile enthusiasm and esteem her any less for it, she gave a little squeal of joy as she passed the city limit sign.
Home. And with it, all kinds of possibilities.
It felt like she’d just turned a page to a whole new chapter of her life. A new, exciting, and adventurous chapter that she’d been writing in her heart for years, working and striving for the happy ending that she knew was hers for the taking.
Leslie Collins – cupcake queen.
Cupcakes hadn’t always been the dream, at least not at the start. Back when she’d first felt the call to something greater, she’d not known exactly what it was that she was heading towards, but she’d known the reasons behind it, behind the constant drive she felt to be important, to be someone.
“We’ve got to help Travis.”
She’d been only nine years old when she’d spoken the words to her sisters, laying it out as simply as possible, just like she’d always delivered all similar edicts to them. “We’ve got to arrange a wedding for Ken and Barbie.” “We’ve got to get Mom and Dad to order a pizza for dinner.” “We’ve got to ride our bikes all the way around the block.” She was the oldest sister, after all, and Holly and Brooke always needed her to tell them what to do, because at seven and five, they were pretty much clueless.
All little sisters need a big sister, telling them how it’s going to be, and that’s just exactly what Leslie had spent her whole life doing.
She could remember sitting in the playhouse in the backyard with them as she’d delivered these words with all the severity and importance that she could muster in her little girl voice.
We’ve got to help Travis.
This new command about helping Travis had been different than any that Leslie had given to them before, though. Holly had seemed to sense the seriousness in her sister’s tone. Or maybe that was just residual severity from all that they’d been through in the months prior to that afternoon in the playhouse.
There had been a car accident. The three Collins sisters had woken up that morning with two parents who were young and healthy, and they’d gone to bed that night as orphans. If Leslie, Holly, and Brooke had been older, they would have thought through the precariousness of the situation, of their parents being killed without much financial security left behind or any extended family who would be willing to step in and take care of them. If the Collins sisters had been older, their concern would have been as grave as their mourning had been.
But as it was, they were young, and all those concerns were left to someone else. To Travis, their nineteen year old brother, who picked up the mantle of his parents’ failing business, their mortgage, the debt they carried on their cars, the health insurance payments they’d missed, and all the bills they’d neglected, waiting on a better day. Travis had inherited it all, and though Leslie was too young to really grasp the heavy load he shouldered as a result, she’d known enough to discern that he was in need of help.
“Travis has a lot going on,” she’d said, looking between Brooke and Holly, attempting her best to communicate this to them.
“He’s sad,” five year old Brooke had said, which was maybe the most honest thing anyone had said since their parents had passed. There were a lot of cliched words about God’s will, about the valley they were in, and about how the Lord would provide, and Leslie had thought them all true enough, maybe, but on the whole not at all helpful. She appreciated more honest words, even if they were simplistic.
Travis was sad. They all were.
“Exactly,” Leslie said. “Travis is very sad. Because Mom and Dad…”
Holly had sniffed at this, the tears filling her eyes just like they did every time anyone revisited the topic of their parents and the car accident.
“Holly, stop it,” Leslie had said, not meaning to be unkind but sounding that way all the same. “Being sad won’t help anything.”
They still were, though. Even Leslie had moments of grief, where tears couldn’t be avoided, no matter how hard she tried to be stoic and brave.
Just like she was trying to be as she stared at her sisters in the playhouse.
“We’re going to help Travis,” she said, declaring it more emphatically this time as if the words would be truer if she said them with more certainty.
“How are we going to help him?” Holly asked, blinking back the tears that Leslie had forbidden.
How indeed? What could they really do? What would help things?
Leslie had heard enough as she’d listened to the adults talk. Travis had talked a lot with the church pastor and his wife. Not like the Collins family had gone to church before all of this happened, but once it had, that’s where Travis had his sisters first thing, where the pastoral family stepped up and helped him, talking about things like custody, child services, and legal arrangements, things that the girls hadn’t understood. The pastor’s wife had shown Travis how to do their hair, had cooked more than a few meals in the kitchen for them, had walked through a budget with him, and had left long lists of instructions about how to do some of the things that their mother had always done, unnoticed. Laundry, school schedules, meal planning, household budgeting, and other responsibilities that now belonged to Travis.
Leslie had also heard Travis talking with Mr. and Mrs. Sanders, the couple who had worked for his parents, him on the construction end, her as a secretary. There were many conversations between all of them about the business, about the debts there, and about the direction the future projects, which were alarmingly few, would take.
Leslie had heard enough to learn a few things.
The Collins family was poor. Collins Construction, the family business, was failing. Big time.
Travis needed money. And quick.
This is how the Collins sisters were going to help Travis.
“We’re going to help him by giving him money,” Leslie had said to her sisters, expecting that they would just agree with her, no further questions asked.
Holly might have done just that, as that was her personality. Submissive and agreeable, maybe to a fault at times. But there was Brooke, looking between her two sisters with confusion. “What? We don’t have any money.”
That was a fitting mantra for the Collins family. We don’t have any money. Like a family motto, though none of the girls had known it until then.
“Yeah, Leslie,” Holly said softly. “We don’t have any money to give Travis.”
“I know that,” Leslie said, rolling her eyes at them. Then, trying for patience, she smiled. “That’s why we need to figure out a way that we can make money. It’s expensive, running a business and taking care of us. We need to help him. He can’t do it all by himself.”
“How are we going to make money?” Brooke asked, not convinced that any of this was a good idea. “We’re just kids.”
They were. True enough. But surely there was something they could do…
“We’re going to figure something out,” Leslie said, believing that they would with every last bit of confidence that she had.
And though the sisters had no grand ideas that day, in time, they came up with a plan. It was the pastor’s wife who came over one day like she was accustomed to doing as Travis worked overtime, trying to resuscitate his parents’ business as he learned the craft himself. The pastor’s wife would come and help him out where she could, babysitting the girls and helping them with homework, amusing them until Travis came home late to tuck them in, worn out and exhausted himself. She was there at the house that weekend that Travis was working more overtime, carrying bags of groceries with her, unveiling the contents with a great flourish, and revealing several cake mixes and frosting containers, sprinkles and squeezy tubes of decorative icing.
Cupcakes. The Collins sisters were going to make cupcakes, just for fun.
But it was more than just fun. Leslie found that it came naturally, being in the kitchen and following the instructions on the box, decorating the final products with ease and directing her sisters to do the same as the pastor’s wife smiled over them and told Leslie that her efforts were better than most adult’s final products. Over time and several more attempts at the same practice, Leslie wasn’t even using a box mix anymore, choosing her own ingredients and crafting her own recipes with the ease of someone who had spent her whole life baking. She was good enough that people who bought the products she made out of their feelings of pity for the family came back because the cupcakes were really good. Making treats for kids’ birthday parties and classroom parties gave way to more grown up events like bridal showers and baby showers, with the Collins sisters producing the cupcakes then hitching a ride with the pastor’s wife to deliver them to their destination. By the time Leslie was a teenager and Travis no longer had money problems thanks to his own ingenuity, she’d made it into a business, making her own deliveries to weddings, where her cupcake creations were replacing traditional wedding cakes.
The Collins family went from being the poor kids in town to the rich kids, thanks to Travis and his success.
And thanks to Leslie, who smiled at the memory as she pulled her car into the parking space outside the old downtown drug store.
The building had stood abandoned for a couple of years, telling a sad story about the end of an era, a vintage era, of soda shops and drugstores, hometown relics that spoke of innocence and the purity of a community untouched by modernization. Downtown had been falling apart just like the rest of the town, but the economy had taken a turn recently. Oil out west was creating more jobs, and rather than being a commuter community which they’d been in the past, the town had been steadily becoming home to hundreds of families that were now rapidly pouring in, charmed by the homes that Travis’s company was building and by the new shops and sights along the highway, businesses going up quickly to save the town and make it home for a new generation of people.
Leslie felt like she’d stumbled onto a hidden gem with this place. She’d been watching it for the past two years, planning her move as she continued to use a rented kitchen in her college town, making her cupcakes and selling them, personally and at different businesses that would contract her for her services, setting aside all of her profits so that she could make an offer on the building. She was going to use part of her savings to gut the small kitchen and have Travis build her a new one, but the rest of the building was going to remain as it had been in its prime. Very vintage and all, with brick work throughout the interior and natural light pouring in from the generous windows, a place where she could put in some simple furniture and cozy touches, making it perfect for parties and showers, and for just every day customers who would come in for a treat. She was going to take the customers back to a simpler time in life, when the neighborhood sweet shop was the place to be and sweet memories could be recalled with a single bite. And the name of this sweet place?
First Love.
She could picture the sign now, all done in a whimsical, romantic font in pastel colors, right there on the front of the building, recalling those days of a different era in the hearts of customers, heralding a new and exciting day in her life.
Her phone rang just as she was smiling again. She answered it without looking at the screen.
“You’re praying, right?”
An odd greeting to be sure, but this was actually fairly standard for all of Leslie and Dana’s calls.
Dana had been her roommate in college, selected for her by some random computer generation system at the state university, but Leslie had preferred to think it was providential, completely orchestrated by God. The two girls had become friends quickly, almost like kindred spirits, and Dana had been an answer to prayers that Leslie had no doubt Travis had been praying for quite some time, that Leslie would surround herself with believers who would bring her back to the faith that had become lukewarm to her during her senior year of high school.
There had been plenty of good reasons for that. One in particular. But that one reason wasn’t anywhere near the state university where Leslie met Dana.
“You’ve got to come with me to church tomorrow,” Dana had said that first night they’d been in the dorm, splitting a pizza that Travis had delivered to them before he left Leslie on her own for the first time, nervous and so dad-like that Leslie had wanted to cry. Her senior year had been tough on them, and Travis had been supportive, understanding there at the end.
But she’d swept aside those thoughts that night, pausing between bites to study Dana after the question had been posed. “Church?”
“Yeah,” Dana nodded. “That’s my first priority in getting settled in here. Find a new church home. I thought I’d start with the First Baptist a couple of streets over from here. They probably have a huge college student program, just based on how close they are to campus, but I don’t want to venture in there by myself, you know?”
Leslie did know. New people, new place, new experiences. A new world, honestly.
And it wasn’t like she wasn’t a believer. She still considered herself to be a very serious believer, in fact, so going to church was just one of those things that she would have gotten around to on her own. Eventually. Probably. Maybe.
“I get that,” Leslie said. “And I’ll come with you.”
And she had, pulling out her Bible for the first time in months, opening it up in the small group she and Dana found themselves in, and hearing the words as if they were entirely new.
How did the Lord do that? How did His words, forgotten and ignored for so long, suddenly come screaming back to her senses, overwhelming her into attention, then gently whispering to her heart like they did?
There were seasons to faith, and Leslie soon found herself transitioning to a new one. College had been a season of renewed commitment to Christ and to honoring Him with her life. And it hadn’t been just a season but a new way of life that continued even after college, through the next few years that she and Dana continued to live together and serve well in the church that had become home, being accountable to one another and encouragers all at once.
Dana knew all about First Love and had been praying with her for this meeting in particular.
“I’ve been praying all morning,” Dana said. “Which has gotten me some strange looks from my students. Probably because I’ve just said some of those prayers out loud without thinking.”
Leslie smiled at this. “They’re three. Like they don’t say crazy things themselves.”
“That’s the truth,” Dana laughed. “One of the little stinkers asked me if I had a baby in my tummy earlier. I’m going to assume he asked that because his mother is pregnant and he thinks all women of a certain age have babies in their tummies… and that it has nothing to do with the paunch I have after all those cupcakes you had me sample this weekend.”
There had been a huge wedding, and Dana had stepped in when Leslie’s sister, Holly, had a final scheduled at the same time and couldn’t be her assistant like normal. Dana had done a great job, but she’d eaten a good portion of the emergency stock of cupcakes that Leslie always brought along just in case there were any surprises or accidents in setting up the elaborate cupcake displays.
“Well,” Leslie said, checking her makeup in the mirror, “I hope you taught him that those are conclusions men should never make about women. Or voice out loud, at least.”
“I’m having enough trouble teaching him to wash his hands after he goes to the bathroom,” Dana said. “But enough about my exciting life in Threesville. Are you back home yet?”
“Just got here,” Leslie said.
“How long until you get to the building?”
“Just got here,” she laughed. “City limits to downtown takes about half a second.”
“Is it still as perfect as the last time you saw it? The building that is, not the town.”
Leslie let her eyes wash over it, over her future, all her hopes and dreams.
Perfect.
“Absolutely,” she sighed.
“And you’re meeting with the realtor?” Dana pressed. “Like, right now?”
“Yes,” Leslie said, closing her mirror and taking another breath.
“Then I’ll get off the line and start praying even more,” she said. “You call me later and let me know what happens, okay?”
“Okay,” Leslie nodded.
“Hey,” Dana reminded her. “All for God’s glory, right? Everything that this business will become, all that you’re going to do. Success is being who He’s called you to be, sharing your gift with the world, giving witness to who He is… remember?”
Leslie did remember. Her inclination was to attach success to the deficiency she’d felt when she’d lost her parents, when she’d wanted to help Travis, but when she framed it all in the right light, in what she knew to be true spiritually, everything was different.
She and Dana were good to point it out to one another, to remind one another at times like this.
“I remember,” she murmured. “Thanks for praying.”
As she ended the call, she took a steadying breath, thankful to see that there was an SUV parked at the curb, certain that it meant the realtor was already inside, waiting for her to come in and finally make her an offer after a quick glance.
Hardly any need for the quick glance. She’d looked it over before, weeks ago, knowing that there was no interest from anyone on the building, able to sense the realtor’s anxiousness, knowing that she was ready to move the property as quickly as possible. Leslie had held off until now, until she could make the offer she was comfortable with, one that would leave her with enough money to make her improvements, one that she’d prayed over until the time was right to go forward.
Now was that time.
“It’s all about to happen,” she murmured, giving herself one final glance in the rearview mirror before stepping out of her car, shutting the door behind her, and pointing her feet towards her future, confident steps covering the distance in seconds, one last prayer being uttered from her heart as she stepped onto the curb and moved quickly down the sidewalk.
Here she was. Her future was ready to start, right now.
She opened the door, stepping inside and twirling a little, taking a breath and already imagining the scents that would be pouring forth from First Love in weeks, the customers that would follow, the community she would make here with her business, where everyone would know her name –
“Leslie?”
She was facing the entrance, her back to the voice, when she heard the disbelief in the simple word. And though it had been six years since she’d spoken to him, since he’d spoken to her… well, she recognized the voice with alarming clarity.
I love you, Leslie Collins.
He’d said it before, many times. He’d said a lot of things. But her mind was fixed on the tender sentiment as his voice trailed over to her, stopping her cold.
No. No, no, no…
With her heart pounding, she turned around, knowing who would be there, scarcely daring to believe it even as her head swore that it couldn’t be anyone else.
And sure enough, there he was.
He was all grown up now but not so far removed from the past they shared that she couldn’t see, in the man before her, the boy who had been the center of her heart for so long. The boy who had then broken that heart and shown everything that she’d believed about him to be a lie.
Blake Young.
“Leslie, is that you?” He said it as though he was just as shocked to see her, which he likely was. She’d been gone for six years. And he… well, who even knew where he’d been or what he’d been doing.
The more pressing concern wasn’t Blake’s past. It was his present, which had brought him here, face to face with her.
Why was he here? Why was he in this building? Why was he in town? Why was he showing up now?
Why did her heart hurt all over again, just like she was a teenager again, crying because he didn’t love her after all, because he’d ruined her?
As he watched her with concern, she found her mouth too dry and her heart too full to manage much of anything.
Except this.
“What are you doing here?”