Chapter One
Gabrielle
"No, you lowlife son of a bitch, asking me if you can be my nougat filling is not a compliment and if you ever try to touch me like that again I would be happy to boil down your inadequate dick and turn it into gummy bears."
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When I was five years old I poured all the M&Ms out of my bag and lined them up in a Barbie shoe rack, arranged by color, so I could sell them to all of her plastic friends that never would have tolerated the calories and G.I. Joe who was too busy defending the country and convincing people to stay in school to appreciate the gourmet dessert.
When I was in high school I set out to create the world's most perfect peanut butter cup, was single-handedly responsible for the Great Orthodontic Caramel Tragedy that spread through my class, and beguiled my Home Ec teacher with a maraschino cherry embedded in homemade marshmallow dipped in dark chocolate that I called my Sundae Bite.
When I was looking for a college I used up three pink highlighters picking out the options with the best chocolate and pastry arts programs, trying to determine which one had the most appealing balance of renowned instructors, state-of-the-art kitchens, and dorms, along with their proximity to my hometown so that I wouldn't be too far away from my family.
Two years out of college and I was exactly what that very family had always expected of me...an executive assistant.
I love my family dearly and never once questioned whether they love me, but apparently, that wasn't enough to make "gourmet chocolatier" a legitimate career path. At least not for my parents who both took the "American Dream" concept deeply to heart but focused heavily on the success part and not so much on the dream part. In the giant game of LIFE that my family was playing, my parents had filled their little car with two tiny pink plastic babies and gone about their way, getting careers, paying taxes, occasionally doing the fun things that we got to do because they got careers and paid taxes. When it was our turns to start back at the beginning in our own little cars, my sister didn't go for the career card. Instead, she immediately got married and had a baby. Then another baby. She had made it to her third baby in three years and I was getting more and more of the pressure to start climbing the corporate ladder and make a more successful path for myself.
Which is probably how I ended up crouched behind a ficus tree in the gleaming marble lobby of the consulting firm of Boring, Pretentious, Bigoted, and Bland. I had been the executive assistant for Mr. Pretentious himself for a little more than a year, sitting behind a desk that could only be compensation for something and running errands I was sure were mostly concocted to impress me, like some strange rich man mating dance. When I first got this job I thought that it was going to be the perfect way to make my parents proud with my impressive title and legitimate office work during the day, while still soothing my soul and keeping in touch with who I really was making chocolates at night. There were times when my parents would come over to my apartment unannounced and I would find myself shoving bars of gourmet chocolate and bowls of ganache into cabinets, the oven, and any other available space I could like I was trying to hide a meth cooking operation. But I kept it up because I knew that it was what they expected of me. They had gone through so much to make sure that I had all of the opportunities that I possibly could, and I felt like I owed it to them to at least pursue a successful career so that they could feel confident, so that they could stop worrying about me.
But that was before my boss had started supplementing his list of errands for me each day with a periodic chase around the desk or an elevator ride that was just a bit too close for my comfort. I tried to ignore it. I tried to pretend that I was just being too sensitive and was misinterpreting things that he said or the way that he looked at me. Maybe watching one too many of those horrifically shot corporate training videos about sexual harassment had indoctrinated me to believe that anytime a male blinked in my general vicinity I should be offended. It wasn't until he had brought me into his office under the pretense that I would be taking dictation from him and brought along the plate of chocolates that I had brought in that morning that everything went to hell.
Him throwing around the word 'dictation' probably should have been a red flag.
After trying to ignore him doing things with his tongue that no chocolate should ever have to be subjected to, I was shocked by him actually coming around to the chair that I was sitting in and picking me up out of it, turning me around, and sitting me on the edge of his desk. He had no sooner muttered his fateful words about nougat that his hand was up my skirt on my thigh and the heel of my shoe was in his crotch. He hit the floor faster than a bikini at Spring Break, knocking over the chair that I had been sitting in in the process. I managed to get off the edge of the desk and snatch the little clear plastic container of thumbtacks that he kept in the corner of his desk before he rolled over and climbed up on his knees. I never knew why he had those thumbtacks. He didn't have a cork board in his office, and this was not exactly the type of firm that had staff lounges filled with bright, encouraging inspirational quotes and bulletin boards.
Right then, though, I was glad for whatever the reason was that he had them. I pulled one out and tossed it in his direction. He ducked out of the way and I threw another. All of the built-up frustration and anger that I had been feeling in the time that I had worked with him was starting to come out, and the thumbtacks were flying. Most of them are just bouncing off of his suit or not even getting to him, but finally one seemed to poke him right in the neck and he let out an angry growl, swatting it away. His eyes narrowed at me and I wondered what the chances were that the other three men would back him up in a murder case, but then he opened the door and stormed out. I could have just left. I could have taken my indignance and anger right to human resources and filed a complaint. Instead I poured the remaining thumbtacks on his chair, emptied the bottle of white out, that I was fairly certain dated back to his college days, into his mug of coffee, and used the biggest permanent marker that I could find to spell out, in no uncertain, and also fairly unladylike, terms that I was no longer interested in continuing my employment with him, across the surface of his desk.
When I was finished, I walked out onto the floor and shouted my evaluation of him out to anyone who could hear me. This, admittedly, was probably most of the building considering I had done it at the top of my lungs. It involved several words that my mother would've probably liked to pretend that I didn't know and may have also included a critique or two of his anatomy that might have suggested that I had gone along with his advances.
And that's what brought me to my hiding place behind the ficus tree. It would have been a much less cowering exit from the office had I remembered, before the thumbtack throwing incident, that my car was at the mechanic and my sister had brought me into the office that day. As it was I was stuck there until she was able to come get me and I wasn't interested in talking to any of my co-workers about my untimely exit. Or facing the security guards that I was sure were going to be after me at any moment. At least this was giving me plenty of time to figure out how I was going to explain to my parents why I no longer had my office job, and why I may end up having a visit or two to the courthouse in the coming months.
Fortunately, I soon learned that the courthouse was off the table. It turned out that Mr. Pretentious wasn't picky when it came to his potential office dalliances. He had already made his way through the vast majority of our floor of the building and had even ventured a little bit into the staff pool of the other partners. I had been on his radar since the first day that I started working there, but that hadn't stopped him from trying to dip his quill into as many of the office inkwells as he could. There had been a few complaints, but not enough to substantiate anything. My outburst had been too much to deny, however, and the board quickly agreed to not press charges on me and secure me a handsome severance package, sourced from his personal bonus from the year, if I didn't move forward with a sexual harassment suit against him and the company. I found it fairly sickening that he was getting to go right back up to his cushy office and continue on about his life with only a meaningful glare from HR, and a chunk missing out of his bonus for the year, and I was the one booted out on my butt. That was really all that they had to offer, however, and once they had made it clear that I either take that offer and run or face the humiliation of charges being pressed against me, I decided that I was just not the one to start the revolution in the office and bowed out.
I wondered if there might be one day when I regretted that choice. Maybe someday I would think back and wished that I had stood up for myself more or demand that there be more action against him, but in that moment I needed to just put it behind me and move on. I could only hope that the mysterious anonymous postcards that showed up at the firm, but couldn't be tracked to anyone, and that warned against his proclivities towards the women who worked in the building, would help to keep his future executive assistant and anyone else sitting behind those desks out of his office and away from his dictation.
What really mattered was that the severance package that they offered me was enough to add to my savings and start the gourmet chocolate shop that I had been holding in my heart for so many years. It was tiny and it wasn't in the location that I would have always wanted it to be, but it was mine. I didn't have to show up to the shop at the time that anybody told me to and I could close it up whenever I wanted and go home. Of course, when I consider the fact that most of the time I was at the shop before the sun rose and didn't leave until it was almost time to be up to come back the next day, it wasn't nearly as liberating as it sounded.
Now it had been just over six months since the ficus tree incident and I was doing my best to keep my shop afloat. Business wasn't as booming as I had hoped it would be, but I had begun to get a trickle of customers and I still had enough from my savings that I was able to keep myself going. I didn't know how much longer that was going to last, however. The one ray of hope came from the fact that Valentine's Day was just around the corner and nothing screams 'prove that you love somebody' like a box of handcrafted chocolate. At least, I hoped that the people would hear that particular scream and make their way to the shop. Keeping myself optimistic, I had been devoting much of my time to coming up with new truffles and treats specifically for the holiday. I was in the midst of trying to figure out how to make the inside of one of the truffles pink without resorting to the cliché and predictable raspberry when my sister hurried into the shop. She smiled at me as she rushed past into the back, and then returned a few moments later without her coat and purse, tying an apron around her ample waist that hadn't quite yet recuperated from the third pregnancy.
"You know," I said, "you can come in through the back door. It would be a lot easier than coming through the front, coming behind the counter, going through the kitchen, and then into the office."
Skylar nodded as she swept her thick dark hair back into a ponytail at the back of her head.
"I know," she said. "You go over this with me every time I get here."
"So why don't you do it?" I asked.
"Like I've gone over with you every time that I have gotten here, I'm not going to park my car behind the building and run down an alley to get into the shop."
"You don't have to run," I said.
"That's true," she said. "But if I don't run, that just means that the scary people have more of a chance of getting me."
I shot a glare at her.
"When have you ever seen a single scary person anywhere near the shop?" I asked.
"Just because I haven't seen them, does not mean that they aren't there. Besides, there were some pretty suspicious people gathered on the corner just a couple of months ago. That totally counts."
"They were collecting money for the Salvation Army," I said. "Did the Santa hats and the giant bells that they rang incessantly not stand out to you?"
Skylar looked like she was trying to come up with something to say, then gave an exasperated sound.
"Whatever. So those people might not have been doing anything nefarious, but you never know. It's better to be safe."
"Safe from what, exactly?" I asked. She was busying herself rearranging the pieces of chocolate that I had already arranged in the display case, purposely not meeting my eyes. "You sure have gotten boring," I said. "What happened to my sister who lost her high heel on the roof because she was sneaking out of her bedroom window to meet her boyfriend and couldn't get it back before our father cleaned out the gutters? What about my sister who convinced our father not to tear down the tree house outside because it was so nostalgic and meaningful, just so that you could sneak the same boyfriend into it? What about my sister who hopped a bus to go downtown and see a concert with, wait for it, her boyfriend when she was supposed to be studying?"
"I married that boyfriend," she said. "That's what happened to me."
"Well, I don't think that should be an excuse. Why should getting married make both of you boring as hell and apparently afraid of the entire world?"
"You'll understand one day," she said.
"I hope not," I said.
I talked a big game, but the truth was I was probably even more boring than I was accusing Skylar of being. I might be burly and brave enough to park behind the building and come in through the backdoor, but that pretty much ended the excitement of my life. I didn't have a boyfriend. I hadn't had one in two years and including that one the longest relationship that I had ever had was just under a year, in high school. That ended when the head cheerleader set her eyes on my boyfriend right before prom.
Pep rallies were far less peppy after that.
When I wasn't at the shop making and selling chocolates, I was at home either sleeping or thinking about the next day at work. Even the extremely infrequent days off that I allowed myself were filled with things like grocery shopping and trying to keep the dust bunnies under my couch enough at bay that I didn't need to consider myself a professional breeder. It sounded dull, but the truth was I was actually happier with my life now that I had been in a long time. I might not be making the cover of pastry magazines and catering celebrity baby showers or anything, but at least I was doing what I had always wanted to do. A little bit of professional buzz and maybe a slightly less nonexistent social life would be nice perks, but I figured they would come eventually.
"How's business been today?" Skylar asked, moving on from the conversation.
"It's been OK," I said. "A few people came in this morning and I've gotten a couple of phone calls about Valentine's Day orders."
I was trying to sound as optimistic as possible, but I knew that my sister could see right through me. Her husband was the businessman of their relationship, and she had been right there beside him when he had decided to jump ship from the powerful company where he had built his career and instead start his own business. Of course, he had started his business to great acclaim and with the support and encouragement of not only other people in his industry but also previous clients who came along with him. That was a slightly different experience than my blaze of glory, but I knew that there had been plenty of days when she had been worried that his new venture wouldn't be successful and that they would have to struggle to get their feet back under them. In that way, she understood what I was going through.
"Have you talked to Mom and Dad?"
I slid my eyes over to her.
"Are you serious?" I asked.
"They might help you," she said. "Even just a small loan to keep you cushioned."
"Let me ask you something," I said. "Do they know that you're here helping me?"
"Oh, dear Lord, no. You know that this thing is the shame of the family. I'm not going to bring dishonor on them by letting them know that both of their daughters are working in a chocolate shop."
She said it with laughter in her voice, but I knew that the humor was only covering up that she was partially serious. My parents have been very sympathetic when they heard about what happened with my boss, but that sympathy had pretty much disappeared when I told them about my shop opening. They were horrified that I would take the money that I had been given in my severance package and open the shop rather than investing it or keeping it in savings while I looked for what they referred to as a real job. They made it abundantly clear that they adored me and would do everything that they could to support me emotionally, but that they had already knocked me out of the nest at last and wouldn't be supporting me financially.
"Isn't mom taking care of the babies?" I asked.
"Yes," she said. "But she thinks that I'm in a support group for mothers of multiple toddlers."
"But the babies aren't multiples," I said. "I mean, the last two came so close together that I'm still not entirely convinced that they didn't share quarters for a little while. The research is still out on that one. But they were all born by themselves."
"I know that," Skylar said. "Trust me I am well aware of that. I told her that the group is for mothers that have more than one child aged 3 and younger. Even if she didn't entirely believe me, she knows that I need a break every now and then. Taking care of the three of them is the most wonderful thing in my life, but it is also damn exhausting. Sometimes I just need to either be all by myself or around other people who can actually carry on a full conversation."
"At least they think that you're super mom," I said. "You went for wife and mother. That's like the best career ever."
"Don't think of it that way," she said. "They don't compare us. I made a different choice than you did, that's fine. They don't think that I'm better than you because I got married and had babies."
"They think that I'm wasting my life," I said.
"They don't think that you're wasting your life," Skylar said. "You know how they are. They just think in order to be respectable and successful you have to either work in an office building or have a bunch of letters after your name. They just don't understand. But they love you. You know that."
I nodded.
"I know. I almost wish that they would love me a little bit less though," I said.
Skylar looked at me with confusion.
"Why would you say that?" she asked.
"Because them loving me so much kind of takes away from my street cred if I want to segway into an Emo music career."
Skylar laughed.
"Well, that's certainly one to add to the pool of options."
I took a breath as I headed back into the kitchen to get another tray of truffles to put into the display case. I knew that she would never say it, but part of my sister agreed with our parents. She had been the only one of the family that had been entirely encouraging and excited for me when I started my shop, but when the business didn't start pouring in, she started to get nervous. Now I could see that she thought I should be looking around for other opportunities. That was something that I wasn't ready to do yet. There might come a time when that becomes necessary, but I figured that I had a few more months until even considering it was something I had to do.