The insistent whirring coming from the countertop rang out over the song playing, but I didn’t care. The sound of the stand mixer running was music to my ears.
In the metal mixing bowl, egg whites that would become a perfect Italian buttercream were whipping into a fluffy mass. Meanwhile, the sugar and water were reducing into a syrup on the stove.
I’d long since stopped needing the battered, hand-written instructions I had sitting open a few feet away, safely removed from the baking mess. Still, I always kept the old thing around when I was in the kitchen. It felt a bit like having my gran beside me.
“The trick is not to let the syrup hit the side of the mixer bowl, sweets. You do that, it’ll harden and you’ll have yourself some crunchy bits in the frosting.”
We were making a birthday cake. My birthday cake. Today, I was nine years old. Gran had asked a few days ago what type of cake I wanted, and I told her I wanted to try to make it this year.
Gran didn’t tell me I couldn’t, not like Mom had when I told her we were going to. She just asked what flavor I wanted so she could make sure we had everything we needed.
I loved being in the kitchen with Gran. Even though she said the kitchen in her apartment at the assisted living place was “not worth the spit to shine it,” being there with her was always better than being at the trailer. Mom usually wasn’t home, even after her shift ended, and there wasn’t much to do. That was why I rode my bike to spend time with Gran most days when I wasn’t at school.
Picking up the pot of hot syrup, I poured the clear liquid in nice and slow like I was told, aiming the stream right between the bowl and whizzing whisk.
“Nice and easy, child. That’s good,” Gran coached.
Good. In this kitchen, with my gran, I did good. I was good at baking, and Gran would teach me more. It was the only place I heard that. And it wasn’t just Gran. The other old folks around who tried the things we made said it too. I was good at this. This one thing was mine, and I would learn everything Gran could teach me to make me even better.
When the syrup was all mixed in, and the meringue had to be whipped until it was cool, I looked at Gran.
“I think I want to open a bakery someday,” I said, admitting the dream I’d had in my head for months.
She smiled. “I think that’s a wonderful goal, sweets.”
Goal. Not a dream.
Yes. Dreams were for sleeping. I couldn’t bake in my sleep.
One day, I was going to own a bakery. That was my goal.
It was funny. Even as a kid, I’d never been a dreamer. I’d watched my mother hold onto her dream of finding a man with deep pockets she could leech off of, someone who could get her out of the trailer park just because she would get in his bed. And who would get her out, specifically. I’d have been brought along because I was a kid, but it wasn’t like she’d been dreaming of a better life for her daughter. She just wanted some rich fool of a man who’d be charmed into making her a kept woman.
Of course, that never worked.
It didn’t help that she looked for this mystical prince charming with padded pockets in seedy dive bars, barely dressed and usually wearing a couple days’ worth of caked on makeup. I’m not saying her single-minded pursuit would have worked anywhere, but she was definitely looking in the wrong places to even have a shot.
I’d realized young her method wasn’t the way to get what you wanted out of life. No one was showing up to hand you your dreams on a silver platter. Mom used to say her time was coming, but that was a crock. The universe wasn’t going to magically call out your number and grant your wishes like you were waiting at a deli counter.
No, in the real world you had to go out and get what you wanted for yourself. And even then, you had to prioritize.
Most of my life, I’d wanted to run a bakery, and I hadn’t managed to make that a reality. Not yet. Maybe never. What I had done was what my mother always wanted to do, and I’d told myself I wouldn’t rest until I achieved it. I got myself out of that trailer park and set myself up well enough to know I’d never be going back.
I owned my house. It wasn’t huge, it wasn’t flashy, but it was mine. My car was paid off. I had savings. And I was transitioning myself into a job I could do for longer than my dancing career would last. It wasn’t a lifetime plan, it wasn’t a dream come to life around me, but it was financial security that had nothing to do with relying on some man to provide for me.
The simple pleasure of a life I built for myself and fresh cupcakes awaiting frosting on the counter was enough to keep me satisfied.
Lubing up your whole body before going out onstage was a distinct and unpleasant torture. True, I never got dry skin—that was the one benefit. Sitting around between dances while all greasy and every bit of your skin feeling tacky as the stuff dried, however, might have been my least favorite part of the job.
Sure, one might think it was the asshole customers who thought me taking my clothes off onstage meant I was fair game. Or maybe most women might have thought it was the getting-naked-with-an-audience thing. Those didn’t bother me.
The oil did.
Still, having to choose between oiling up or going the glitter route, I was going to pick oil every time.
Anyone who thought glitter in general was a nuisance because it got everywhere and never went away didn’t know the unique hell of covering your entire body in it. If I never spent weeks randomly finding glitter in various orifices again, I’d die a happy woman.
My hair was up in curlers and I was slicking up my legs for the first time of the night when the knock came at my door.
Since the promotion, I’d had my own dressing room. That was because it also served as an office. I was responsible for taking care of the girls and scheduling them, and I needed a place to do that where there was more than the individual vanities and lockers in the main dressing area.
Throwing on my robe, I went for the door, and instantly wanted to kick myself for not asking who it was first.
“Damn, I was hopin’ for no robe,” Daz said by way of greeting, that cocky smile on full display and his green eyes roving over the exposed skin of my legs.
“You know, women can win a lot of money when they sue for workplace harassment,” I replied off-handedly as I moved back to the vanity.
He took the unspoken cue to step inside, shutting the door behind him. “You honestly tell me you feel harassed, and not just because I’m making it hard for you to deny us what we both want, I’ll stop.”
“Did you come in here for a reason?”
Despite my best efforts, the airy tone of my voice didn’t distract him from the fact that I was changing the subject. His triumphant grin made that clear enough. Trying to appear unaffected by his flirting or the knowledge that his game was still on, I picked the bottle of oil back up and slathered some more on my calf, keeping my focus on rubbing it across the surface in an even layer.
“Christ, you don’t even need to dance. We could put you up on stage just doing that shit and we’d still have a line outside,” he grunted.
I’d never admit it aloud, and absolutely wouldn’t even consider saying it with Daz around, but I felt a thrill rush through me at the power he was admitting I held.
“If you want a show, you know as well as I do what time I go on tonight. Now, what’d you need?”
Even as I said the words, all business, I kept running my hands up and down my leg, moving up to my thigh even though I always started at the top and worked my way down. My thighs were already set.
“Need you to talk to the girls, make sure no one has any issues in or out of the club we need to know about.”
That stopped my rubbing. My head shot around to face him. “Why? What’s going on?”
“Nothing much yet. Gotten a few hang ups on the phone line over the last couple days. Could be some loser hoping he’ll get one of you so he can share whatever fucked up fantasies he’s got who’s cutting and running when he hears a dude on the line. Could be something more. Just want to get a finger on the pulse early if there’s a chance this is going to be a problem.”
I felt a twinge of worry myself, but shoved it down. I had my own history, but not the type that would call and hang up. Mine was more likely to come barreling through the front doors on a mission.
“I’ll make the rounds,” I assured him.
“Thanks, sweets.”
The air felt thin in my lungs. “What’d you call me?”
He gave me an odd look that dissolved beneath his usual salacious grin. “Safe to assume you’re all kinds of sweet, Avery. I’d know for myself if you’d just let me get a taste. I promise, it’ll be even sweeter for you than me.”
Sweets. It was a name I hadn’t been called since Gran passed. It must have just been hearing it again after so long that affected me, not the man saying it.
Never that.
“Right. I’ll pass,” I responded, brushing off that unnerved feeling both at the nickname and the way he seemed to notice my reaction to it. Daz had moments like that a lot. Passing expressions that hinted there was a lot more going on in that head than the sexual bullshit he was always spouting.
Of course, as soon as the slightest glimmer of that other side showed, it was buried again.
Or maybe I was just imagining things. Projecting, perhaps.
With determined focus, I switched legs and kept going with my prep. As far as I could tell, that was all he came for, so he could show himself out. It wasn’t a smart move. A gazelle didn’t just ignore a lion in its midst. I may not have been as helpless, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t closed in a room with a predator all the same.
The feeling of his breath against my exposed neck rocketed through my senses like a gunshot on a silent night. The sudden awareness of his proximity let off an explosion of awareness throughout my whole body.
“I’ll play all the games you want, gorgeous. It’s like fuckin’ foreplay, this chasing you shit. But know one thing,” he whispered just below my ear, every gust of his warm breath making me want to shiver, “I will catch you.”
And with that, he turned and walked out.
For a long moment, I watched the spot where he’d just disappeared. Then, releasing a long breath, I forced my focus back to getting ready for the night at hand.