Sweet Cheeks(5)
I slam the piping bag down for emphasis. A huge blob of the teal-colored frosting shoots out from the force and squirts across the distance onto the butcher block. I stare at it for a moment, wanting to laugh and cry at the same time over the situation. At Ryder thinking I actually want to get back together with Mitch and at myself for going off on him and letting my temper get the best of me.
It’s not his fault. It’s mine. It’s the overload of emotion that I’ve held in since my breakup with Mitch. It’s the knowing that everything I just pretended to make up—wanting to see what Rebound Sarah looks like, wanting to see Mitch and feel relief that I had walked away, wanting to prove to our old friends that I’m better off now—are thoughts I’ve actually had over the past few weeks. Validations I don’t need but have crept into my mind nonetheless.
“Say.” There’s nothing but empathy in his voice, and yet I can’t look at him. Can’t lose it when I’ve been trying so hard to keep everything—my life, my emotions, my sanity—together to prove to everyone, including him, that I made the best decision.
Needing a minute to collect myself, I hang my head, draw in a deep breath, and tell myself it’s okay to feel a bit unhinged. That leaving the life I once had and essentially starting over again would leave most people feeling crazy.
“No. I’m okay.” I clear my throat and focus on scrubbing the colored icing from the countertop so he can’t see the tears welling in my eyes. All the while, I wait for him to say more. Know he wants to. And yet when only silence weighs down the air around us, I’m forced to look up.
Ryder’s head is angled to the side as he stares at me with nothing but compassion in his eyes.
“That’s not what I meant, Say. I just meant that doubts and curiosity are a normal thing to have. That there’s nothing wrong if you do and I didn’t want you to feel you had to hide them from me.”
I chuckle nervously, not wanting to discuss this. “Thanks, I’m sorry. I guess I went off the deep end there.”
“It was entertaining picturing you peeking through the bushes with leaves in your hair.”
I glare at him. “Funny.”
His expression softens but the intensity in his eyes remains. “For the record, you didn’t make a mistake leaving Mitch. Not one that I can see, anyway.” I appreciate the show of solidarity. His support of my decision.
The tears I’ve held back, threaten once again. “Thank you. I appreciate hearing that more than you know. Can we just forget about it? I don’t plan on going to his wedding. I never did. It was just a mishap the RSVP got mailed.”
“Okay, deal. But I have to admit, I kind of like knowing he’s worried that you’re actually going to show up. Serves him right for sending it to you.”
“What I really need to do is get back to work. The clock is ticking, and these cupcakes need to be frosted.” I pick up the piping tube without looking at him, survey the hundred cupcakes left to ice, and appreciate the need to focus on getting them done and delivered rather than Mitch and his copycat wedding.
My wedding.
Thankfully Ryder leaves me be and returns to the little alcove off the kitchen. A heavy sigh of discord still comes every couple minutes when he finds something else I must have done wrong on the little spreadsheet he made me. But there is definitely a reason he’s the numbers guy between the two of us and I bake for a living.
I decorate to the beat of the music. A little Maroon 5 to lighten my mood as I add designs to cupcake after cupcake, stopping after every ten or so to flex my hands and stretch my fingers when they cramp. My mind veers to Mitch. I can’t help it. It’s almost as if it would be easier for people to understand if there was some huge smoking gun that ended our relationship, but there wasn’t.
He was perfect in every way. Polite. Successful. Kind. You name every characteristic of who you’d want to marry, and his country club mug shot would be posted right beside it.
But too much perfection is sometimes a bad thing. Especially when I’m far from perfect myself. How did I ever think I could marry him and live up to his and his family’s ridiculous societal standards and ideals of what is expected of a wife?
We were the classic case of it’s not you, it’s me. And I wear the big, shiny crown taking the blame on that like there is no tomorrow.
But as perfect as he was, there had been a lack of passion. And not just the kind that happens when you’ve been with someone for years, but rather the kind that never was there to begin with. The kind I overlooked from day one because if a guy treats you as well as Mitch treated me, and is as good a catch as our friends with wide-eyes full of jealousy kept telling me he was, then you’re supposed to overlook that, right?
But there was more than that. He never understood why I’d prefer to be up to my elbows in a vat of cake batter with pink frosting smeared in my hair, rather than with the Junior League celebrating the coming of spring at some kind of social event that was more of an excuse to buy a fancy new dress and red-soled shoes. Or how tea with his mother—where she talked endlessly about superficial topics—was enough to bore me to sleep, but to me spending a few hours volunteering at the local ASPCA, cleaning dog kennels and giving extra attention to the lonely fur-babies, was an afternoon well spent.
Because God forbid we had a dog of our own. To Mitch, dogs meant fur, and fur meant mess, and I was already messy enough with my frosting and sprinkles for him.