Cream of the Crop (Hudson Valley, #2)(7)

“Girl. How’re the sticks?” I asked, sinking down onto the couch with my berry-banana concoction.

“How’re the sirens?” she shot back, her answer every week. My best friend for years, we’d fallen into the habit of chatting more often now that she was back on the correct coast and only a ninety-minute train ride away up in the Hudson Valley. We’d always stayed close, but something about living closer to each other had kicked our friendship up a notch, and now I looked forward to our weekly Saturday-morning chats. I spent a similar hour each Sunday morning on the phone with our other best friend, Clara, whenever she was in the same time zone. A branding specialist for luxury hotels, she was frequently out of the country on business.

“How come you haven’t shipped me one of your coconut cakes yet? My doorstep is suspiciously devoid of Zombie Cakes care packages . . . who should I talk to about that?” I teased, slipping out of my sneakers and examining my pedicure. I might need to pop over this afternoon for a shine-up.

“You can talk to the lady in accounts receivable, which is me. As soon as you buy a cake, you’ll get a cake, it’s that simple,” she said with a laugh. “I’m starting a business here; I can’t be giving away the profits.”

“Can I get it at cost?”

“Sure. It costs fifty-five dollars, plus shipping.”

I rolled my eyes. Roxie had recently started a food truck in her hometown of Bailey Falls, using her grandfather’s old Airstream trailer. She was already making a name for herself in the Hudson Valley and had even brought the whole show into the city on a few occasions. It took time to start a business, naturally, but she was doing it in exactly the right way. She’d started small, and with a little guidance from me in terms of marketing, she was kicking some ass. Her cakes were wonderfully rich and nostalgically old-fashioned, a great combination. “How was your week?” she asked, snapping me back from my thoughts.

“It was good; brought in a new client, assisted on a few other campaigns, nothing too exciting. How about you?”

“It’s crazy here right now with the harvest; Leo is going nuts. You’ll be proud of me, though; I learned how to make a plaster-of-paris town hall.”

“For Polly’s class?” I grinned, thinking about how upside down Roxie’s life had become within one summer. She’d come home to help her mother out with the family diner, and ended up falling in love with a local farmer who had a seven-year-old daughter. She was head-over-heels in love with her new life.

“Yeah, they’re making a mock-up of Bailey Falls, and we were in charge of the executive branch.”

“Sounds exciting,” I said drily.

“I’m glad she didn’t get assigned the water tower; that would have been difficult.”

And just like that, the life around you begins to change. We were growing up.

“Leo ruined the first town hall. It was all finished and ready to go to school the next morning, when he got all twisted up in my panties, tripped us both, and fell, sending me ass first into the cupola. We had to stay up all night making a new one.”

And just like that, you realize nothing ever really changes.

“Enough with the Mayberry. You planning any trips into the city anytime soon?” I asked, dangling the city carrot every week.

“Nothing on the books right now. You planning on coming up here for a visit anytime soon?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“You’re adorable,” I said, chuckling, finishing my smoothie and rising off the couch to throw it away in the kitchen. “There’s a big foodie festival here the first week of November; you should try and get your cakes into it; lots of gourmet eyeballs there.”

“Send me the details and I’ll see what I can do. Speaking of food, are you gonna talk to Oscar this week?”

“Shush.”

“Explain this to me again, please,” she said, her voice incredulous. “I’ve seen you get a guy to literally eat out of the palm of your hand, and you can’t talk to Oscar the Grouch?”

“He wasn’t eating out of the palm of my hand.”

“He ate olives off your fingertips, and he kneeled down to do it. In a bar, for God’s sake.”

I giggled. He did. Yuri. He’d said he was a Russian mafia guy, but he wasn’t so tough. I stuck my tongue in his ear, whispered what he could do to me if he played his cards right, and . . . wow. He really was eating out of the palm of my hand.

“I don’t understand why this guy makes you so googly! I mean, he’s obviously got that brooding bad-boy sex god thing going on, and—”

“You can stop there; that’s enough to make me go googly,” I interrupted, my eyes crossing.

“You know, if you came up here for a visit, I could easily arrange a meetup . . .” Her voice trailed off, plotting.

“No! I can’t, no!”

“Why in the world not?”

It was a good question. Why wasn’t I jumping all over this?

“If I come there and I see him, and we talk, about cheese or whatever else might come up, then it’s like . . . I don’t know. Something changes.”

“Yeah. We get this shit moving past the scrambled-brain phase,” she replied.

“Exactly! What if, once we start talking, he no longer scrambles my brain? What if, once I get to know him, there’s no grrr behind the golden? What if”—and I had to sit down to even say this out loud—“what if he’s got a teeny weenie?”