She clearly already knew this question was coming because she doesn’t flinch. “They came around. It was my life, not theirs. I knew what I wanted. And that’s lucky enough by itself — not a lot of people do.”
I open my mouth and almost say it right then: I don’t want this. But the problem is I do, and I don’t, and my feelings are still way too tangled for me to be able to say I don’t want to spend my whole future in this place when I also can’t imagine a future without it. It’s dumb, but I wish for a stupid, childish second I could just stay like this forever, with Mom and Dad running things so I can still love this place without feeling responsible for it. So I can still let it define me without letting it own me.
But then another swell of customers comes in five minutes to close, and we’re all back in a flurry, the conversation over and the strudel long forgotten.
Jack
Later that night, I’m sitting on the couch with Ethan, both of us on our laptops. The fight we were in about the Twitter picture kind of ended by default, the way they always just seem to have expiration dates more than resolutions — when you’re packed in quarters as close as ours and working together in a deli, staying mad at each other is just plain impractical.
A ping comes in from Weazel.
Bluebird
So. We still on for tomorrow?
I can’t decide if whatever is churning in my stomach is relief or dread. Ever since this afternoon I’ve avoided getting on Weazel, even thinking about it. Usually I make a few sweeps during the day to make sure everything is kosher and to deal with any suspicious behavior the safeties in the app have flagged, but after that whole Pepper and Landon thing, I just want to wash my hands of it.
It’s just — I don’t know. It seemed like maybe we were having a moment. Like maybe we’d had a bunch of them, and they all kind of snuck up on me until they were right in front of my face, until she was popping out of the water with that full-wattage, ridiculous smile that made it feel like my blood changed its composition in my veins.
And weirdly, throughout this whole thing, Pepper and I have been … well, friends seems like a stupid word now. Like that doesn’t quite cover it. I’ve told her things I’ve never said to Paul, not even to Ethan — heck, not even to Bluebird, who until now was the only person I could come close to saying anything honest to. Close enough I can still practically see her texts to me about Ethan the other night like my brain has screenshotted them — close enough that she managed to call me out for things I haven’t fully understood myself.
She accused me of hiding. One straw short of accusing me of self-sabotaging. Well, then, this is the icing on the cake — I made this stupid app, and now this stupid app is the reason Landon and Pepper are going to ride off into the sunset.
I turn back to Weazel, to this weird beast of mine. I’ve never once regretted making it. With the exception of people occasionally being dicks the way dicks are prone to be, it’s helped set up study groups, and given people a place to vent, and accidentally started friendships — relationships, even. Gina and Mel. Pepper and Landon.
Maybe even me and Bluebird.
Wolf
Yeah. But first—
Wolf
Emergency Cupcake Locator
It takes her a full minute to answer. I spend the first bit wondering if I’ve freaked her out, if the gesture wasn’t funny or it was too personal or if this is going to put a weird pressure on something that, in some ways, hasn’t even started yet.
But then, somehow, my thoughts slide right back to Pepper. I bet Landon doesn’t even end up at the group thing. He’ll say he is, maybe, and then oh-so-conveniently text her the wrong place for the meetup. Or maybe he’ll wait until afterward—“Hey, want to grab some ice cream?”—and maybe Pepper will even take him to a Big League Burger, just to be funny about it, and pull out whatever ridiculous emergency dessert condiment she happens to have in her bag, and Landon will laugh and tell her it’s cute, and her cheeks will get all red under her freckles and—
Bluebird
Oh my god. YOU DIDN’T.
Bluebird
YOU MADE A CUPCAKE VERSION?!?!
I finally let myself smile, easing into the couch cushions and tilting my phone away from Ethan, who is raising his eyebrows at me. It took the better part of all my free time this week, but I used the same map formatting I based the mac-and-cheese locator app on for a new one, one that lit up 450 different places selling cupcakes in Manhattan.
Wolf
Well, mac and cheese and cupcakes ARE the two most essential food groups
Bluebird
I might actually be crying?????
Wolf
Your dentist will be, that’s for sure
Wolf
Anyway, glad to know you weren’t kidding about that cupcake obsession
Bluebird
Not at all. You don’t even know how on brand this is for me
Bluebird
Okay, so you showed me your big secret project. But I held out on you
Wolf
Well now you’re obligated to unhold out. What’s yours?
Bluebird
It’s super dorky so you have to brace yourself
Wolf
Consider me braced
Bluebird
ppbake.com
Bluebird
It’s a blog. For baking
Bluebird
It’s live and all, my sister and I run it together, but it’s anonymous
Bluebird
And the stuff we make has ridiculous names because we basically bake like we’re five, so
I tap the link, and it opens up a bright, cheery, robin’s-egg blue web page. P&P Bake, it’s called. It’s clearly one of those WordPress blogs converted into a website, but that doesn’t make it any less captivating — the pictures on the posts are so vivid, I can practically taste them through the screen.
I scroll down, glancing at the dessert names, lingering on the pictures. The most recent is Tailgate Trash Twinkies, which are apparently a homemade cake roll infused with PBR; I scroll down and see A-Plus Angel Cake, and Butter Luck Next Time Butter Cookies, and then—
And then, on Halloween, there’s an entry for Monster Cake.
My breath stops before it can leave my chest, my entire body stiffening on the couch like a corpse. There’s no mistaking it. I may have a bad habit of eating Pepper’s baked goods so fast, it threatens the time-space continuum, but the bright colors and gooey mess of that cake are so distinct in my mind and in my taste buds, I could see it in another life and immediately identify it.
Yet my brain still refuses to process it, and I’m still scrolling as if I’ll blink and it will disappear, a vivid, sleep-deprived teenage hallucination.
But the further I scroll the worse it gets. The So Sorry Blondies. The Pop Quiz Cake Pops she and Pooja were eating the other day. A few things I’ve never heard of before, with irreverent, silly names, some of which must be Paige’s, but others that are so distinctly Pepper it stings to read.
I drop my phone.
“What?” asks Ethan, barely looking up from his screen.
Pepper is Bluebird. Bluebird is Pepper.
I can’t decide what to think, what to feel, but my body seems to decide it for me, my heart beating all over my body and my chest suddenly so full of air, I’m not sure whether to use it to breathe or yell “PEPPER IS BLUEBIRD!” at the top of my apparently very melodramatic lungs.