Red Velvet Calling
Jules found it in the middle of her kitchen island. A dark chocolate cake shaped as a bottle of wine. It was half done by the time Grayson stumbled into the kitchen and completely gone after he'd had his way with it.
Bobby found his perched atop a wooden crate on his boat. Nothing prissy, nothing fancy, just a pure A-MER-I-CAN apple pie.
Andy inhaled three excessively decorated red velvet cupcakes before Ellie managed to wrestle the container out of his hand. He found her later that night gorging on two in the bathtub, icing all over her face.
"Someone make her stop!" Ellie mumbled in between chews of carrot cake, three days later. "I've gained five pounds this week!"
"Honey, I love your curves," Andy said before shoving a peanut butter fudge bar into his mouth.
Ellie glared at him over her fork.
He took another bite of his fudge. "Is there curry in this?"
"Probably. The cake she left us last night tasted like vanilla, rose water, and lost dreams," she snarked. "Just like everything else in her life, her desserts are just a little bit off."
"And yet you continue to eat it," Jules said, coming from the dining room with a bottle of wine.
Ellie shrugged. "I do what I want."
"Laurie's going through a tough time right now and we should all support her," Jules said nobly.
"It's not like that bean head's never been dumped before," Ellie growled, licking her fork.
"She just gives you the warm and fuzzies, doesn't she?" Grayson quipped as he came down the stairs. "What are we talking about?"
"Laurie's baking." Jules waved a hand over the assortment of desserts and pastry currently displayed on her kitchen counter.
"Oh that."
"Yeah that," Ellie retorted. "And she needs to stop before I end her."
"You could just stop eating."
Ellie lifted her fork and swiped at him, missing his face by half an inch.
Grayson gasped and clutched his face. "Not the face. Never go for the face. It's my money maker."
"No, sweetie," Jules inserted. "This is your money maker." She shimmied her boobs.
Travis and Bobby walked in at the end of her dance.
"I don't even want to know," Travis said shaking his head.
Bobby gave her a lascivious leer. "Nice, J-Bird."
"I can do that too!" Andy shimmied his upper body manically.
"Sit. Down." Ellie pushed him back into his seat with one hand.
"Normally I'd think this display of crazy was just the booze talking," Travis said staring at them. "But I'm guessing this counter of diabetes might have something to do with it."
"Travis, you have to talk to Laurie!" Jules said. "She sort of listens to you."
"Talk to her about what?"
"It's understandable after a breakup to overcompensate. Throwing yourself into work is an established coping mechanism after losing a loved one. But it won't dull the pain or stop the hurt. If you were to talk to Laurie about her breakup with Wade, let her cry on your shoulder, perhaps the baking will stop as well."
They all turned to stare at Tom as he reached over the window for a chocolate chip cookie.
"What?" he said catching their stares.
"O...k...a...y," Jules turned back to Travis. "So, as I was saying, she's totally overdoing her baking because Wade's gone. We're all going to get fat if she doesn't stop." She stared at him. "Look! You're even getting a double chin!"
Travis covered his neck with his hand self-consciously. "Laurie's been baking?"
"I got a bag of cookies this very morning." Bobby placed a bag of bone shaped cookies on the counter. He took one out and took a bite. "Though they got this weird jerky flavour to 'em."
Travis narrowed his eyes. "Dad, those are doggie treats."
"Huh?" Bobby stared at the bag. "Oh, that's why dog Travis was eyeing me when I left the boat."
Travis stared at the assortments on the counter. It seemed that everyone in the group had gotten some form of Laurie's baked goods except for him.
Maybe it was a ploy ... Save the best for last and all that.
So he waited. He camped out in his living room for two days just in case she left a plate of something delicious on his doorstep and Sig got to them before he did.
By the fourth day, he was getting nervous. By day seven, he knew that nothing was coming.
It was bad enough that that everyone, even Tom for God's sake, had managed to get a taste of Laurie's cookies – which, now that he thought about it, was the story of his life – but even worse, she'd been incommunicado ever since the break-up.
The only reason they knew she was alive was due to the fact that she kept leaving desserts like calling cards.
Except he wasn't getting any messages.
Avoidance through cupcakes – that was a new low even for him.
He found himself at her door holding a carton of ice cream on the eight day. He didn't know what he was doing there, he just knew that going more than a week without seeing her face was like going through Chinese water torture. He couldn't take it.
"Trav!" she said in surprise as she opened the door. She looked like she'd been sleeping in a vat of flour. It was everywhere, on her face, her clothes, her hair. She looked a mess. She looked beautiful.
"Ice cream?" He jiggled the container.
Her eyes flitted away and it made him uncomfortable. She really didn't want to see him. He took a step back, already planning to make a getaway when her eyes fell back on his face.
"Come in."
Her kitchen looked like a pastry bomb had hit it.
"Uh, sorry about the mess," she said as she saw him take it in.
"No, it's uh, very homey."
The silence stretched between them and it was anything but comfortable. Tension filled the air.
She twisted the apron between her hands and with each twist all the frustration he'd felt over the last week started to bubble to the surface.
Twist.
Twist.
Twist.
"Will you stop that?" he barked.
Her eyes flew to his face. "What?"
"That, that – that!" He yanked her hand away from the apron.
She stared at him incredulously.
He slammed the ice cream down on the surface. "And for the record, I love apple pie! And brownies! And mint chocolate chip cookies!" He knew he sounded like an idiot but his mouth wouldn't shut up. "Tom, Laurie? TOM?"
Her mouth opened to say something and then it snapped shut as she looked away.
He turned away, feeling angry, awkward, and stupid. He was being an ass, making her breakup about his rejection, but he didn't know how to stop.
"I am sorry, you know," he said as he turned away. "About Wade." And as he was turning he caught his foot against her rug and went flying towards a cupboard, arms flailing as he went down.
The cupboard door flew open on contact and several pastries fell out, a cookie hitting him in the face as he crashed to the ground.
He closed his eyes for a moment, wishing that the earth would swallow him whole, and then opened his eyes to find Laurie standing over him, concern on her face but her eyes sparkling just a little.
"I'm glad I can amuse you," he said, pushing himself up into a sitting position.
His hand brushed against something smooth and he looked down to see a cartoon face on a square vanilla cookie. He picked it up and stared.
Curved brown spikes mimicking hair started at the top, followed by beady dark eyes, a button nose and a groove in the bottom that resembled the cleft on his chin.
Eyes transfixed on the cupboard, he got quickly to his feet. And there he saw containers of desserts – cookies, cupcakes, cakes, all in some form of his face.
"This ... is ... weird," he said, his mouth slowly curving up into a smile.
Reaching for the container of vanilla cookies, he shuffled through them, watching his cartoon image smile at him, frown at him, or wink at him. He couldn't help but laugh.
Laurie wouldn't meet his eyes.
He reached for her hand, clasped it comfortingly, and waited for her to look at him. "I thought you forgot about me," he said.
She gave her head the barest of shakes. "Even when ... even when I wanted to. Even when I was trying to think about Wade or miss him, I couldn't. And before I knew it I had a cupboard full of cookies with your face on them."
"Thank you," he said, knowing it was a weird thing to thank her for, but needing to anyway. And then he couldn't help bending towards her to brush his mouth against hers in an almost platonic show of thanks.
She murmured something incoherent, the whisper of it light against his lips.
He pulled back slightly, looking at her questioningly.
Her eyes dropped to his mouth. "I went through so many flavours," she said in a soft almost mystified voice, "and none of them tasted quite right. But this," she brushed her fingers gently against his lips, "this is the taste I was looking for."
Then she slid her hands through his hair and pulled him closer.
It was a long time before either of them thought about dessert again.
A/N: Feedback is lovely and greatly appreciated. Thank you! :)