The cake was sitting on the kitchen counter and finishing up cooling when Seymour returned home from picking up Audrey. He started trying to apologize for not having it quite finished yet, but Audrey was delighted anyway.
He'd meant for it to be something he could do for her and not something she would have to put work into, but she did look genuinely excited when she asked, "Could I help? Doing the icing is my favorite part!" If she found it enjoyable, he decided there was no reason she shouldn't be able to join in.
Seymour handled the main layer of frosting, and Audrey was quite pleased when the icing flowers started adding didn't seem to be turning out half bad. Not exactly 'picture in a cookbook' worthy, but she still thought she was getting better at it. And while she was working, Seymour was happy to listen to her talk about everything she'd experienced in her classes so far.
Seymour didn't think he fully understood everything she was explaining to him, but it sounded as if Audrey had a good grasp on what they were learning. The shop he'd spent most of his life in had gone through countless years of scrounging and struggling just to stay open, but he was feeling more and more sure that things were going to be better here. Audrey always did seem to have a way of making things turn out better than he ever thought they could be, and there wasn't anyone else he would trust more with all of this.
Audrey told him about how she'd been nervous when she walked in and saw that she was the only woman there, even though she'd already known that it would most likely be the case. But she'd been too distracted to feel nervous once the class started, and there had been so many fascinating things to learn. She could hardly wait until the two of them got their shop up and running, and she would get a chance to start putting it all to use.
She wasn't sure if she could ever begin to tell Seymour how much all of this meant to her. Back in her old life, she'd never seemed to get opportunities to show that she could be good at something important, let alone having someone who would believe in or encourage her. It was still taking time to get used to this feeling of knowing that her thoughts were something valued, instead of just being told to keep it to herself when she had something on her mind, or preferably act as if she had nothing going on in her head at all.
She rambled on longer than she meant to, but while she hadn't quite broken the habit of listening for a warning to shut up, nothing of the sort ever came. If this went on, maybe she would end up out of the habit completely before long.