—What House Are You?—
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JENNIE
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Lisa stays true to our agreement and her band doesn't go on until nine thirty the following Saturday, giving my last comedian time to finish his act. It works out well, and it's great for business—Lisa's more than mine, since it means a good chunk of my customers end up migrating over there when I close up.
I even pop in to check out the band, mostly out of curiosity. Not because I'm trying to support her or ogle, or anything.
After polling my regular customers and setting up an online survey, Harry Potter Trivia Night is born. The winner gets a dozen HP-inspired cupcakes and a round of drinks for them and three friends.
I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. I've read all the books, listened to the entire series on audio more than once, and I own all the movies. I also saw every single one in the theater on opening night. "Big fan" is an understatement. I'm pretty proud of the fact that I didn't need to go online to research tough questions since I'm so well versed already.
I've gone all out. Every drink and cupcake is HP themed. My posts are getting a record amount of likes, and we have twenty individuals entered in the contest. It's going to be fabulous.
I'm decked out in my Gryffindor dress, wielding my Hermione wand and wearing my Hogwarts cape. It's almost like a pre-Halloween party. If this event gets the same amount of attention as the comedy nights do, trivia night will become another monthly staple at BB. I'm thinking Stranger Things deserves its own event, too.
At seven, the café begins to fill with entrants and their friends. Callie is kept busy behind the counter, Rosé is helping with drinks, and the hardcore HP fans are dressed in their house garb, devouring cupcakes and house-themed drinks.
I call out the names of the competitors and am completely shocked when Lisa walks into the café dressed in a Slytherin hoodie. The Slytherin part isn't much of a surprise—she definitely fits the profile with her dark hair, less-than-aboveboard business tactics, and prankster ways, but the fact that she's an HP fan is unexpected. Unless she borrowed the hoodie from one of her employees. I wouldn't put it past her to use it as an opportunity to piggyback on another one of my ideas.
"You're a Harry Potter fan?" I ask when she approaches the counter to register.
"Hell yeah."
"The movies or the books?" I demand.
She scoffs and makes a face like she can't believe I'd ask such a thing. "The books, of course. I own all the first-edition hardcovers and the soft ones, too. Plus Jim Dale nails the audio."
"Oh my God, I love his voice!" The audio books are amazing, and I listen to them all the time when I'm at home, testing cupcake recipes.
We grin at each other, and for half a second I dislike her a little less. I register her to play, and she grabs a drink before she takes a seat at the table up front where all her fellow HP competitors are already waiting.
There's a sizable crowd of non-entrants lining the fringe of the café as we get ready for the contest to begin.
Word to the wise: HP fans are ultracompetitive. The first three rounds of trivia weed out the I saw the movie but never bothered to read the books crowd. By eight we've narrowed it down to the best six contestants. Lisa manages to stay in the top three.
She nails the rapid-question round, putting her in the finals. Her adversary is Shanna, a twenty-two-year-old lit major at the local college who's writing her thesis paper on Harry Potter lore, so she has her work cut out for her.
I pull the final question, which has been selected randomly, and whistle into the microphone. "Wow, this one's a doozy. For the title of Harry Potter Trivia Champion, a dozen of my magically delicious cupcakes and drinks for you and three friends, name every ingredient contained in Polyjuice Potion."
Lisa and Shanna both slap their hands on the buzzer at the same time, but Shanna gets there a fraction of a second sooner, the red light bathing her face in a sinister glow.
"Shanna, what's your answer for the win?"
She leans in to the microphone, closing her eyes—it's how she's answered every single question. "Lacewing flies, leeches, knotgrass, fluxweed…" Her brow furrows and she hesitates for a second before continuing. "Shredded Boomslang skin and a bit of the person you want to turn into." Her eyes pop open and she smiles triumphantly.
"Is that your final answer?" I prompt.
"Yes. That's my final answer."
I admit, I'm disappointed when I have to say, "I'm sorry, but that is incorrect." Shanna's face falls like a pile of crumbling bricks.
"Lisa, would you like to respond and try to steal or would you like a new question?"
"I'll try to steal, thanks." She clears her throat, eyes fixed on mine as she leans in, lips almost touching the mic. Her voice is a low, confident rumble. "The ingredients in Polyjuice Potion are lacewing flies, leeches, knotgrass, fluxweed, shredded Boomslang skin, a bit of the person you want to turn into and…" She pauses for dramatic effect. "Powdered Bicorn horn."
I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. "Is that your final answer?"
A cocky grin spreads lazily across her face. "Yes, Jennie, it's my final answer."
"You're sure?" I arch a brow.
Her smile doesn't waver. "Absolutely."
"You are correct. We have a winner!"
"Hell yeah!" Lisa jumps to her feet and raises both fists into the air as if she's won a round in the boxing ring. She turns to me and in what I can only assume is an impulsive show of victory, she wraps her arms around my waist, picks me up off the floor, and swings me around in a circle.
When she sets me down, I take a dizzy step back. She keeps her hands on my waist to prevent me from falling off the makeshift stage. "I gotta head back to the bar, but I'll take a raincheck on the drinks." She winks, jumps off the stage, and fist bumps her way to the front door.
The brief warm and fuzzies disappear the following night when Lisa hosts a Beer Pong Tournament. The loudest beer pong tournament in the history of the universe, apparently, because every thirty seconds there's a collective "ooooooh" or "yeeeahhhhh" coming from her place.
It takes everything in me not to go over and check it out after I close up. And even then I peek through the window, just to see. It looks ridiculously fun. But I know if I go in there Lisa will find a way to make me participate, and I have terrible aim. I'm guaranteed to lose, which would also mean drinking beer. I have an early morning tomorrow, so I back away slowly and head home, where it's mostly quiet and there are no twenty-one-year-olds playing beer pong in the apartment next door to mine.
Over the next several weeks my competition with Lisa heats up, both of us trying to outdo each other with new events, particularly since we've both made it through to the top one hundred bars from the over five hundred who were initially nominated for Tori Taylor's Best Bar contest. The next round will bring us down to the top fifty, and both of our bars are currently hovering in the thirties thanks to social media votes. After that, the competition is going to get steeper with the quarterfinals, taking us down to the top twenty-five bars. I don't want to get cocky or complacent though, since we still have a long way to go to number one.
I hold a poetry slam night and despite the initial lack of excitement, it turns out to be a totally popular event, especially with the drama students at the college.
Unfortunately, Lisa plans another one of her loud events—all her events are loud—on the same night, so we're forced to wrap it up early. I should really know better by now.
On the upside, every new, fun event I host does better than the last. We hold a Halloween cookie-decorating contest and sell a ridiculous number of gory cupcakes and fun, horrifying drinks. Orders for cupcakes for the local businesses continue to pour in, which means I'm endlessly busy and still managing not to dig too far into my line of credit. It also means I'm light on sleep, but I can deal with being tired as long as BB is staying afloat.
Tonight I have a bachelorette cupcake and cookie-decorating party. It's actually one of Rosé's engagement photo shoot clients who came back looking to secure her for additional dates—including the wedding. When Rosé suggested the bachelorette party I absolutely ran with it, with her input, of course. It gives her another opportunity to take some fun candid photos to add to their engagement and wedding albums and I have the opportunity to do something new and different.
Rosé came in earlier to snap some shots of the setup, and then popped back in before the bride and her wedding party were scheduled to arrive.
The bride's sister arranged the event and rented out the entire café. Customers can still come in and purchase cupcakes to go, but there's a warning on the door and the entire place is full of women decorating treats.
We decided the cupcakes are fun, but you can't make interesting shapes the way you can with a cookie. We start with a cupcake-decorating tutorial—Rosé records that part—but that's quickly devolved into turning cupcakes into vaginas. And the cookies…well, those are just as entertaining. Once the debauched decorating begins, Rosé takes off back to her studio, half apologizing for not being able to stay. I wave her off; honestly, this is the most fun I've had with a decorating class.
At eight Lisa pops by—she still makes a daily stop for a cupcake—and gets a gander at the penis cookies the ladies are working on.
The entire wedding party stops to watch her cross the café.
"Ooooh! Hey there, cutie, you can come sit with me!" The bride's sister—Irene—is on her third martini and lost her filter an hour ago. The drinks aren't even that strong. Every time she decorates a cookie, she ends up taking a picture of her biting into it and then she forces her friends to send her the picture. She then promptly posts it to all her social media accounts. She's also tagged the café in every single post. I should probably mention that the cookies she's most fond of posting are the penis ones.
I consider untagging the café, but decide that based on the number of likes the posts are getting it doesn't hurt to let it ride. Who knows, it could become another new revenue stream.
"What're you ladies up to?" Lisa shoots a smile and wink in my direction—the wink is probably unconscious—and veers toward the women.
"We're decorating cookies. See!" Irene holds up her most recent work of art. A very orange penis, complete with pubic hair. It looks like it was decorated by a six-year-old. Or a drunk woman, the latter of which is accurate.
Lisa's eyes go wide and she coughs into her fist. "That's very convincing."
"I even gave it pubes! They're made out of licorice."
"I manscaped mine," one of the other bridesmaids declares and holds up her less orange, much more aesthetically appealing bald-balled cookie.
Irene's eyes rake over Lisa, pausing at her crotch. "Do you manscape?"
"Uhhh—"
"Ladies, this is Lisa, owner of the bar next door. When you're done here, you should drop by. You must have some kind of special drink promotion you can offer these lovely ladies, right, Lisa? And don't you have some kind of event going on? Is it a live band?" I know it's not because I stalk her IG profile. I don't follow her, because I don't want her to know I'm watching her, but after the loud, live entertainment started I needed to know ahead of time what I was facing every week.
Her gaze moves from the penis cookie two inches from her face to me. She looks like she's plotting my murder. I can completely understand why. These ladies are already halfway to rowdy drunk. They're all on some ridiculous pre-wedding keto diet—which died a sad, necessary death once I told them the cookie calories don't count tonight—and they've been sipping martinis for the past two hours. They'll fit in perfectly next door.
"Ooooh! You own The Manoban Cap?" Irene puts her hand on Lisa's forearm, leaving icing smears on her tattooed skin. She's definitely on the prowl based on the way she's eyeing Lisa's crotch the same way Lisa eyes my cupcakes.
Lisa either chooses to ignore her or maybe she's too busy giving me the death glare and missed her simpering question. Irene strokes her forearm, rubbing in the icing.
"She does, don't you, Lisa?"
"I don't actually own it, I just run it. It's my grandfather's—"
"Oh, wow, isn't that sweet? You work with your grandpa? I love guys who are close to their families. I'm close to my family, too." Irene is still petting Lisa's arm. Still holding her penis cookie up in the air, as if she's waiting for Lisa to praise her efforts.
The rest of the women are watching the one-sided exchange with something between fascination and mortification. Mostly it's fascination, though.
The woman on Irene's right snorts. "You haven't talked to your mom in three years."
"I'm close with the rest of my family, though," she snaps, sending a rage glare at the other woman. I think her name might be Yeri. Irene returns her attention to Lisa. "I'm close with everyone else. Even my stepmother."
"Well that's…nice." Lisa takes a deliberate step back, away from her petting and the phallic cookie. "You ladies enjoy the cookie decorating." She makes a move toward the door.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" I call out.
"Huh?" Her gaze shifts to me.
I hold up the small box I set aside for her. It contains two cupcakes. They're themed for tonight's bachelorette party. Although I decorated these especially for Lisa, as I always do.
"Oh, right."
She rushes over and tries to grab the box from my hands, but I maintain my protective hold on it, smiling serenely. "Don't you want to know what kind they are?"
"I'm sure I'll love them."
"Me, too, but you should sample one, don't you think?" I bat my lashes and smile wider. "These ladies have yet to try the cupcakes. I'm sure they want your seal of approval, don't you?"
A chorus of "Yes!" comes from the table, followed by some additional hoots, hollers, and taunts. You'd think we were at a strip club, not a freaking cupcake cocktail café.
Lisa narrows her eyes.
"You heard them. You don't want to disappoint the bride-to-be." I flip the lid open and her eyes flare and meet mine.
For the first time, Lisa is less than 100 percent composed. In fact, her cheeks have turned a lovely shade of pink. "You gotta be shitting me." She rubs the back of her neck.
"They look real, don't they?"
"Ooooh! What are they? Can we see?" Irene claps her hands together excitedly. I should probably hydrate this group before I send them next door.
"Why don't you show them, Lisa?" I hold my smile.
"No way."
I go for the cupcake on the left.
"Hell no." Lisa smacks the back of my hand and her eyes dart to the women. "I'm not eating that in front of them."
That little smack seems to reverberate through my entire body, pinging around like a marble in places that haven't had attention in a long time. Ironic considering the design on the cupcake I'm about to make her eat in front of these women. "So this one, then?" I lift it from the box and turn it so it's facing the right way for her.
"I'm going to get you back for this." Her tone is low and dark: equal parts threat and promise.
"Totally worth it." I nod to the cake perched in my open palm.
She grudgingly takes it.
The women have abandoned the table and their cookies to gather around the spectacle that Lisa has become. Because she's holding a vagina cupcake. The other option is, of course, the male anatomy. Both are convincing in their authenticity.
"Eat it, Lisa!" Irene shouts. The rest of the bachelorette party join in and chant her name.
Her ears are red, her glare tells me she's so freaking pissed off, but she's also aware that these ladies are going to come over to her bar and drop stupid amounts of money on shots and girlie drinks as soon as they're done here. Customers are worth more than her pride in this moment. Also, Lisa has proven that she isn't the kind of woman who backs down from a challenge, and for some reason I hate her a tiny bit less because of it. For now.
I covertly slip my hand in my pocket, searching for my phone as she peels the Bride-to-Be wrapper from the cake. Thankfully, Lisa is sufficiently distracted by Irene, who's snaked her arm around her waist and is screaming her name like she's the one about to get eaten.
I manage to pull up the camera app, switch it to video mode, and hit Record before she fully unwraps the cake. She holds my gaze as she brings it to her mouth, opening wide. I lift the phone, making sure I catch her when she takes a robust, rather sensual bite.
And all the while her eyes tell me she wants to mash the cupcake in my face. But she doesn't. Instead she puts on a show. I'm hashtagging this cupcake porn. Because that's 100 percent what it is, literally and figuratively. Even the bite placement is purposeful, and so is her groan when the flavors hit her tongue. The sweetness of vanilla cake, the hint of cocoa in the thin layer of icing before the light buttercream registers and then there's the vanilla custard center, because come on, I'm nothing if not detail oriented.
She obviously doesn't expect the filling, which of course is the point. Custard dribbles down her chin, but she's so busy glaring at me while I record this epic moment that she doesn't notice.
I can't resist the opportunity. I bite my lip, fighting my own smile. "Oh! You're making a mess, Lisa. Here, let me help." I make sure the video is still rolling and I catch the dribble before it drips off her chin.
Before I can pull my hand away, she wraps her fingers around my wrist. There have been very few instances in which Lisa has made intentional, prolonged physical contact with me. The most body-to-body contact we've had to date was when she picked me up and removed me from behind her bar. After the fact, I can admit that she was right in that situation and I was not. Did she really need to fireman-carry me out from behind the bar? Probably not. Have I thought about all that physical contact countless times since then? Not at all. Okay, maybe a few. Hundred times.
So when she yanks me forward by my wrist I stumble and my hips meet the counter. I have to remember to keep the phone trained on her face when she bites my finger at the first knuckle. And I have to swallow down the gasp when her tongue swirls around my finger, cleaning off the custard.
She releases my finger with a wet suctioned pop, drops my wrist and jams the rest of the cupcake in her mouth. The whole thing. I cut the video because she's killed the sexy, but I know I can edit it into something useable.
She chews quickly and swallows, swiping at her mouth with the back of her hand. "Post that and you'll regret it."
"I'll regret it or you will? That was cupcake porn gold, wasn't it, ladies?"
The women cheer and Lisa jerks back, like she's suddenly aware there are other people here besides us.
She nabs the box, halfway to crushing it. "Just remember you pulled the pin, Alice." And with that she spins around, excuses herself, and leaves the café.
"Okay." The bride-to-be raises both of her hands like she's trying to stop traffic. "Please tell me you're sleeping with her. You have to be sleeping with her. I'm pretty sure I just came vicariously through you."
"I'm sorry." I splutter and smooth out my apron—totally a nervous move. "I don't know what you're talking about. She's my rival, not my…girlfriend."
Irene grabs my arm, eyes wide and alarmed. "Fuck buddy? Please tell me you're boning her."
"Uhhh—"
"You will be soon if you're not already," the bride-to-be says.
"I don't even like her," I scoff.
She smiles. "You don't need to like her to ride her; you just need to want to use her for stress relief. That's how me and Sehun started out and now we're getting married. I see wedding bells in your future!"
I see a whole lot of retribution and Lisa doing whatever she can to get back at me, probably by making a crap-ton of noise, but I don't bother to tell these ladies that. They're the end of my night, and whatever trouble they have brewing isn't going to be mine to endure. It'll be Lisa's and I'm more than happy to let them wreak havoc on her.
..
Forty-five minutes later, my bachelorette party has defected next door and I've finished cleaning up. I consider stopping at The Manoban Cap to see how things are going over there.
Off-key singing filters through the barrier of the wall separating our places. I decide I can drop in for five minutes to check how the girls are doing.
I reapply my lipstick, check my hair, and grab my purse. I'm almost out the door when I realize I'm still wearing my apron. I take it off—careful not to mess up my hair—and throw it in the washing machine, knowing I can toss it in the dryer in the morning when I come in to decorate the cupcakes for tomorrow. Then I lock up and head next door.
The place is packed with people, and I spot the bachelorette ladies on the stage, one of them belting out a tuneless "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus. Everyone is cheering, likely because of her backup dancers twerking their way around the stage. The ladies are significantly more intoxicated than they were when they left my place. The song finally comes to an end, which is a relief because the horrible singing gets worse the longer it goes on.
Lisa steps up and takes the microphone from the bride-to-be before she can start another song. "That was fantastic! A round of applause for Irene. You definitely outdid yourself with that one!" The crowd bursts into applause and laughter. Thankfully the bride is way too intoxicated to know that she sounded like a dying goose on methamphetamines.
I turn to leave, satisfied that I've accomplished what I set out to—make Lisa's life a little more difficult—but people have moved in behind me, so I can't get to the door.
"Jennie!" Lisa's deep voice echoes through the speakers and I freeze. "I see you out there. Come on up! The cupcake queen from next door has graced us with her gorgeous presence. Who wants to hear her sing?"
The crowd erupts in a cheer.
"You heard them, Jennie. They want you to sing for them. Don't be shy!" A spotlight is suddenly on me, the glare blindingly bright. "Come on, ladies, go get Jennie and bring her up here for me."
Of course she commissions the drunk bachelorettes to help.
I don't blend in very well in my fifties-inspired dress—tonight it's pink and has a diamond ring theme—so it means that every single person is now staring at me.
The bachelorette crew grabs my arms and pulls me toward the stage. Lisa is grinning like the cat who ate the canary. She did promise to get me back for the vagina cupcake. And I totally posted the video in my stories as soon as she left. I figure it's great advertising for future bachelorette parties.
I don't bother to fight. If Lisa thinks dragging me onstage in front of a bunch of drunk college kids is going to embarrass me, she's got another thing coming.
When I reach the stage, she holds out her hand in faux-chivalry. I slip my palm into hers, and warmth zings through my body at the contact. I climb the stairs and she tugs me against her side, smiling down at me, eyes twinkling with malicious mirth. "I'm so glad you stopped in to see what was happening here tonight, Jennie."
I wrap my fingers around her wrist and angle the microphone down. "I couldn't miss hearing my girls sing!"
Her grin widens. "They were certainly a delight, weren't they?" She addresses the crowd, and they all clap and whistle.
Lisa is ridiculously charismatic. It doesn't matter that the bride and her wedding party sucked more than a Hoover on the highest setting; they love her and in turn they love the ladies' terrible performance.
"Well, now that I have you up here, what should I do with you?" Lisa's tongue peeks out and the right side of her mouth quirks up in a half-smirk. She tips the microphone toward me.
"What do you want to do with me?" I'd like to say my voice is purposely low and smoky, but honestly, the question and the way she's looking at me seems almost lascivious.
"Hmmm." She sucks her teeth. "Not so sure I should answer that honestly."
That gets a loud cheer from the crowd.
She gives them all a look and I roll my eyes. "Aren't I up here to sing?"
"Right. Yeah. What's your jam? How about 'Let's Get It On'?"
I scoff and take the microphone from her. "Mmm, I think we can come up with something better than that." I tap my lip. "Have you been up here yet, Lisa?"
"I'm running the show, not in it." She laughs, but her eyes glint with a warning look.
"Why can't you do both? Who wants to hear Lisa sing? What do you guys say, should we do a duet?"
The cheer is so loud it makes my ears ring.
"You heard them, they want us to do it together."
"There's only one microphone."
I lift a shoulder in a light shrug. "We can share, can't we?" I drop the mic and whisper. "You're not getting out of this."
She gives her head a slight shake, but her smile tells me she knows she's screwed herself with this. "What're we gonna sing?"
"Hmm." I pretend to think about it for a few seconds. "How about 'You're the One that I Want'?"
Lisa laughs. "I should've known you'd be a Grease fan." She motions to the deejay. "All right, you heard the lady. Let's do it."
What Lisa doesn't know is that I've probably watched the movie a thousand times. And I've seen the play at least twenty times. I also have the soundtrack and I listen to it in my car all the time. I don't even need the lyric feed. My love for Grease is a good part of the reason I wear the dresses I do.
When I adopt an obsession, I don't half ass it; I commit fully. Much like my obsession with Harry Potter and cupcakes. When I was a teenager, I used to love drama class. Even in college I would join the theater groups for fun. I didn't ever want it to be a job. Once I was the understudy for the role of Sandy, so I know the entire song by heart, actions included.
I smooth my hands over my skirt and hand the microphone back to her. I love that she has to start.
I have to hand it to Lisa. She really does try to hit the notes and she doesn't do a half bad job, but she has to keep looking at the screen. Her gaze keeps darting back and forth. It makes it that much more satisfying when I cover her hand with mine, tip the microphone down and sing to her, telling her she's the one that I want.
It's obvious she's shocked, possibly because I don't need the lyric prompt, possibly because I'm not a half bad singer. She almost misses the cue to join me, but I nudge her and nod to the screen, forcing her to drag her eyes away from mine.
She tries to keep up. It's rather commendable, and I will say, what she lacks in vocal range she makes up for in hip shaking.
When the song ends, the crowd bursts into uncontrollable applause and shouts for an encore. I slip my hand into Lisa's, noting her damp palm, and we take a bow.
I hand her back the microphone and tug on the collar of her shirt, pulling her down. My lips brush the shell of her ear and her skin pebbles as I whisper, "Not quite how you thought it was going to go down, huh?"
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