The realization struck me belatedly that I really should have thought a little bit more about what exactly Missy wanted me to make before promising that I could get it done in time. I hadn't really paid attention to the whole order, but I knew she wanted something strawberry, a ring of white nonpareils added to the icing border and "Get Well Soon" written in red script on the top. Plus, Pearl's questions had alluded to layers of the cake. Just with that much information, I knew I had at least two hours' worth of cake decorating ahead of me - but first, I had to actually bake the cake.

I winced inwardly as I looked at the rest of the order. She wanted a round, three-layered, red velvet sympathy cake with cream cheese frosting. (Sympathy cakes aren't exactly common, but it's far from the strangest order I've received. I think it's sweet that she's giving a nice cake to a sick friend.) The strawberry she mentioned, as it turned out, was actually candied strawberries to put on the top of the cake. In addition, she asked for two icing roses on top and a crushed pecan garnish on the sides. How I was going to fit all of that on a cake with a 9-inch diameter, I had no idea.

But it was what she wanted, so I would manage it somehow.

I flipped through my recipe book to the recipe for red velvet cake and got to work, preheating the oven and gathering the ingredients. (Most of the recipes that I make I have memorized, but I always make sure to double-check in my recipe book, just in case.) I prepared the cake pans that I was going to use with a light dusting of flour and oil and pulled out two mixing bowls, one for the dry ingredients like flour and cocoa powder and one for the wet ingredients like buttermilk and eggs. Then, it was only a matter of mixing the dry ingredients into the wet ones to make a smooth batter.

Next, I measured out equal amounts of batter and poured them into the three cake pans. Once they had settled evenly, I put the pans into the oven and set a timer - half of the recommended cook time, to remind me to rotate the pans so they'd cook evenly. I figured I'd get back to frosting the cookies I had been working on before while the cake was baking, and start preparing the decorations and frosting while it cooled.

However, I hadn't counted on getting more urgent orders to complete.

Pearl came into the kitchen five minutes after I put the cakes into the oven with a scowl on his face. "Can you make a quick batch of blueberry muffins? Some idiot's Pokémon knocked over the whole display case, and I had to throw them all away."

"You should have saved those for Lax," I said absently, not looking away from the cookies.

"Er - that's what I meant," he said, rubbing his temples. "Sorry. It's been a long day, and it's not even half over…"

I nodded empathetically, but as soon as he left the kitchen I felt a grin spread across my face. (Muffins are a breeze to make, and the recipe I use makes a fairly large batch. I like to sample each batch of muffins before we sell them.)

I'd only just gathered all the ingredients to make muffins when the timer went off, indicating that Missy's red velvet cakes were ready for rotation. While I was by the ovens, I turned on a second one to start heating up for the muffins. By the time I mixed the muffin batter and scooped it into the tray, the cakes were ready to be taken out of the oven. So, I took the cakes out of one oven and put the muffins in the other one.

Never one to stand idle in the kitchen, I put the cakes on a cooling rack and headed for the fridge to get butter and cream cheese for the icing. (Did I mention that I make all my icing from scratch?) Then I spent half of the remaining time that the muffins needed to bake looking for the confectioner's sugar, which I had forgotten to put away after I made the frosting for the cookies.

(Oh. I never did finish frosting those cookies.)

Once I found the sugar, finishing the icing was simply a matter of mixing the ingredients together until the mixture was light and fluffy. Of course, halfway through, the muffin timer went off and I had to take those out of the oven before I could continue. Finally, the icing was fluffy enough to satisfy me, and I put it in the fridge to stiffen up a bit before I used it.

I checked the clock on the wall and was pleased to see that it was about lunchtime. My stomach growled in agreement. However, that joy was diminished by the fact that I couldn't take my lunch break yet because I couldn't leave the kitchen unattended. My assistant would be here soon, though - that knowledge buoyed me up as I returned to frosting the cookies.

I had only frosted a quarter of the cookies by the time I started making the muffins, so I figured I'd get about three or four more done before I could take my lunch break. However, I soon realized that I had finished twice that many and my assistant still wasn't here yet. My stomach was growling even louder than before, so I sampled another muffin before continuing to frost the cookies.

Finally, I heard the back door fly open and someone, panting heavily, dashed inside. I glanced over my shoulder toward the back room and sure enough, my assistant had just come in. She was bent over to catch her breath, and her brown hair was falling all over her shoulders and in front of her face. That was odd - normally she kept her hair pulled back so it wouldn't fall in any batter or anything.

Once she had finally recovered enough to speak, she looked up at me with her big gray eyes and cried, "I'm so, so sorry! I had a late night last night, and then when I turned off my alarm this morning, I closed my eyes for just a moment, and…"

"That's fine, Whitley, I understand," I said cheerfully. "It was just a mistake. It happens. Promise me you won't make a habit of it, and I promise I won't tell Pearl."

"I promise," she said solemnly, pressing a fist to her chest. "Thank you very much!"

I instructed Whitley to finish frosting the cookies while I ate lunch; when I finished, I'd be able to start frosting Missy Berlitz's cake. Just before one o'clock - when my lunch break would normally be over - Whitley came in carrying a big white cookie box. "Finished already?" I asked.

She nodded and opened the box, showing me all thirty-six star-shaped sugar cookies frosted with white and gold inside. "I noticed that there were some red velvet cakes on the cooling rack," she said. "Do you want me to start frosting those?"

"No!" I exclaimed, a little too quickly. "I mean…no, thank you. I'd like to make that order myself." I glanced around the room as if that would tell me what Whitley could do instead, and finally a thought struck me when I noticed the time on the clock. "Oh, Pearl will be starting his lunch break soon. You can start covering for him in the front now."

(I call Whitley my assistant, but that's not entirely accurate. It's like this: I work in the back, Pearl works in the front, and Whitley works wherever she's needed.)

She nodded, a little reluctantly, and headed back into the kitchen. A few minutes later, Pearl entered and took a seat across from me; he heaved a sigh as he sat down, and rested his cheek on his palm. "Thank God for lunch break," he groaned. "I swear I've dealt with more irritating customers this morning than every day in this past month combined. Consider yourself lucky that you don't have to deal with consumers directly."

(Oh, I do consider myself lucky…because of the one consumer who I did get to deal with.)

"Maybe you should hire someone to run the register for you," I suggested between bites. "Thanks to Whitley, the cookies for that birthday party tomorrow are finished, and I can start icing Missy Berlitz's cake after lunch."

"Maybe," Pearl said noncommittally. I got the feeling he wasn't really going to listen to my suggestion. (But when does he?) "But what about the other orders we got today?"

"What orders?"

Pearl frowned at me. "An apple pie and macarons…?"

I blinked back at him. "I never saw anything about that."

"I left them on the counter for you," he said crossly. "And I told you I was leaving them, too. You have to pay attention to these things."

His words stung a little because they were totally unwarranted, but I just chalked it up to Pearl's temper being tested by the testy customers this morning. Plus, I didn't want to argue about something so insignificant. So, I just started gathering up my trash and said, "Okay. I'll have Whitley get started on them after you finish your lunch."

I headed back into the kitchen and glanced at the two orders that Pearl had left for me. I hadn't noticed them before because Pearl had dropped them on the counter by the door to the main room, which I almost never pass by. The macarons were due to be picked up this evening, while the apple pie was due to be picked up tomorrow afternoon. The customer, a Ms. Cynthia Carolina, had requested that the pie still be hot when she picks it up, so there was no point in starting it now. But we still needed to make both Missy's cake and Mr. Fuego's macarons.

(That's a problem because Whitley's not an expert baker, and macarons are a rather advanced recipe. I always make macarons myself. When she comes back to help me in the kitchen, she has to be able to work on something…)

When Whitley returned to the kitchen, I reluctantly gave her permission to work on frosting the cake. "But," I added, "if we get more orders before I'm done with the macarons, cover the cake and work on those instead. Got it?"

"Got it."

While Whitley picked up where I had left off spreading frosting over the first layer of the cake, I began the process of combining ingredients for the macarons. Not long after we started, Pearl popped in to say that he needed a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies - quick, easy, and something Whitley could do instead of working on Missy's cake. Granted, it wouldn't detain her for too long, but the less time she spent working on the cake, the more time I'd have to make it perfect.

Finally, just under three hours later, they were finished - three dozen lavender-honey macarons, neatly boxed and ready for pick-up. And just in time, too - Mr. Fuego came by about twenty minutes later to pick them up. Whitley, meanwhile, had finished assembling and frosting the cake. She hadn't done the decorative border around the bottom, but she had written the "Get Well Soon" on the top using red icing and left space for strawberry topping in the center and icing roses near the edges.

(That actually works out perfectly, since writing with icing is the one decorating skill that I'm nowhere near mastering. I probably would have asked her to do it for me anyways.)

Whitley was working on a loaf of banana bread for some customer who apparently had the patience to wait for the bread to be made, so I was able to pick up where she had left off on the cake easily. First, there was the matter of the icing border. Missy hadn't specified what exactly she wanted for the trim besides the nonpareils, so I went for a red border to match the message on top and contrast with the white nonpareils a bit more. I piped out the icing in little red stars all around the base of the cake and then placed one of the little pearl-shaped candies on the tip of each star.

Next, I did the simplest part of the order - the pile of candied strawberries in the center. Of course, it wasn't quite as easy as just dumping them in the middle and moving on - I had to arrange them in a neat pile, then pour a little bit of syrup over them without making a huge mess on top of the cake.

Then, I needed to make the roses to place on the top. I opted to make them using red-tinted fondant, since red seemed to be the main accent color for the cake. Like all good quality icing, I had to make the fondant from scratch. (It's not that difficult to make, though - it's basically just a mixture of gelatin, glucose, and glycerin with sugar kneaded in.) Once I rolled out the fondant, it was only a matter of cutting it into petals and sculpting it into the right shape. Then I placed the roses on top of the cake.

The final task was the one that I had been dreading the most; I had to sprinkle crushed pecans on the sides of the cake. Gravity was no longer my friend, and I wondered if I should have sprinked the pecans on before anything else - I didn't want to get crushed pecans on the trim, but that seemed impossible to avoid at this point. I ended up holding my hand an inch above the icing trim while I threw pinches of crushed pecans at the edges.

When I was about three-quarters of the way through this process, I became aware of Whitley loudly clearing her throat behind me. I carefully piled the rest of the pecans on the counter in front of me and turned to face her. "That's the cake for Ms. Berlitz, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yeah," I replied.

"She, uh…she's here. To pick it up."

I winced; it was never a good thing when I wasn't finished with an order by pick-up time. The last thing I wanted was for Missy to think that I couldn't do something as simple as finishing a cake on time, especially when she paid extra to have it done by this evening. But I couldn't give her an unfinished product, and I didn't want to give her a bad quality product in the interest of getting it done in time. So, I asked Whitley to apologize to Missy on my behalf and tell her as much.

About a quarter of an hour later, I finished sprinkling on the pecans. Then, I took a moment to look at the cake overall. I couldn't say that it was the most aesthetically pleasing cake I had ever made, but it was the best I could do while meeting all of Missy's specifications. I carefully placed it in a cake box - with a clear top, of course. (I take great pride in the work I do, and I don't want to hide it from people.) Then I headed out into the main room.

Missy Berlitz was sitting down at one of the tables by the window, tapping her fingers on its surface and looking just as regal as I remembered her. She glanced over her shoulder as I approached, holding the cake box out in front of me. Her eyes widened when she saw the cake. She slowly rose to her feet, though her eyes remained fixated on it. She took the cake box from me carefully, keeping it level. I felt a little swell of pride at her obvious awe of my work.

"I'm sorry again about the delay, but I would hate to give you a rushed product," I said earnestly as she finally looked up at me. "I hope your friend will enjoy the cake."

"Y-yeah…" she said uncertainly, quickly dropping her gaze.

The change in her demeanor was obvious and so starkly contrasted to the confident woman that I saw this morning that I couldn't help but ask, "Is something wrong?" I could think of several different possibilities, not all of which concerned me, but if it did I'd like to help her however I could. I hated to see her looking so uncomfortable.

Her lower lip quivered a little, and she looked back down at the cake. "It…it's beautiful. I'm sorry," she whispered, so softly that I could barely hear her. I wasn't even sure that I had heard her correctly - why would she apologize for the fact that I made the cake beautiful? That's just what I do.

Finally, she met my eyes again with all the haughty confidence of that morning. Yet, there was still a softness to them that hadn't been there before.

Then her next words left me in as much shock as she had been in when I brought out the cake.

"When do you get off work? I need to talk to you."

Missy Berlitz wanted to talk to me? Just because I made her a cake?

(I mean, I did make the cake with extra care because it was for her, but I didn't really expect her to notice me because of it. I just wanted her to be happy with the cake…and if that made her want to grace our little bakery with her presence more often, all the better.)

I quickly brushed away the doubt, though. The why wasn't as important as the fact that she asked to talk to me, and she was waiting for an answer. "I, um, yes," I stammered out. "Um, we close at 8, but there are still things I have to take care of after we close…"

"We should meet here at 8:30, then," she said decisively.

I took a breath to calm myself, knowing that I wouldn't make a good impression if I kept stuttering like an idiot. "Pearl will still be cleaning up in here then," I said. "The back room is more private…unless, um, you don't mind him overhearing," I added, flushing slightly.

"No, that will be better," Missy replied.

"I can…meet you at the back door and let you in?"

"Perfect," she said. She gave me a soft little smile and added, "Thank you for the cake…Dia. I will see you again soon."

"See you soon," I echoed. The little bell above the door jingled as I held the door open for her, and I watched her stride along the sidewalk for a bit longer than necessary before heading back inside. The memory of that smile still lingered in my mind long after she left.

A/N: In case you're interested in making some of the stuff that Dia and Whitley make in this chapter for yourself, I thought I'd link to the recipes that I used for reference! (you'll have to insert a period before each "com")

For the cake and frosting: foodnetworkcom/recipes/southern-red-velvet-cake-recipe-2011892
For the fondant icing: biggerbolderbakingcom/how-to-make-rolled-fondant/
For the fondant flowers: craftsycom/blog/2016/09/easy-fondant-flowers/