Seven
JACK
Valentine’s Day began as the Roman festival Lupercalia. The festival included fertility rites and the pairing off of women with men, usually by lottery. By lottery! Tell me how that’s at all romantic? Also, I believe the sacrificing of goats was involved.
—SOLO FEBRUARY CHALLENGE
Okay, so that went well. No, it’s not me. It’s all men on planet Earth. I just can’t believe I read the room so wrong. I kind of thought … we had a connection. Clearly, I’m wrong.
I slide the tray of unbaked raspberry tortes into the oven at Margo’s. It’s a relatively slow Friday. It’s been a few days since Sora blew me off. I hate to admit this, but I still look for her to walk in the sliding automatic doors of the store. Stupid, really. I should give up. I’m like Charlie Brown and that damn football. Every single time Lucy holds it, he runs full speed toward it. Only to have it swiped away at the last second. Again.
My phone dings and I pull it out of my pocket.
The Spark dating app tells me I have more than a dozen new matches. I aimlessly look through them. There’s a woman on her patio with a fish face. “Kissy face” might be the technical term, but they all look like fish faces to me: lips puckered, cheeks sucked in. Fish face with sunglasses. Fish face without. Woman in a bikini staring off into the distance. Fish face and cleavage shot. Cleavage shot and fish face. Another bikini. More cleavage. More fish faces. And a long list of new messages from interested parties, all consisting of one-word openers.
Hey.
Hi.
’Sup?
Hey.
Hi.
All gorgeous enough to pique my inner Neanderthal’s interest. But my inner Homo sapiens craves a conversation. A connection that goes beyond one-syllable answers. Because I’ve had enough of the casual swipe-right circuit. I want more. I want something real. Someone who makes me laugh. Someone with substance. Someone who understands the concept of an inside joke. Or, hell: humor, period. Someone who doesn’t spend hours trying to get the perfect fish face and semi-tasteful cleavage shot for their social. Someone who eats food on dates, instead of nibbling on the edge of a piece of lettuce like a guinea pig.
Someone like Sora.
Confession time.
I might have noticed her at Margo’s in the produce section, maybe back near Christmas, looking pretty damn crisp herself. I’d recognized her instantly. Those sweet brown eyes and perfect pink bow lips are impossible to forget. Plus, she has that little beauty mark, to the left of her mouth, and the dimple on the right when she smiles. She’d been wearing a plaid scarf, knee-high black shiny boots, and a red wool thigh-length coat with lipstick to match. Like the perfect Christmas present I wanted to see under my tree. Red—the color of good luck, the color Po Po, my Chinese American grandma, said scared away bad spirits. But then, I realize, she’s not alone. Some guy is tagging behind her, an ugly version of Lance Bass, that she called Dan.
I guess if she really has vowed to go solo this month, then that means no Dan, either. I guess that’s a consolation prize. Still, Solo February could’ve just been an excuse to let me down easy. Sora’s nice like that. Of course, the rejection still stings. More than I’d like to admit.
The timer of the oven at Margo’s goes off, letting me know the raspberry mini tortes are ready. I shove my phone in my pocket, grab a couple of oven mitts that are too small for my hands, and open the oven. Heat blasts my face as I grab hold of the tray of desserts and slide them out. They look perfect, if I do say so myself. I glance around, but I’m alone in the grocery kitchen that looks out to the glass cases of the bakery section. I sigh. It’s no Alestra, the fancy Michelin-star restaurant where I worked last year, making dessert delicacies that got five-star reviews in the Chicago Tribune. Ah, how far I’ve fallen.
I shake my head. No need to dredge up bad memories now. What’s done is done. Can’t remix a cake that’s already baked. I glance up from the counter and see a woman debating whether or not to come up and order something. Two others stand behind her, whispering. I sigh. I know I’ve become the local single ladies’ (and some men’s) obsession. It’s just all kinds of embarrassing, really. I don’t want that kind of attention.
It doesn’t matter, though. Soon, I’ll open my own bakery. At my shop, they can flirt with me all they want. I’ve got half the cash I need to open it. Plus, now I’m nominated for Best Pastry Chef, and if I win the award this year, and the $100,000 prize, I’ll be set.
My luck has to be changing. After the disaster that was last year, I’ve got to get a break.
My phone rings in my pocket. My older brother, Marc, is calling.
“Hey.” Marc sounds echo-y, so I know he’s calling me from his fancy new car, probably stuck in traffic on the way to his law office. He never has time to call anyone unless he’s stuck in traffic. “You remember Allie’s birthday tomorrow?”
I roll my eyes. “Of course I remember our niece’s birthday.” The fact that Marc feels the need to remind me is slightly annoying. “I’m baking the cake, remember?”
“Okay, just checking. You know this party is … important.”
“I know.” A year ago, the poor four-year-old was stuck in the cancer ward at Chicago Hospital, fighting off leukemia. That spunky, adorable, fearless girl gave us the scare of our lives. But she fought through it like a champ and kicked cancer’s ass with her light-up sparkling unicorn sneakers. That soon-to-be-five-year-old is my damn hero. “I’m making her favorite cake—chocolate chocolate. And I might have picked up a few things. Pink and glittery.”
“Ian isn’t going to like that. You know how he feels about glitter.” Ian’s our other brother and Allie’s dad, and has lamented a million times how glitter gets all over every surface of the house, no matter how much they try to contain it.
“Ian can bite me,” I joke. “The girl loves glitter? She’s getting glitter. After all that she’s been through? Least I can do.”
“Yeah, and she’s got a doctor’s checkup later this month…” Marc trails off, because he doesn’t want to say what we’re both thinking: the cancer could come back anytime. It’s a sneaky, cowardly son of a bitch.
“That’s why Allie gets all the glitter and chocolate she can handle right now.”
Because the truth is, we don’t know how many birthdays Allie will get. Whether she stays well is up to the big guy upstairs. All the doctors tell us the odds are good. Still, it’s the Big C. And it’s scary as hell.
“Okay, well, don’t be late. It’s eleven at Ian’s place.”
“I know, Marc. I know.” Marc feels the need to police us all, being the oldest. Even when we were little, he promoted himself to Mann Family boss.
I hang up with Marc, heart a little bit heavy. But Allie won, I tell myself. She beat it. No use in letting doubts about her future creep in. She’s going to live long and well. Allie reminds me that we only get one shot on planet Earth. You never know when your time is up. Might as well make the most of it.
I think about Sora again and sigh. I just wish I could be making the most of it with her.