How to Eat a Cupcake (8 page)

Chapter 6

Julia

I
could see Annie had a bee in her bonnet from the moment Jacqueline led her into the kitchen. She seemed jumpy, biting her lip, her cheeks still shining from the cool, sodden air outside. Instead of taking off her red coat, she pulled its belt tighter around her waist. Her small, heart-shaped face—with her light brown, wide-set eyes and honey-colored skin—was framed with her wild dark hair above and the coat's fake fur collar below; a clump of missing fur on the lapel gave her the look of a mangy, yet plump, street cat.

“Oh, hi!” I said brightly. “I didn't realize that was you at the door. I figured you'd come in the kitchen, like old times.”

“Nope,” said Annie, eyes flashing. “I came in the front door, like new times.”

“Okay.” She clearly planned to make this meeting as difficult as possible. “Either way, I'm glad you're here.” The maid, meanwhile, was standing awkwardly in the door frame, and now cleared her throat. I gestured in her direction. “Jacqueline can take your coat, if you like.”

With some reluctance, Annie slid her arms out of her coat, revealing a sunshine-yellow, houndstooth-print, seventies-style jumper that contrasted humorously with the pinched look on her face.
Where does she find these outfits?
I wondered, hoping that wherever it was, she washed those “vintage” numbers before wearing them. I smoothed down my own milk-white cashmere sweater and nodded toward the kitchen's built-in breakfast booth where my laptop sat open and aglow.

“I thought we could work in here,” I said. “It's about as close to the espresso machine as we can get without sitting right on the counter.”

Annie paled. She opened her mouth and then shut it. “Fine,” she said at last. The craggy treads of her leather boots crunched loudly against the tile floor as she strode past me.

Oh, of course she doesn't want to be in the kitchen!
I realized, feeling my stomach flip. I'd had ten years of chocolate croissant nibbling and fridge grazing and coffee sipping in my parents' kitchen to distance it mentally from the place where Lucia had collapsed, but for Annie, the feeling of shock and loss must still hang in that room as though her mother had just died yesterday.
Thirty rooms and I decide this meeting should take place in the kitchen?
I felt myself reddening.

“Oh, Annie!” I said. “I should have thought . . . I'm sorry.”

“For what?” she asked thinly.

“For this.” I made a sweeping Vanna White gesture over the kitchen's center island. “Should we move? What a way to kick things off. I'm so sorry.”

Annie's eyes narrowed and I could tell she was thinking that I'd done this on purpose—that I'd wanted to upset her. She looked at me like she could see right through me, and her steady gaze gave me a rare jolt of nerves.

“It's fine,” she said, settling into the booth.

“Okay. If you're sure.” I turned away to fiddle with the espresso machine, talking over my shoulder all the while. “So what have you been up to all these years? I feel like we didn't really have a chance to catch up at the party. Obviously, you're a baker. A master of all things cupcake.” I set a plate of Sonja's chocolate-dipped macaroons and two nonfat vanilla lattes on the table and slipped into the bench across from her.

“That's it really,” she said, taking a sip. “Lots and lots of baking.”

“My mom told me you studied pastry.”

She nodded, her dark, flyaway—
almost feral
, I thought unkindly again before I could stop myself—curls shaking around her face. “At the San Francisco Culinary Institute.”

“How fabulous. It sounds like you've been leading a very romantic life. Very
Chocolat
.”

Annie sighed. “It would make it a little easier to roll into work at five a.m. if I knew Johnny Depp was going to be there.”

I laughed and then stopped abruptly when I heard how loud it sounded in the room. “Are you seeing anyone?”

Annie hesitated for a moment before saying, “Not right now.”

“Oh, I see. You're playing the field. How fun!” I said. “People are getting married later and later in life. I wouldn't even be thinking about marriage yet if I hadn't met Wes. You know what they say: it's all about meeting the right person. And it only takes that one.”

Annie pressed her lips into a sarcastic smile. “Yes,” she said, “there is a remarkable amount of clichés on the topic.”

I flushed. Why was I trying so hard, beating back every potential moment of silence with inane chatter? It was the sort of behavior that irritated me to no end when others displayed it, and here I was polluting the already fraught air between us with my overly energetic voice. Annie was clearly becoming more and more annoyed; her fingers—which were still surprisingly childlike, small and plump—drummed steadily along the side of her latte glass.

The truth was that ever since she had agreed to open a cupcakery with me, I'd grown increasingly attached to the idea. Each morning that week, I'd awakened a little earlier, plans for the shop buzzing through my mind. My emotions still felt dangerously close to the surface, a huge, essential part of myself still felt irrevocably changed, but I could already sense how these very concrete, pressing thoughts of budgets and marketing plans and branding strategies would help me cling to some semblance of the person I'd been, a person whom I had liked—or at least respected—quite a bit. That very morning, in fact, I'd awakened at 6:45 on the dot, no alarm needed. I couldn't risk the chance that Annie might back out now.

“Shouldn't we get down to business?” she asked, as though reading my thoughts.

“Yes!” I said, straightening. “Of course. Let's start with the contractual details. My thought is that I will make an equity investment of start-up capital and will own fifty percent of the business for one year. In the months that I'm actively involved leading up to my wedding in May, we'll split ownership and cupcakery profits fifty-fifty; after May, you'll become the sole proprietor by buying out my share of the business at a fifteen percent premium according to a payment schedule that will be linked to the cupcakery's success.” I didn't need this fifteen-percent return but feared that if I didn't include it, Annie would balk. Better to keep things businesslike than to let on that the return on investment for me would be related to mental stability, not money.

“If the shop does well, which I'm sure it will,” I continued, “the schedule will be such that you'll buy out my investment over the course of about three years. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if the cupcakery were to fail, you wouldn't be required to repay me anything.”

“That seems generous,” Annie said, eyes narrowed. I could hear her foot anxiously tapping the floor below the table.

“Not really. This isn't charity,” I said hurriedly. “Like any business investment, there's risk and the possibility of reward. The risk is one I'm more than willing to take after tasting your cupcakes and doing a little market research.”

Still, Annie seemed skeptical. “And all of this is in the contract?”

What does she take me for? A criminal?
“Yes, in explicit detail.” I handed her the document. “You should have a lawyer look it over so you feel completely comfortable proceeding.”

Under the table, Annie's foot was still at last. “Sounds fine,” she said. “I'll have a lawyer friend look it over.”

“Good. Let's move on to lighter topics.” I swept my fingers along the laptop keyboard. “I've already scoped out a few retail spaces on Chestnut, Union, and Fillmore streets. The one on Fillmore was most recently a restaurant, so the kitchen is—”

“Wait,” she interrupted. “Fillmore Street? I don't want the cupcakery to be in Pacific Heights.”

“Oh,” I said. I took a slow sip of latte, leaving a glossy peach rosebud on the glass. I'd envisioned the latest generation of Devon Prep girls strolling down the bustling shopping street, dropping into the shop on a daily basis to fritter their sizable allowances on cupcakes and coffee. Now I realized that that very clientele was probably Annie's worst nightmare. Still, those girls had money, and Annie's ample psychological baggage shouldn't take priority over the cupcakery's bottom line. “Where were you thinking?”

Without hesitating, Annie responded: “The Mission.”

I sighed.

“The Mission,” she repeated, jutting her chin into the air in a manner I remembered well from childhood. “It's perfect.”

I took a bite of a macaroon, stalling as I worked to formulate a response. I was not one to pussyfoot when it came to matters of business, but I knew that Annie—who, stereotype or not,
did
seem to have a quintessentially
Latin
temper—required a certain deft approach. “It's just,” I began carefully, swallowing a final bite of cookie, “we're aiming for a very specific clientele. A three-dollars-and-fifty-cents-cupcake-eating clientele, to be precise.”

“Three dollars and fifty cents!”

“I ran the numbers. Three dollars and fifty cents per cupcake with a nice discount for a dozen. People spend forty dollars on a cake that feeds twelve, so why not forty dollars for a dozen cupcakes? These aren't just any old cupcakes.”

Annie looked at me and shrugged. “Okay, fine. I'll leave the pricing up to you. But the Mission is nonnegotiable.” She popped a macaroon into her mouth and chewed fiercely.

Now, I bristled. “Nonnegotiable? Annie, come on. We're just getting started—
everything
is negotiable.”

Annie's nostrils flared. I resisted the urge to reach out and brush away the crumbs that littered her large chest, thinking, as I clutched my hands in my lap, that a good tailor could have done wonders for the way that silly yellow jumper buckled and gaped around her curves.

“Have you ever even
been
to the Mission?” she asked, still chewing. “You haven't lived in this city in ten years so I probably shouldn't assume you know anything about the neighborhood. The Mission is filled with trendy new restaurants and shops. More so than some of the older neighborhood residents would like, in fact. The hipsters, the dot-commers, the overpriced-baked-goods eaters—that's where they live. And if they don't live there, then they
go
there for cutting-edge cuisine. It's a culinary hotspot—
the
place to open a cupcakery.”

Her argument made some sense. I'd heard about the positive changes that had been happening for years in the Mission, though admittedly I wasn't sure I'd ever been to the neighborhood. I reminded myself that this was Annie's business; I would reenter my old, more conventional—and lucrative—life come May and she would be left running the cupcakery on her own. I held up my hands. “I'm not saying no. Let me just research the market a little more, and in the meantime we can check out what sort of spaces are available and see what the rent looks like. If it makes sense, we'll move forward. Okay?”

Annie sat back against the upholstered bench, looking a little surprised that I was so easily swayed. “Okay.”

“Crisis number one averted.” That false chipper ring had edged its way back into my voice. “Next item on the agenda is nailing down a timeline. I know it's tough to say without a space in mind, but if we start small, I think we can push ourselves to get this business up and running in three months.”

“Three months!” Annie said. “Really? But there's so much to do.”

I shrugged. “You'd be surprised how fast money can make people move.”

Annie was biting into a second macaroon as I spoke and now slowly lowered the cookie to the table. Her eyes narrowed. “Did you really just say that?”

“What?” I asked, my mind racing back over what I'd said. The thing about money? It was a throwaway comment. Did she have to dissect everything?

“That I'd be surprised how fast money can make people move?” she said. “Please tell me you realize how that sounds.”

Oh, enough, already!
This meeting was beginning to exhaust me. “I'm sorry if that statement makes you uncomfortable,” I said evenly. “Frankly, I thought it was only us WASPs who were supposed to be patently incapable of discussing money.”

“I can discuss
money
,” Annie spat. “It's your sense of entitlement that turns my stomach.”

My mouth dropped. “Annie! Why must you act so mean?”

“Probably,” she said, “for the exact opposite of the reason that you act nice: it's hard for me to be fake.”

“No! I act nice because, because,” I sputtered, “because I
am
nice! But you—you're not a mean person. I
know
you're not. So I'd really like to know why you act like you are.”

She shrugged. “I'm the kind of person who doesn't sugarcoat anything but cake.” I got the distinct sense that she was enjoying seeing me riled up. “Anyway, I think the question of whether or not you're a nice person is still very much up for debate.”

For the first time since Annie had walked in the door, I allowed silence to fill the room. It seemed clear that any attempt to move forward would have to come from me. I thought back to what had happened between us all those years ago, a series of events that I still had trouble remembering as anything more than one minor misunderstanding after another toppling against each other like dominoes. And, anyway, in the end, what harm had been done? Annie had graduated from Devon and eventually gone to Cal just as she'd wanted. Still, it was clear she needed some coddling.

“Annie,” I said at last, placing my hands on the table. My three-karat cushion-cut diamond engagement ring shone brilliantly below the kitchen lights; my fingers, compared to Annie's, were long and elegant—the hands of an adult. “In reflecting back on those years in high school, I realize I was not always . . . considerate of your feelings. I wasn't a good friend to you. I see that now. I'm sorry.”