Cupcakes and Christmas - R.J. Scott Page 0,21
my head. So why did you say yes to coffee? It’s just coffee, not a sweeping love affair with Olympic style sex. Although random sex with Brody wouldn’t go amiss. In fact, if I closed my eyes I could think of his eyes, and his body, and…
His snowman sweater.
His ridiculously cute snowman sweater with the floppy carrot, and the scarf that puffed out under it.
Not that I’d been staring.
My cellphone vibrated and I casually looked at the notification, hoping it would be something I could ignore, but seeing Erin’s name at the top I knew I had to at least acknowledge it. I know she was somewhere in this hotel, and that she probably knew exactly what suite I was in.
ROI down, shoot some inside footage. Nice car vid.
I had a shop, selling aprons with my name on, bakeware, even packed ingredients to make the perfect cakes, I sold chocolate, candy, blowtorches for meringue, plates, cups, posters—if it was something that was even tangentially connected to baking it had my name on it. ROI, or return on investment, was just another term for how much advertising cost against what I was earning, but it had become so much more than that to me. It was a measure I had to watch to know how I was doing, and it used to be I’d watch the ads and how they ran, checking them every hour, sometimes more, desperate for the money to outweigh the cost of making the ads. Now I had a guy who did this for me. He was part of Erin’s team. A quiet focused man with huge complicated spreadsheets that calculated what I was worth to my company at any given moment. The formula was simple. I go live on Insta or make a video for any platform that would have me, and I made money.
I settled back on the bed, one hand under my head after tousling my hair, and then I put the phone just right, playing with the settings and moving until the light was perfect.
“Hey, Mallys, I’m at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, met up with the other five contestants and did the opening shots. Wait until you see the antlers and the sweater I had to wear, you’re gonna laugh. I might get some sweaters commissioned for the shop, who’s up for that?” Several hearts began to dance on the screen, and a few messages along the lines of I’d buy that. Meanwhile, I had a product I could push. “Seems like I’m going to have to be content with a Mallys T-shirt, but it’s a good shirt, so I’m not going to worry too much.” More hearts, more messages, and I could guarantee people were getting shirts, buying into the name. “We’re meeting for dinner, check my Insta for photos later. Bye, guys!” I blew a kiss at the screen and then ended the video, dropping the cell to the bed and feeling faintly dirty. When had it got to this point where I didn’t feel successful after each video? Where the number of likes meant nothing to me? The cell buzzed, and I buried it under a pillow. I could still hear it, so I was torn between looking at the messages or turning it off. Instead, I headed into the bathroom for a shower. No one can hear their phone through a closed door while standing under a torrent of water.
If only I could forget it was out there making noise.
I rolled my neck and then braced my hands on the tiles, the water beating down on my tight neck.
Rose water cupcakes, winter rose, rose gold.
The blind challenge I had no control over, so I’d have to cross that bridge when I got to it and try not to panic. There are two types of people in a blind bake. Those who’ve never seen whatever they had to make before, and those who’ve made it all the time. The ones who knew what to do always looked so quietly confident, and the ones who didn’t? They were the contestants who said that they didn’t understand what they were doing and just winged it.
I know how to bake. I’d been baking since forever, at times I had so many baked goods in my tiny kitchen that I’d have to pass them out to neighbors. Not talking to them of course but leaving parcels at their door.
The final task, the Finale Challenge, was to create a Christmas gingerbread house, and that