Read There's Cake in My Future Online
Authors: Kim Gruenenfelder
There's Cake in My Future
Acknowledgments
First off, I’d like to thank Matthew Shear, my publisher, and Kerry Nordling, in Foreign Rights. If you guys didn’t sell my books, I could never sit in my pajamas writing my books, and for that I am eternally grateful.
Many thanks to Jennifer Weis, my editor, for supporting my books and helping steer me through the whole writing process on project after project.
To Kim Whalen, my agent. Again, how do you thank the person who has guaranteed that pajamas can be work clothes?
To Jennifer Enderlin, for coming up with the title for my book. (I still believe it every day!)
To Dorothy Kozak, for saying, “You should write a book about a cake pull.”
To the people I trust so much that I let them read the “crappy first draft”: Carolyn Townsend, Brian Smith, Jennifer Good, and Anne Bensson. I don’t know how I got so lucky to have found a group of people who have enough faith in me to tell me the truth about what doesn’t work in my books and what needs to be fixed. I do know that it’s easy to lie to the people you give up on. It’s harder to plod through with those you know have more in them. I treasure you.
To Erin Dunlap for helping me so much with Mel’s “Am I happy?” monologue. You should be writing novels—I’m just sayin’.
To Seema Bardwaj and Reena Singh, for letting me take your names for my character and giving me tidbits of info about Indian American culture. Obviously Seema isn’t either of you (you are both much more fabulous), but I’d like to think a few of your cracks and quips made it in.
To my family: Brian and Alex, of course. Carol, Edmond, Janis, Jenn, Rob, Haley, Declan, and Maibre. And on Brian’s side: Caryol, Walter, Eric, Sonia, Eric Jr., Kyle, Emily, and Korie.
And one other family I have to thank: the friends my son Alex thinks have the first name “Uncle” or “Aunt”: Jeff Greco, Brian Gordon, Robert Sexton, and Suzi Hale Sexton. To “the winetasters”: Dorothy, Missy, Gaylyn, Jen, Nancy, Reena, Christie, and Marisa, for all of your encouragement. And to Laurie, for her encouragement.
Finally, I want to thank a particular group of writers whom I’ve met since
A Total Waste of Makeup
. These writers don’t all know each other, and they’re not all in the same field of writing. But they have one thing in common: they are all artists who are also incredibly good and supportive people. That’s hard to find—and somehow I found you. Joe Keenan, Bob Daily, Jennifer Coburn, Beth Kendrick, Quinn Cummings, Jeff Greenstein, and Nancy Redd. Whether it’s coming to book signings, sending me a picture of my book on a bookstore front table, bantering about agents and editors, or letting me pitch asinine ideas at you until something interesting came out, I am grateful.
And if I missed anyone—you know who you are—yell at me and I promise you will be in the acknowledgments for Book 4.
Contents
Advance Praise for There’s Cake in My Future
Prologue
Melissa
Is it a
really
bad sign when the bride has locked herself in the bathroom? Or is it just one of those things that all brides are secretly tempted to do right before the ceremony?
I am standing in the back room of a beautiful old church in Santa Monica wearing a sparkly satin aquamarine dress with a giant bow at the hip, dyed-to-match aquamarine pumps, and an aquamarine hat so ostentatious it could make Liberace climb out of his grave just to tell me to tone it down a bit.
Obviously, I’m the bridesmaid. An honor that currently affords me the task of knocking politely on the bathroom door of my good friend Nicole (aka The Bride) and begging her to come out.
“Nic? Honey,” I say gently, tapping lightly on the door. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” she whispers to me through the locked door. “I’m an awful, selfish person who doesn’t deserve a wedding, or a marriage, or happiness. And I am going to die alone with a bunch of potbellied pigs.”
“Pigs?” I ask, confused but trying to sound understanding and sympathetic. “Why would you end up with pigs?”
“I hate cats.”
I can’t tell if she’s overreacting or not. I mean, when you think about it, a wedding is an astonishingly big leap of faith. Any ceremony that specifically mentions “sickness,” “poverty,” and “death” as part of the agreement—that should at least give a girl pause. Right?
Maybe that’s why society has encouraged women to focus more on the glittering diamonds, the gorgeous dress, the flowers, the presents, the cake.…
Oh … the cake. After this past week, I’m pretty sure the bride doesn’t even want to hear the word
cake
, much less look at one.
Our friend Seema, Nic’s maid of honor, opens the front door of the bridal room and backs her way in, careful to keep the door as shut as possible while she slithers through the doorway. Seema wears the same ridiculous ensemble as I, but her luminous Indian skin can handle the hideous shade of blue Nic has picked for us. And her hourglass figure easily pulls off the lacy décolletage of the V-neck top and the stupid bow at the hip.
“No, no problem at all,” Seema insists with forced cheer to someone out in the hall. “We just need a few more minutes. The bride…” She glances over at me as she struggles to finish her sentence. “… smaid!” Seema continues. “The
bridesmaid
is depressed that it’s never going to be her and has locked herself in the bathroom. We’ll be right out.”
Seema slams the door shut, locks it, then runs over to me, still camped out at the bathroom door. “I think I bought us a few more minutes,” Seema whispers to me hurriedly. “I don’t think anyone suspects anything yet.”
My eyes bug out at her. “Who was that?”
“The church lady. She wants to know why we’re behind schedule.”
“Why did you tell her that
I
was the depressed one?” I whine to her in a whisper. “Like I’m not having enough problems today. Do I really need three hundred people thinking I’m holding up a wedding because I can’t get my love life together?”
“I panicked,” Seema admits in a whisper. “Besides, it
could
be an excuse.”
“Did it ever occur to you to use
your
sorry excuse for a love life as an excuse?” I challenge her. (An outburst that is completely out of character for me but I believe well within my rights.)
“Fine,” Seema concedes, her tone of voice clearly brushing me off. “So next time, you can go out there, and use me as the excuse.” Seema begins rapping on Nicole’s bathroom door several times. “Nic, drama time’s over,” she says firmly, but ever so quietly. (Can’t have the wedding guests hear anything in the back room, after all.) “Now come on out.”
“No!” Nic whispers back urgently through the door.
“Don’t let my whispering fool you,” Seema warns Nic. “I swear to God, I will kick down this door! Put me in an aquamarine skullcap in front of three hundred people. Oh, you
will
get married today! I don’t care if I have to drag you down the aisle with a chair and a whip.”
“First of all, it’s not aquamarine—it’s aqua,” Nic begins with a hint of condescension. “As a matter of fact, if we’re getting technical, I’d say it’s more of an electric blue.”
“Really?” Seema responds dryly. “This is what you want to do right now? Lecture me on your chosen bridal color palette?”
Nic whips open the door to haughtily tell Seema, “Well, you make me sound like some tacky little bride from 1984. And, secondly, it is
not
a skullcap. That is a lovely—vintage!—forties hat and veil.”
Nicole looks exquisite: the quintessential California girl ready for her wedding at the beach. Her sun-kissed skin glows, her emerald eyes sparkle, and her platinum-blond hair practically shimmers under her long veil. She looks flawless in her gorgeous Monique Lhuillier strapless princess A-line gown in ivory satin. A vision, ready to walk down the aisle.…
Until she slams the bathroom door shut again before we have the chance to ram our way in and force her to get married.
I let my head fall into the palm of my hand.
Seema tries the door, but it’s locked again.
“It’s a costume for an extra in an Esther Williams movie,” Seema yells as much as possible while speaking in a stage whisper. “Now get your butt out here!”
There’s a polite knock on the front door. I walk over to it. “Yes?” I ask through the door in the most carefree and breezy tone I can muster.
“It’s Mrs. Wickham,” the lady from the church says on the other side of the door. “People are starting to ask questions. Is everything okay in there?”
I watch Seema stand up, determinedly walk back a few steps, then run like a bull right into the bathroom door.
It doesn’t budge.
“It’s fine,” I lie. “I was…”
Seema grabs her shoulder in pain, and starts rubbing it. “Son of a…” She pounds on the door with both fists and stage-whispers, “You get out here, woman!”
I open the front door as little as possible, then squeeze through the tiny crack and step out into the hallway. As I do, I take my left hand and push Mrs. Wickham away from the door and farther out into the hallway while simultaneously closing the door behind me with my right hand. “I’ve been vomiting,” I lie. “And crying. Nic was just helping me clean up my mascara.” I grab her by the collar and whine, “Oh God, Mrs. Wickham, why isn’t it me? Why is it never me?”
Suddenly I hear a loud, rhythmic pounding inside the room. I quickly let go of Mrs. Wickham’s collar, open the door a crack, then peek in to see Seema holding a fire extinguisher and ramming it repeatedly into the locked door.
I close the door quickly to block anything unseemly from Mrs. Wickham, and force a toothy smile. “But I’m good now.”
POUND!
I continue to smile, “You go make sure the groom is okay…”
POUND!
My cheeks hurt, I’m smiling so hard. “After all, without a groom, we don’t have a wedding.”
POUND!
PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!
“Oh shit!” I hear Seema roar on the other side of the door.
I open the door a crack for a second time to see Seema covered in fire extinguisher goo.
I slam the door shut again, then turn around to the church lady and force myself to admit, “Okay, we might be having a little problem with Seema’s dress. We’re gonna need two more minutes.”
* * *
One week earlier.…
One