Sugar Rush (Offensive Line #1) (5 page)

Cowboy In Me.

It’s not a happy song. It’s not fun like most of my favorites, but there’s something in it that tugs at me. The same tug that I feel when I look at Trey and Sloane. A hollow feeling in my gut. A mild ache that sits painfully sweet on my tongue like white chocolate and pink frosting.

LILLY

November 10th

Mad Batter Bakery

Los Angeles, CA

The Mad Batter used to be called Alexander’s. It was dark back then. Dated. The owners hadn’t updated it since nineteen seventy-two and it showed. The product was what mattered, though. No one came for the décor. They came for the goodies. For the sugar and the bread. The basics that never changed because they didn’t need to. They were good. Had been for years.

When we took it over we had to change the name. That was part of the deal Owen and Claire cut us when they sold us the place. They brought the asking price into our range, but we had to rename it. We couldn’t live off their legacy, and that was fine with us. We wanted to make our own mark, use our own recipes, and take chances in ways they never would have let us under the Alexander name. We went organic on a lot of our ingredients and cut out most of the fat. Sweets with half the sin, that’s our moto, and it’s paid off. So has the total overhaul in the look of the place. We’re playing to a younger crowd than the Alexanders ever bothered with and twenty somethings in Los Angeles don’t want to shop for trans fats in their grandma’s basement. The biggest and smartest change we made was simply color. Two small, purple tables sit by the windows, mirroring a second set outside basking in the sunshine. Green paint coats the walls and counters, the same shade as our logo, and every time I see it I remember the night we picked it. I remember thirty shades of green slashed haphazardly on the wall behind the register, the acrid scent thick in the air. They ranged from a deep grass green all the way up to a yellowish hue that looked like the inside of a poop filled diaper. Not the kind of color you want in a bakery. Or anywhere.

Rona and I argued for hours over which one to pick. We narrowed it down to three, then broadened it to five, before finally bringing it down to two, but that’s the problem with a partnership; there’s no majority. We were at a stalemate. Luckily we had Michael. We called him at three in the morning in the thick of our debate and somehow talked him into coming down to the store to help us decide. He was groggy and disheveled, but he stood between the two of us with an arm over each of our shoulders and made the final decision.

Diaper shit green.

Rona immediately dragged her paintbrush down his shirt in retaliation for messing with us. The color was a vibrant lime green.

“That one,” Michael said immediately, looking down at his ruined shirt. “That’s the color.”

“Be serious. This is important!” I exclaimed irritably.

Late nights did not then, and do not now, agree with me. I get grumpy. Well, I guess I get grump
ier
.

“I
am
serious. This is the color. What’s it called?”

I spun the sample can around amid the chaos on the counter. “Lucky Lime.”

“That’s it. It’s perfect.”

Rona and I stood back to admire his shirt.

“That wasn’t one of the finalists,” I complained, though I didn’t know why. The more I looked at it away from the other colors, the more I liked it.

“But it is bright,” Rona argued. “And we wanted bright.”

“That’s true.”

Michael sighed. “Are you ladies going to make a decision or are you going to stand there staring at my chest all night?”

Rona shushed him. “You’re a wall. Walls don’t talk.”

“This wall does and it says it’s got a girlfriend leaving for London in four hours so it’d like to go home to bed.”

“I think this is it,” I told Rona quietly.

She smiled. “I think you’re right.”

“You mean
I’m
right,” Michael reminded us.

“Shhh.”

Michael lunged at Rona, pulling her into a tight bear hug that lifted her off her feet and smeared still wet paint onto her chest. She laughed, a high, trilling sound that made Michael smile. It was the first time I’d seen him smile in a week. It was the last time I’d see it for over a month.

But that’s what the color reminds me of now; my brother and my best friend laughing late at night.

“You’re the girl who won’t sign the release?”

The host of
Tastetastic
has appeared on the other side of the counter from where I stand daydreaming. He’s a round old guy with big green eyes and a shiny bald dome. An entourage follows him everywhere he goes, even when he says he’s going to the can, and I think how freaking stupid fame is. How ridiculous it makes people.

This guy, though, I can’t figure out if I’m supposed to know who he is or not. If he was a celebrity before he started hosting this show. Cooking shows have started using stars from sitcoms that were on when I was a kid, like they’re aware that we all grew up and have responsibilities now. Like they think because we enjoyed watching these people pretend to go to high school and have it better than we did we’ll want to watch them now in better kitchens than ours eating better food.

I put on a patient smile that sinks no deeper than my lip gloss. “That’d be me.”

“Why not? Are you camera shy?”

“Sort of.”

The truth is I don’t care for celebrities or cameras. It’s a shit deal when you live next door to Hollywood, but it’s the city’s fault I feel this way. It made the monster that burned me and I’ll never forgive it for that. The city or the monster.

“You’re a beautiful girl,” baldy insists. “The camera will love you.”

“Thanks, but that’s not what I’m worried about.”

“What are you worried about?”

I pull my smile tighter, feeling it grow thinner. “I’m worried I’ll look fat,” I lie, looking for an easy exit from this conversation. “I have to check on things in the back, excuse me.”

“Alright, but you look great, honey! Phenomenal! I’ll look fat enough for the both of us!” he laughs wetly.

I chuckle politely before pushing through the swinging double doors leading to the kitchen. It’s a little quieter back here. No cameras or boom mics. No crowds. Just a producer with an overworked clipboard, Rona, and a makeup artist painting her face. Her palette is spread over the stainless steel island where I paint our cakes.

Rona looks afraid. She’s not even trying to hide it. She smiles through it, though, giving me a genuine grin when she sees me, bright and happy as always.

I envy her that.

“How’s it going out there?” she asks.

“Crowded, but good.”

“We’ll be setting up most of our shots back here,” the producer informs me. She’s an older woman with proudly gray hair, warm, brown eyes, and a name I can’t remember. “After the establishing shots of the interior, the display cases, and the outside of the building, we’ll focus mainly on your process. We’ll be out of your hair soon.”

“Take your time.”

“She doesn’t mean that,” Rona teases.

I smile. “I’m trying to.”

“Lilly does most of the bookkeeping. Having our doors closed makes her nervous.”

“Trust me, you’ll have a boost after the episode airs,” the producer assures me, checking her cell phone.

“That’s what I keep telling her. That and I wish you guys could have been here yesterday.”

“I heard you had a big job.”

“We did.” Rona’s eyes sparkle playfully. “Plus, Lilly met a guy.”

“Here we go,” I groan.

The makeup artist turns her darkly shadowed eyes to me with a curious grin. “Ooh. Is he hot?”

“Smoking,” Rona confirms.

“He’s not that hot,” I protest feebly.

“Seriously? You’re gonna try to downplay Colt Avery?”

“Colt Avery?!” the makeup girl exclaims. She whips her phone out of her back pocket, her short, black lacquered nails flying over its surface. She turns it to Rona. “
This
Colt Avery, from the Los Angeles Kodiaks?”

“That’s him. I mean, I think he was wearing a shirt when she met him, but—oh no hold on. Still looking,” she objects when the makeup girl goes to take her phone away. “Aaaaaaaand I’m good. Thanks. I get why you keep him as your screensaver.”

“I’d have him as my breakfast if I could.” She stows her phone, giving me a wicked grin. “Did you sleep with him?”

“Three times in thirty minutes,” I deadpan. “It was epic.”

“Are you for real?”

“Are
you
? No, I didn’t sleep with him. I talked to him. That’s all.”

“You’re crazy! You don’t talk to a guy like that. You hop on and go for the ride of your life.” She picks up a brush, giving me a cursory look. “You’re cute. I bet he would have banged you if you asked.”

“Well, shit, if I’d known that I would have asked.”

She nods her head solemnly as she turns back to her powders.

“Anyway,” Rona continues slowly, “it’s the first time Lilly’s talked about a guy in months. She hasn’t had sex for almost a year.”

“Ro!”

“What?!”

“Dude. Boundaries.”

“I’m nervous!” she cries defensively. “You know I get chatty when I’m nervous.”

“Chat about your own shit.”

“You spent a half hour in a closed pantry with a guy off the cover of Playgirl. My last date was with a dentist from Bakersfield. Your shit is so much more interesting than mine.”

“More interesting than the fact that you fart when you orgasm?”

“Lilly!”

I smile, leaning against the doorframe. “Yeah. Not so great on the receiving end, is it?”

“Maybe we should all just shut up,” she grumbles.

The door behind me bursts open, knocking me forward. A member of the camera crew, a young guy with an ironically skeevy mustache, reaches out to catch me as I stumble forward.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry!”

I wave him away, catching my footing before I eat floor with my face. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Are you Lilly?”

“Yeah.”

“The one who refuses to go on camera?”

I shrug irreverently. “It’s what I’m famous for.”

His eyes dart to the producer behind me. “Can you talk her into it?”

“Don’t you think I tried?” she fires back, uninterested.

“We all tried,” Rona tells him.

He backs out of the doorway, looking to the right at someone out of view. “Nah, she’s not going to, but maybe you can convince her.”

I hear a chuckle, low and vibrant. Unnervingly familiar.

“I doubt that, man, but I’ll try.”

My body goes cold. “No fucking way.”

Rona stands in my peripheral, taking a step toward me. “Lilly, what’s – Oh, my God.”

The doorframe fills with him. It’s nearly too small, everything in the world seemingly inadequate in his presence. Nothing is bright enough, large enough, fast enough to keep up with him.

With the pulsing presence of Colt Avery.

He smiles when he spots me. It’s crooked, one side of his mouth rising higher than the other. It makes me feel like I’m tilting. Falling.

“What’s up, Hendricks?”

“No.”

His body jerks with a silent chuckle, his smile widening. “What?”

I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. I don’t know what I want to say, not exactly. I’m too stunned by the fact that he’s here, live and in the flesh. In my world. My normal, average, everyday world that looks Technicolor bright with him standing in it.

I wasn’t supposed to see him again. What the hell is happening?

A cameraman moves behind him. He’s filming this, and I’m in the shot.

I shake my head at him. “You can’t use any of this. I haven’t signed the waiver.”

Colt glances behind himself at the camera. “Yeah, they told me about that.” He turns back to me, his smile going smug. “What’s the matter? You don’t want to be famous?”

“The store is closed right now,” I tell him, ignoring his question. “How did you get in?”

“For real?”

“Because you’re
famous
?” I ask dryly.

“It has its perks. You should try it.” He steps around me, his hand outstretched. “You must be Rona.”

Rona is nicer than I am. Most people are. She smiles at him pleasantly, shaking his hand and managing to look only mildly star struck. “Yeah. I’m— yeah. Nice to meet you.”

“Colt,” he supplies unnecessarily, at least having the decency to pretend we don’t all know his name and nearly every contour of his naked body. “Good to meet you. I love the store. Your cake was the best part of the party yesterday.”

Rona flushes pink all the way to the roots of her hair. “That’s amazing. Thank you.”

The makeup artist offers her hand next. “Kendra,” she purrs.

He nods, taking her hand only briefly.

He introduces himself to the producer next. Sandra. That’s her name. He’s charming when he greets her, effortlessly dropping the sexy act in favor of the boy next door show. She absolutely eats it up.