His Gift 1(3)
“How about you go and I take out the pans?”
Steph put her hands on her hips and glared at me. The last time I’d been in charge of taking the cakes out of the oven, they’d come out black. To be fair, I had forgotten to turn the volume down on my headphones. A cake timer going off sounded a lot like it belonged in the backing track of the latest Katy Perry album, really it did.
“Okay, I’ll never offer to help you again in the bakery,” I said, shaking my head.
“It’s only a dress. It won’t suddenly turn you into a girly girl, Lacey.”
I looked at Steph, and then the cake. Thoughts of hundred dollar bills danced in my mind. Well, it was just for ten minutes.
“Fine,” I grumbled. I hadn’t worn a dress since my mom made me wear one to church the last time I visited her for Christmas. But this was for a good cause.
“Thank you so much! Oh Lacey, I don’t know what I would do without you!”
“I bet Andy would be okay with wearing a dress,” I said, arching one eyebrow.
“He’d probably be more comfortable in a dress than you would,” Steph agreed. She put a glass cover over the two-tier cake. It settled around the cake like a globe protecting its contents. “But not half as sexy as you’ll be!”
“Sexy?”
“Sexy. That’s the only kind of dress I have. That’s the only kind of dress you’re allowed to wear in a New York City penthouse, I’m pretty sure. Heels, too.”
“Oof. Let’s get this over with,” I said, casting one last glance at the cake sitting on the table. It glittered brightly under the fluorescent lights of the bakery.
“Get this over with? You get to go be sexy and deliver my cake to a party full of rich guys, and I have to sit here slaving in the kitchen. You should feel lucky.”
“I’ll feel luckier once I get back without tripping over my high heels and breaking my ankle.”
“As long as you don’t break it on the way there. That’s my two thousand dollar masterpiece,” Steph said.
***
Two thousand dollars.
“I can’t believe I’m delivering a cake with a higher net worth than me,” I said, tugging on the dress.
That was the other thing. Steph was curvy, but not like I was curvy. I had hips that stretched the fabric of her little black dress tight across my chest. My equally more-than-curvy chest.
“I can’t wear this,” I said.
“Why not?”
“It’s a little black dress on you. It’s an itty-bitty-teeny-weeny black dress on me. It’s way too revealing.”
“You can’t be too revealing,” Steph said. “That’s like having too much cream cheese frosting. Impossible.”
“Look at the front of this dress! It’s so low-cut I could use it as a nipple sling if I wanted to.”
“You look sexy.”
“I look like one of those hippos from Fantasia.” I flushed, pushing my boobs down into my bra to keep them from popping out completely.
“Let me get a shawl.”
Steph dug through the top of her closet. By Manhattan standards, Steph’s room was about average tiny, but she’d managed to score one of the few studios with a walk-in closet that hadn’t been redesignated as a bedroom. Living right above the bakery was noisy as hell, which I minded more than she did.
In Iowa, where my parents lived, it was quiet. Like, fart in one room, hear it across the house quiet. I hadn’t managed to get used to the hum and buzz of New York City yet, and so I slept with earplugs in, and headphones over the earplugs, in a cardboard box of an apartment in north Brooklyn as far away from the subway as I could.
“Here we are!” Steph waved a colorful shiny thing in the air.
“What’s that?”
She shoved the rainbow-colored shawl over my head. It was knitted loosely. It was glittery and iridescent.
“It’s an accessory.”
“I’m not really into accessories. Although the Lisa Frank color scheme is attractive—”
“And it helps cover your boobs.”
I looked up into the mirror. The rainbow iridescent shawl covered the tops of my shoulders. Its folds curved slowly across my chest, obscuring my cleavage.
“So it does. You have a point, my cupcake-wielding friend.”
“Great. When you get back, I’ll have a cupcake and your paycheck waiting for you.”
“You’re the best.” I turned to go. Steph crossed her arms, blocking the doorway.
“What?” I asked.
She circled her finger in the air, telling me to turn around.
“Makeup.”
“I have makeup on,” I protested.
“You have concealer on, and only because I convinced you that you needed to hide the circles under your eyes for an interview.”