Be Mine Forever

Chapter Twelve

Alec:

Sunday, May 19th

God, I can't wait to leave. It's Sunday today, a day the bakery is always closed on, but then Viola called me out of the blue saying that there was an emergency. Apparently, a customer made a last-minute order and really needs to get their cake, also being willing to pay triple the normal price for the inconvenience. And sadly, Viola isn't exempt from the allure of a little extra money at others' expenses. So that's how me, Briana, Andrea, Lucky, and a couple of other people I don't know got stuck working here on our day-off. Without pay because apparently, the extra money needs to go to fixing up one of the 'broken' freezers.

"Oh God, I can't wait to get out of here," Andrea groans as they start frosting the little flowers onto the three-tier cake. Seriously, why would you do this to us on a Sunday? Why not wait a day and order it on Monday? I mean, we're not even getting the extra money as a thank you for doing this! "Yeah, it seems dumb not to just wait until tomorrow," Lucky adds in as they wipe some frosting off their fingers. God, even Lucky's tired of this shit. "That's exactly what I was thinking! It's pretty rude to call your employees in on their day off and not give them the extra money as a thank you."

And I get that she probably figures that we're all happy as hell to work here, which is true usually, but she can't just rip us off like this. We have groceries to buy and building managers that we need to bribe to ignore the random animals we sometimes bring in, not speaking off experience. "Yeah but it's not like we were really going to do anything today was it?" Briana asks as she finishes frosting the flowers on the first tier of the cake. "Plus, we've only been here eight hours. It hasn't been that long." Oh my God, have her and Lucky switched minds? This is our day off and we're not even getting paid for this! And it's been eight fucking hours!

"Just eight hours? It's the goddamn weekend! We shouldn't even be here!" Andrea steps down from the stool she was standing on and glares at Briana like she just committed a mortal sin. "Have you been brainwashed or something? Weekends are supposed to be no-work, relaxation days; not days where you come into work because your boss wants some extra cash!" Andrea's shout echoes throughout the whole kitchen, Viola's comments about the great acoustics definitely not a lie. "Andrea! What if Viola heard you!" Briana snaps at her with a glance at the somewhat thin door.

It may not be obvious at first because of her cheerfully ignorant personality, but Viola isn't the type of person you want to insult. From the rumors I've heard, she has a long memory and a lot of hidden rage that has a habit of building up and then exploding. So her hearing Andrea call her greedy probably wouldn't have voted well for us, and that is why we use inside voices when trash-talking her. "Well, it's not like she's-" "Hey, is everything okay in here? I heard a shout," Viola chirps with her usual cheerful ignorance as she pops through the door. Speak of the devil.

Andrea whips around to face her, since I'm not the only one worried about Viola's hidden rage, and lies almost perfectly, "Yeah, everything's great! Just got into a little argument." Oh, God, I hope she believes this. I don't want to have to deal with an angry Viola on top of decorating a three-tier cake on my day off. "Oh, okay! Hope you guys work it out," she turns to me with her completely oblivious smile still on her face," there's someone here to talk to you Alec, she's out in the front." She gestures to the front area and then skips along back to wherever she was before, giving us no time to ask who this lady is, though I have a faint idea who.

"God, that was close. Hey Alec, you know who wants to talk with you?" she asks with a smooth change of subject. Guess she doesn't want to talk about her almost screw-up. Fine by me, I don't want to think about what kind of hell show might have gone down if Viola heard what she really said. It gives me shivers just to think about it. I take off my apron and set it on the counter, wanting to look just a little decent for my talk with the Devil herself. "Yeah, I think it's Katrina. Who else would show up on a shit day like this?" It's pretty much her superpower to show up on any shitty day I'm having and then proceed to make it ten times worse.