Friday the 14th

Part 1: Cupcakes

Copyright 2017. All Rights Reserved.

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Forever and always. Do people ever really mean it when they say it? In reality, probably not. I've done my research and fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. I know everyone wants that fairy tale ending, but with chances like those, I'd say save the money you would spend on the wedding and become a crazy cat lady instead.

The average cost of a wedding is like thirty thousand. You could buy a lot of cat food with that kind of money. And that's not even including the divorce lawyers.

But every year, I found myself loading boxes of cupcakes out of my mom's car on the beach or in some event hall, my mother herself carefully carrying a five layer wedding cake like it was her own child. Because if there's one thing Mom loved more than serial dating Saturday evening customers at the bakery, it was baking wedding cakes.

"I'll happily bake a dozen cakes for your wedding, Mia Melina Rose, dear," Mom always said, whether it while I was curling my hair for homecoming or just going out to meet my friends at Starbucks. "I can picture it now: Forever and Always written in pink frosting.  Ooh, and lots of red hearts, because it'll be a February wedding, on your birthday."

"Just because my birthday's on Valentine's Day doesn't mean I'll even get married," I'd tell her, touching up my winged eyeliner--which made my green eyes pop on a good day and made me look like a panda on a bad one. "Plus studies show that twenty-five percent of millennials won't even get married."

"Good thing my Mia Melina will be in the seventy-five percent," Mom would reply, kissing the top of my head and leaving the room.

Needless to say, my mother is a hopeless romantic.

Or maybe she just needs someone to live out her dreams for her. Because my mom never got her fairy tale ending. Instead, she got Dad, had my brother, Josh, had me, and then was dumped after ten years, when Josh was eight and I was four. Yeah, sucks for her, but withhold any sympathy, because she got engaged to Dad's best friend, Darren, a month after the divorce was finalized. I guess there had been a few "affairs" over the years...

For a hopeless romantic, Mom really didn't stick by her soulmate. Another reason I don't believe in all that love crap. People talk about love like it's magic. It's just a chemical reaction. Probably lust, TBH.

Today we were unloading the baked goods by the rose gardens. I'll admit it, the whole venue looked very pretty in a very wintery, bleak kind of way. The sky was a pale, afternoon gray, layered in clouds and fog, but the chairs set up in rows were decorated in fresh flowers that cheered the whole place up a bit, unlike the partially dead ones growing on the bushes nearby. However, we weren't here for the wedding--we were just here to deliver junk food.

I followed Mom into the lodge beside the gardens. The dance floor was deserted, so I headed after Mom across it to the buffet tables where she carefully set down the cake and gestured to the empty cupcake display stands.

"Get to work, honey. We have a lot of cupcakes to fill those."

No kidding.

I frosted half of them.

I sighed as Mom walks back outside and open a box of cupcakes. Red velvet with vanilla buttercream frosting and pink marzipan roses. Red velvet is really just chocolate with food coloring though. I didn't get why people would order a cupcake that tastes exactly like a chocolate cupcake but is a different color. Plus, some food dyes give you cancer. It's better to go with plain chocolate.

I started placing cupcakes in rings on the stands. I'm basically a pro and setting out cupcakes, since that's usually my only job at the bakery. It just gets boring really fast. And there are two hundred freaking cupcakes to set out.