Sweet Pleasures ✔︎

[3] 𝑪𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒚 𝑲𝒊𝒏𝒈

It goes on.

Life, that is, Jupiter sighed. Even after the most embarrassing experience in the history of the world, life goes on.

And hers did. She didn't remember anything after horking up a bunch of birthday cake shots-well, she didn't want to remember anything after that-but Freya apparently dove in to rescue her ("Too late," Jupiter told her bitterly over the phone the next morning, to which Freya replied, "Well, you weren't scratching your ear.")

Freya then reassured her that Mr. Hottie had been entirely solicitous and helpful in getting her to the car and that he'd appeared far more concerned about her than his ruined shoes.

Jupiter suspected her friend told her that just to make her feel better, but it didn't work. In no language anywhere in the world could find your happiness be defined as "get drunk on birthday cake shots and make an ass out of yourself with the hottest man you've ever seen."

With a groan, she tossed her cell phone on the nightstand and hauled herself out of bed, wincing as sunlight speared through her eyes. Her studio apartment over the bakery-which was old and decrepit, but came with low rent and a fantastic commute to work-was usually a place where she felt happy and peaceful. She'd painted the walls a warm blue, decorated them with posters and paintings of Paris, and furnished it with comfortable, shabby furniture and secondhand bookshelves.

But this morning not even her little nest had the power to make her feel better. Maybe she was just more suited to Cheetos and video games than scotch and sex.

Jupiter gave herself a mental kick in the pants before she did something stupid like call Brian and ask how things were going on League of Legends. She wasn't going to regress just because of one stupidly drunken night. Besides, people were supposed to get drunk and be stupid on their birthdays. It was a rite of passage.

Okay, so maybe the rite was just for one's twenty-first birthday, but as a late bloomer who'd spent her two previous birthdays with her mother, Jupiter was still entitled to a bit of stupidity. She'd bet dimes to doughnuts that Mr. Hottie had-

Stop. Don't think about him.

Just the memory of how she'd acted with that handsome, utterly sophisticated man made her cringe. So much for hoping he'd see her as a woman.

Life, Jupiter reminded herself firmly, goes on.

Despite her mind-numbing hangover and scorching embarrassment, she dragged herself into the shower. After getting dressed, she went down the narrow staircase to the Rainbow Palace Bakery that had once been her mother's dream come true.

Located in an old building that also housed a foreclosed car-parts store and a bail bondsman's office, the Rainbow Palace had been in business for fourteen years, but it had started going downhill when Jupiter's mother got sick and was unable to run the day-to-day operations.

Against Valarie Rhoades' wishes, Jupiter had dropped out of the San Francisco State history program four years ago to return home and take care of both her mother and the bakery, but the ensuing struggles with hospital bills and rent had put the bakery in a hole that she'd purposely kept hidden from Valarie. If there was one thing Jupiter had been able to do for her mother, it was ensure that she didn't worry about money.

Not that there had been any of it to worry about. And now the Rainbow Palace was so far into a hole that Jupiter could no longer see the sky above. Trying to lift the bakery out of that hole was proving much more difficult than keeping it solvent.

Her heart sank a little as she stepped inside. The gilt paint lettering on the window was peeling, and her mother's once-fantastic decorations of dream catchers, lava lamps, and mandala tapestries now looked old and shabby. Once upon a time, the mosaic tables and seating area had been filled with easygoing hippies and artists who gathered here to eat, read, talk, and play music.