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Most people decide to make a significant change when a new year starts.
I guess that’s why they call it a “wake-up call.” It wakes you up from the daydream you’ve been floating through and shows you the worst-case scenarios. It shows you what will happen if you don’t change and what you’ll become.
Visions that won’t let me rest if I don’t get them down onto paper leach from my exhausted veins until I can give into sleep. The Muse is a real bitch that way, if you ask me.
This is where one might assume I’m going to say it was magical. That the singing was like that of an angel, drawing me to the door of the bakery like some kind of moth drawn by flame. No. The singing sounds like a dying cat.
honest, the most reliable, or the most fatherly, it can’t be said that he didn’t love my mom. He loved her more than anything on earth. An obsession, even. But do you know what happens when someone with an addictive personality loses his addiction? It transfers to something else.
When I found that cookbook, I realized I had found a lifeline to my mom. I could bake and I could bring her to every major event in our lives. Birthdays and holidays and graduations. Cookies for good grades and brownies for breakups and stupid boys.
But as I’m standing there, panic flowing through me as I try to think of what to do next, something strange happens. He seems to snap out of his own daze. And the man smiles. He fucking smiles. Clearly, he’s a psychopathic murderer.
The smile is bright white teeth with full lips and a dark, well-trimmed beard surrounding it. It’s a good smile. Ted Bundy also had a good smile, though.
“I’m not a flasher, babe.” “I’m not your ‘babe.’ I’m a woman terrified because a huge tattooed man is in my place of business!” “You’ve got that right.” He crosses his arms over his chest. It’s a nice chest. “Excuse me?” “You’re not mine.”
“You’re sure as shit not mine because if a woman of mine had her door unlocked in a new place like you did, I’d turn her ass red.”
“Your fuckin’ noise traveled all the way to my apartment. I thought someone was in my shop robbing me. You need to keep it the fuck down.” “I’m sorry?” “You should be.”
A hand shouldn’t be that hot. Annoying, asshole men in their underwear who may or may not be my new neighbor should not be that hot.
“My cat is hunting me,” she says, and both relief and annoyance flood me. Her stupid fucking bitch of a cat.
I hated her for that for a time, the fact that I got the ass and none of the boobs. I got the sunburn and the strawberry-blonde hair and the height and the jokes about being a leprechaun when I was the one who kept Mom’s promises and secrets. Lilah got all the good parts of our family while getting the least of the pressure.
In some ways, I saw it as a push from my mother that it was time. That I had done my duty and I could live for me.
For me, I’ve spent the entirety of my thirty years avoiding confrontation. I’m a fixer, not a problem maker.
New Lola might be committed to taking names and getting shit done, but that doesn’t mean she’s an inconsiderate bitch.
And maybe even more, I need to work on not being such a damn pushover, letting everyone get their way at my expense.
All of those things protected the people I love. Not me. Advocating for things my family needed, that part was easy. Advocating for myself? That’s apparently a lot more difficult.
Why does the world fucking hate me?
New Lola, come back. Remember that this guy is a fucking asshole. Not only did he break into your business this morning, but he’s also doing the same thing he bitched about less than 24 hours ago.
“He hates a lot of things. He’s like a really grumpy old man.”
Because there are a lot of things you can forgive when it comes to family. And you can forgive a lot more when illness shows you just how precious and fragile life is, how precious your family is. But selling out your own child to dig you out of your mistakes? No. I couldn’t forgive him for that.
I realized then I had become a sure thing for my father. At some point, I had changed from his daughter, whom he was ashamed to ask for help, to a security net he relied on.
Most parents sigh when their kids spend their money frivolously. Mine sighed because he spent mine frivolously and there wasn’t any left.
“It’s the fucking Carluccios, Dad.” “Lola, I’m your father. Don’t you—” “Then fucking act like it!”
“You want to be treated like a father, step up and be one! I’m done with this shit. I knew that after Mom died, you’d need some leniency. I gave it to you. I gave it all to you! You got in deep, and I helped you stay above water. We did that because you’re all we have left, Dad. And because it’s what Mom would have wanted.” I paused a beat before I laid that last dig, the final blow to my dad’s soul. “This isn’t what mom would have wanted. Not you, not what I’m dealing with, and sure as fuck not what Lilah could be facing.
I let my hope hang on his promises, hollow as I could now see they were. But anyone who has ever loved an addict can tell you that the promises are always there. It’s the follow-through that isn’t.
The cupcake looks like Lola in food form. Sweet and pink and definitely holding the potential to rot your fucking teeth out.
Part of me can’t think of a single thing worse than fucking the hot—no, not hot, annoying—baker next door. Another part of me . . . “You don’t shit where you live, Hat,” I say. “I’m suggesting you eat where you live,” Hattie says, her devious smile growing even more.
“You’re grumpy.” Not this shit again. “I’m always grumpy, according to you.” “Yeah, but you’re grumpier when you’re not getting pussy regularly.”
Also, I never said you just have to fuck and chuck her. You’re not that much of a scumbag.” “But I’m a scumbag?” “I mean, if the shoe fits, babe.”
“That bothers you, doesn’t it?” I don’t answer. “Why are you so bitter about it?” “Because I had to work my ass off here.” “But you didn’t have to. You chose that.”
“That’s not fair. I still did this all by myself.” “I’m just saying, just because you think she was handed everything doesn’t mean she was. You know better than anyone that what you see isn’t always what you get.”
“My shorts,” he says, and my eyes dip down without my permission to see low-slung basketball shorts which are soaking wet at the crotch. And clinging. Clinging somewhere my eyes definitely should not be. Not even a bit. Oh God, I can’t look away, though. Fuck! It’s not unimpressive.
“See something you like?” The words are amused and annoyed, which seems to be his specialty when he’s talking to me. I wonder if he talks to Hattie that way, or his clients, or his girlfriends. I’m sure he has plenty. “What?” “Eyes are stuck to my dick, babe.”
No, Benjamin Coleman is like everyone I’ve ever met who recognized my last name. Everyone who read “Turner” and instantly thought the sweet, privileged, sheltered daughter of a politician. The daughter of the town’s beloved mayor. Every award at school I earned because I worked my ass off, I’d hear the whispers—it’s because of her dad.
My long hair is in a messy bun, but not in the effortlessly chic way Lilah does it—in the way that screams “stressed the fuck out.”
And finally, as I’m pounding, I hear the music go down slightly like he’s trying to decide if the noise is outside or the music. It’s me, fuckface.
But I didn’t. Instead, all I could see was the image I didn’t realize I was drawing on my desk, the image angering me. Braids.
But you didn’t turn your music loud because you forgot she lived there, my mind reminds me. You turned it up because you knew if you did, she’d come barging over.
“Oh, like you cared last night when I said the exact same thing?” She’s not wrong. I won’t admit it, though. “It’s five on a Saturday morning. I didn’t go to sleep until after one.” “Oh, trust me, I know. You kept me up too.” “Aren’t you tired, then? Why aren’t you fucking asleep?” “Because I have a fucking business to run, Ben.”
Her face is going red, and her chest is heaving with anger. I wonder for a moment if she also looks like that in other situations. My cock twitches, the traitorous bastard.
“But believe it or not, I’m not made of money. I can’t just get a new door in a space I don’t own because my neighbor is a dick and a light sleeper. So fuck off, Ben. When you learn to respect others and treat them with kindness, you’ll start receiving it back.”
Lola is like one of those cartoons when it comes to emotions—you can read each and every one on her face at any given moment. Right now, I can almost see one of those cartoon thermometers on top of her head, the red creeping up the lines as her anger rises. It’s going to explode soon. I bet she’s fucking gorgeous when she explodes, lets go of the tight reins she has on being prim and proper and sweet as pie.
“If you had a man, I would know. The entire city of Ocean View would know, baby. If you had a man, no way you’d be taking your neighbor cookies in the middle of the night wearing a nightie.”
“If you had a man, you wouldn’t be doing everything yourself, lugging in flour and sugar and butter from a fucking hatchback, getting yourself fancy coffees as a treat on a Friday morning. You’d have someone to take care of you.”
Women are taught if they have a man in their life, they help do the heavy lifting. That if you have a man in your life, life gets easier. But you know what? I call bullshit. Because that’s also supposed to be what your father does, putting his daughters first, taking care, protecting them. Not dragging them down. And you can’t show me a single woman who doesn’t know at least one other who had a man make her life living hell.
But these days, the only thing women really need protection from is men.
“No, if you had a man, he’d give you a reason to stay in that bed, sleep in late. Change your schedule because he can’t get enough of you.”
