She’d been so excited to move to New York – Queens, to be precise – to finish her masters, but she was finding it hard to make ends meet. Everything was so expensive, and she’d hoped to find a good job – like Ugly Betty – on a cool magazine, or in an art gallery or with a photographer. She’d been a bit shocked to find out that those jobs didn’t actually pay any money; you were expected to work for free – how you paid for food didn’t seem to come into it – which clearly meant that any of the cooler jobs were only open to really rich people, which seemed unbelievably wrong and had opened up a distinct glow of unfairness in a life that up to now had been nicely skewed in her favour, as she was pretty and clever and had grown up in a happy Wisconsin family.
So she had taken this stopgap job to make ends meet, but now it had dragged on for three years and none of the other cool stuff seemed to be happening, and frankly she was getting tired of it. That was before she even got to the New York men. She’d been asked out, of course, and had been wined and dined by handsome guys, sexy guys, crazy guys, nice guys, and every single one of them had asked her at the end of the evening if she wouldn’t mind remaining non-exclusive, and every single time Kelly-Lee had said no. She was worth more than that. She was sure of it. But it was getting a bit tiring waiting around. Her roommate Alesha thought she was a buttoned-up idiot, but then Kelly-Lee had noticed Alesha get home several times early in the morning with her silver dress still on from the night before, so she was trying not to pay too much attention to what Alesha thought. Then, after two years she’d changed her mind on that one too. Sure enough, the guys that said they were going to call called her about the same as before – i.e., not at all. But at least she occasionally woke up with someone in her bed. Alesha had smiled unpleasantly and made remarks about Little Miss Snooty being brought down a peg or two, and how you had to kiss a lot of frogs. Then Alesha had moved out with someone that she’d met, and Kelly-Lee felt more alone than ever.
You didn’t meet many men in the cupcake shop, though. Well, you did, but not very useful ones. Some fat, some gay, some buying for their wives or girlfriends. (That was the worst, if they were nice. Imagine having a husband who also bought you cakes. Kelly-Lee sometimes had trouble finding a guy who would buy her a drink, even if they’d only just met.) And some obviously feeling sorry for something they’d done and hoping the cupcakes would make up for it, which, in the case of a woman, very much depended on whether they were on a diet or not. Kelly-Lee was always on a diet. She had to try the new cupcake recipes at the beginning of every month, but she always made sure she restricted each one to a mouthful, and spent an extra ten minutes at Aquabike Extreme.
Her mother wanted her to go back to Wisconsin for Christmas. It would be about ten degrees below zero, snowed up to the windows, and her relatives would spend the entire time banging on and on about her amazing life in the Big Apple and was it really like what they saw on TV, and then they’d all fall out about gay marriage and her mom would say something that was meant to be conciliatory, like how she knew Kelly-Lee wasn’t quite married yet, but if she wanted to bring a boy home, they could probably overlook the sleeping arrangements, and Kelly-Lee would look at her prom queen picture (truly, her proudest moment at the time) and want to scream. She sighed. Then the doorbell had rung and she’d hopped up to her perky best.
‘What can I get you today?’
Foreigner, she thought. Cute, but a bit rumpled-looking.
‘Uhm, hello,’ said Austin, blinking and taking off his glasses.
Ah, thought Kelly-Lee. English. So probably drunk. Still cute, though. She checked his finger automatically. No ring.
‘Are you looking for something sweet?’ she asked, cheekily. She liked Englishmen, you could have a laugh with them. Not like American men; they always took you seriously, then carried on talking about themselves anyway.
Austin smiled. ‘I just liked the smell.’
‘Have you been in New York long?’
‘About two days,’ said Austin. ‘It’s been a long two days though.’
‘It’s confusing at first, isn’t it?’ said Kelly-Lee. ‘When I first got here, I just stared upwards all the time. I nearly fell down a manhole.’
‘Oh no,’ said Austin. ‘Well, it could have been worse. A giant anvil could have fallen from the sky.’
‘Are you looking for some cakes?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My girlfriend runs a cake shop.’
Kelly-Lee liked the word girlfriend. It could mean anything. It could mean girl I just met, someone I know in passing, near ex. It didn’t mean fiancée or wife.
‘Which one?’ she asked happily.
‘Oh no, you wouldn’t know it. It’s in London. London, England,’ he clarified needlessly. She smiled.
Better and better, thought Kelly-Lee.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘So you’re all the way over here and she’s over there? Are you going to be separated for long?’
‘Hmm,’ said Austin. ‘I’m not sure. I hope not. You know how things go.’
Kelly-Lee did.
‘Coffee?’
Austin did want a coffee, to clear his head a bit. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘So do you like running a cupcake café here?’
Kelly-Lee had learned long ago that moaning was not considered very attractive in a woman. Men liked perkiness and happy girls.
‘I LOVE it,’ she said. ‘It’s amazing! The smell of cinnamon in the morning! The first cup of coffee! Trying out all the new amazing flavours.’
‘Do you bake them yourself?’ Austin asked.
Kelly-Lee frowned. She had always considered it the hallmark of a sophisticated New Yorker to be unable to turn on her own oven.
‘Well, kinda,’ she said. ‘The van drops them off, you know, half mixed? Then I just kinda heat them up. Like Mac and cheese.’
‘But you like baking?’
‘Love it,’ smiled Kelly-Lee. ‘Hey, you know, we deliver.’
‘To London?’
‘Sure! We’ve got a sister shop there. I can call them right away, they’ll be there in half an hour.’
‘Really?’ This struck Austin as a fantastic idea. And it seemed there was absolutely nothing to stop Issy coming over here and baking if he took up a job. There were plenty of shops. It would be great!