Page 98 of Salty, Spiced, and a Little Bit Nice

So that night, I spent more time watching and studying TikTok and YouTube videos than I cared to admit. But it was for a worthy cause, because after too many weeks of cringing and covering my face whenever random people on the street recognized me from George’s viral proposal, I was going to finally capitalize on my unwanted fame.

Enlisting Kim and Jenna’s help, the next day we took several videos of me working in the kitchen; of me giving a tour of the bakery; of me serving customers (Jenna and Ruby each pretending to be one) and boxing up their orders; and finally of me behind the coffee machine, (also pretending) to make a latte. Kim brought her DSLR camera and took professional snaps of the baked goods, and the results were so much better than what I could have taken with my phone.

“I think we’ve got enough.” Kim lowered her camera and scrolled through the pictures. “I’ll send these and the videos to you.”

“Thanks. Let’s hope this works.”

I uploaded everything during lunch—Kim’s gorgeous shots on all our social media accounts, and fun and catchy edits on both TikTok and YouTube, including a short snippet of George’s proposal video. I’d also scheduled several posts in advance, hoping the consistency would help me collect more views and followers, and hashtagged the shit out of everything.

My grand idea was to show the face behind the bakery, humorously exploiting the fact that I wasthatgirl who had rejected the famous George Fitzgerald. I was banking on the hope that the now twelve million people who had watched the viral video and the ones who were obsessed with George would see what I’d uploaded, and hopefully spread word about the bakery. I texted George the previous night asking for his permission to include his failed proposal, because I knew it might bring back humiliating memories for him. He was surprisingly cool about it, even wishing me nothing but the best for the bakery.

I didn’t glance at my phone again until it was time to close, because I was too scared that my bright idea would turn out to be another disappointing flop.

Thankfully, it didn’t.

Later that night, I had so many notifications on my phone alerting me about new followers and messages on the bakery’s social media accounts. In a few short hours, my posts had gained over thirty thousand likes, and almost fifty thousand views. Sure, there were plenty of nasty comments on the videos, mostly from people who laughed at me because, apparently, I’d fallen so far from being George Fitzgerald’s almost-wife, to working my ass off frosting cupcakes at a small bakery.

But for every one mean remark, there were four thoughtful comments to make up for it. People from all over the country offered their best wishes to me, warming my heart with their encouraging words. Some people congratulated me on the “next chapter of my life,” and strangers I didn’t even know cheered meon for being brave enough to follow my heart and turn down a very public and elaborate proposal. And thanks to the posts, the bakery had racked up forty thousand new followers in less than a day.

Forty. Fucking. Thousand.

And the good thing about the power of social media?

It was that the effect didn’t just stop online.

When I arrived at the bakery bright and early the next morning, the sight that greeted me made my jaw drop.

It was still dark, but there was already a queue a mile long outside, snaking past Kim’s yarn store, around the corner, and beyond, even though we weren’t open yet. In fact, we weren’t supposed to open for another three hours. When I cautiously squeezed through the crowd to get to the front door, some people at the front of the queue called out and greeted me with my first name, as if we were next-door neighbors and had been BFFs since we were in our mothers’ wombs. I could even hear someone exclaiming, “It really is her!”

We were slammed from the minute I flipped over theOPENsign, and Ruby and I were on our feet the entire day. One of the videos I had posted yesterday—the one with the snippet of George’s proposal—had gone viral overnight, although still not as impressive as the original proposal video. It was quoted and reposted on all the major social media platforms, even on some I hadn’t even heard of before. Word had well and truly spread that the woman who hadn’t been smart enough to accept George Fitzgerald’s proposal was now holed up in Port Benedict, slaving over hot ovens to eke out a living.

My planhad actually worked.

Some people who came in to the store weren’t even there to buy anything, but because they wanted to see me, as if I were awell-known celebrity chef with multiple Michelin stars. Some asked for a selfie, and almost every single customer had a similar set of questions: (1) Was it really me? (2) Why did I reject the proposal? (3) Was I out of my ever-loving mind? And finally, the overwhelmingly most popular questions coming from young women, (4) Is George still single, and (5) If yes, can I introduce them to him?

The queues and the steady stream of customers kept coming and going throughout the day. The last customer walked out at eight, two hours after our normal closing time. I held my breath as I tallied the day’s taking, before letting out a loud whoop and breaking into a crazed happy dance, because we had achieved our budgeted revenue for the entire month.

In just one day.

Hopefully, this was a sign that things were finally looking up.

CHAPTER 29He Made Things Right

The next couple of weeks were a dream come true. The bakery was busy round the clock, both from walk-in customers and online orders. On days when we announced a special, limited-edition menu item—matcha cinnamon rolls for today—customers would flock and form long queues outside, hours before we were open, and we’d sell out within the first two hours. We’d gotten so busy that I’d had to hire two part-time employees: one to assist Ruby at the front, and one to work in the kitchen.

Someone from thePort Benedict Gazette—an actual journalist from the actual newspaper this time—got in touch, wanting to feature us in their weekend edition. Thanks to the article, which raved and spoke glowingly about our “delightful choices of guilt-free, decadent baked goods, guaranteed to satisfy your sweet tooth,” a few businesses in the city had reached out, wanting us to cater for their next corporate events.

So far, so good. Life was finally turning around. Business was picking up, and our profit and loss for the first month—I was putting my finance training to good use—was looking solid. I wasfinally free of my parents. I made plans to move out of Kim and Jenna’s sofa, scouring real estate listings for one-bedroom units to rent, preferably close to the bakery. Everything was perfect, and absolutelynothing(and no one) was missing from my life.

When I announced that to Kim and Jenna, they’d snickered and said I was full of shit.

I was most definitely not. In fact, I liked to think of myself as careful and cautious, because I now planned all my trips in advance and made it a point to avoid all the placeshewould usually go to. Instead of getting my Indonesian food fix at Java Spice like I used to, I drove twenty minutes farther to find another restaurant, thereby eliminating the possibility of running into him. I had even rescheduled my weekly grocery shopping trips to fortnightly, because I now had to drive twice as far to find a supermarket in another area, so I wouldn’t accidentally bump into him in the fresh foods aisle.

But the city wasn’t big enough for the two of us, so I knew the odds were probably not in my favor. One day, be it in the near or distant future, I would run into him. It was inevitable, just like getting old and dying. And I hadn’t prepared myself for what to do when that day came. (The day that I ran into Alec, not the day I died.)

A knock on the thick glass windows of our open-plan kitchen broke my reverie.

“Ellie? A customer is here to pick up their order and asked to see you.”

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