Page 26 of Best Woman
I am basic and boring and never as happy and blissed-out as when I’m eating, from a pan larger than my torso, yellow sheet cake covered in buttercream so thick and sweet I should schedule a dentist appointment after the first bite. The cake is so moist and spongy, with colorful frosted flowers piped lovingly along the sides. Honestly, if I had a cake-sitting fetish, there is no cake I’d rather sit on. But I’d prefer to just eat it.
There are fewer cake slices than there were last night when I stopped in for a postcoital sugar rush—I’ve never been shy about eating my feelings. Standing under the fluorescent lights in the empty bakery department, I hold up two options for Kim. “Chocolate or vanilla?”
“Neither,” she answers. “I’m not really into sweets.”
I clutch my heart in mock horror. “How can anyone resist Publix cake? I don’t care if you’re notinto sweets,Publix cake is like, transcendent. I think there’s heroin in it.”
She grabs the slices from me and starts toward checkout. “I had more than enough growing up. My mom always brought a huge cake to school on my birthday to share with the class. I will forever associate the taste with unwanted attention.”
“See, I had the opposite problem. I’m a summer baby, so I never got the school birthday experience.”
“Summer baby…wait, what’s your sign? I can’t believe we haven’t done this yet.”
I laugh. It’s true, though. I don’t think I’ve met a queer person since college and not known their zodiac sign within the first twenty minutes of conversation. “I’m a Cancer. July fifth. You?”
“Sagittarius. December fifth.” She stops to peruse beverage options at a large display case.
“Interesting. Water sign”—I point to myself—“and fire sign”—I point at her. “We’re…steamy.” That came out much flirtier and more suggestive than I’d intended.
Kim turns and gives me that same look she did in the car earlier, one far too dark and searching for Publix at 10p.m.All I can do is give her a bland smile and duck my head.
There’s only one register open, and the person behind it has hair so shockingly pink it looks like a MySpace background circa 2005. Their face is studded with piercings, covered with the kind of pubescent acne that looks like it hurts, and smudged with eyeliner that clearly started in one place at the beginning of their shift and has since migrated. They are painfully young and have perfected an aura of ambivalence thicker than Axe body spray.
Oh god, it’s me at fifteen. The horror.
Kim drops our loot onto the conveyor belt and the cashier looks up at her, eyes widening a little bit in a way I’m coming to realizeeveryonedoes when faced with Kim Cameron in her full glory, before finding me standing next to her. They snort. “Wow, two nights in a row? You know this stuff is like, pure lard, right?” Oh, they must have checked me out last night when I was too deep in my self-flagellating spiral to notice. They scan our purchases.
I cross my arms, aiming for haughty rather than defensive. “I happen to have a very fast metabolism.” Not quite the sickening comeback I was aiming for, but I lean into Kim to show off a bit. She takes it in stride, even paying for the cake she won’t be eating. I could swoon. She grabs our bag and heads out the door, and it takes me a moment to get my body moving again.
The surly nonbinary teen rolls their eyes. “Um, hello,follow her.”
So I do.
There’s nowhere to sit outside, so Kim and I take our (my) snack to her rental car. Despite my repeated offers to share my cake, she’s untempted. A pity, as it would be very romantic to feed it to her and fulfill some weirdly specific adolescent fantasies.
Kim shifts her body to lean against the door and turns to look at me. “Tonight wasn’t so bad, right?”
I do the same on my side. “No, it was mostly fine,” I answer.
“I totally got what you meant about your brother, though,” she says, wincing as if in pain. “Thatfolksjoke. And the way he reacted to me bringing up Jenna. What a dick.”
For a moment I’m pissed and want to jump to my brother’sdefense, but I can’t. She’s only following the breadcrumbs I left for her, interpreting everything through the lens of my lies. I chew my cake slowly, giving myself a moment to think. This is my chance to come clean. I don’t even need to tell her the full scope of my fibbing. I could just minimize everything I’d said, or tell her that Aiden and I have cleared everything up over the past few weeks.
But then her hand comes down on my thigh, and she looks at me so sweetly, sincere and sympathetic and lovely. I think of myself at sixteen, as awkward as the cashier who just checked us out, in this very same position. Sitting in a car next to Kim Cameron, wanting her but knowing she’d never want me back. I don’t want to be that kid again.
So I swallow my cake and nod. “I don’t really wanna talk about it,” I say, because the least I can do is not dig myself in deeper. She nods, so understanding I could die from shame. I have to change the subject.
“You know, Rachel kind of accosted me in the bathroom to ask about my intentions with you.”
Kim’s face is surprised, and also perhaps a bit pleased. “She did not! What did she say?”
“That you’re a perfect lesbian saint and she will personally have me banned from every coffee shop in Greenpoint if I break your heart.” She laughs. Delighted at the sound, I shovel more cake into my mouth. I decide to be a little brave. “I can’t believe you remembered driving me home that time. And here we are again, sitting in your car. It’s bringing up a lot for me. All we need is Ani DiFranco.”
“How could I forget? You looked so lonely sitting outside all by yourself.”
“I was pretty lonely, yeah. I think it was partially self-imposed, teen angst and all. But I don’t think I let anyone in, because if I did they might…you know, actuallyseeme.”
“Would that be so bad? Being seen?”
