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Lilly
The next morning, after spending the rest of the night tossing and turning, replaying the scene in the kitchen with Oliver repeatedly, I wake up feeling restless and annoyed. The entirety of last night was a bust. And now I have to deal with the consequences. I use Amy’s phone to organise for a locksmith to meet me at my apartment, and after half dragging, half cajoling Amy out of bed to give me a lift home, I manage to get out of the house without another Oliver encounter. In my mind, it is now imperative that I avoid him for the foreseeable future, before this crush turns into something bigger.
Thirty minutes later, after thanking Amy for letting me crash in her bed and for driving me home, I greet the locksmith. With Johnny hovering in the background, making everyone nervous, the work gets done in record time, and then I’m back in my apartment with a new lock installed, ready to shower off the grime from the last twelve hours. Once clean and in my most comfortable yoga pants and sweatshirt, I send Oliver a message with an update on the lock situation, thanking him again for the rescue. When he replies with a single thumbs-up emoji, I gather that Oliver, too, is needing some space. With extreme care, I put his T-shirt in the laundry basket, giving it one last stroke as I do—so soft—and then I grab my laptop to delete my profile from the dating website, feeling a sense of relief that I don’t have to go through any of that again. If I can’t meet someone out in the wild—what is so wrong with meeting someone at a bar anyway, like Meredith Grey and Derek Shepherd?—then I won’t be meeting anyone at all. And right now, that seems more than fine to me.
Feeling somewhat dejected, I head to the kitchen to do what always soothes me when I am feeling down, baking. Today I decide to take the time to make a special treat, one that involves a lot of concentration so my mind won’t wander to places it is best not going. My baked vanilla cheesecake with raspberry coulis is always a big hit, so I set about measuring out ingredients, and to get rid of the deafening silence in my lonely apartment, I put on one of my favourite true crime podcasts, getting lost in the world of armchair detectives and unsolved murders.
Once the cheesecake is in the oven, the coulis is chilling in the fridge, and they have solved the case of the missing teenager, I look at the time and see that it is mid-afternoon, and I am at a loss for how to fill the remaining hours. Is it too early to break open the wine? I am messing around with my Love, Lilly Instagram page, working on my latest sponsorship ad for #bakeware, when I get a FaceTime call from my parents. I haven’t spoken to them in weeks.
“Hi, Mum! Hi, Dad!” I say as both their faces fill my screen.
“Hello, Lilly,” my mum replies.
“How are you? We were just saying that we haven’t heard from you in a while,” my dad adds.
Happy that they noticed I hadn’t been in touch, I fill them in on the exciting progress I have been making with Love, Lilly.
“So I am getting a lot of followers on Instagram and TikTok, which are already bringing in a small income through paid sponsorship ads. And this will all hopefully turn into a lot of customers in the future when I finally open up my own café,” I finish up telling them. I look at my parents’ faces and can see they are not sharing in my enthusiasm for my business venture, and though they don’t say anything specifically negative about it, it becomes clear in their next line of questioning that this is not something they support.
“Are you sure this is the career path you want to pursue? It’s not exactly what you focused on when you went to university,” my dad asks.
And what was that path? I ask my dad in my mind.
“It sounds risky, with no steady income or plans in place should it fail,” my mum adds. They are an echo chamber of negativity.
I sigh to myself, resigned to the fact that they are already envisioning it will fail, and tell them, “I have a business plan in place, with all the financials worked out, projecting costs and revenue for the next six to twelve months, with contingency plans in place as well,” I add, hoping to wow them with my foresight and business acumen. “I did major in business with two semesters of economics as part of my course, remember? This will help turn my small business idea into something real.”
“Oh yes, the economics classes. I had forgotten you took those as part of your degree. Maybe there is a job out there where you can use that particular skill set?” my dad says, missing the point.
“She could go work as an intern in a financial institute, like the son of your colleague Darren. What is his son’s name again?” Mum asks Dad, talking about me like I’m not there.
“Yes, Darren’s son Brad. He started at the bottom and worked his way up,” my dad clarifies. “That sounds like a wonderful idea for you, Lilly. You could really carve out a solid career for yourself in finance.”
With a sad smile, I wonder how, knowing me, they could possibly see me working in finance, and I give them a noncommittal answer, wanting to end the conversation and get away from the stain of disappointment that always surrounds our conversations.
“I’d better go,” I tell my parents as my oven timer goes off in the background, ever so grateful for a legitimate excuse to disconnect the phone call.
“I’ll call you soon,” I promise them.
“OK, bye, Lilly. Don’t forget to investigate financial internships online. It’s still early in the year, so you will have a chance to secure a spot. You need to do it now though. You don’t want to miss out,” my dad adds.
“Sure thing.” I reply, forcing a smile. “Love you guys, bye!”
I hang up the phone and pull myself to my feet, feeling heavy with the weight of my parents’ unfulfilled expectations. I take my beautifully crafted cheesecake out of the oven and place it on the bench. As I look at it, I am filled with so much joy and pride, and I can’t understand why my parents don’t want me to feel this every day. I spend some time taking a photo of the result and post it to Instagram with the caption, “Expectations fulfilled.” At least I am good at something.
*****
After I force myself to do some adulting, spending an hour folding laundry, vacuuming my entire apartment, and surface cleaning the bathroom, I allow myself to log back on to Instagram and scroll through my latest DMs. Most of them are asking for more videos and tutorials on baking made simple, so I pour myself a glass of wine—it is wine o’clock somewhere in the world—and, determined to give the people what they want, I look through my recipe cards. I settle on a favourite easy recipe of mine for “no-bake bliss balls” and pull together the ingredients, pressing the go-live button once I’m ready.
“Hello, friends,” I say into the screen. “And welcome to my Love, Lilly lesson!”
As I watch the viewer numbers increasing to over one thousand and counting, I continue, “Today I am going to walk you through the very easy three-step process to make bliss balls.” I take another sip of wine, monitoring the comments as I begin guiding the audience through the recipe. I’m startled at how many people are commenting on how cute I look (in this outfit?), and my confidence grows. And once I have made my way through most of my glass of wine, my commentary predictably veers away from baking content, and soon I am discussing my thoughts on what happened on the latest episode of The Bachelor.
“And can you believe Clayton broke up with both Gabby and Rachel? It just goes to show, give a guy thirty eligible women and he can still end up alone,” I say, noticing that my viewership numbers have increased substantially throughout the video, with most of them loving the random, non-food-related commentary.
As I get to the last step, I wrap up by saying, “Once this is done, you just place them in an airtight container and put them in the fridge overnight.” I smile at all the happy face emojis I am seeing and finish up by saying, “I will post this recipe on the Love, Lilly page, so keep an eye out for it. And please leave me a comment about what you would like me to make next time. Or better yet, I may run a poll. Yes, that’s what I will do. So make sure you tune in next time for another dramatic episode of Love, Lilly Lessons,” I finish up in my best Chris Harrison voice. I end the video to a wave of hearts and clapping hands emojis, and I feel excited and exhilarated in a way I haven’t in the longest time.
That was amazing! I think to myself once I put down my phone and set about cleaning the kitchen. So many people logged on to view my Instagram Live, over fifteen thousand by the end, and now the comments and DMs are flooding in. With my third glass of wine in hand, feeling pretty good about myself, I settle onto the couch to read some messages from my adoring fans. As I glance down the list of usernames, my eyes and mind screech to a stop at one familiar one: Seb_Bedford_69. That can’t be right, can it? Sebastian, my ex-boyfriend who stranded me in a cabin on a mountaintop and left me heartbroken all those months ago, messaging me on Instagram. When I look more closely, I see he has sent several DMs over the past week, with the last one from today saying,
