“Nothing! Nothing. But Charlie might have told Benny. Who, rumor has it, might feel like he hasn’t done enough to support you in a, er, public way.”
I cover my face with my hands, leaving my fingers open to peek through them. “I swear, this office has more busybodies than my papaw’s church choir.”
“First, as you can see,” Benny continues, “this cake has layers. It has the layers that are visible but also so much depth within. It’s so much more than meets the eye. So much more than you, the viewer, see through your computer screen, through whatever it is that this cake allows you to see about itself. So much more than people who casually glance at the cake in passing would notice. You can’t even begin to imagine what’s contained inside.
“Obviously, this cake is beautiful. I mean, you could stare at it all day. It’s gorgeous. It makes you want to lick its face—”
I press a hand to my mouth to keep in a laugh of disbelief. Tears are pooling in my eyes, though from good feelings or humiliation I can’t tell, and I blink furiously to keep them at bay. After the past few days, my eyes barely need an excuse to start leaking.
“—its surface, that is, and it clearly knows how to present itself. I mean,damn.What a stunning cake. But you know what? That stuff is just icing and a few crumbled candies. The cake’s real power is in its substance. For one thing, it’s taught me so much. It was a process making this cake, getting to know its ingredients, what it is and what it comes from and what it wants to be, and I learned a ton from it—more than any one cake has ever taught me about myself, and life, and cooking. Did you know a cake could do all that? I sure didn’t, at the beginning of this thing.”
“Oh my God,” says Teagan, right in my ear. When did she get here? Is anyone at FoF actually working right now? “Oh my God,ohmyGod.”
“Another component it has, see, is the chocolate. The chocolate is this unbelievable deliciousness that everyone wants and is lucky to come into contact with. It’s sweet, it’s light, it’s of the highest quality and best flavor. Just so much sugary goodness there.”
Benny turns over the piece of a Reese’s Cup he’s holding between his thumb and forefinger. I’ve given up trying not to cry.
“But here, it’s complemented by peanut butter. Peanut butter, it’s got protein, right? So it has a lot of strength. A little saltiness, a little punch—this peanut butter won’t take your shit sitting down, y’know? Because peanut butter has been through a lot to get here in its current form. A long process, a whole lot of grinding and pressure and struggle, to come out as smooth and complex and amazing as it is.”
I see that Raj, Nia, and Lily have wandered into PK 2 and are standing with Seb and the others, watching with expressions ranging from confusion to astonishment to pure enjoyment as Benny gets more and more spirited. About cake.
About clearly much more than cake.
“Now, even with all it took, even with all that these ingredients had to go through, all the heat it’s taken to make the cake what it is, people might not be fans of this cake. While it’s objectively incredible, perhaps the greatest cake that has ever existed, it’s still gonna have haters. There are those who might watch this video and feel the need to comment on this cake, and tell it that it’s not as special as it is, or point out what they think are flaws. People will disagree with chocolate and peanut butter being delicious, a stance that is plainly wrong. Others might suggest that Friends of Flavor would somehow be better off without this cake, or that my limited experience making decent Italian food somehow make my presence here more valuable than this cake’s.
“Well, I’d like to make it clear that those people don’t know a single fucking thing.”
Gasps echo through the room, including my own. Did he just say that? Live?
“They don’t know about this cake, they don’t know how wonderful it is. They’ve never seen something so purely good, so unobjectionably awesome. They feel intimidated and inferior, because they are inferior and always will be. They don’t have anything on this cake and they know it, so they sit behind their computer screens or stand behind their oversize egos and tear it down to try to prop themselves up. But they’ll be lucky if they ever cross paths with a cake like this one and it dares to spit in their direction.”
While he’s in the middle of this portion of his rant, which has devolved into near shouting and erratic hand gestures that have him close to knocking the top layer off his precious cake, I feel a hand on my back. I turn and see Teagan, her eyes gleefully wide and her mouth in a shocked smile. A small crowd of people from the office has gathered behind us and Katherine, enthralled by this shitshow.
She leans in and whispers, “Oh my God. Okay, Reese, as much as I don’t want this to stop, I think you might have to cut the boy off.”
I give a shaky laugh, brushing the tears off my cheeks as I turn back toward Benny. Taking another glance in the direction of the camera, where Margie and Charlie show no signs of ending filming and Aiden might be in an actual state of shock, I decide she’s right.
Benny has slowed down somewhat and seems to need to catch his breath, but he continues to talk. If the boy can do anything, it’stalk.
Okay. I can do this.
I slowly cross the room toward Benny, deliberately avoiding looking at my bosses or Charlie and his camera or the who knows how many others who have gathered to watch this train wreck live.
“So before you pass judgment on this cake, maybe take a look at yourself and what’s going on in your own screwed-up life that’s given you a warped perspective on an innocent, beautiful, phenomenal in every way—”
I lay a hand on Benny’s shoulder and when he turns toward me, his mouth falls open in a perfect circle, dark eyebrows wrinkling his forehead under his cap. He is flushed and startled and so, so handsome. It’s the first time I’ve looked at his face since we were on a city sidewalk and I was walking away from him and goodness, I’ve missed it. I step closer and he searches my weepy eyes.
“Sounds like a pretty good cake,” I manage with a soft smile.
“The best,” he breathes.
I step closer still, just a few inches from him now. “I’m a little sweeter on the baker, to be honest.”
His eyes close and his chin tips down for just a moment, and he exhales on a laugh before looking at me with so much warmth and intensity.
“You have no idea how good it is to hear that,” he murmurs, and then he’s kissing me hard, one hand in my hair and the other wrapping around my waist to pull me to him. I bring my arms up around his shoulders, barely registering the cheers and applause in the packed kitchen before I pull the cap off Benny’s head. I hold it up to cover our faces from the camera, as our kiss goes on much longer than I’d ever want my mama to see.
When we break apart, Benny whispers, “I love you, Reese. And I’m sorry for not making that totally clear before now. I want to be with you, and support you, and fight for you—”
