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I think back and I can almost smell the vanilla and sugar in the air. “German chocolate cake,” I say proudly.
“But my favorite thing to eat has always been my grandmother’s strawberry shortcake. I just don’t know how she did it,” I admit. “Over the years I've tried so many times to get it to taste just like hers, but I can never get it just right.”
I stop to see Ethan smiling at me. Somehow it’s as if I’ve transported him into my memory and now I know he absolutely has to taste this strawberry shortcake.
“Come,” I say, pulling him toward the exit, through the maze of plants and shrubs and gardening equipment. “You’ve got to taste it. You won’t understand what I’m talking about unless you taste it yourself.”
Between directions I narrate all the times I’ve tried all sorts of crazy ingredients to get my strawberry shortcake to taste exactly like my grandmother’s and how I failed each time.
By the time I tried to copy the recipe my grandmother had died, but sitting down at this small bakery I felt all the love she had always baked into treats.
“That’s great marketing,” Ethan says, watching me savor the first bite of my cake.
“Marketing?” I frown. “ It’s a childhood memory, not marketing,” I argue.
Ethan shrugs. “Well, it’s convinced you to keep spending your money here.”
I consider it for a moment, Ethan’s business has jaded him. He sees everything as a business opportunity and it makes me wonder if he can still feel… like people feel.
“Why do you see things that way? What happened?” I ask. “It has to be something tragic," I joke, although I do seriously think something tragic must have happened to have Ethan so twisted up.
“Nothing tragic happened. I just realized that people will pay good money to feel good and if you convince them they can keep feeling that way then they’ll keep paying for it,” he explained nonchalantly.
Of course, I remember Ethan’s lecture on love and marriage when we first met, but sitting here across from him having been the grateful recipient of his attention, his generosity and his affection, I doubt he really feels that way. Not about love, anyway.
“Something must have happened to make you feel that way. It’s not natural,” I say dismissively.
Ethan closes his eyes and savors the taste of strawberry shortcake, enjoying it just as much as I knew he would.
“You can’t sell that feeling can you?” I ask.
“People have been selling this feeling for years, home-made, just like mama makes? Marketing," he laughs smugly.
I shake my head and remember the seminar with Cameron Robinson. She was right, the moment you believe the marketing pitch, they convince you that you can have something and they've got you. Marketing.
"But if you don't expect anything, you don't let yourself believe the world owes you a happily ever after, you can't get suckered into any of those schemes," I say.
Ethan looks at me, eyes wide with shock. "Who on earth told you that?"
I raise an incredulous brow. Ethan has been cynical since the day we first met and now suddenly he’s changing his tune, questioning my detox from blinding optimism.
"After I lost my bakery I was in a very dark place. I had worked so hard and it was all taken away from me," I say. "Thinking it was unfair, that life owed me a reward for my hard work kept me down, it kept me helpless."
I see the sympathy in Ethan’s eyes and I hate that he looks at me with so much pity. I am strong. I don’t need his pity.
"You do deserve it though, Cassidy. All the happiness and success. You deserve it all," Ethan says.
All the sincerity and hope in his voice catch me off guard. Maybe, just maybe, his commercial view of love is just a front, a shield to hide a heart as broken as mine. A heart that still believes in true love.
7
Ethan
"So you've had a bad experience, it doesn't mean they're all going to be bad," I argue, still confused by how someone who could be so optimistic about romance could suddenly be so pessimistic about everything else.
Cassidy still isn’t moved by anything I’m saying. It’s as if she has expected this all along. As if she knew something like this might happen. She expected the worst and now that it’s happening, she is more than prepared for it.
My assumptions about Cassidy were clearly wrong. How could a sweet and naive girl like her think this is a great idea?
