Crap. I’d completely forgotten about my six boxes of sappy heart-shaped wedding cupcakes. I’d just admitted to Ian that I’d more or less been left at the altar, and I wasn’t in the mood to humiliate myself any further. So I decided to make light of it. “Are you hungry for lunch yet?”
“I am, actually,” he said. “Are those sandwiches?”
“Worse,” I said. “Wedding cake.” I reached into the back and grabbed one of the boxes. Untaping the sides, I angled it so that Ian couldn’t see inside.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Finding the perfect lunch for you.”
I scanned the cupcakes.Love U. No.Soul M8. Not quite.PLZ Me.Wouldn’t mind, but not in the middle of a traffic jam in broad daylight.
At last, I spotted one that perfectly captured what I was feeling. I pulled it out of the box and handed it to him.
A smile crossed his face as he read:U R Sweet.
He took a bite as he gestured for me to hand him the box.
When I passed it over, he angled it so I couldn’t see inside. I couldn’t help but notice that he was starting to look pretty handsome. A part of me hoped he was going to find a rogue cupcake withCan I Fondle UorHow Bout a QuikEon it.
But when he finally picked one out, he didn’t immediately hand it to me. Instead, he carefully pulled off the white letters and dropped them into the box. He then grabbed a bobby pin from the console tray, straightened it into a writing utensil, and started engraving.
A few moments later, he handed me the cupcake.
I M HappE
I smiled. As I took my first bite of myHappEcupcake, I grabbed another from the box, pulled the lettering off, and engraved it with a question.
Y?
He took a bite while he engraved another cupcake. He handed it to me.
Bcuz I Found U
I giggled like a lovesick schoolgirl as I engraved his next cupcake.
I M LuckE
Y?
Bcuz U Found Me
His final cake message took an extremely long time to engrave, and when he finally handed it to me, the lettering was so small I could barely read it.
If We Keep ComUnic8ing by Cake, I M Going 2 B Sick
With a mouthful of cake, I giggled again, and handed him my last cake-o-gram.
Me 2
Eating these sweet feelings was much more satisfying than eating my bitter feelings for Tyler, and I enjoyed my three lunch cupcakes much more than my five breakfast ones. My hand-engraved frosting messages to Ian weren’t empty flattery. Iwaslucky. Without him to keep me company, today would have been nothing short of an emotional nightmare.
“These are really good,” he said as he took a bite of theMe 2cupcake. “How many do you have left?”
“About fifty,” I said as I swallowed my last bite. “Are you ready for dinner yet? You’ll never guess what’s on the menu.”
He laughed, almost choking on his last bit of cake. “Don’t tempt the evil spirits,” he said, pointing to the still unmoving traffic ahead of us, “or we might just end up spending the night here.”
I felt a tingling in my fingers and a hollowness in the pit of my overstuffed stomach. I’d been around long enough to know what it was. It was attraction. Ian had said the thing about tempting the evil spirits as a joke, but the truth was, I wouldn’t mind spending the night with him. And waking up with him. And then spending another day with him. And most importantly, eating more cupcakes. With or without him.