Page 21 of Deep Feelings & Shallow Graves

Jennifer

That I walked out of Carson’s house panties intact, edged within an inch of my goddamn life by a single kiss, says a lot for how I’ve grown as a person. Like, emotionally. Spiritually. Whatever. Character development, if you will.

Because Carson is basically a strippergram with a gun and “cuff me, daddy” vibes. He’s got a jaw that begs for sins and hands that make promises. But I’ve got rules. Guidelines. If I’m going to break my long-standing “only one dick at a time” policy, there’s gonna be structure.

Which is why, when Blake shows up on my porch this morning holding a brown paper bag and that stupidly hopeful face like I might give him a gold star for breakfast, I politely explain, “We can do all sorts of things. Many things. Creative things. But no orgasms for me today because I have a date tonight, and that would be rude.”

Because it would be. I may be a murderer, but I’m not an animal.

He just grins like I said something adorable instead of emotionally deranged.

“Okay,” he says, like he understands and he’s into it.

Then, like the golden retriever of domestic submission that he is, he walks inside and starts pouring chocolate milk into two glasses like this is the most natural arrangement in the world.

I tell him about Cookie and the challenge as I unwrap the French toast sticks he brought and pretend I’m not already thinking about all the ways I could break my no-orgasm rule and blame it on him.

“Yeah,” he says, casually. “So we need to make that bitch choke on her gossipy words. I’ve had your cookies. You’ve got this. What are we baking?”

We.

I just… I love how in he is. Not just in like, his body pressed against mine or his tongue memorizing my pulse, though he’s very good at both, but in. Bought-in. Invested. Willing to help me move bodies or win a bake-off. Whatever I need. “They all are,” I say to myself like a lunatic.

“All what?” he asks.

I ignore it.

“What do you think of Edgar?” I ask.

“Oh, good plan,” Blake says instantly. “We ask him. He knows food. Have you ever heard him order? You don’t want to be behind him in line if you’re hungry. Took him, like, an hour to get his pizza order in. I thought I was gonna die of old age.”

“Never took him for the pizza type,” I say. “But yes. He’s my date tonight. And Officer Carson. I’m sort of seeing him, though not tonight because you know orgasm limits.”

I leave out the part where I practically came from a kiss because we’re being appropriate right now.

Blake sips his milk utterly unfazed by my spiraling. “Officer Carson’s cool. He let me off with a warning when I did a rolling stop. Said something about ‘not enough witnesses to matter’ and waved me off. I like his vibe.”

I’m trying really hard not to remember what that mouth felt like on my clit. I’m also failing.

“And Edgar?” I ask, chewing on a too-hot corner of toast.

He shrugs. “Kind of a local legend. Not scary though. You’d have to be a real dipshit to piss off the guy who controls the crematorium, right?

He was always nice to me. We went to high school together.

Not friends or anything, but we didn’t shit talk each other.

Cookie was a bitch to him back then too. ”

Of course she was. Probably gave him saltless scones and acted like it was a flex.

I swallow and stare into my milk like it might offer guidance.

Three men. An ex to murder. A bake-off. No orgasms before dinner.

Just a normal Tuesday.

Blake takes another sip of his milk like we’re discussing weather patterns instead of my ethically questionable vagina itinerary.

“So what are we baking?” he asks again, like the only thing that matters is defeating Cookie in the town’s passive-aggressive Hunger Games of frosting and sexual tension.

I pull out my phone and unlock the sacred scrolls: my Pinterest boards. One’s titled Bake It Till You Make It, another Revenge Is Best Served With Buttercream, and then there’s Cakes That Could Conceal a Weapon, because multitasking.

“What about this?” I swipe to a triple-tiered lemon tart.

Blake squints. “That looks like it costs seventeen dollars a slice and tastes like sour sadness.”

“What about a lavender lemon scone tower?”

“Okay, what if we do something fun? Like chocolate-covered bacon. Men love meat, right?”

“It’s lemon themed,” I say. “Besides, that’s not a dessert, that’s a crime against pigs and God.”

“Okay but hear me out, what if we make cookies shaped like little dicks and write ‘choke on this’ in royal icing?” he suggests. “Lemon icing.”

The feral part of me slow claps. “That’s… actually inspired.”

Twenty minutes later there is flour on the ceiling, Blake is covered in powdered sugar and regret, and I have three pans of what may be legally classified as hate crimes cooling on the counter, and an army of mangled fondant penises on a baking sheet like some sugary battlefield of broken dreams.

“Why does this one look like it’s melting in fear?” I hold up a limp, misshapen sugar shaft.

“He had a hard life,” Blake says solemnly.

“Hard isn’t the word I’d use.” I bite into one of the cookies and immediately spit it into the sink. “Oh yeah,” I declare, pointing at it like it started the plague and blamed a woman. “That’s unfuckable.”

Blake tries one and winces. “Tastes like regret and wet cardboard.”

I throw the tray out the window.

“Maybe something more classic?” he suggests. “You make good cookies. Like, make Cookie cry with your cookies.”

I turn to the oven where batch #6 is rising like a yeast-fueled panic attack. I’ve baked so many test rounds I’ve lost track of which ones I hate the least. I am surrounded by a cookie battlefield. Chocolate chips, lemon zest, and chaos.

“I have no clear winner,” I admit. “I’ve birthed forty-seven different cookies and none of them are better than that smug bitch’s glitter bullshit.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Blake says, cheerfully licking icing off his wrist like it’s a kink and not a casualty. “You’re perfect. You can’t lose to someone named Cookie.”

I lean against the counter, breathing in sugar and spirals. The scent of baking anxiety. “You are dangerously supportive for someone I told not to make me come this morning.”

He grins. “I follow instructions. Mostly.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t sign up,” I say, staring at the form like it laughed at my trauma.

“Listen,” Blake says, wiping cookie batter off his wrist with the confidence of a man who has definitely licked something inappropriate in public.

“She can’t keep her mouth shut. So I’ll just feel around while I’m fixing shit at her bakery.

The oven fan goes out more than she does, and we’ll know exactly what kind of cupcake or tart she’s summoning from hell this year. ”

“And if it’s great?” I ask.

“Then we regroup and sabotage. Or bribe the judges. I’m flexible.”

“She has this whole town in her little apron pocket,” I say. “You find out what she’s making. And I’ll…”

He leans in, serious now, feeding me a still-warm chocolate chip cranberry cookie like he’s proposing marriage or a sex cult. “Are you okay?”

“It’s fine,” I say around the cookie. “I’m just balancing murder, sugar, and three men who all have thighs like Greek statues. Totally manageable.”

He frowns, clearly unsure if that’s a metaphor or a confession.

“Find out who’s judging,” he says, recovering fast. “I know everyone in this town, and so does Edgar. Carson might only know how many speeding tickets they’ve racked up, but me and Edgar? Between us, we know food and fixing shit.”

I nod, adrenaline and baked goods running hot in my veins. The kitchen looks like a war crime, flour on the walls, icing in my hair, fondant dicks haunting the cooling rack like edible regrets, but I feel good. Dangerous. Hydrated. Focused.

Blake packs up three dozen cookies, a dozen bars, and six cupcakes “for science,” kisses my cheek like a golden retriever with boundary issues, and disappears with a salute.

I stare at the entry form. Download it. Then call Carson.

He picks up on the first ring. “Jennifer.”

“Can you find out what Cookie is entering in the bake-off? And who’s judging?” I ask.

“On it, sweetheart,” he says, and hangs up like we’re planning brunch, not blackmail.

The moment Blake leaves, I march upstairs and open my closet like it’s going to offer me answers instead of existential dread and a waft of cedar-scented trauma.

The dress I bought for Edgar’s date, silky, black, mid-thigh with lace like grief had a lingerie phase, suddenly feels too widow-core. Not that he’d mind, probably. Man cremated his high school guidance counselor and still remembered her favorite scone.

I hold it up. “Do I want to look fuckable or like I can help him dispose of a senator’s body?”

The mirror offers no help. Just stares back like, bitch, I don’t know your life.

I try on something red, sexy, simple, deadly, but it makes me look like I’m about to fuck my way through the G8 Summit, and while that’s a goal, it’s maybe not the energy for date three.

I text Blake:

Me: thoughts on lace?

Blake: You always look great. Wear the hoodie I left! :)

I stare at my phone like it called me fat in Latin.

A hoodie. For a date. With Edgar Templeton, mortician of mystery, man who moaned over a cherry tart like it was foreplay. I should bury Blake in that hoodie just to make a point.

I go feral for twenty minutes, yanking clothes out of drawers, throwing on tops and yanking them off, shouting things like “does this say I want your bone saw or your bones?” to the rhythm of a breakdown.

Eventually, I find it.

A dress with cleavage so aggressive it should be registered as a weapon, but paired with a jacket that says I could commit mail fraud and you’d help me hide the receipts. It’s emotionally confusing. It’s morally flexible. It’s perfect.

I pause before leaving to spritz myself with perfume called “Crimson Velvet” that smells like expensive guilt and the kind of sex that ruins lives. My lipstick is war paint. My heels say I have secrets. And my panties are… well, hopeful. Just in case.