One Day Like This: A feel-good summer romance, Page 2

  So what was she doing stuck in the same lackluster job as always? Scraping up squashed bread and Jell-O cake day after day, as chances slipped past her in a world filled with opportunities, all of which had managed to elude her thus far?

  She was flicking up the last bit of mess when a pair of stiletto heels crossed her path. Designer, Devil Wears Prada-type heels. Instead of moving around her, they stopped in their tracks. The person attached to the sleek legs wearing them exclaimed, “Is that really you, Tessa? Oh my gosh, it is you!”

  Even before she looked up, Tessa knew it was the last person on earth she would choose to see at this moment. The blast from the past had all the charm of a chilly, damp burst of air from an old window-cooling unit. Even the roommate who left her to pay their part of the year’s rent without warning might be more welcome than the owner of these shoes. That was how much she didn’t want to see her snobby childhood neighbor turned college frenemy, Penny Newcastle, right now.

  Penny had always been infuriatingly superior, entitled, and gifted with perfect luck and perfect timing. She had gone on to greater things after graduating, Tessa had heard through the gossip chain. Which was exactly what everybody believed about Penny’s future, which had never been subject to polite tsks of sympathy from those who warned her about the foolhardiness of pursuing her dreams.

  Penny had probably never eaten a hotdog, much less scraped one off the floor.

  “Penny, what a surprise. Great to see you.” Tessa tried to sound casual as she jumped to her feet. If she just pretended this whole situation wasn’t horribly awkward, maybe Penny would too. Fat chance.

  “Tessa, I’m in shock. I had no idea you were part of the Hughes’s circle of friends,” Penny said with amazement. “I mean, I’m only their neighbor, of course, but I’ve been to enough of their parties that I can’t believe I haven’t come across you before now.”

  Just then, her glance fell on Tessa’s nametag. “Oh…” A polite little o formed by a flawlessly lipsticked mouth. “My mistake,” she said. “Oopsie. My bad.” That awful little smile from their days at college was back—the one that was part pity, part fake sympathy, which Penny always trotted out for people she didn’t really like.

  “As you can see, I’m part of the event planning staff,” said Tessa. “Party 2 Go? We specialize in birthday parties, graduations… pretty much anything involving kids and families. So I’m at work right now, making a client’s day feel special.” She was trying to sound upbeat. Would Penny believe it, given the fact that she was wearing a t-shirt with a T-Rex in a party hat printed on it, and holding a plastic pail containing the remains of some kid’s lunch?

  “But how on earth did you end up with this, Tessa?” said Penny, sounding still more amazed—while not being amazed at all, as Tessa well knew. “A kids’ birthday party firm just doesn’t seem like the you I remember from all those years, who was so into the idea of big weddings, and cozy little intimate ceremonies and all those grownup occasions. I’m so surprised to see you doing this instead.”

  You had such ambition back then. Such big ideas. So why did you pick this dead-end job, Tessa? Why did you fail?

  Penny’s smile made Tessa want to hurl herself under the nearby fold-out table, where June was laying out a big, green Jell-O cake covered with neon frosting for the Hughes family’s noisy guests.

  “This is just a temporary position for me.” If she said this convincingly, Tessa told herself, then she would believe it, too. “I’m intending to take an opening position at an event planning firm, and work my way up the ladder. It’s a plan in progress.” Mostly inside her head and in the pages of the five-year business plan she had crafted in her free time. She sometimes took it out of its folder and gave it a wistful flip-through.

  “So what about you?” she asked Penny. “It looks like things are going well for you.” A massive understatement, since her old classmate was dressed to the nines for a cupcake and hotdog birthday celebration.

  Penny gave a modest laugh. “What can I say? Work is positively insane right now. But then you can’t accept a promotion from an international firm and not expect to lose a few nights’ sleep occasionally.” She took a sip from her party cup and made a face at its punch. “With the transfer to Florence next year, I’ll be busier than ever.”

  “You’re moving to Florence?” Tessa felt envious as she echoed these words.

  “I know, I know. My dream job, and I’m only now receiving the chance,” said Penny. “But it’s just for six months or so. I get bored if I stay in the same place too long. Or date the same man.” She laughed. “My latest—you should see him. He’s a personal trainer named Ashton. Dark, handsome, not too clingy, and he’s keeping me firm and fit with a free membership at his gym,” she added, resting one hand on her slender hip, flanking her nonexistent stomach.

  Penny, who had never been short of admirers, would undoubtedly be surrounded in no time by hunky Italian men as she sipped wine in picturesque villas. Tessa brushed some hotdog crumbs from her t-shirt and tried not to cry.

  Things were getting out of hand at the dessert table nearby, with kids shoving ahead of each other for second helpings of the Jell-O cake, rocking the table as June tried to prevent an upset.

  “Tessa, could you give me a hand?” she said. A small hand smeared frosting over the plastic tablecloth sporting more smiling T-Rexes, after one kid transformed his slice into play dough by squeezing it.

  “Duty calls,” Tessa said, pasting on a chipper smile. “Nice seeing you, Penny. Good luck in Florence.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief as she turned away, dignity intact. Only to walk straight into a comic trap, as the over-exuberant birthday boy made a swipe for an extra slice of cake and shoved the whole thing off the table in the process—all over Tessa’s sneakers.

  “Oooh, what a shame,” Penny sympathized. “At least they weren’t real leather, right?” She gave Tessa a consoling pat on the shoulder before moving on to chat with some of her fellow guests.

  “Tina! Get the backup cake!” called June. “Tess, when you’ve cleaned that up, will you grab some extra dessert plates from the truck? Thanks. Hey—did your mom say you could have all those cookies, little lady?” June turned on the offending child, who was loading up a plate with a tower of sugar cookie clowns.

  It couldn’t get any worse than this. Tessa consoled herself with that truth as she finished wiping off her shoes—now stinky and a hideous shade of lime green from the neon food coloring that was saturating the icing. At this juncture, her boss Bill approached, dangling a set of keys from his fingers.

  “Tough luck, Tessa,” he said. “Justin quit this morning. Looks like you’ll have to drive the truck for the next few gigs until I can find somebody new.”

  “Me? Drive the truck?” Tessa groaned. “I thought I was supposed to work on coordinating cakes and snacks the rest of this month. You promised, Bill.” It was better than nothing, being the employee who selected the baked creation for each party—and a thousand times better than driving the truck, which tended to earn honks and snickers of laughter in traffic due its design. The truck’s bed was encased in a decorative plastic camper shell that made it look like a dachshund inside of a hotdog bun, complete with a long-nosed head across the truck’s cab and a long plastic tail covering the trailer hitch.

  Most of the kids referred to it as “the hotdog truck.” Whenever it stalled at a light, however, drivers trapped behind her came up with more creative and less polite names for it. Worse yet, the plastic sides of the “bun” created a blind spot in the mirror, making it next to impossible to reverse the truck into the bakery and grocery’s tiny little parking spaces.

  “Please, Bill,” she said. “I’ll do any of the other jobs. I’ll wear the T-Rex costume for a month—”

  “No can do,” said Bill. “Tina’s had too many tickets, and June has her hands full already. Last time Steve drove, he put a dent in the hotdog’s tail. So it’s down to you.” He tossed her the keys.

/>   At least Bill didn’t bring up the time she had crushed the dachshund’s plastic nose against a low-hanging supermarket sign. With a sigh of disappointment and despair, Tessa closed her hand around the plastic key ring in the shape of a greasy slice of pizza.

  Two

  The Bridal Closet had just decorated its window with its newest wedding gowns for spring. Its mannequins were dressed as ballet brides, evening gown brides, executive brides—all in icy-cold white with fluffy veils, even the one in the tulle skirt. A traditional princess bridal gown was in the middle, the mannequin’s plastic hands clutching a bouquet of artificial white roses.

  Ama paused outside, admiring the veils that were perfectly placed among the row of brides. Secretly, she pictured herself wearing one of those gowns someday, instead of the traditional red sari she was fated to wear or offend her parents. Maybe if that princess dress were made from embroidered metallic silk in white, and draped over one shoulder… and maybe if the veil over her short dark hair resembled traditional Indian bridal jewelry instead of a little tiara…

  Not happening—unless she wanted to break her mother’s heart, that is. White was for mourning in India, not marriage, and her mother had her heart set on a traditional Indian wedding, especially since Ama’s brothers and sisters had planned their own following those customs. Her romantic fantasy fading with this thought, Ama continued walking, pausing a few windows on to gaze at the sugary treats in the local Italian bakery, Icing Italia, where a young woman was arranging rows of freshly iced gingerbread cookies and the traditional biscotti.

  Ama pictured something different this time: rows of her own creations on display. Gingerbread and sugar cookies, and the special glazed almond cookie she’d created, inspired by traditional Indian sweets. In the middle, a big five-layer cake adorned with marzipan birds of paradise flowers circling to its topmost layer. It was her latest sketch, made on the back of one of her dozen or so culinary school brochures, between helping chop ingredients for vegan curry. Brochures she hid from sight whenever one of her parents entered the kitchen.

  The girl arranging the desserts noticed her with a brief smile. A moment later, she was replaced by two older women who were setting a basket of twisty bread loaves and a bottle of olive oil in the middle of the display, blocking the spot where Ama envisioned her birds of paradise wedding cake.

  Ama’s real destination was several blocks from this bakery, giving off a very different aroma from that of yeasty bread and sweet spices. Her family’s restaurant, the Tandoori Tiger, was filled with pungent scents of curry, mango powder, garlic, and ginger as she opened its door beneath the big sign featuring a tiger stalking among tall grasses.

  The dining room was decorated in red and strung with loads of garish paper lanterns and flower twinkle lights that created the colorful atmosphere her father preferred. He was busy cleaning the plastic menu sleeves by the hostess stand, where Ama’s sister-in-law waited for customers in a bright pink sari. From the kitchen came the sound of other relatives, including her mother—they were busy cooking.

  Almost everybody in Ama’s family worked here, including herself. Her Punjabi father cooked a little, and worked as manager, seating host, and waiter, while her mother cooked a lot, along with Ama’s widowed auntie, and newlywed sister, Rasha, whose accountant husband did the books for the restaurant. No Bhagut woman ever left the family business unless marriage had other plans for her—case in point, Ama’s middle sister Nalia, whose husband was a software programmer on the other side of the country.

  As for her brothers, even when they worked outside the restaurant, they chose jobs that benefited it somehow. Her brother Jaidev worked for a spice wholesaler for a while, and Nikil became a butcher.

  Even Ama’s baking aspirations had been sparked by a need for more desserts to add to the menu years ago, since sweets were not a big part of her mother’s background. When Ama first opened an American baking cookbook, she hadn’t imagined actually loving the secrets behind making the soft sugar cookies she had eaten at friends’ houses, or baking little French cakes as light as a sponge. It was as addictive as the taste of sugar itself, which her American childhood had given her—along with Hollywood movies, and the Western embracing of love at first sight and romances without family approval as real-life concepts.

  “Ama! Is that you?” her father called, seeing someone on the other side of the restaurant’s glass partition. “Hurry up—we have only a half hour before the customers arrive, and there is no sweet syrup for the jalebis!”

  “Coming in a moment, Papa,” she called back, as she climbed the back stairs to her family’s apartment on the top floor. On the desk in her room were several flattened bakery boxes, a big roll of bubble wrap, and butcher’s paper and twine for wrapping the outside of packages.

  She clicked onto her website. Sweetheart Treats—Cookies and Cupcakes for All Occasions! was Ama’s own business, an online shop selling sweets of all kinds, including those inspired by different cultures—delivering treats by mail for birthday parties, wedding receptions, and gifts. Most orders were only novelty cookies, but it gave her the chance to flex her creative muscle outside the restaurant’s dozen or so desserts.

  Scrolling past pictures of her pearl-studded cupcakes, French cream puffs, and princess cookies, she clicked on the latest purchase button. A new request—two dozen rainbow birthday cupcakes.

  Perfect. She printed off the receipt and grabbed the binder notebook containing her best recipes, dessert designs, and recipe cards for her creations, along with lots of pictures that had inspired her, flipping through its pages for her “tips and shortcuts” notes from her last batch of multi-colored cupcake batter.

  Someday, she dreamed of selling something bigger than dancing princess cookies—such as the cake she had pictured in the bakery window. Sending a wedding or birthday cake by mail would be a little more challenging than sending an iced menagerie of cookies to a baby shower. But still less challenging than convincing her parents that there was no reason to be suspicious of American views on white weddings, spontaneous kisses, and falling in love with a random stranger who turns out to be your soul mate. The only Bollywood films Ama could ever bring herself to watch—and there were few of them—were ones about spontaneous love supplanting arranged matches; all the classic romance movies in Ama’s collection involved magical, perfect connections that happened when one least expects it.

  That, however, was an argument best saved for another time. Ama went downstairs to the restaurant to melt sugar for the funnel cake syrup.

  Three

  “Hold still,” said Natalie, as she slipped a last-minute pin into place in the dress skirt. “No, don’t look yet,” she said, turning her model away from the mirror fastened to the inside of the bathroom door of her family’s bakery. “Wait until I’m done or you won’t see the full effect.”

  “Is this going to be much longer?” asked her cousin, Carrie. “I just told your mom I was stopping for a few minutes to pick up a cream cake for mine and Nick’s dinner party tonight. I told my babysitter it’d be an hour’s worth of errands, tops.”

  “I’ll be done in ten minutes, I swear,” said Natalie. “Hang on. Let me stitch this really quick, then turn around.”

  She stuck the last pin into her wrist pincushion and turned Carrie’s shoulders, spinning her cousin around to face her reflection. In the mirror was a girl in a slinky emerald gown with one careless off-the-shoulder sleeve. With soft and elegant curves, gentle ruching, and a little shimmer in the light, the fabric’s clean, natural flow and draping effect were traditional yet modern—in the secret phrase never uttered by Natalie except in her mind: perfect elegance.

  “What do you think?” Natalie said. “I call it ‘classic and classy.’”

  “I like it,” said Carrie, with genuine admiration in her voice. “Natalie, this is one of your best. Really—I’m being honest.”

  “You don’t think it’s too much?” said Natalie. “The asymmetrical hemline is a littl
e new for me, and I thought maybe it should be a little more modern—”

  “Nat. Seriously. I like it,” said Carrie. “Stop seeing all the little flaws, all right?”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” said Natalie. “I’m psyching myself again. Why do I always do that? You’re so right. Okay, you can take it off,” she said, unzipping the dress at the back. She checked her watch. “I gotta get going if I don’t want to be late to my class.”

  “Good. Not that I don’t love it—but I really have to be back before the babysitter’s shift at Old Navy.” Carrie stepped out of the dress and reached for her shirtdress, hanging on the bathroom hook. “What’s this for, by the way? Are you taking it to class?”

  “Nope. This year’s classes are more textbook than hands-on. The history of fabric and textiles,” said Natalie. “This dress is for the boutique’s design rack—if I’m lucky.” She folded the dress and put it into the paper gift sack for showing to her boss later that day.

  “Hey, if the boutique doesn’t buy it, I might be interested,” said Carrie, as she shouldered her purse to leave. “Don’t forget that, okay?” She smiled, hinting, before she turned toward the door, in pursuit of her cream cake from the bakery’s counter.

  “You got it. Love to Nick,” said Natalie, as she collected her sewing things from the floor. “Tell the kids I say ‘hi.’ Like they care about me, since Ma’s the one who gives them all the leftover cookies whenever you bring them by.”

  “They love you anyway. And I’m serious about the dress, by the way.”

  Green thread, retractable sewing tape, funky-handled scissors patterned like a ladybug—the same ones Natalie had used to cut out the fabric for her first design when she was sixteen. It felt like longer ago than eleven years—a hundred or so original dresses, designed and sewn by her, were taking up all the closet space in her apartment, so she was forced to store the rest in her childhood bedroom at home.