Baby on Board

Cupcake Therapy

Arnaud had one rule and one rule only when it came to being in the kitchen: if your name is not Arnaud or Nate, you are not welcome. 

Being the owner of La Petite Pâtisserie you would think that the rule didn't apply to me, but you'd be wrong. As I wasn't a trained pâtisserie chef, my presence in the kitchen wasn't welcomed which is why, a few months ago, we converted a smaller are just off the main kitchen into a secondary area that I could use whenever the urge to create came to me. Of course, it also doubled up as a private baking room where we'd host parties, but those were few and far between, mainly because Arnaud hated teaching people to bake. It was sacrilege to his art. Apparently.  

Today, however, the secondary kitchen was in full use as my sister's future brother-in-law tried and failed to make a cupcake. Samuel Courtenay was currently a house guest of mine and knowing that he was going through a rough patch in his personal life, I decided to see if a little cupcake therapy would work. It worked for me- for the most part- so it should work for him, even if it meant that he would almost burn down the business I had lovingly built from the ground up.

"That's it," Samuel said in frustration as he threw his hands up, giving the tiny dessert in front of him the ultimate stink eye. Having been baking for at least three hours, he'd yet to produce anything edible and Samuel was growing impatient as the buttercream icing slide off the top of the cake. "This is pointless, Charlotte. Honestly, what is the point in all this, exactly?"

Reaching for a cloth, I wipe away the dust of the powdered sugar and pick up one of the remaining cupcakes. With finite precision, I pipe the buttercream icing onto the cake before shaking the colourful hundreds and thousands on top. Holding it up to Samuel, I smile. "It really isn't that hard. The point, however, is that this is all therapeutic. You're just not willing to give it a go."

My sister, Sophie, had called yesterday afternoon, practically begging me to take Samuel in. I knew very little of the backstory but from what information I had gleaned of the situation, Samuel and his fiancée had recently split up, even though they're now technically dating. Sophie had tried to explain it all to me, seeing as she and Jasmine were once attached at the hips, but she lost me somewhere along the way and I wasn't too fussed about getting back on track. All I knew was that Samuel would be staying with me for a while, making my spare room his home away from home.

Before he came to stay last night, I didn't really know Samuel that well. I'd met him enough times but we'd never spoken in depth. For his part, he has always been infatuated with Jasmine Gough and after my break up with Brogan- a history I'd rather not rehash- I hadn't been the most social person. Now that Samuel was in the same boat as I was, we were slowly bonding over the pain of being screwed over by people we thought we loved and that loved us. 

Of course, bonding usually meant an incalculable supply of wine, most of which the bottles now stood empty on the kitchen counter, but it was still bonding. The headache that came with the alcohol was a natural by-product of the situation but the smell of freshly baked cupcakes was helping to alleviate the hangover that Samuel and I both felt. 

"I've given it a go, Char," Samuel sighed, plopping down into the chair near the preparation table. I've never taken to any nicknames people have given me but at the moment, hearing an abbreviated version of my name was the least of my worries. I was supposed to be helping Samuel cope with his heartbreak but all we'd really manage to do was play My Life Sucks More Than Yours. Samuel was the ultimate winner of that competition. From the way the dark circles cast shadows under his otherwise vivid eyes, and the stubble that was days overgrown, you could easily tell that Samuel was a broken man. "This really isn't helping. I've drunk myself into oblivion countless times, I've catalogued an entire art collection in preparation for an exhibition and now I've baked seventy-two cupcakes, almost half of which I've successfully managed to screw up, and yet I'm still a complete fuck up."