Beyond Love

A Fork in the Road

A/N: Yay update! I've been doing my *cough* Nguyen duties in Japan but I haven't forgotten you Bakers. Also, I'll be starting school from tomorrow onwards so I'm not too sure about my writing schedule just yet. The next chapter of Flight School and Crash are like 3/4 done but I'm not confident on publishing them just yet. I haven't exactly found a writing spot here either, but a quaint little cafe in this park nearby caught my eye so I'll probably be checking that out tomorrow :> 

Before you read, did you know that Wattpad will donate $1 to ILGA if you tag WattPride on your story????? WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? WRITE THE RAINBOW AWAAAYYYYY NYYOOOMM ^0^/

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[A. Dempsey]

I waited for the words to sink in, watching as her eyes narrowed in on mine. Her sudden change in expression neither fazed or corrected my opinion but simply furthered my belief of it. She sat down, thin-lipped.

"I don't understand what you mean."

"The definition of inedible?" I frowned. "Surely, you wouldn't appreciate a word by word explanation of the term, Miss Rachel. That would be embarrassing—both for you and for myself."

Immediately, she stood. The chair dragged across the floor with an ear-piercing screech before crashing sideways, turning heads and causing the entire room to fall silent.

"I beg your pardon Mr. Dempsey, but do you not see the line before your eyes?" She snapped, eyes cold and hard. "People wait hours just to buy this in the city and you dare to say that it is inedible?"

At once, the place was swept with murmurs and eyes on the back of my head. An immense discomfort stirred in my chest but I forced it down and reminded myself to breathe.

"Miss Rachel, there is a difference between the common tongue and that of a critic's," I said very quickly, certain that she wouldn't understand either way. "These pastries are passable for the average consumer but purely relying on aesthetics—such a trick would not work on any critic."

Her face froze over like ice.

"You are disillusioned. I would advise you to leave before I call the police and sue you for defamation, Mr. Dempsey," her voice was quiet and restrained, as though bottled rage was fighting to escape with every word. "Save yourself the embarrassment. You are clearly lying through your teeth."

She called me a liar. There was no mistaking it and yet, I could not believe my ears. The polite and well-mannered lady I'd met beforehand and invited to share her best-selling creation at the event I put together had vanished—undone in mere seconds of words she could not digest!

Outraged, I stood, murmuring a curt thanks for the cake before passing her and making for the door. All of a sudden, the pink was suffocating and I no longer knew how I'd brought myself to enter in the first place, wondering if there was absolutely any chance of redemption should I write a full, honest review of my experience today.

The stakes were high. ARCD was a rising star, close to making it big and at the peak of its popularity. No chief editor would be in the right mind to publish such an article. Unless it was Lia we were talking about.

I left the place without another word or second glance over my shoulder. Even kind Vanille wouldn't have had anything nice to say about those disgusting pastries.