When Bianca licked some frosting off her lips, my dick twitched.
“My mother used to bake cakes for friends’ birthdays in her spare time,” she said. “I used to enjoy helping her. Of course, the best part was licking the spoon.”
“I bet you’re fantastic at licking the spoon. Was it a wooden spoon, by any chance?”
“As a matter of fact, it was. Big piece of wood.”
I grabbed the spoon I’d used to stir my tea. “Show me how you licked it.”
The woman returned. “How do you like the carrot cake?”
Bianca looked at me. “It’s very…moist.”
“I bet it is,” I muttered.
“Are you getting any closer to narrowing it down?” the woman asked.
“Well, it’s…quite hard,” I said.
Bianca grabbed my knee under the table. When the woman walked away again, we both broke out into laughter before vowing to try to take the process a bit more seriously.
About fifteen minutes later, the woman returned. “How are we doing?”
Bianca smiled. “We’ve decided on the vanilla cake with buttercream frosting for the bottom layer. For the middle layer, we’re going to go with the lemon…also with the buttercream. And for the top, we’d like the vanilla with strawberry preserve…buttercream all the way.”
Kissing Bianca’s ear, I said, “I know you love the cream.”
The lady cleared her throat. “Let me go grab the book. We’ll choose a design and put the order in for you.”
When she returned with a catalog of cake designs, Bianca pointed to a particular one. “Aw…look…balls. Just like our first meeting.” She turned to the woman. “What about the one with the balls?”
“You like this design? This is one we do where we actually decorate around the cake with cake pops. We strategically stick the pops in various parts of the cake. And the best part is…everything is edible.”
I grinned. “All I heard was strategically sticking shit in various parts and edible…I’m good.”
“You two are quite the pair, definitely made for each other,” the woman said.
Squeezing Bianca’s thigh, I grinned proudly. “Why, thank you.”
She took out her pen. “Okay…so when is the wedding date?”
There was dead silence for several seconds until I answered, “It’s one year from today, actually.”
“Oh, how perfect. We’ll just need fifty-percent down now, and then the balance will just need to be remitted on delivery.”
After I handed over my credit card, we were left alone for a bit, and I noticed that Bianca suddenly looked somber.
“What’s wrong?”
“It feels real. I wish it was.”
Fuck. This was backfiring.
“Maybe I took this too far.”
“No. No, I just got a little emotional when she wrote down the date.”
Before we could say anything further, the woman returned with my card and a receipt. “All set, Mr. Truitt. You can call us anytime with the venue location so that we can arrange for a delivery time on the morning of.”
Bianca remained quiet as we walked out of the shop. I couldn’t take it anymore. I pulled her into a tight embrace on the sidewalk and whispered in her ear, “We have to stay optimistic.”
“It’s hard not to want to prepare myself for disappointment. It just seems too good to be true that we could dodge this bullet.”
“I have to believe. It’s all that’s getting me through today. I have to believe that this time next year….I’m gonna have my cake and eat you, too.” I laughed, because the funny thing was, I hadn’t even meant for it to come out that way. Eat you, too. It just did. Must have been subliminal.
She smacked my arm playfully. “I’m glad you’re still finding humor in all of this.”
“Gotta laugh so I don’t cry, beautiful.”
I meant that.We spent the rest of the afternoon on the private stretch of beach off the guesthouse.
As the sun set, it felt like the curtain was slowly closing on our time together. Bianca was still wearing her white dress, which was now covered in dirt, water, and sand. I wanted to burn the image into memory.
“I don’t want to sleep tonight,” she said. “I feel like I just want to stay up all night.”
“Who needs sleep?” I grabbed her hand. “May I have this dance?”
No music was required as we slowly swayed to the sounds of the beach. We rocked back and forth until the sun completely went down then stayed up and talked, vowing not to fall into slumber.
Sleep eventually won out, though, as we later crashed in each other’s arms on the sand.
The sound of the seagulls woke us up the next morning. Looking like we’d washed ashore, we’d slept in surprisingly late; we must have both been exhausted from forcing ourselves to stay up.
As we sat up on the sand, I wrapped my arms around her body from behind.
“So, you never finished your sentence,” I said.
“What?”
“You know, before we flew down here. You started telling me about your sexual fantasy. You said it started with me opening something. I need to know the rest.”