Page 23 of The Serendipity

Now, I am a little girl plucking daisies and getting a different answer with each petal that flutters to the ground. Only instead ofhe loves me, he loves me not, I’m vacillating betweenI despise himandI’d like to tie his apron strings once more.

When I need my feet to come back to earth, I remind myself that he wouldn’t try my cookies.

And can you really trust a man who refuses a cookie? No. You can’t.

I’m so distracted that I walk into the wrong office building to deliver a cookie order and have to backtrack a whole block.

Then I almost drop the box as I hand it off to the woman who placed the order. She’s wearing a pale blue sundress, an odd choice considering the crisp weather outside. But then, my wardrobe has been a revolving door of yoga pants and pajamas for what feels like months, so I have no room to judge.

She must see me eyeing her bare shoulders because she smiles. “I dress for the weather I want,” she says with a shrug. “And I’m ready for spring.”

“Good philosophy. Another few weeks and hopefully we’ll start to see it.”

When she finally glances down at the box, her mouth falls open as she sees the cookies through the viewing window. “These are beautiful. Better than the pictures on your website.Wow.”

A surge of pride fills me—mixed with something a whole lot uglier.

These aren’t the zoo cookies Archer and Bellamy saw. This order is to celebrate a coworker’s newborn baby boy, and they were maybe the hardest ones I’ve ever had to decorate. Not as far as skill goes—they were pretty standard, with blue and whitebottles, onesies, and rattles. Very little detail work needed, aside from writing monogrammed initials and the name Bronson.

The hard part was thinking about babies for the hours it took me to finish. I always wanted to be a young mom. I thought I would be. Until those hopes came smash-crashing down—along with the relationship I thought would beitfor me.

The cookies were a very tactile reminder of the hopes I lost and how quickly time is zipping by me. I swear, I could practically feel my ovaries turning to dust while I piped the nameBronsonin white. It didn’t help that Bronson is one of my favorite baby names.

With no relationship—or even potential relationship—on the horizon, motherhood seems to grow farther and farther out of my reach. It makes me angry with Trey all over again. Not because I want to be havinghisbabies, but because I invested almost four years in our relationship. Our breakup was like hitting reset on my whole timeline. My whole life, really.

I’m right back at the starting line. If I met someone today—Archer comes to mind, and I briefly wonder if a lobotomy would effectively remove him—and we dated, got engaged, then married in a normal amount of time, I’d be pushing thirty by the time we had kids.

Which isn’t old! It’s fine! My ovaries and my eggs will still be fine! Women have children into their forties now. I know this. I’ve googled.

I just thought my life would be different by now.

I almost had it all. Until I didn’t.

And as I decorated each sweet onesie cookie with Bronson’s monogrammed initials, my loss was all I could think about.

I’d almost prefer making naughty adult cookies for a bachelorette party.Almost.

“Honestly,” says the woman in the sundress, shaking her head, “I’m not sure you’re charging enough for these.”

She’s right—I’m not charging enough, despite Archer’s shock about my prices.Definitelynot enough. But with a fledgling business, I need any sales I can get, hoping they’ll bring reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations.

Speaking of…

I force a smile. “There’s a card inside the box with information on how to leave a review—those really help—and a few flyers with coupon codes for you and your friends.”

I try to say this cheerfully, not allowing the edge of desperation I feel to creep into my voice.

I hate selling. The word—along with themarketingandpromotion—triggers my gag reflex. When I quit my office job to do this full-time, I was floating on the compliments of people who had raved about my cookies for years, not thinking about taxes and LLCs vs S-corps and things like brand awareness.

Or having to be the one to actuallysellmy cookies to people. Shouldn’t they just sell themselves by virtue of how pretty they are?

Apparently not.

Some people, I think to myself, a certain suit-wearing billionaire coming to mind,won’t even try them.

“There’s my little baker!” Mom says, beaming as she opens the door and envelops me into a hug.

My relief is instant, a full-body sigh as I press into her warm embrace. The familiar scent of home, today mixed with something deliciously savory that Mom must be cooking, adds to the comforting effect.

---