Baked in Love Read online

  But I couldn’t ignore it when I was out here like this, staring it in the face. And I couldn’t control how frustrated it made me.

  Which was a problem, because I really didn’t want Chelsea to know. She was disappointed enough knowing I didn’t have much interest in this shit.

  After Chelsea made the payment and I got Aidan’s address, we said our goodbyes and see-you-laters and went to the car. It was a drive that was almost identical to the one we went on the way to the bakery. We were silent for the first five minutes and then Chelsea tried to force small talk.

  “That chocolate really was good, wasn’t it?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “And don’t you think you’ll have fun tonight hanging out with Aidan and his friends?”

  “Not really,” I answered honestly.

  “Seriously?” She raised an eyebrow. “You’re not excited in the least?”

  “Nope. Not really. Probably would have preferred to play games at home but whatever. What’s done is done.”

  I didn’t say it in an angry tone or anything, but Chelsea immediately went on the defensive.

  “I was only trying to help you out. You never go anywhere or see anyone. I’m concerned about the fact that you make no friends. I think it’ll be good for you!”

  I nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

  We were quiet the rest of the way home.

  We were quiet all the way to the house, too. It was until I sat on the couch that Chelsea sat next to me and tried to talk again.

  “It really seems like you’re not that interested in this wedding stuff,” she said suddenly.

  “Well, I guess I’m not,” I answered honestly.

  She nodded, clearly disappointed but unsure of what else to say. Then, without warning, she leaned in and kissed me.

  It wasn’t just a peck, either. It was a full on, passionate, let’s-fuck kiss. She hadn’t kissed me like that since… Well, I couldn’t even remember.

  I pulled away instantly, trying to hide the disgust I felt when she stuck her tongue down my throat.

  “Not now,” I told her. “I have to get ready to go to this game night.”

  Now her frustration was finally showing. “Miles, do you know how long it’s been?”

  “How long it’s been since what?” I asked, though I already knew. This was me stalling.

  “Since we had sex.”

  “No.” I shrugged. “Not that long.”

  “Months!” she said instantly. “And before that? Even more months! I don’t even think we’ve had sex more than a handful of times in the last year!”

  “What do you want me to say?!” I snapped. “I’m busy! You volunteered me for this stupid fucking game night without so much as asking me. Now I’ve got to go to it and try to be friendly to people I don’t even know. Maybe if you hadn’t done that, I could have had sex with you tonight.”

  “No! You wouldn’t have! Because you never do. You don’t talk to me, you don’t have sex with me, I don’t even understand why you’re in this relationship! You don’t seem happy with me.”

  “Why? Why don’t I seem happy? Because I’m not willing to fuck you when I don’t have time? Because I’m bored by wedding bullshit?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Because there’s no passion anymore.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Chelsea. Relationships can’t always be passionate. We’ve been together a decade. Eventually, things become routine. The passion dies out.”

  Her eyes were filling with tears. “So you’re saying you really don’t feel passionate toward me anymore?”

  I shrugged. “Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Feel passionate about me?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Exactly,” I said as I stood up off the couch and started walking toward the bedroom.

  She followed me. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be like this though, Miles! I don’t see it in other couples. They are passionate. I know there are many who are thrilled to be marrying the woman they love. I know there are couples who still have sex regularly and still want to talk to each other about their days when they come home.”

  “I know about your day! You go to the hospital, you take care of your patients, you complain about whatever doctor you were working under. It’s the same god damn day every day. Why would I ask about it?!”

  She was crying now. “Maybe because you care about me?”

  “I do care about you. Of course I care about you.”

  “No, you don’t. How could you? You don’t even want to be around me. There is no way you care about me.”

  “I do.”

  “Prove it!” she demanded.

  “I’m fucking marrying you! What more proof could you need?!”

  “But you don’t want to be, do you?” she asked through tears. “You don’t want to marry me, right?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that one.

  “It was my idea, wasn’t it?” I asked. It was my way of avoiding answering directly.

  “And why did you?!”

  Don’t say you felt obligated, I told myself. You won’t make things any better by saying that.

  “We’ve been together for over a decade. Obviously, I’m never going to be with anyone else. You’re already my partner in life. The only thing there was to do next was to get married. You deserved a proposal. “

  “I deserved one? Like, I deserved one because you love me or I deserved it because I happened to put up with you for over a decade?”

  “Both,” I said.

  It was the wrong answer.

  “What, did you just think that’s what you were supposed to do? Enough time has passed so you had to give me a ring? Is that it?”

  The truth spilled out of me.

  “Yes, okay?! It’s been enough time, you deserved a ring. It was the right fucking thing to do.”

  “The right thing?! Like whether or not to marry me is some kind of moral dilemma?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. You wanted to get married, didn’t you? I could tell you wanted to be married. And I did it, I proposed to you. You should be happy.”

  She sat down on the bed, wiping tears away from her face.

  “I can’t imagine why I’m not happy!” she said sarcastically. “Maybe because, when I was a little girl, I imagined that the man I was going to be with one day was going to actually want to be with me. I imagined my future husband laughing at me during cake tastings and talking to me on long car rides. I imagined that I’d walk down that aisle and see my future husband grinning at me, and I’d know this was the happiest moment of not only my life but his too. But I’m not going to come down that aisle and see you smiling, am I, Miles?”

  “I’ll smile,” I told her. “Of course I’ll smile.”

  “You’ll force a smile. The way you always do with me. It won’t be real; it’s never real with you anymore. It won’t be the happiest day of your life. I don’t even need to ask if it will be, I already know. It just… won’t.”

  I knew she was right. But it seemed fucked up to not say something. I was obviously hurting her very deeply, though that had never been my intention.

  “Who knows? Maybe it will be the happiest day of my life. I might see you there, looking beautiful, and be thrilled to be doing this marriage thing with you.”

  “Is that what you tell yourself? That one day you’re going to wake up in our marriage and actually be happy with it?”

  it was, actually. It was what I told myself over and over. It was the only thought that comforted me. I wouldn’t be able to go through with this marriage if I hadn’t convinced myself that one day I’d feel happy again.

  “It won’t happen, Miles,” she said seriously. “You won’t wake up happy. Every day married is going to be like every day we have now. If anything, it will get worse. You’ll get more bored of me. Because you don’t love me.”

  Now, this part I could refute.

&
nbsp; “What are you talking about?! Of course I love you! You’ve been my best friend since we were kids. You are the person closest to me. I’ve never been more comfortable with another person.”

  “You’re right,” she acknowledged. “I am your closest friend. And maybe you do love me. But only like that. Only like the person who is your closest friend. Not the way a man loves a woman before he marries her. Something isn’t right with the love you have with me. I’ve known it for a long time, but I’ve shoved the thought down. I told myself I was being crazy. That I had unrealistic expectations for this relationship. But you know the only real expectation I have?”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “To be with a man who really loves me. Loves me so much that he’s counting down the days until he gets to call me his forever. But that isn’t going to be you, is it, Miles?”

  She didn’t give me a chance to answer. She ran out of the bedroom into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.

  I groaned as I walked over to the bathroom door and knocked on it.

  “Chelsea, open up.”

  “Just go!” I could hear her crying loudly. “Go to your damn game night.”

  I didn’t know what to do at this point. Just leaving didn’t seem like the smartest thing to do. She was hurting and I should have been there for her when she was hurting, as her partner. It was the decent thing to do.

  But what about when I was the thing that was hurting her? What should I do in that case?

  I decided that I was doing more harm waiting around here then I would be if I left.

  “Okay,” I told her. “We can talk about this later.”

  “But we won’t,” she said through the other side of the door. “We won’t figure this out. I already know.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing. I just grabbed my keys and left.

  2

  Aidan

  It was about 6:15 when I got home, barely on time. People would be here at any moment.

  I grabbed some chip bags I had in the cupboard and poured them into large serving bowls to put out on the table. I had beers in the fridge, though my friends would undoubtedly be bringing some of their own.

  I was looking forward to this night. It had been a while since my last game night. I used to host two a month, but I had stopped in the last few months after meeting a new boy.

  I know, that was kind of shitty to me, to drop off the planet for my friends after getting a new boyfriend. But what can I say? I’m only human. And new relationships are fun; I couldn’t help getting wrapped up in this guy.

  But things didn’t work out. It wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t mine; nobody cheated or did anything extraordinarily wrong. We just slowly learned we weren’t compatible with each other.

  It was pretty unfortunate, though. In this town, I had a very small dating pool to choose from.

  It was one of those very conservative small towns. So conservative that, to most people, I didn’t even bother coming out. I knew enough about the area to know that wouldn’t go over well.

  And I wasn’t the only gay man who laid low around here. Every guy I dated who was from around here did the same thing I did, kept themselves mostly in the closet to fit in a little better with society around them.

  I knew it wasn’t ideal, but what else could I do? It wasn’t that I was ashamed to be gay, not at all. I was extremely proud of the person that I was.

  But most conservative and religious people around me wouldn’t feel that same pride. And I ran a business in this town. In a place as small as this, it wasn’t hard for word to get around and ruin a small business. Enough people here would boycott my bakery to ruin my profits.

  I knew I could leave. There were plenty of more liberal places in the country that wouldn’t bat an eye at a gay man being open about who he loved. There were places where you could walk down the street holding the hand of another man and not get so much as a dirty look.

  But I’d have to leave behind the business that I built if I moved. And it was hard to walk away from that. It was a business I inherited from my grandparents (my parents had no interest in running it, having their own decent jobs) and it was a piece of cake to take over. No pun intended.

  But seriously, they ran it very well and it’d been very successful. It would be pretty hard to walk away from that success to start all over somewhere else.

  For at least the foreseeable future I knew I’d be staying here. Which meant my romantic prospects weren’t that great.

  But oh well. I didn’t mind my romantic life taking a back seat to my career at this point. In fact, I preferred it that way.

  Plus, I had my friends to keep me company. And that was plenty enough for me at the moment. I could be myself around them. I only had a few really good friends, but they all knew I was gay and were completely okay with it.

  Although that was something I’d noticed in this town. The older generation tended to be very judgmental but it didn’t seem to have been passed on to people my age. Unfortunately, most people my age didn’t have a need for baked goods and it was the older crowd my business catered to.

  It was 6:20 when the first person arrived, which was a little weird considering they were always late.

  When I answered the door, I realized it wasn’t one of my friends but the guy I had met in the bakery today. Shit, I forgot all about him! Honestly, based on his reaction I didn’t really think he’d show up.

  “Hey, Miles, right?” I said, sounding as positive as I could and doing my best to hide my surprise at the fact that he was here.

  “Right. And it’s Aidan?”

  “Yep! Come on in! Nobody’s here yet, but I’m sure they’ll start popping up shortly. But make yourself at home.”

  “Cool, thanks.”

  I wasn’t completely sure what to make of this guy at this point. He was a cute guy. Blonde, which I wasn’t usually into, but he pulled it off well. Not that I was looking at him as a potential partner. Obviously not; the guy came into my shop today with his fiancée, for crying out loud. But I still couldn’t help noticing he was good looking.

  He was quiet, though. He had been quiet at the shop, even while talking to his fiancée. He had one of those monotone voices where you weren’t sure what he was really thinking. Which was probably why I thought he had no interest in coming over earlier. He was hard to read.

  But he gave me no reason to think he wasn’t a nice guy. And I really did like making new friends; it was nice to have a new face over. And my friends were always really welcoming, so I was sure it’d work out fine.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked him as he sat down on my couch.

  “Anything alcoholic,” he answered quickly.

  “Beer it is,” I said as I went to grab two beers from the fridge. I popped off the bottle caps then walked back into the living room and handed it to him.

  “This is a really nice house you have,” he said as he grabbed the beer.

  See, he was nice! If not a little shy and awkward.

  “Thanks! It’s not much, but it’s been a good starter home.”

  “Hey, beats my apartment,” he answered. “I’ll be thrilled to be in a house of my own. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Just has to have some space.”

  “Oh yeah? Is that your next move after the wedding?” I asked. The fact that he was getting married was the only thing I knew about him so I kind of had to use it to propel the conversation forward.

  “Hopefully. Probably not for many years after that. A lot of money is going into this damn wedding, you know how that goes.”

  “Yeah, weddings are brutal. I mean, except for me, because wedding cakes are actually a cash cow.” I smiled jokingly.

  “Yeah, you pariah,” he teased as he almost chugged his beer.

  He was considerably less awkward now. I heard him talk more in the first couple minutes of being here than I had heard him talk the entire time he was at the bakery. Which was pretty weird, considering
I was a stranger and he was with his fiancée earlier. You’d think he’d be more closed off with me. But he probably was just really bored of the whole thing.

  “Not too stoked on the wedding though, huh?”

  “Not at all,” he answered seriously. “And my lady is kind of freaking out about it. She wants me to go to every little thing that requires wedding planning but honestly, man, it’s boring as hell. And a little infuriating.”

  “Infuriating?” I asked. “Infuriating in what way?”

  “In the way that we’re spending all this money on a party for one day when we could be spending it on our future. That house, for example. It seems so pointless.”

  “But your fiancée disagrees?” I asked.

  “I mean, I think so. I never really told her that I think this wedding is pointless to me. She seems into it, so.”

  This struck me as weird. I mean, he was marrying the girl. Shouldn’t he have been communicating this with her?

  “How long have you two been together?” I asked, thinking maybe they rushed into the marriage and had a short enough relationship that they hadn’t mastered the communication thing.

  “Ten years or so. We started dating in high school.”

  Well, there goes that theory.

  I noticed his beer was now empty. “Do you want another one of those?” I asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. I took the empty bottle from him and went in the kitchen. When I came back, I dove right back into the conversation.

  “That’s a hell of a long time. High school sweethearts, that’s pretty cute.”

  “Yeah, it’s been a while,” he answered, not sounding too excited about that. But I didn’t want to pry into his life, I barely knew the guy.

  He immediately started sipping on his new beer. I wasn’t sure what to say after that, but I was saved by the sound of my cell phone ringing.

  I grabbed it, and the caller ID read “Mario.”

  “Hey, sorry, I gotta pick this up,” I told him. “It’s one of the friends who is supposed to come over tonight.”