“Good,” he says to her. He bites into his cake pop again and turns toward me. “How about you, Ted?”
I lift my clean plate in one hand, cake pop in the other, and sigh. “As you can see, I’m having aterribletime.Lacklustermeal.Horrendousdessert.Abysmalcompany.”
Mia nails me with a full icy stream from her water blaster.
I squeak. “Mia! I was just using antonyms again!”
She laughs around her cake pop, a golf ball tucked inside her cheek. “I know those were Entenmann’s,” she says. “I just wanted to get you anyway.”
“You did, did you?” I reach into the pool and tickle her toes. Mia shrieks and kicks her legs, dousing me with pool water. I’m three times as wet as I was before the water blaster.
“Very effective revenge tactic,” Alex muses.
I wipe water from my face. “It was actually quite refreshing.”
A soft laugh leaves him as he peers back at Mia, who’s lounging against the side of her little pool, hand patting her air bubble belly. She finally takes a small bite of her cake pop and says, “Wow. This isoutstanding.”
“Mia approved,” I tell Alex.
He smiles at her, then turns my way. “And what’s your verdict, Ted?”
I bite into my cake pop, too. Pillow soft, sweet vanilla cake. Rich, buttery icing that’s only slightly, perfectly sweeter. An obscene moan leaks out of me.
“Thea approved, too!” Mia says.
Alex’s gaze dips to my mouth, then darts away. He clears his throat. “Great.” He turns toward Mia. “Think we should bring some to The Bookshop for the party tonight?”
Mia shoots her arms up into the air. “Yes!”
“Good. Because I made a sh—” He catches himself. “Shootton of these, also in Hanukkah and Kwanza colors, and they’re taking up my entire freezer right now.”
I poke his toe with mine. “Alex, I told you that you weren’t allowed to make them! Coming up with a mess-free dessert idea was help enough.”
“True.” He gently tugs a corkscrew curl of my hair, then steps back. “But I couldn’t say no when Fern reached out.”
“Ugh.” I scrub a hand across my forehead. “I get it. She’s impossible to say no to.”
“Actually,” he says, “she offered me a ridiculous amount of money to make them. While also reminding me of how much she’dinvestedin me leading up to my first cookbook’s launch.”
“So she guilt-tripped you. Great.”
“Nah. I only said yes because of the money. I found the guilt trip amusing, though. And I reminded her that the profit she’s made from my subsequent cookbook’s preorder campaigns, run exclusively through her store, have more than paid back herinvestment.”
I squeak. Just the thought of talking to my boss like that makes me feel like I’m about to throw up. “You didn’t.”
“I did. You know me, Ted. I have no problem saying no if I don’t want to do something.”
“Truth!” Mia yells.
“Okay, smarty-pants,” Alex says to her.
I sigh. “Well, I’m glad she paid you, but money or not, I’m still pi”—I stop myself, mindful of Mia—“perturbedthat she bothered you in the first place.”
“Perturbed,” Mia says. She frowns. “Thatsoundslike superb. But I don’t think itmeanssuperb.”
“Perturbed,” Alex tells her, “means annoyed.”
“Veryannoyed,” I add.