She came hurrying over.
“We need pasta and cake and pie and hot chocolate and bourbon and pretzels with beer cheese. We have an emergency,” Maeve said, clapping her hands to punctuate the words. “Tess got fired and had a breakup.”
“We weren’t dating,” I corrected, my voice sounding husky. I was not going to cry, especially not over Beck. I took a few deep breaths. “We were just hooking up.”
“Aww,” Holly said, patting my hair, “you really had it bad for him!”
Then I started bawling. “I thought I had my happy ever after! I thought that after everything I had to survive that he was going to be my reward, but he wasn’t. He was just another refrigerator that had fallen off the back of a truck and totaled my car on my road trip through life.”
“Oddly specific but okay.”
“Start with a cupcake,” Holly said, sliding a mini dessert in front of me. “It will help take the edge off.”
I stuffed the whole thing in my mouth.
“Ahhh,” my friend said gingerly, “that actually has a wrapper on it…”
“Ugh,” I pulled it out of my mouth. “I hate cupcake wrappers that look like they’re part of the cupcake.”
“I think you’re the only person that has issues with those,” Maeve said, raising an eyebrow.
She opened up her laptop. “Let’s look for some new jobs.”
“No one’s going to hire me,” I blubbered. “I’m a mess.”
“They don’t know that.” Holly slid a hot chocolate in front of me.
“I don’t have any clothes. All my stuff is at Beck’s house.”
“We’ll come with you to go rescue them,” Maeve assured me.
“Not today,” I said sadly. “I can’t today.”
“Hopefully you won’t have an interview scheduled too soon,” Holly said, handing me a large slice of cake.
“I hate interviews!” I wailed. “I hate applying for jobs. I hate interviews. I hate sitting in a room with a bunch of people I don’t know and having to pretend like I’m totally excited about the company and that it’s been my dream to work at Vapid Millennial Bitch Designers Emporium my entire life and we’re going to be such good friends when everyone knows that it’s bullshit and that the only reason I’m there is because I need a job that pays on time and in cash.”
“I know you hate working,” Maeve said, “but we need to work to afford baking supplies. You love baking!”
I crossed my arms. “I hate that cake pans cost so much, and I hate that my baked items don’t look like the Pinterest photos. And I really hate Beck.”
I peeled the wrapper off another cupcake. “And I hate pickles. They ruin a perfectly good hamburger. And did I mention I hate Beck?”
“You did.”
“And cupcake wrappers.”
“That too.”
“I need to make a list,” I said, wiping my eyes, “of all the things I hate.” I pulled out my sparkly pink Hello Kitty pen and grabbed a napkin.
I wroteBehold Tess’s Hate List:
My boss, Beck Svensson.
Evil stepsiblings.
Vending machines that only take coins.
