"You are not allowed to be rude and misogynistic," Dana snapped.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm under a lot of stress." I saw one of the production assistants walk by with the extra desserts the contestants had made. Chloe's cookies passed not even two feet away from me.
"Are you even paying attention?" Dana hissed.
No. No, I wasn't.
"Sure, yeah, I'll be better next time," I told her and walked off to follow the cookies. There were some left out for photographing. I swiped two while the camera guys weren't looking.
In the elevator, I took out one of the cookies hidden in my suit pocket and ate it. Heaven. It was amazing. The cookie wasn't too sweet, and I could taste the individual ingredients. The nuts made the cookie savory and slightly salty, which balanced out the sugar. It was addicting. I needed another one.
I walked into my apartment chewing the last of the swiped cookies. I looked down; my suit was covered in powdered sugar and little crumbs. Milo jumped off of the sofa and padded over to me, licking the sugar off of my suit as I brushed off the crumbs.
"I need more of those cookies," I said to the dog. They seemed to be a fairly standard cookie according to Nick and Anu. It shouldn't be hard to find a cookie like the one Chloe had made, especially in New York City. I checked online. Several bakeries had similar wedding cookies. After making sure my suit was powdered sugar-free, I put on a light overcoat and went out.
This should have been a job for an assistant, but my assistant was gone—she had gone to California with her new husband, and between my company and the disaster of Frost Tower, I hadn't had time to find a new one.
Under the pretense of finding a tenant for my tower, I visited bakery after bakery.
Each bakery had wedding cookies that looked similar, but none of them tasted like Chloe's. They were poor imitations. Was it really that impossible to find a decent cookie in New York City?
While waiting for my car to swing around the block, I searched for a recipe online. The cookie used only four main ingredients. It couldn't be that difficult to make. I went to a store and picked up what I needed.I'm a billionaire, I went to Harvard, and I run a global company. I can make cookies,I thought.
9
Chloe
Icouldn't believe I was in the bottom two.
"Your cookies were fine," Nina assured me. "Jack was just a douche."
I was lying on my bed in our shared room, feeling depressed.
"Jack said I didn't need any more cookies," I whined. "And the judges were mean to me."
"Jack Frost is a horrible person," Nina said, patting me on the head. "He's basically a monster. I mean, he doesn't like Christmas and he doesn't like desserts. Who does that?"
"I made those especially for him! Why didn't he like them?" I wailed. "I was sure he would like those cookies!"
"Some people can't be saved," Nina said. "That's what all those billionaires are like. Did you know that something like twenty-one percent of all CEOs are sociopaths? He's a fundamentally awful person."
"Don't talk about my future husband like that!" I heard Hartleigh yell from the common area.
"I am not staying in the apartment with her," I said to Nina, standing up and putting my shoes on.
"Let's go finish decorating the lobby," she suggested. "Gunnar told me that he needs to take the shots of the space tomorrow morning."
I collected my decorating supplies while I stewed about Hartleigh and Jack and the unfairness of it all.
"Jack and Hartleigh deserve each other," Nina said as we rode the elevator to the lobby. "They can make freakishly tall, freakishly scrawny babies."
"You're just saying that to make me feel better," I said.
"I speak the truth! Her skin is sallow, and her chest is a bit flat. You'd think Jack would want actual boobs on an actual woman."
"At least Hartleigh seems to fit into New York City, though," I said as we walked off the elevator into the partially decorated lobby.
"That’s probably why her hair looks so bad, all the binging and purging and cosmos for dinner. She can't even cook."
