“It is… Vat do they say? Karma,” Babushka grumped.
He never should’ve told her Heather broke his heart, but the damage was done and now he needed to keep his grandmother from getting arrested. She had no business driving anything.
“Someone should probably go notify Heather,” Ethan piped up. “You want to go, or do you want me to?”
Jase took in the damage once again. This wasn’t the kind of thing they could just leave a note about.
“I’ll go get her. Can you keep an eye on Lead Foot here?” He gestured to his grandmother, who at the moment was inspecting the front of her bumper.
Ethan sighed. “Sure thing.”
Jase started his walk of shame to the cookie shop. He punched his buddy Brek’s number into his cell. Brek knew car repair. He’d know what to do about the van.
“You’ve got Brek.”
“I need a favor.” Jase’s breath huffed against the mouthpiece. “Babushka just rammed Heather’s delivery van with her Buick. Everyone’s fine. Nobody’s hurt. But the van doesn’t look so good. I’m going to tell Heather right now, but I could use a second opinion on bodywork.”
There was a long pause.
“The pink van?” Brek asked.
“Yeah.” Would there be any other van?
“Shit,” Brek replied. “That’s her baby. She sold her car to buy that thing.”
“Brek, what’s going on?” Jase could hear Brek’s wife, Velma, asking in the background. There were some muffled sounds while Brek relayed something to her.
Velma and Heather were tight. Once Velma knew, she’d call Heather. He picked up his pace to a jog.
“I’m on my way,” Brek said before the line went dead.
Phone shoved in his pocket, Jase rounded the corner to Heather’s shop. The outside was as pink as her van. She’d added cookie decals on the windows with polka dots all around. It looked like the happiest business on the block. At least, it would be until he told her what his grandmother had done. He pulled on the door, the jingle bells attached to aCome In! We’re Open & Awesomesign bouncing against the polka dots on the glass.
“I need to talk to Heather,” he said to the lady running the cash register.
“She’s in the kitchen. Just one sec.” Cash-register lady raised her just-one-sec finger and continued helping a customer.
No time for this. He practically jumped over the counter and pushed the swinging door to the kitchen open.
“Hey, you can’t go in th—” Cash-register lady started to say, but he was already through the door.
He skidded to a halt.
There, laid out before him, were trays and trays and trays of cookies shaped liked penises and iced in bright colors. Fuchsia. Yellow. Teal. Neon green.
Hair-netted Heather glanced up from where she was icing the tip on a batch of blue-balled man rods.
He had thought the day was weird before. It wasn’t.
“That is a lot of dick,” he said to no one in particular.
Two of her staff were boxing them up, and one was arranging several dicks-on-sticks into an arrangement in a vase. The symmetry was on point, and one truly had to look closely to see the phallic shapes of the cookies. They looked like an adorable assortment of cookie flowers. Until you did a double take and realized they were a handful of multicolored edible erections.
“Jase?” Heather asked. The tip of her icing bag leaked blue icing onto the table.
“Okay, so first...” He shook his head. “We’ll get to that. Second”—he waved an arm toward the erectile bouquet— “what the hell are these?”
Heather raised her eyebrows. “You’ve never seen a penis before?”
