It's Brittany, Bitch | Ερις (eristic) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2017-04-14 15:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | eris, uke mochi |
there is nothing better than a friend
Who: Alice & BB.
What: BB confronts Alice over her work hours
Where: Alice’s apartment.
When: Afternoon of April 14
Alice had lost complete control of her life. She often thought that when people lost their grasp on their lives it was a slow build up followed by a dramatic crumbling but this seemed more neat, more sudden, less dramatic. She was tired, she knew that, her poor butchered thumb knew that, and the state of her apartment stated as much. But still, Alice found it difficult to admit how tired she was and she didn’t have enough brainpower to think of a way to fix it all.
Ever since that first dream she shared with Brittany, Alice found it hard to sleep, which was a miraculous thing to accomplish considering how ridiculously exhausted she was to begin with. Paperwork for her cookbook lay scattered across half of her dining table, dirty baking supplies sat piled in her sink, her camera was hooked up to her computer and hadn’t been touched to download the various photos she needed for her blog.
And there was Alice in amongst it all, still wearing her pajamas and feeling beyond guilty that she had called out from work and made the other baker and cashier come in. She was told to rest and instead she tossed and turned all night. Getting rest was such a simple instruction and yet she was failing at it all.
When Brit texted her about getting drinks after work, Alice didn’t have the energy to come up with an excuse but mindlessly replied, “Im not sure, i called out of work today. Im home right now. Not sick.”
siiiick??????1!!11 came the reply. A few minutes passed, then another barrage of messages showed up on Alice's phone.
ok cumin over wat kind of soup
chikeN? or i ken get u Taco bell
no soup is better goin w/ tomato
b thar s00n :)
Alice sighed and let her phone drop onto the couch beside her. She lay stretched out over the furniture, a leg tossed over the back, and HGTV murmuring low. She should get up and shower, get to the paperwork, do something with the dishes but it felt best to just lay there for the time being. It wouldn’t be the first time Brit had seen her in her pjs with her hair piled on top of her head.
A loud, repetitive knocking came through loud and clear at her door. On the other side stood BB in a yellow hoodie with jeans and sneakers, her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. From her left hand hung a plastic Panera bag with two large cardboard bowls of the aforementioned tomato soup. BB had her phone in her hand and started texting her friend again.
OUSSIDE LEMME IN
SKITTLES U BETTA NOT B SLEEPIN
u needa giv me a spare key or sumthin
Alice rolled off the couch and went to the door. At first, she grabbed the handle with her left hand and immediately regretted it, pulling it back and shaking it as she cursed under her breath from the instant pain that swelled from the cut in her thumb. The irritation of it all was still clear on her face as she opened the door, but despite it all, she tried to smile. “Hey Brit, come in.”
BB strolled into the apartment as though she lived there, though her eyes took in a long drink of her friend, coming away frowning.
"No offense, skittles, but you look like the living dead. I thought you said you were sick, not a zombie." She shut the door behind herself, ushering Alice back into her apartment and onto a seat on her couch. BB was surprised at the state of the apartment; Alice was usually the neater of the two girls, and everything around her threw up red flags. Eyes trailed over papers on the dining room table, but she focused on Alice first, setting up the two cups of tomato soup.
"I didn't get anything to drink, you got something? Juice? Or water's good, too," she decided herself, leaving Alice with plastic spoons and a piping hot bowl of red as she wandered off into the kitchen. Soft rattlings sounds were quickly heard. "Don't freak out, I'm not breaking anything," she called over that noise, for whatever good it might do.
“I said I was not sick,” Alice replied from the couch as she opened the soup and poked at it with a spoon. “But I’m thankful for the soup all the same. It’s just been.. I don’t know… things have been sort of crazy.” She lifted a spoon-full of soup and lifted it to her lips, blowing on it softly before putting it in her mouth. The noise in the kitchen continued and didn’t cause Alice any worry. She was used to it, Brit was nothing but noise, passing from room to room leaving chaos in her wake. After being friends with her for so long, Alice would have found something wrong if there wasn’t a clatter of noise as Brit went searching for drinks.
The aptly described noisy girl returned to the main room with two glasses of water; she passed one to Alice before taking a seat across from her on the couch.
"Crazy, huh? Is that why your apartment looks like a tornado hit it?" She pulled the second cup of soup toward herself. "Soooo, are you, like, running yourself ragged for a reason that inexplicably escapes anything I can puzzle out?" BB spooned up a bite of soup, blowing on it before gently testing it with her tongue; she made a face, and poured it back into the cup, stirring it to help cool it faster.
Alice blinked and looked at Brit. She switched tactics quickly from Alice being sick to running herself ragged but there it was. “I mean, I wouldn’t say ragged,” Alice began, bubbling up with excuses as she had been for months. She looked at her soup as she spoke, no longer wanted to see Brit’s facial expressions. “It’s just been busy with the bakery, you know? Lots of things to bake and stuff to do. It’s crazy and yeah, a little tiring.
“And I’m going to get to cleaning my apartment, I just haven’t really had a chance…”
"How many people did you say you had helping you out? At, like, the bakery?" BB narrowed her eyes in Alice's direction, the stirring motion remaining soft and slow as her attention lasered in on her friend. It was obvious she was overextending herself, and BB wondered how many others had told her as much. "And, like, how often are you letting them help you out?"
Alice’s jaw set and she continued looking at her soup. “Two people help me out. One girl at the counter and another baker,” Alice replied honestly but still didn’t look at her friend. She lifted a spoon to her lips and sipped the liquid slowly before replying. “The cashier is only around part time and the baker is… well she’s good. She makes perfectly fine materials and people like them just fine, but for whatever reason feedback always seems to indicate they like my stuff better. I don’t know why, they say it just puts them in a better mood or whatever. So I try to do a lot of the baking still…”
"Skittles, you can't run it all on your own." BB's stirring spoon had stopped, and she looked dismayed. "I get that you wanna give your customers, like, the best, but you can't do that if you're, you know, dead on your feet. You need to give the other two more time in the shop, and take some more time for yourself." The spoon moved again, though only in a diagonal slash across the cardboard cup.
Taking in a deep breath, Alice lifted another spoonful of soup. “I know,” she replied, a harshness to her tone. “I just… I don’t want to fuck this up, okay? It’s still new, it could still fail horribly and just with everything going on, with the dreams, and the weird gift, and all this crap it’s just hard to focus and get everything tidy and figure it all out. God dammit,” Alice hissed, a glob of soup landing squarely on her pj top. “I’ll be right back, Brit, I want to change this and get stain remover on it.”
She didn’t wait for a reply but got to her feet and left the room, beelining to her bedroom and closing the door softly behind her.
BB's glare struck directly between Alice's retreating shoulder blades, but she quickly found other ways to amuse herself; namely, poking through papers stacked around Alice's couch. It looked like many of them were accounting paperwork for the bakery, and it showed that the shop was making a sizeable profit; more than enough for Alice to let her two employees work further shifts, which, if BB remembered her own internships and first time gigs, they had to have been more than willing to do more than part time, maybe if only Alice asked. She was still sifting through papers when Alice returned, taking careful sips of her tomato soup in the process.
“Sorry for snapping at you,” Alice said immediately as her bedroom door opened. Rather than pajamas, Alice upgraded to sweats and a tank top. Her thin, pale arms looking even paler with her bright red hair brushed and down. She paused in the doorway, looking at her friend helping herself to her paperwork.
“I could ask what are you doing but really, I’m not even surprised.” She sighed as she returned to her seat and picked up her soup again.
BB shrugged. "If you didn't want people to see it, you wouldn't leave it out all over the place, Alice," she replied, flipping through another page. "And it looks like you can afford to take at least one, maybe two more days off. Hate to break it to yah, skittles, but you're not a machine; you gotta realize that you need other people to help you out." For the first time, her eyes swerved down to the bandage around Alice's thumb. "Aannnd what's that?" She nodded her chin toward Alice's injury, already suspicious of its origins.
Alice looked down at her thumb and she immediately switched the soup to her other hand and moved to cover her thumb between her legs. “Um, well, it’s fine but I cut myself. Last night, actually. Laura--have you met her? The new nurse here?--well she patched me up and told me to get some rest so, you know, that’s why I’m home today. Doctor’s orders, or something. I figured I’d rest for the day and let it heal more.” She looked at Brit, her eyes clear and serious. “But really, it’s fine.”
"Oh my god, Alice," BB said, all but throwing her soup spoon down. The paperwork on her lap did flutter to the floor as she rose, hands turning into fists at her sides. "This is stopping, like, right now. You're gonna call your other people, the baker and the candlestick maker or whatever, and you're gonna ask if they can work more shifts, longer hours, whatever. That is non-negotiable, skittles. I get that you want everything to be perfect, but do you know how fast the health inspector will shut you down when they find a fucking finger inside a cupcake? Or are you going for a Sweeney Todd theme for Easter? Huh?" Her words were coming out hot and fast, her face nearly turning as red as the soup she'd brought over.
Alice flinched from each emphasized word her friend threw at her and in turn looked properly chastised. “I know, I know,” she began but all too quickly she was crying. Large, hot tears ran over her cheeks and her shoulders slumped. BB immediately closed the space between them and hugged her friend, wrapping her arms tight around Alice.
“I don't even have a good excuse. I am tired. I'm exhausted and everyone sees that. You, Rafe, Gabe, Laura, everyone I speak to comments on how tired I look. They're all concerned and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. It's just too much going on with the bakery, and the dreams, and the wheat, and the book—did I tell you about that? I might as well now, of all people to know you have the biggest right. I just feel like I haven't even the chance to breathe long enough to make a plan and decide to hire more people or whatever and I'm just. So. Tired.”
BB drew Alice back toward the couch, forcing the other woman to sit, keeping her hands on Alice's shoulders, then wrapping her fingers around Alice's.
"Skittles, the bakery's doing great. Nothing says you gotta work yourself to death over it, you know? Like, it's a sign that you're doing well if you can afford to hire and pay people and sell more things. That's how you sell more things. Is any of this making sense? Because it makes sense to me, but I know that doesn't mean it translates..." A hint of a smile moved over her lips, trying to add some levity to the situation. She wanted to see Alice smile, to stop worrying, and to take five seconds so they could chill out and just enjoy each other's company. Then one hand was moving a strand of red back from Alice's face, tucking it behind an ear, and her heart hurt.
"Really, it's gonna be OK. You just need to slow down, and coming from me, that should mean a lot."
Alice stared at her friend and gave a small, agreeable nod. “You’re right,” she whispered, her shoulders slumped and how truly tired she was clear on her face. “Maybe… maybe you could help me? Come up with a plan, I mean. I just… I really like the baking aspect of the bakery. Maybe I can start to really focus my attention to that end and allow other people to deal with the customers. I could hire someone to do all the bookkeeping, maybe? I hate the bookkeeping.” She sniffed, a smile still not evident, but at least the free flowing tears had stopped.
"God, who doesn't?" She kept that hand near Alice's face, her smile broadening. Then her brow furrowed as her mind went back to another detail Alice had mentioned. "And no, you didn't tell me about a book. What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis?" She kept on, trying to keep the amusement going and her friend smiling.
And it worked. Alice smiled and let a small, weary laugh escape her parted lips. “So… Penguin, the book publishers? They approached me about publishing a cookbook that focuses on baked goods. I’ve been keeping it a secret but I’m trying to tell more people. I mean, the worst that happens is they decide to back out of the deal, right?”
It stung, slightly, that Alice had told people before BB, but she wasn't about to ruin this nearly perfect moment. Signs of her hurt were there -- eyes wincing slightly, her smile tempering -- but she fought to keep her face the same from one moment to the next. "Skittles, that's great. You know they're not gonna back out, because if they do, that'd be stupid. Your food is amazing, and I'm not just saying that because I'm your friend."
She paused, then grabbed Alice's hand with her own, giving it a squeeze. "Can I see? Do you have, like, a layout or something, or pictures, or recipes?" Her grin turned mischievous. "I promise not to steal anything."
Alice nodded, and reached for Brittany’s hand, clutching it tightly with her unwounded one. “Yeah, if you’d like. I haven’t shown anyone what I’ve worked on so far. I’ve been trying to do my own pictures and everything, although they said they’d send a photographer to do all the food. But I wanted to send pictures with the recipes so they knew what I was talking about and could pick and choose what gets included.”
She tugged on Brittany’s hand and pulled her along toward the dining room table that sat next to a large window overlooking the ocean. On the table was a stack of printed pages of photos and recipes, as well as a notebook with a list of different ideas of what to include.
BB's itching fingers did not hesitate to help themselves; the idea that she'd be included first on something was there in the way she scooped up two photos and a page, her eyes poring over every word.
"This looks amazing," she offered, not looking away for a moment. She traded the page for another. "When do they need stuff by? When's your publication date? Also," she held up a picture, "you're totally making me one of these. You need taste-testers, right?" She grinned at Alice.
Alice smiled more genuinely, her face brightening considerably compared to earlier. “Yeah if they do a photoshoot I’ll have to bake everything that’ll be in the cookbook. So I’ll have a ton of baked goods. You can get first dibs. Then Rafael and Isobel, Max, Gus, Lucas…” The names drifted off as she looked down at the paperwork, fingers trailing over each picture. “No idea when it’ll be published but I need to get the list of ideas to them by July first. Then I guess we’ll see from there. With all the bakery stuff it’s been hard to keep up with it all but, well, I guess we’re going to fix that, huh?” She looked up at Brittany, the same look in her eye that she’d have over the many years they knew each other. One shared when they were paired up for projects in school, or had the same idea for an adventure to depart on.
"Hell yes we are," BB replied, meeting her friend's eye with an equivalent look. Then she dove back into the pictures, drawing Alice into discussing a few of the recipes and why she'd made certain choices. Each looked more delicious than the last, and BB couldn't fathom why her friend thought the book publisher would pass on such a golden opportunity. She hoped she could work a little more confidence into her friend's thoughts, but settled for their shared companionship in that moment.