WHO:Carol & Audrey WHEN: Mid June(ish) WHERE: Baxter's (1) WHAT: Carol comes bearing gifts. RATING/WARNINGS: None STATUS: Complete
More often than not, Carol didn’t write for the magazine. She had the occasional slot that needed filling and doing it herself was easier than going on the hunt for a freelance, it tended to give her a little bit more leeway with budgeting and she could allot more pages to things she considered relevant.
Like local businesses. And Carol wouldn’t say that she paid extra attention to female run businesses, but there was a degree of appreciation for a successful woman running her own business that Carol liked to add a little something to. She personally thought Baxter’s deserved it too.
So, the week the magazine was meant to run, with Audrey’s interview among the four others that ran small businesses in the OC area, Carol made a point in swinging by the bakery with a copy for Audrey. Just so that she could have a look at the issue before the larger area.
Audrey had very much enjoyed the interview she’d done with Carol earlier, and was looking forward to seeing the article about local businesses in the magazine. Though, she’d been thinking about it a lot lately, the magazine had completely skipped her mind in the last few days. She’d been dealing with OBGYN appointments and helping Izzy with running BB2… it wasn’t until Carol came in through the door to the lobby that Audrey remembered. She was behind the counter at the time, and broke into a bright smile. “Carol!” She said, and waved the woman over. “Come here and give me a hug!”
It was apparently impossible to escape hugs, so Carol didn’t bother trying, pushing her laptop case to the back of her butt out of the way before greeting Audrey with the hug, “Hey, how’re things? How’s the incubation going?” Because although Carol did not plan on having kids herself, if that was even possible now, she did love babies.
“Where are you at now? How far are you?” When she’d interviewed Audrey she’d been in the early stages, and finding out that Audrey kept her business going strong while also juggling her marriage and motherhood just added more respect to her dedication.
Audrey was a big hugger. She couldn’t help herself, really. She liked to be close with people, and when she made a friend, she kept them. If you asked her, almost every single customer who came into her shop became a friend. Especially those she spent extra time with! She gave Carol a quick squeeze, then pulled back. “Things are wonderful! Spending less and less time at the second location, because Izzy is absolutely wonderful in leading that. And incubation is great. It’s a girl!” She ran a hand over her tummy. “I’m due… September twentieth? So I’m more than half-way now.”
“Aw, that’s great, it’ll be just in time for fall.” And Carol made a mental note to find something cutesy and sweet for a baby girl, she could even stop being a nerd for a little while about it too. Maybe.
“So, I was mostly stopping by so that you could get a tiny little preview,” Carol gave a small smirk while she waved the magazine issue in her hand with a little flourish. “Unless you’ve gotten your fill of previews and wanna wait for the big release?” It was a tease, really. But hey, sometimes too much of a good thing and all that.
“Yep! Hopefully we’ll be starting to get some sleep again by the time Halloween rolls around. I’m looking forward to the four-person family costume debate. Merlin and I can whip something up pretty easily,” thank God for magic, “so it should be fun. I might throw a little party here at the bakery.” She grinned, glancing around, but her attention was brought back quickly to Carol and the magazine.
“Really?? I’d love to see it! I can’t believe it’s out! How long has it been since our interview?” Audrey asked, turning to usher her friend to a booth. “Wait, let’s get drinks and snacks first, then you can show me the whole thing. What would you like?”
Halloween wasn’t Carol’s favourite time of the year, but sometimes it could be cute, especially seeing kids get kitted out in their adorable little outfits. “Um, how about a caramel latte and whatever sweet thing you’d recommend. No nuts.” Since Audrey was the authority on what was excellent in the bakery, because everything was delicious, Carol would trust that choice to the pregnant lady.
Even as she slid into the booth, shrugging off her light jacket and folding it over her laptop case, “Well, we talked about three weeks ago, I got the interviews slotted into our opening for this month’s release. The magazine hits shelves on Monday though.”
Audrey nodded, then popped back behind the counter to grab some sweets and drinks for the pair of them. She went decaf for her own, so she wouldn’t poison the baby with too much caffeine, and then pulled more shots for Carol’s latte. In just a minute she was back over with a couple of sparkling lattes and a plate with a variety of miniature pastries. There were caramel, chocolate, cheese and fruit--no nuts. Audrey slipped into the booth as best a woman in her position could.
“Wow, has it been three weeks already?” Audrey beamed over at Carol. “I can’t wait to see it! Did the picture come out?”
“Doesn’t time just fly.” It didn’t really feel like that long at all, but the time just happened to get away from them these days. Carol was sure that the next time she looked at the calendar they’d be too close to Christmas for anyone’s liking.
“Everything came out great,” Carol had ended up with a spotlighting on about four local businesses, doing a few smaller pieces on another six, she’d slotted Baxter’s into the second slot, which had a slightly bigger space and a nice glossy picture of the outside. Talking about the building of a business, local support and the new second location. “I think you’ll really like it.”
Audrey lifted a fork to attack a piece of chocolate cake. She was pregnant and wanted cake. That was that. “I’m so excited to see it!” She said before shovelling a bite of cake into her mouth. “What other businesses did you profile for the piece?” She added. Of course, Audrey was going to read the thing cover to cover.
Carol rattled off the four main ones, including Baxters, mostly focusing on her coffee rather than her cake -not because the cake wasn’t delicious, but just because she was addicted to the coffee. “We really want to be able to focus on local businesses. And we’ve set up to run ads for each of the businesses over the course of the next seven months. It’s the interns in the advertising departments job, so we figured why not help out locally.” This branch of the magazine was focused largely on California, and while some of them were out of Orange County area, Carol felt like these guys needed the boost and the break sometimes.
With space on the table for the magazine, both of them with their beverages and Audrey getting her food nomming on, Carol just went about showing the other woman the result of their interview, even though she’d leave the magazine with Audrey to keep for later.