Big & Beautiful 8: Fluffy & Fabulous
Yazar
Mary E Thompson
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Charlotte, a passionate baker, juggles the challenges of running her bakery, Bite Me!, while navigating a budding romance with Max, a charming yet mysterious snowplow driver. As she faces business hurdles and personal dilemmas, Charlotte's life takes unexpected turns, leading her to question trust, love, and the true meaning of community. With the support of her friends and the shadow of a new competitor, Charlotte's journey is a heartwarming tale of resilience, romance, and the sweet taste of new beginnings.
Chapter 1
Book 8: Fluffy & Fabulous
My alarm went off at 4 a.m., like it did every day. It didn’t really matter though because I was already awake. I’d had two months to figure out what to do with my future, and I finally had an answer.
I’d found the perfect site. It had taken me eight weeks, but I found the perfect location to move to. Well, perfect enough. My building, the building I both lived and worked in, was being sold out from under me. I was getting evicted and only had one more month to find a place to go. The day before I put in an offer on a storefront in a new strip mall that was opening across the street from my current location.
It was perfect. A small retail space, enough room for a huge counter, and plenty of seating. I’d been thinking of expanding Bite Me!, my bakery, anyway, but with the new site it would be a reality. Probably a necessity too in order to make up the difference in added rent. The new place didn’t have a studio apartment for me to live in so I also needed to find a new home, but that part didn’t worry me as much.
“Shit,” I said as the alarm beeped again, indicating I’d dozed another nine minutes. To the average person nine extra minutes was nothing, but for me it meant the difference between five batches of muffins and six. With a firm slap and a flip of the switch, I crawled out of bed and rushed into the shower. I tied my thick chocolate and peanut butter colored hair up to avoid washing it, hoping to make up those nine minutes.
Clean and dressed in my standard early morning outfit of sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt, complete with no bra because… well, because I hated bras and no one was there that early anyway, I headed to work. My 42C breasts bounced as I rushed down the stairs of my apartment into the kitchen of Bite Me! I flipped on the lights and smiled to myself. In the quiet of the kitchen, I could always feel my grandma. “Hi Grams,” I said, as I did every morning. Of course, silence answered me, but I felt better saying hello to her.
First order of business, start the coffee. Even though I never slept more than a few hours, I drank coffee as though my life depended on it. There was something about the sharp, bitter bite of a cup of black coffee and the sweet, smooth taste of a muffin or cupcake that always made me smile in the morning.
With the coffee brewing I washed my hands, tied an apron around my waist, and started up my mixers. My morning customers usually came in for muffins so I began each day with four big batches before moving on to cupcakes.
Flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder combined in the first mixer followed by vegetable oil, eggs, and milk. As the blueberry batter mixed together I moved onto the banana nut, working the two concoctions simultaneously with practiced efficiency. Once the blueberries were folded into the muffin mix I scooped them into pan liners and slid the first batch into the oven. The banana nut were right behind the blueberry and I started to breathe easier, thinking maybe I had made back my nine minutes.
The shelves in the back were sparsely stocked with the typically few leftovers from the day before. I baked fresh every day and it was one of the things that had kept my store packed with customers for the last two and a half years.
With the muffins in the oven I washed up the mixers and started over with new batches of chocolate chip muffins and my holiday specialty, candy cane muffins. With Thanksgiving behind us, and Christmas quickly breathing down our necks, my customers were craving winter flavors.
As for me… well, I could skip the season altogether. Not having any family made the holidays extra hard. I had seven best friends, but they were all paired off and they didn’t need me trailing along to their family events. Plus, I was a big girl, figuratively as well as literally, and at 31 years old I could handle a few nights alone.
Even if those lonely nights made me want to consume an entire batch of my salted caramel cupcakes.
My oversized ass didn’t need that.
But baking filled a void inside me that I’d convinced myself was full as long as it held a cupcake, or a muffin, or a new recipe. It was only over the last few years as I watched my friends find love that I started to let myself believe I could have it, too. I dated a lot, frequently called a romantic by my friends, but I struggled to believe a man would ever want to settle down with me.
If he did I wasn’t sure I’d have the time anyway.
Growing up I’d always been overweight. My grandma called it ‘fluffy,’ probably because she was, too. She told me, “We’re fluffy, just like a perfect cupcake. Never be ashamed of that.” I believed her when I was little. I thought I was special because I didn’t look like the other girls, the skinny ones who had perfect hair and no shape. Once I hit middle school I started to realize being different wasn’t something to be cherished, it was something to be changed.
My grandmother’s kitchen was my favorite place in the world. After school we’d spend hours in there baking away my sorrows, crying into cupcake batter about the boys who didn’t like me or the girls who didn’t want to be my friends. I tried to not care, to just be my fluffy self, but the other students wouldn’t have it. I endured near endless ridicule until I graduated high school a year early and enrolled in college classes as a commuter student.
College was a little different. I focused on my classes and I wasn’t on campus to be involved with other students. It meant I had very few friends, but it also meant I was free of harassment. I loved my college years because I studied business. It was never a question if I would open a bakery one day, but I was excited to learn everything I could about running a business since I already knew how to bake.
I was in heaven. Until my whole world fell apart.
None of that mattered anymore though. My life was Bite Me! and I was willing to do anything to save it. Finding a man was the furthest thing from my mind as I fought to save my baby, my heart. Bite Me! was the only thing I had, the thing that reminded me most of my grams, and I wasn’t going to sit by and let it crumble around me like a dry cupcake.
I didn’t make dry cupcakes.
By six the kitchen smelled amazing and I was on to baking cupcakes for my afternoon customers. Cupcakes were my big seller, and what I’d started the business on. I’d given in and added muffins a year earlier when customers started asking if I had any. I never had any desire to branch out to cakes or brownies or breads, but muffins were an easy stretch. And I’d always loved muffins. Almost as much as I loved cupcakes.
With the muffins cooled, I headed out to the front with a loaded tray to stock the case. I flipped on all the lights as the snowplow passed by my window to clear the nearly two feet of accumulated snow. I smiled as I slid the first tray into place and went back to the kitchen for the next tray.
I loved snow. Winter was my favorite season. Not only did I have a ‘winter figure’ instead of a summer one, but I loved being able to curl up in front of a fire with a cup of coffee and a sweet cupcake.
Sometimes I fantasized about having a man there too, but even a romantic like me couldn’t conjure one up at will. Once I got Bite Me! settled into my new location I could worry about finding a man again.
Or start collecting cats to keep me warm by my imaginary fireplace.
With the display cases full I wiped down all the tables in front, flipped the lights off, and checked on the cupcakes. I poured myself a fresh, extra-large steaming cup of coffee and slowly unwrapped the chocolate chip muffin I saved for myself.
It was still warm in the middle when I broke it apart. I inhaled the sweet chocolate scent and closed my eyes, thinking back to the first time I’d made those muffins.
It had been a particularly bad day at school. The cute boy I liked had smiled at me in the hallway and I finally worked up the courage to talk to him. In the cafeteria I walked over to his lunch table and bravely asked if I could join him. He looked up at me like he’d never seen me before and asked, “Why?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. He didn’t seem like he was being cruel, but he couldn’t imagine why I’d want to sit with him.
“Um, you smiled at me today and I thought maybe you liked me.”
I was an awkward kid. It came with the territory when you were raised by a grandmother who made you believe everyone was kind and wonderful. She also taught me to always speak my mind and tell the truth.
I learned a painful lesson when the boy, whose name I couldn’t remember years later, said, “I didn’t smile at you. I was looking at the girl behind you. The hot one.”
My face fell and I felt so stupid that I didn’t even answer. I simply turned and walked out of school. When I got home, hours earlier than I should have been home, I still had tears running down my cheeks. Grams wasn’t mad, she just wrapped her arms around me, her vanilla scent enveloping me, and said it was time to make something special.
Whenever we’d baked we always made cupcakes so when we added chocolate chips to the batter I was confused. Grams explained that sometimes we needed something we could dunk.
By the time we’d pulled the muffins out of the oven I’d forgotten all about the stupid boy and decided to push through high school so I could get out early. Grams was in my corner, like usual, and I knew I was making the right choice.
The muffins were perfect and we dunked them in fresh coffee that Grams brewed that afternoon. It was the first time I’d had coffee and the first time I’d made muffins. Grams turned what started as my worst day of high school into a great memory and something that sparked an expansion of my business.
Lost in my memory I jumped when the front door rattled. It was still dark outside although daylight was threatening to break through. The rattle was followed by a knocking. I set my coffee down and glanced around, wondering if I had anything I could use as a weapon.
Deciding I had nothing that would help, I peeked through the window in the door between the back and front of my store. The snowplow was parked out front and a tall figure was shielding his eyes, peeking into my store.
He didn’t seem like a threat so I pushed out to the front and walked over to the door. He held up a hand in a wave and I waved back. “Can I help you?”
“I saw your light on a few minutes ago. Do you happen to have any coffee?”
I considered his request. The nice person within me wanted to just open the door and give him a cup of coffee. The businesswoman in me wanted to tell him to come back in an hour when I opened. The woman in me wanted to get closer to the rugged looking guy standing outside my door in the freezing cold.
The businesswoman lost as I unlocked the door and pulled it open so he could come inside. He was tall, about six inches taller than my own 5’10”. His smile was the first thing I noticed about him besides his height. He was grinning like the happiest person on earth. He raised a gloved hand to his head and pulled off his black fleece hat to reveal coffee-colored hair. His twinkling eyes matched the rich coffee color of his hair as he smiled at me.
Jeans hung low on his hips and his ski jacket draped open to show a fitted t-shirt, showing me just how built he was beneath. I hadn’t seen a man that attractive in a long time. Well, except the hotties all my friends had married. This guy though, he stirred something in me the others never had. Something I wasn’t prepared for. Something I didn’t have time for.
“I really appreciate you letting me in.”
“Do you drive the snowplow?” I asked, immediately feeling stupid. Of course he did, why else would it be parked out front of Bite Me!
“Yeah, I got the contract this year. I didn’t check the weather last night so I rushed to get out here this morning to clear the lot. My coffee never got made and I’m already dragging.”
I chewed on my lip and looked him over again, trying to decide if I trusted him. His snowplow certainly looked legit and the parking lot was clear so I figured the least I could do was give him a cup of coffee.
“Give me a minute. I don’t open for an hour so the only coffee I have is the pot I keep in back.”
He nodded and I vanished into the kitchen. I pulled down a to-go cup and filled it with the last of the coffee from my pot. My coffee and muffin called out to me as I passed them by, but I forced myself to ignore them and deliver the coffee to the snowplow guy.
His nose was practically pressed to the display case when I came back out. I cleared my throat, and he straightened up, grinning at me sheepishly. Geez, could he be any cuter?
“This place smells delicious. Did you bake all those this morning?”
I nodded as I took in the case. I was proud of my work and loved my shop. Getting to that point had been a challenge, but I knew I was good. It helped that I also loved it.
“I baked most of the muffins this morning and am getting started on the cupcakes. Most of my customers come in for the cupcakes, but I’ve got a loyal breakfast crowd that loves my muffins.”
“I can certainly see why,” he murmured, his eyes raking over me.
My body felt all tingly, and I started to sweat. Of course, that was when I remembered what I was wearing. Yep, still in my sweatpants and t-shirt. Without a bra.
I wanted to believe my apron covered enough, but there was no covering the girls.
Or the fact that they’d taken a liking to my guest.
I crossed my arms over my chest and forced myself to look him in the eye. “Do you take anything in your coffee?”
He glanced down at the pink cup in his hand with Bite Me! on the side and chuckled. “Cute. I like it. And no, I drink my coffee black. But if you’re willing, I’d love one of those chocolate chip muffins. They’re my weakness.
I found myself unable to resist his smile. I slid two muffins into a pink bag, again with Bite Me! on the front, and I handed it to him.
“Thanks. Really. How much do I owe you?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I can’t do that. You have a business to run.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, but if you drive through my storefront because you fall asleep at the wheel it’ll cost me a whole lot more than a couple muffins and a cup of coffee.”
He laughed, a deep, rumbling sound that tugged a smile to my lips. “Very true,” he quipped. “In that case, I’ll get out of your way. I greatly appreciate the coffee and muffins. And the pleasure of your company for a few minutes. By the way, I’m Max Sullivan.”
He extended his hand and I slid mine into it, tingles spreading up my arm, making my nipples stand up. “Nice to meet you Max. I’m Charlotte Black.”
“Charlotte,” he said, almost to himself. “Beautiful name for a beautiful woman.” Max pulled his hat back on his head and picked up his coffee and muffins. “Have a good day, Charlotte Black.”
Then he was gone.
