As far as I could remember, I had always loved making things in the kitchen. It was something I’d inherited from all the time I’d spent with Mamá Lupe. It had been our bonding time. Our happy time. Even our sad time. Some of my absolute favorite memories had been in her house, making empanadas and cakes and mole and guisado. She’d even bought an Irish cookbook so I could make some things that my dad’s family would have liked… if he’d still had any of them. And when we hadn’t been cooking, we loved watching talk shows with cooking segments. We’d binge Emeril. She had made it fun and TV show-like when we made things together, and it had sucked me in and turned into a place of comfort and love.
When there were a ton of other things in my life I couldn’t control, I had always been able to pick and choose what I made; that was something I didn’t have to rely on other people for.
And later on, being in the kitchen made me feel closer to the woman I had adored who I missed so much. She had left me with a legacy. With a way to still feel her.
So yeah, I loved making things I could eat. I always had. I loved eating.
One night, about seven years ago, after I’d had a bad day at the restaurant I’d been waitressing at and only had a couple things in the fridge to make for dinner and no money to go buy more groceries until payday, that’s when it happened. That was when that first seed of an idea had been planted in my head. Looking back on it, I’d only been brave enough because Connie and her family hadn’t been home to watch me. They had been on vacation visiting Richard’s family.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I’d done it. I’d uploaded a video to WatchTube just for the hell of it. For fun. Pepperoni pasta, I’d called it, because all I’d had was pasta, pepperoni slices, and leftover parmesan cheese in packets. It took a month to get five views. A month later, I uploaded another one on Mamá Lupe’s birthday, just for her. That time, it had been her favorite tres leches cake, a recipe I’d known off the top of my head for years. I got twenty views and twenty thumbs up from my family members after sending Connie and Boogie the link. My boyfriend at the time—that idiot—had suggested I keep doing them.
No one told me I sucked or that I was awkward or an inconvenience, so I kept going, because I got a thrill from seeing nice comments, even though they had been from relatives and my ex. They had made me feel good. The people pleaser in me liked making people happy and enjoyed making them laugh even more. I’d struggled with my self-esteem for so long that it was nice, for me, to feel… nice.
And slowly but surely, those views went up and up and up over the years.
I wasn’t an Emeril or a Rachel, but I was a Bianca. A Lazy Baker. The Lazy Baker.
I had gone from posting a video whenever I felt like it, to a video a week, and after time, to two a week. I had done it for fun until I’d finally started to see it as a business, which was a stupid decision I realized years later because I could’ve been making some serious money. It was a potential future. My future. A bright one that I enjoyed doing despite the drawbacks.
Then my dickwad of an ex had tried to take it away from me.
But it was still mine.
Maybe I wasn’t in the ideal situation I wanted to be yet—thanks to all his bullshit—but I was trudging ahead, slowly but surely. With plan B, plan C, and plan D. And none of that meant I got to take time off with my finger up my butt. Plan B, plan C, and plan D were waiting for me.
And I was finally going on vacation to Disney World because I was taking myself there.
Plan B: have a better website. (I hadn’t decided some minor details on the layout yet.)
Plan C: release a cookbook. (I had more than half the recipes I planned on sharing done.)
Plan D: branch out into more than just posting videos online. (But this was the scariest plan and the one I wasn’t so sure I was brave enough to go after.)
There were more plans, but for now, those were the most important.
I was going to do this, for me.
Yet… none of that mattered in that moment while I was busy.
Busy listening to this butthole of a human being.
Gunner knocked on the counter eventually when neither one of us said a word to him, and I hoped he knew we were both calling him an asshole in our heads. It wasn’t like we didn’t do what we were paid for. We did. It had literally been two minutes of checking out a big butt while we hadn’t been busy. I’d bet he checked it out too every time that guy walked by.
On top of that, I knew for a fact Gunner hung out in his office and played Tetris. I’d gone in there twice early on while he’d been in the bathroom and spotted his computer screen. Hypocrite.
“Get back to work,” he had the nerve to call out over his shoulder as he walked away like he hadn’t just spent five solid minutes trying to kick us in the ass with his words.
“God, I fucking hate him,” Deepa muttered when he disappeared through the rows of machines.
I kept watching to make sure he didn’t come back into view. “I hope he steps on a Lego.”
She snorted, and I grinned at the girl a few years younger than me. “I started working on my resume like you said. I’m going to email a couple more of
