They stood silent for a moment before Amanda motioned to the cash stationed on the counter. Flustered, she headed toward the doorway, unable to bear the awkwardness of this final exchange. How foolish she had been! To not even think to hand him the cash, to hope to brush his fingertips, still laden with flour, as she passed over the money. The bells of the door rattled against the glass as she heard a quick, “Have a nice day!” above the shuffling of her hurried steps. She flopped into her car, juggling the keys for a moment before shoving them into the ignition. Heaving a sigh of relief, she glanced over at the white box on the passenger’s seat. This awful encounter deserved a reward, so she reached over and broke the tape’s seal. A flash of black magic marker caught her eye as the lid popped open. Grabbing the box into her lap, she read aloud the markings she had mistaken for some clerical scrawl: Call me. (334) 778 – 0928, Eddie.
The white box resided in her trashcan, crumpled amongst the scraps of last evening’s meal. Amanda didn’t have to get up to save the cardboard from the contaminated juices of a rogue tomato because she knew it was just an empty receptacle. There was no scrawl on its interior. Her interaction with the fat Slovenian woman who had actually served up these confections was minimal and absent of enthusiasm. Eddie toiled in the back, slapping dough against the counter with brutal intensity. He did not even glance in her direction.
How glorious it would have been to receive some semblance of acknowledgement from a cute man in one of those moments, seemingly straight out of a romantic comedy. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy loses girl. Boy regains girl’s affections and they live happily ever after. However, boy ignores girl in favor of pastries did not have the same desirable outcome as the movie plot which Amanda had imagined.
Amanda wandered from the kitchen to her bedroom, absent-mindedly handling t-shirts in an attempt to put on something suitable for the day. Peeling off her tank top, she stopped for a moment, catching her reflection in the mirrored closet doors. Breasts sagged like milky masses, falling across her swollen belly. Her sickly skin, pale as winter snow with none of the sparkle, stretched over widening hips. She traced fingertips over her torso, mapping out the irregularities and flaws. Reading her body’s Braille, it spoke of insecurities, infidelities, and incapacities. Letting out a deep sigh, Amanda stood for a moment, loathing the bulge of her stomach and the white jagged stretch marks that littered her figure.
