Cupcakes

Chapter 5: Happiness is Icing

Chapter 5: Happiness is Icing

I couldn’t believe how happy my ex-porn star lover was. Richter was in seventh heaven, creating the best sugary sweets in the tri-state area. His talent was remarkable, which only provided the store with more success. Customers flocked into the bakery and wanted to meet him, the man behind the many delectable pastries and sugary honey buns. Among them were sweet-toothed grannies, culinary buffs who were buffed, and an arrangement of young and handsome men, looking for a taste of my lover’s icing.

Icing was happiness for Richter, I had learned. No longer was the man on pornographic movie sets in West Hollywood with beefy and oiled jocks, easy fluffers, and a handful of shitty directors who were looking to take advantage of his skin to make lots of cash, although Richter admitted to me that he never had a problem with their animalistic nature.

Once particular customer that frequented Cupcakes and wanted to take advantage of the head baker, was Trafford Gray. Gray was a physical fitness trainer for the exuberant and wealthy of Snowden, and a part-time health professor at West End College. Jarr called him Mr. Stud-A-Muffin. I believed that Gray wanted more than sugar cookies at Cupcakes. Instead, he came for my lover. Gray was a rugged beauty with his bald head, muscled neck, and steel beam-wide shoulders. He came sniffing around the bakery twice a week and usually left with a loaf of inexpensive Italian bread, which he probably threw away because he refused to eat carbohydrates for fear that they would have ruined his muscular frame.

Sniff. Sniff. Sniff. Never would he let me wait on him at the three glass display cases. Instead, he always looked over one of my shoulders, glancing toward the kitchen area. Then he would say, “Is Richter here? He usually waits on me, if you don’t mind.”

“Richter is one step away from being married,” I said with stern vocals, getting my point across.

“I understand,” he said, nodding. “Can you please give this to him from me?” He pulled out a cream-colored envelope with Richter written on the front in script. Gray winked at me and said, “It’s kind of private.”

Of course it was, I thought, and rolled my eyes at the chiseled creep who wanted my man. “I’ll see that he gets it.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Less than five minutes later he purchased his bread and walked out of the store. Once he was out of sight, I sliced the envelope open, pulled out a piece of navy blue Vellum, which read in bright yellow: You’re Invited To A Party. Bring A Sweet Treat. The address was listed on the invite: 293 Erie Presque Road. The date listed was the following night, and the time was eight sharp. At the bottom of the invitation it read in bright yellow: Bring A Skimpy Trunk For A Buddy Swim.

“I don’t think so, Mr. Gray,” I said, ripped the invitation into seven pieces, and tossed them away.