Disorderly Conduct (The Academy #1)

Nina’s grandfather owned a donut shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for thirty years, but was forced to close its doors when wine bars and designer cupcake shops moved in to accommodate the younger scene. However, he was left with the deed to an off-site bakery where the donuts were actually produced. Small in size though it is, the space is valuable, convenient and was quite generously bestowed on Nina—a top-notch pastry chef in her own right—when she turned twenty-one.

So what do I have to offer this amateur operation? In the beginning . . . not a hell of a lot. I could cook a mean cannelloni—oh yes, I could—for one person. Maybe two. But apart from an associate’s degree in women’s studies from Borough of Manhattan Community College, I had no education of which to boast. Especially of the culinary variety. So I learned and I learned fast.

I took night classes on the cheap from culinary school students looking to fulfill teaching credits. I cooked, failed and tried again until I could be useful. Food became my escape, my focus—each time I opened the oven, I accomplished something new. Now, almost two years later, Nina and I hire college students with waitressing experience to carry my creations around on trays at events, which comes with its own brand of drama, but works out for the most part.

Owning a catering company wasn’t a dream I had since childhood or even college. Manhattan is such a kaleidoscope of opportunities—fashion, finance, fedora sales—that it took me a while to catch up with the rest of my eager beaver generation and decide on one path. Once I did, it was as though culinary arts had been waiting patiently for me to discover it, before leaping into my arms like a long-lost friend.

Bottom line is, Hot Damn Caterers is something I’m proud of. Something unexpected and wonderful. It requires all of my energy, and I’m happy to give it. I’ve actually built something out of nothing. I never thought I’d be able to say that.

Lately, though? I’ve been experiencing this sort of . . . anticlimax. Not sure how else to explain the feeling of bursting at the seams to share a triumph with someone, looking around and finding myself alone. Nina is great. Nay, the greatest. I couldn’t ask for a better friend or business partner. Nina has a boyfriend, though, and I can’t even remember the last time she slept at the apartment. We see each other at the Williamsburg kitchen occasionally when Nina needs help with a large baking order, but I’ve taken on the administrative side of Hot Damn and that work is done here, in the apartment. Where the only person to celebrate a new contract with is the dust bunny beneath my bed.

There have been these moments recently with Charlie when I had the urge to tell him a story about the prior evening’s catering job. Or throw him into a chair and force my newest savory puff pastries down his throat so he can give me star ratings. Isn’t that ridiculous? Yes, it is! It’s ridiculous. The beauty of our nonrelationship is the lack of goo. We are antigoo. Charlie couldn’t be happier with the arrangement, either. He blazes a trail out of here that still smokes an hour later. The closest he’s come to tasting my cooking was licking chocolate off my ass yesterday.

It’s probably a phase. I’m twenty-two. Everyone I pass on the street is coupled up or dating online. It’s only natural that I should get the false sense something is missing. The phase will pass. Will it start when I break things off with Charlie? Over time, I think it might. Why that scares me even more, I’m not sure.

I’m piping cream cheese into these neat little phyllo dough puffs when I get a knock at the door. Huh. Nobody buzzed from downstairs. It’s too early for Charlie to show, and he never stops by without texting first. Another one of our unofficial rules. And it can’t be Nina, unless she lost her keys. Although, she’d be shouting Brooklynese at me through the door by now. Weird.

Piping bag in hand, I pad toward the door in my socks and check the peep-hole. A version of me, about twenty years older, stares back from the hallway. “Mother?”

“The one and only.”

I force myself to stop gaping and unlock the door, although I use the piping bag hand, which results in cream cheese squirting all over the ground. “Shit.” I’m in a flustered limbo, stuck between opening the damn door and trying to clean up the lake of cheese before my mother comes in and thinks I’m a slob. “Uhhh. Hold on.”

I use my shirt to clean up the cheese. Hold your applause, ladies and gentlemen.

When my mother walks into the apartment, she looks like a hummingbird deciding on which flower to land. Or maybe an adult version of the hokey pokey. She sets one foot in the kitchen, cocks a hip, backs out. Turns in a circle on the way into my living room, perches on the couch arm, stands again. Then she reaches out with toned, tastefully tanned arms. “Baby girl.”

“Hi.” I walk into her embrace, inhaling the familiar scent of Dolce & Gabbana Velvet Sublime. I step back, giving her outfit the same once over she’s giving mine. “You look amazing. What brings you to my neighborhood?”

“Oh, you know. This and that.”

This is when things get strange. My mother, who never settles, never stops chattering, gossiping or running her fingers over everything in the vicinity . . . she just winds down. And flops—flops—onto my couch. I’ve never seen her execute a move that fell short of elegant, but she’s literally slumping into the pillows, hand to her forehead. Someone has died. That’s the first conclusion I land on, but immediately dismiss it as absurd. We have no people. My father was never in the picture, my grandmother made for greener pastures a decade ago. There’s no one.

Unless. “Oh, God. Did Hula Hoop die?”

“No,” she cries, her spine shooting straight. “Why would you say that?”

Okay, so her half-blind poodle is still up and running. “I don’t know. You seem distraught.”

She holds up a hand as she visibly calms herself down. “Hula is fine. She’s downstairs waiting in my Uber.”

“I guess you’re not planning on staying long.” My throat aches as I say the words, but none of that comes across in my tone. The no commitment rule my mother taught me is a facet of our relationship, too. As a child, I remember her being somewhat warmer. Maternal with occasional flashes of bittersweet joy. She was the only Carmichael woman since my great-grandmother to disregard the three mistress rules—and she was rewarded with me in her belly. The summer she turned twenty-one, she interned at a retail buyer in the fashion district. She fell madly in love with her boss, only to arrive at work one day and find him in the back room with the lunch cart girl, rogering her against the copy machine.

The three rules cemented themselves once more for my mother after that. Not only did she come back from maternity leave and bust her ass until she usurped my father from his position as manager, she moved to a much higher level within the company, fired his ass and never relied on or trusted another man again. They are nothing more than one month’s worth of free entertainment to her and the more unavailable, the better.