Cupcakes & Valentine's Day

The pounding in her head was not making it easier to concentrate. It was becoming a yearly tradition, one that she knew she was too old to continue indulging in, but which she indulged in all the same.

Last night had been the eve of Valentine’s Day and with her greatest prospect being a date with Darren on Sunday, it had seemed like the best way to celebrate the eve of having to endure the pain of falsified declarations of love was with a drink. Or however many drinks were contained in a bottle. When the desire to let a tear escape had started, Bonnie had dragged herself off to bed and passed out in a drunken stupor.

Dressed in a black peplum and fitted skirt, she stared at the whiteboard, analysing it.

‘Are you ever going to tell me what that code is?’ The bald man suffering from middle-aged spread who sat at the desk across her divider rarely spoke to her. For the most part Bonnie scared him. She came in dressed like a high-class lawyer, oozing the attitude and pout of Victoria Beckham, and hating on everything that the job had to offer. At 55 and with two teenage daughters damaging his sleeping patterns, Richard had no idea how to handle a woman like Bonnie who clearly knew exactly how to handle men.

‘No.’ Bonnie continued staring, but a flutter in the back of her brain made her rethink her position. ‘Yes, actually.’ She turned her head towards Richard. ‘It’s my lifeline. Once it’s gone, so am I.’

‘That doesn’t sound good,’ Richard swallowed nervously and began to fidget, now uncomfortable that he’d been engaged in her stare. ‘Should I call someone?’

‘Do you need to call someone?’ she asked dryly. This was bordering on conversation for the sake of conversation and that never ended well. Bonnie heard herself though and felt something that closely resembled guilt. She didn’t have the most pleasant tone, at times she irked herself. It wasn’t that she wanted people to be terrified of interacting with her, more so that she needed them to give her some space and only talk about the things she wanted to talk about, and only talk about them when she wanted to talk about them.

‘Um, no, but I thought maybe you were feeling down. I don’t know. Do you even have that emotion?’ A row of sweat beads had formed on Richard’s top lip, just above where the quiver had started and his eyes widened as his brain comprehended what he’d just said to her. The sight made Bonnie giggle like a schoolgirl.

‘Calm down, Richard. I promise not to eat your heart out while it’s still beating in your chest.’

She actually saw the way he released his breathe, like for a second he had literally been fearing for his life. ‘I’m sorry you’re alone on Valentines Day, Bonnie.’

The smile disappeared and her voice developed a crisp edge. ‘I’m perfectly lonely, okay? I’m alone because I choose to be alone. People can throw all the roses around that they want on one day of the year, pretending that they’re more loved up than I am, but the truth my friend is that they are every bit as alone as I am. The difference is that I choose to be, whilst they have to lie next to the same person each and every night pretending that they can’t feel that emptiness inside that stems only from either choosing the wrong person or from falling out of love. So thank you, Richard, but let me assure you that there is nothing wrong with being alone.’

Turning back to her computer her fingers smashed at the keyboard  with a ferocity that threatened to send a few keys flying.

‘Well, anyway, my wife made some Valentine’s Day cupcakes for me and the kids and she thought you might want one. Just a bit of fun really, what with where we work. She told me to share them with my work friends, but really, you’re the only person who talks to me.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘You don’t have to have it if you don’t want to.’ Richard's face dropped in shame.

‘It’s a cupcake, Richard. Of course I want it. I mean are you serious that no one else talks to you?’

He didn’t need to speak. The crestfallen look spoke for him. Richard had always struck her as the type who would’ve been bullied extensively during his formative years for being a little too shy, a little too soft. His wife, every bit as gentle, had always struck Bonnie as someone who oozed all the nicety of a country comfort magazine. Standing tall, she took two long strides to cover the distance between her desk and his. She reached out and smiled with all the warmth that her cold heart could muster. ‘Thank you for the cupcake, Richard. I hope you and your wife enjoy some time together this evening. And these people?’ she gestured with a dismissive, backward wave of her hand. ‘Fuck them. You’re better than them. There’s a reason you’re the only person in this place that I let talk to me.’

Bonnie didn’t see it because she’d turned to walk away, but with those simple words she drew the first smile from Richard that had crossed his face in the four years since he’d been doing time in that office. And once she was out of his gaze Bonnie smiled too. Richard and his wife had just given her her first Valentines present in six years. Licking icing off her fingers she smiled devilishly and devoured the entire thing in two bites.

Bonnie Martin was nothing if not complex.