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.

Bonnie's Going To Hell

Valentine’s Day loomed ahead of Bonnie like a flashing neon sign reminding her that at this rate there was a very good chance she was going to die old and alone. Rolling her eyes, such things never bothered her. If people felt a need to celebrate their love with flower deliveries in front of watchful eyes, and if they needed a date on the calendar just to go to a nice restaurant together, well, they probably weren’t going to make it anyway.

She smiled knowingly to herself and, as always, sipped from her glass.

Bonnie had once had a boyfriend who insisted on buying her flowers every week. Initially he’d told her it was because he wanted her to know how special she was. Then, as the weeks turned into months, he admitted it probably had a little more to do with him liking the way they made her bedroom smell so pretty, and then, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, he’d come clean and admitted that it had a lot more to do with his own personal love of flowers. In particular he was a fan of orchids and she’d recently learned that he had a whole section of the garden outside the apartment he shared with his boyfriend, Lawrence, just dedicated to exotic varieties.

Sometimes Bonnie missed him a little and wished they could’ve stayed in touch, but then her life was not Will & Grace, and even yearly Christmas cards were just a little too much commitment for her. There was only one person she was prepared to even attempt any level of commitment with and it looked like another day had passed without her having to make any moves to realising who that man may be, and for that she was thankful.

So thankful she took another sip from her glass.

It was a groundhog day of an evening that left her with two options: stare at the television or stare at Facebook. Years earlier she’d learned that growing up as part of the MTV generation meant she had no idea how to sit still and read a book; a shame given how much she enjoyed writing them.

The divorced plus age two friend of her brother’s was still waiting to hear from her but her mind was no clearer. She prayed that something would save her from having to give him an answer. As wrong as it would be for the mother to secretly snatch the child in the night, it would really suit Bonnie if that happened. Not indefinitely of course, she wasn’t completely heartless, but long enough for them to cement a relationship strong enough that she didn’t run away at the first hurdle. Like when the child started crying the first time. Bonnie trembled at the thought.

Like divine intervention the phone sang to life beside her and shattered her daydream.

Katy Perry ringtone, of course.

‘He’s done it again,’ the voice sounded frantic. Bonnie nodded. She handled these situations regularly, plus, she just kind of liked to nod knowingly at regular intervals. That and stare with a murderous queen-like rage like Charlize Theron suggested. Through experimentation Bonnie had established that equally desirable results could be obtained from each.

‘What did your husband do that could possibly warrant screeching down the phone at me like a banshee?’ Bonnie swung her ponytail side-to-side, bored.

‘He wasn’t listening when I was talking to him. Honestly, I was at work all day, I came home and he wouldn’t even listen to me.’

It was a conversation that Bonnie had had a million times. Julie was the closest thing that Bonnie had to a best friend and this very scene played out with alarming regularity. At first the phone calls had made her anxious, threatening to steal her calm with the desperation in Julie’s voice, but she’d since learned that as much as she loved the woman, the truth was that Julie was a drama queen who seemed intent on running her marriage to Jack into the ground for no good reason other than that she could.

‘What were you talking about?’

‘The kids.’

‘The school kids?’ Bonnie screwed her nose up, trying not to side with Jack but finding herself living with his pain. Julie was an artist who was currently trying her hand at running art classes with school groups.

‘I was telling them about our painting today.’

‘Okay. And what did Jack do today?’

‘How would I know?’ Julie cried frantically into the phone. She was not handling the line of questioning with the level of calm that Bonnie would’ve preferred.

‘Well, I guess if I was Jack and you hadn’t asked me how I was and then you started prattling on about finger painting six year olds, I’d probably stop listening too.’

‘That’s my job!’ Julie protested.

‘Sorry, sweetie. That doesn’t make it anymore interesting to anyone except an over-bearing, finger-painting enthusiast, stay-at-home mother with a child in your class.’

Bonnie supposed she was going to hell when she died.

‘You’re so infuriating sometimes!’

The phone went dead in her hands and Bonnie couldn’t help but nod in agreement. Infuriating she may be, but it was also borderline impressive how she had managed to avoid yet another opportunity to give her potential date an answer by filling her evening with staring at her laptop screen and consuming copious amounts of red wine.

The truth was, Bonnie Martin would’ve been infuriated with herself too, if she could have been bothered.

This Ain't No Bridget.

Bonnie was no Bridget Jones though.

This wasn't a woman who was desperately searching for a man in the hope of tying herself down and giving birth to mini-Bonnies. The opposite of that was much closer to who she actually was. Her lack of motivation for her life stemmed from a failed career as a writer and from her dedicating too much of her precious time to Tumblr. Well, that and her drinking. It still wasn't clear to her how she felt about marriage - other than of course that she liked the idea of being adored forever, but also understood entirely that statistically that was unlikely given that her life was not the Hollywood movie that she had once hoped it would be - and while she loved her niece and nephew, whenever they were left in her care for more than a two hour stretch she went home exhausted and in need of more alcohol than a typical day's end would normally require.

It was a predicament of sorts. When you're in your thirties, or so Bonnie had found, men who weren't sold on the idea of children were significantly harder to get your hands on than men in their twenties, yet your twenties was exactly when you wanted a man willing to commit and take the next step. Even Bonnie herself had wanted that five years ago and had left a long-term partner who had refused to deliver on that desire. He had since also refused to deliver with the next woman and was in danger once again of being left for someone who was more willing to donate some sperm in the pursuit of propagation.

The thought made Bonnie shudder.

It was the very reason the divorced man was still waiting on a reply to the lunch date invitation he'd extended to her three days earlier. Divorced she could handle, divorced plus one age two was slightly more confronting.

That conundrum was the very thing that was occupying her thoughts the next day as she stared blankly at a computer screen and tried to ooze just enough negative attitude that people left her alone, but not so much that they might report her for breaching the company's code of conduct on interactions between employees or whatever it was called. It's not like she'd actually bothered to read the document.

Unfortunately some were not so adept at reading Bonnie's cool veneer.

'Hey, Bonnie. How was your weekend?'

Of all the things that annoyed Bonnie - humidity, children who hung around for more than two hours, dessert that wasn't chocolate-based, and people who didn't know how to pronounce 'pinot noir' - forced familiarity was definitely in the top ten things that made her want to grab random objects and either smash them against a wall or snap them over her knee.

Her eyes narrowed on the poor defenceless creature standing before her and forcing poor Bonnie to view them as a target.

'Fine.' Her words were curt. She let a beat pass after she'd spoken before she forced a candy-floss dripping smile. Shoot people a cutesy-pie look and they knew. They knew they were better off walking away than continuing to stay in her sights.

He took the hint. 'Oh, that's good.' Slowly he backed away and she kept her eyes on him the whole time to ensure he didn't get cocky and try with a follow-up question. 'Have a nice day'.

Not a question. She let it slide.

Look, it wasn't that she didn't like people, she wanted to scream at the room, it was just that small-talk was the most pointless of all talk. Had something happened that she wanted to discuss with this man she barely knew, she would've brought it up. She was staring at a screen, something she was paid to do, and he came along asking her questions that she didn't care about and which she wasn't paid to answer. She didn't need to be reminded that she had spent the entire weekend alone because all of her friends had gone and got married and had children. It was tough enough to have to deal with without having to relive it every time a near-stranger decided they wanted to make small-talk.

It truly was a wonder she made it through her days without resorting to violence more often, she thought to herself.

But back to the divorced plus age two guy. If she was clever she'd be able to deliberate on it long enough that at least three hours passed without her even answering a phone or replying to a single email. She knew because that was how long she'd drawn it out for on Friday when she'd first received the invitation.

Yep, she thought to herself, it is going to take something very rewarding to steal me away from this gig in a hurry. So she let the humidity continue to annoy her, she held off on giving him an answer, and instead she spent the morning staring at her old, failed manuscript and wondering whether she should throw it away like the trash it clearly was, or try to polish a diamond out of it's worthless pages. And in between those thoughts she took pleasure in ignoring all calls from her boss and routinely sending glares out in the direction of anyone who dared veer too close to her cubicle.

That was exactly how Bonnie Martin liked to spend the hours her lifestyle required her to kill at work.

Meet Bonnie.

It was too sticky to even contemplate moving. The heat was the main reason she'd been dreaming about leaving this place for the last eight years. The lack of a plan or any sort of clear desire or even something vaguely described as motivation was the reason she hadn't bothered. Wiping away the sweat beads that formed everywhere - and it really was everywhere. The backs of her legs, in her armpits, her neck, and that line on her upper lip that disgusted her so much - kept her busy enough.

The view couldn't be complained about though. A grey sky was trapping in the heat but even with the storm clouds rolling in over the ocean she was happy enough staring out at the murky coloured water. There were days it was pretty, serene, telling her this was a perfect place to really grow some roots and dig in for another eight years, but no view was ever going to make up for the perpetual drip of sweat and paranoia about her body odour.

Why would anyone live somewhere that jeans weren't an option for at least three months a year, she regularly asked herself, but here she was, hanging on because it really was just easier to think that she'd already met him and should wait around for him to realise it was her that he'd been dreaming about.

It was pathetic. She wasn't in denial about that. Worse though was that she wasn't entirely sure who 'him' was. It could've been her brother's best friend, the recently divorced man she'd been fantasising about since she was sixteen and who always dirty danced with her at weddings, clubs, and the like. Or maybe it was the man she'd briefly dated nearly two years before and who had managed to keep her infatuated for a period much longer than the length of time he stuck around for (six weeks had bought him two years of wondering what could've been, to be exact).

Look, the thing was, it didn't really matter who 'him' was, the main thing was that she had an excuse to stay and didn't need to metaphorically grab that bull by the horns and take a flying leap into uncertainty.

Thirty-two, singled five years ago and living in the past, athletic, not career focused but in a job that allowed her some comforts, it seemed silly to throw it all out the window just because of her eternal and passionate distaste for humidity.

Tourists, though. They were everywhere. Coupled with the humidity that was definitely enough reason to move somewhere that was dominated more by locals. Scowling at a loved-up couple sitting at the table beside hers, she took another sip of her wine. She drank too much. She knew that, yet she didn't care. It was the reason her once athletic frame now had a softer feel to it and she regularly reminded herself that there were some men out there who preferred this look. It made it okay in her mind, acceptable even, which allowed her to continue what she was doing without any guilt.

A tropical pizza sat in front of her and as much as the cliche of eating a tropical pizza in the tropics annoyed her to the point of considering ordering something different, it was the very same dish that she ate in this exact restaurant every single Sunday afternoon. Always alone. It wasn't that she didn't have friends as such, it was just more that making plans also annoyed her. Her inner control freak struggled with the idea of not being able to change her mind just because she felt like it, and so each Sunday she ate alone. Picking off the pineapple, then the topping, and then the base. Always ignoring the curious looks from whichever annoying tourist was sat beside her; she was a creature of habit.

The couple beside her now were no exception. They continued canoodling and it was as perfect a reason as any to continue drinking. The thing was - and she had this on good authority from a recently widowed woman she worked with - that loneliness tends to fuel drinking. The woman had practically okayed her continuing to drink with her lunchtime and evening meals, and without children, a partner or any real responsibility other than putting food in the dogs bowls daily and remembering to be at work by 7am, what reason did she have to not drink?

So it was settled. She would drink as much as she was legally allowed to whilst still being able to drive, and then she would remind herself that moving somewhere with an apartment in the city - thus negating the need to limit her alcohol consumption - was a perfect reason to finally move out of this seaside, tourist town that was so far removed from the real world and all the places she would rather be.

That was exactly how Bonnie Martin spent her Sunday afternoon.