family
Going up
Theirs was a hate-hate relationship, but there were payoffs. For Casey, it was money. Paltry, but enough to get her closer to where she needed to be. For Ryan, it was social mobility. With her in his life, he got to experience the city like he never would on his own. When they stepped out together, they owned the Upper East side. Nobody remarked on the age gap – she was 17 years his senior – yet privately it was the thing that put them most at loggerheads. They barely had a thing in common. Casey was a singer, a dancer, fully alive to the Manhattan offering, an Australian abroad, brimming with dreams. Ryan was single minded, quarrelsome, self-absorbed, contrary. A New York native, not quite three years old.
By Megan Anderson5 years ago in Fiction
One More Please Slice!
The smell of fresh coffee woke me up. Coffee ready so early in the morning! What am I saying? Of course, there is coffee! she has been up for a couple of hours now, I am late by her standards. The sunlight coming through the window and the singing of the birds reminded me that I was home, it was peaceful, nothing like the city mornings rushed and chaotic; no not here, not this week. It was finally time to refresh, to get back to basics, and coffee was the first step. I got up and made my way over to the kitchen where I was greeted with a unison of good mornings and was handed a large steaming hot cup of coffee and with it a homemade muffin. Definitely not the city, this was cozy and full of love.
By Claudia Rodriguez5 years ago in Fiction
Winston's Chocolate Cake
Vivaldi’s Spring blared loudly from Winston's phone. Oh man, he thought. Another day. He quickly fumbled to find his phone, which was lost somewhere in his bed. He felt the phone under his pillow, but it clattered on the floor as he grabbed it.
By Suzane Andre5 years ago in Fiction
Let Her Eat Cake
‘Happy birthday to you.’ The lights switched off as Aisha’s family and friends sang the hollow, happy tune. But Aisha didn't feel happy. Twenty two. Another year older. Another year closer to settling down, getting a nine to five job, locking into a life-binding contract with another human and becoming a baby manufacturing machine. Aisha wanted none of it, and yet it was closing in on her, waiting to suffocate her. She was enjoying the darkness of the room until her mother rounded the corner with a gigantic chocolate cake. It was topped with twenty two, perfectly spaced, bright candles. The one thing Aisha had requested for her birthday had been ignored. She had asked for no cake. Her family knew how much she hated it. The taste. The texture. And yet here one was, walking toward her, glaringly bright in the darkness, like the light of death was coming toward her. And it was being served by her mother with a smile on her face. A smile made demonic by the candles that shadowed it.
By Chloe Anne5 years ago in Fiction
Top Tier
It didn't even matter that the sprinkles were freezer burnt. It had been very important to me on the day of our wedding that our cake had sprinkles. Flecks of brilliant colour, sparkling amid light puffs of airy, white frosting. Confetti to emphasize the celebration that was bursting out from my heart.
By Christy Davis5 years ago in Fiction
Just a Touch of Vanilla
“I learned to bake when I was your age,” my Grandma Helen said to me one summer morning. I was eight years old, visiting the big Victorian on Vine Street, which had come down through the family through many generations, its walls catching our family history like a spider catches flies in her net. Until that moment, I’d felt unseen by this woman. Now I was to learn something my father often called ‘the family secret’. She was going to show me how to bake Devil’s Food cake, but not from some cheap store mix. I was going to learn the real recipe, the one that had been passed down through my family’s generations.
By Kaiya Hart5 years ago in Fiction
Sara and the beetle
“A new sister!” said our mum. But I didn’t really understand how it would be. My strongest memory of those early days was getting to have a sleepover up the road at Dory’s when mum popped Sas out. Dory’s older sister Inga was impossibly sophisticated and had eyes that were slanty and dark like an Indian princess. She smelt of patchouli and used to pinch me when no-one was looking.
By Jane Cornes-Maclean5 years ago in Fiction
Twelve Fifteen
I leave the kitchen at 12:00 with the cake. The lit candles dance off the walls to the tune which I am not carrying. My steps are measured. I don’t want to catch a heel on the rug. I keep an eye out for Jazz and Juniper who have been known to dart between my legs at the worst possible moments. I should have locked them in the bathroom but then they wouldn’t be there for the cake. They should be there for cake.
By Vera Patterson5 years ago in Fiction
Finder's Keepers
Her favorite thing about the house she had bought two years after her divorce was the small woods behind it. Sitting in her bedroom, she could look out the window at the trees and imagine she was in the middle of a forest somewhere, secluded and private, instead of in the middle of a suburban neighborhood outside Atlanta.
By Shelly Slade5 years ago in Fiction
The Purple Triangle
Anya sat in the dark at her little wooden kitchen table and carefully tore a page from her small Bible. She folded the page into a thin strip, rolled it up tightly into a cylinder, inserted it into a drinking straw, and cut off the excess. Tomorrow, she thought, I’ll bring this to Yuri.
By Gigi Gibson5 years ago in Fiction
