Cake Batter High Dive
What Does Cake Feel Like?
A Quick Note:
I added pictures of my dog throughout to break up the text to ease that effect. If you’re reading this on your phone and it’s still a headache, I’d recommend reading it on your computer.
Lastly, thank you as always for reading. This is my first piece of fiction that’s put out to the public—so I’m quite excited. I hope you enjoy it, but if you don’t that’s ok; at the very least you can enjoy the pictures of my dog.
Cake Batter High Dive by Pierson Wells
Martha let go of all her tension in one big sigh. She folded into her purple couch and after a moment of silence groaned to get the rest of the tension out. She soldiered back up to a sitting position and looked around at her now-empty apartment. It was a fun party, but she wanted to be in her pajamas. Martha would’ve scolded herself a year ago. Back then she was always trying to do more, increase her social circle, and go to every party. Now? Fuck that shit.
She had finally reached it—or an outer island of it—Nirvana. If she were to think back, she could place three people in her mind who displayed this swaying sense of indifference. People who had truly accepted the idea of not caring about what other people think; internalized it to the point of minerals in their blood.
Like any spiritual pilgrim, you can want that enlightened state—holiness or whatever you want to call it—but wanting, accepting, and believing is not enough to get you there. Martha had wanted to not care so much about what people thought of her. She ached for it in every social interaction. She accepted the logic behind it, she knew it was silly to care what others think. Yet, no apple fell on her head.
Now here Martha was, not caring. How beautiful. She relaxed in her solitude, and a recent thought sprung up. She paused, remembering how it had crept up on her at the party, and how weird it had been. How, at the same time, erotic it had felt to think it. She looked over to the counter and saw the gleam of the plastic container under the kitchen light. The cake inside was only ten feet away. She wondered if she would do it—or if she even could.
Martha stood up and made her way over to the cake, still not entirely believing herself.
Martha inched her face closer until the cake was less than a pinky from her nose. The cake’s pink roses of icing fawned the rims of the glacier-white vanilla cake. Martha smelled the cherries that added bumps to the surface and wondered what it would feel like on her skin.
Questions became sweaty in her mind.
She decided to do it.
Martha’s heart started to jog. She loaded her lungs with short, rapid breaths and gripped the counter. Martha then arched her head back and was encouraged by memories of her time diving competitively. She hoped that suffocating between the doughy layers would replicate that. She wanted that feeling again, to feel submerged.
Martha began her violent plunge when her front door opened and Mary walked in. Martha pumped the brakes on her head-dive and smiled at Mary.
“Oh hey, what’s up?” Martha asked, leaning over the cake like a crazed scientist with a microscope.
Mary scrunched her face. “Uh, I forgot my keys…,” She said. “What’re you doing?”
“Me? Oh, I’m just admiring the cake.”
Mary nodded her head and scanned the apartment for her keys. She grabbed them silently, gave Martha a hesitant smile, and left.
Not taking a second chance, Martha plunged her head into the cake. Her head sunk into the middle with a wet plop. It formed around her face like a thick mask and she was in love. She would’ve lived in that moment if she could. Her lungs, however, quit on her and she pulled her face out.
It was everything Martha had wanted it to be. And, it wasn’t enough. Martha needed to feel that way again. Those few seconds of muffled silence echoed like taunts in her head.
Martha had the jitters the next time it happened. It was two weeks later at Mary’s birthday party, or as advertised to the invitees: One year closer to 50! Cocktail & Black-Tie Theme.
When Martha saw the invitation from her best friend of 20 years, she burned it. She never understood Mary’s infatuation with being older. Since high school, Mary had dressed like she was thirty. It was fun back then. How could you be mad at a kid for playing dress-up?
It became frustrating when Mary began to skip summer trips or spring breaks in college for any opportunity to spice up her resume.
Mary would say, “I’ll have all the time in the world once I’m set. Imagine the trips then.”
Martha was still imagining. There was always another rung in the ladder to climb, how could Mary not see that? Mary spent more time chasing her fictional dragon than with her friends. So until that stopped, Martha was burning every card.
Martha looked over to the pile of birthday cards in Mary’s kitchen and wanted to burn the shit out of them. She was in there to catch her breath, but seeing the cards worked her up even more. They had been playing charades in ‘the parlor room’ when Mary mimed something sick and dying. Guesses were thrown out: Disease, old age, death. The wind-up timer chimed and Mary shook her head.
“You silly geese,” Mary said. “The word was youth.”
Oh, the partygoers said drawing out the word. They murmured about how deep and poetic it was. Mary smiled, the praise opening her mouth like a flower in spring. That was when Martha bit her lip and left for some air.
Martha had entered the kitchen, and made herself another glass of champagne, she was boiling with thoughts. Would Mary still think youth was a disease if it had been stolen from her? How could she hate something she’s never had taken away from her? Martha had almost screamed those questions at Mary in the living room.
But she didn’t because it would just make Mary pity her. It wouldn’t start a conversation. The partygoers would say oh in the same drawn-out way and give polite murmurs about how insightful a comment it was. That’s not what Martha wanted. What Martha wanted was not to feel belittled. She didn’t need praise or agreement, just understanding.
Martha’s chest felt tight and she felt like she couldn’t escape There was no room for air. She looked down at her glass and gave it a swirl. She watched the motion of the liquid and allowed the memories to take her.
With her eyes closed, she slipped her foot out of her flat and put her toes on the tiled floor. The sounds of charades in the other room became the cheering parents. The tiles became wet in memory and her foot curled from the sticky feeling of other people’s feet-prints.
The AC clicked on and Martha was suddenly on top of the high dive. The fluorescent lights dulled everything but her heartbeat and the goosebumps on her clammy skin. Martha began to smile when Mary walked into the kitchen.
“Are you ok?” Mary asked.
Martha opened her mouth but decided to hold her breath.
“Yeah, I’ve just been overwhelmed recently.”
Mary tilted her head like she was looking at Martha for the first time. She was still in the doorframe and looked at it and then at Martha.
“Shit,” Mary said.
Mary went over to the bottle of champagne and refilled her glass.
Martha poked Mary in her shoulder and raised her eyebrows.
“Hey, it’s OK,” Martha said.
“Are you sure?” Mary asked. “You have that look like you’re thinking about diving.”
Martha waved it away. “That old news?”
Mary didn’t buy it. “You always get weird on my birthdays.”
“Well,” Martha said.
One of the other guests—Martha didn’t know who—came in and paused halfway through the door.
“Oh, my bad,” they said. “Am I interrupting something?”
“No, no,” Martha said. “I was just catching up with Mary.”
Martha shot Mary a look and motioned for her to go. Mary hesitated but then began to leave.
“Hey, it’ll get easier as you get older,” Mary said. “Times the best medicine, right? And I’m here with you til our bones are dust.”
Mary left and Martha soaked in her thoughts. She hadn’t expected the sweetness from Mary but her last comment was enough for Martha to ignore it. How could she expect Mary to understand if she saw the past as meaningless?
Martha sighed and slid to a sitting position on the floor. The only thing that ever gave Martha that encompassing sense of acceptance was when she was ten feet under the water. She hadn’t felt that in a long time. The moment with the cake gave her that, if only for a few seconds. Damn, how nice it had been to feel that way again.
Martha’s eyes drifted over to Mary’s chocolate birthday cake that sat plum on the counter. The sunshine captured it like a posed Instagram model and Martha began to ache. A thought snaked to her mind, she hadn’t done chocolate, would that feel different?
She couldn’t though. This wasn’t her cake.
Martha settled on buying one on the way home instead. She could even try pie or a cupcake if she wanted to experiment. A laugh from the other room interrupted her thoughts.
Through the door, Martha heard Mary say through giggles, “Seriously though, being young is such a curse!”
Martha stood up, walked over to the cake, and plunged her head in.
Chocolate, indeed, felt different than Vanilla.
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