Mascara on the Wind

The breeze blows cold. I’m on a balcony, looking down at her. There’s something surreptitious about it. She doesn’t know that I’m watching. It’s not quite right.

But still…

What else can I do?

Look, it started so plainly. I was attending a friend's wedding. Things had gone horribly wrong. The cake had not arrived, the groom was as drunk as a lord, and the weather was precipitous, to say the least.

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It was raining cats and dogs.

She arrived in the rain with the wind blowing up a storm.

I was on the balcony, looking down.

She held a broken thing in her hands. I distinctly remember that the car windows—her car’s windows—were wound down. Wound down so that the rain could get in.

Weird. I thought it was weird.

Her tears, when she looked at the cake in her hands, streamed mascara through the rain. The breeze blew her tears across her face in a disturbing pattern. A pattern of interlaced, black pain.

My heart flipped.

Her vulnerability blew at me like a tornado.

I wanted to fix her cake. I wanted to wipe the mascara away.

The next thing I knew, I was down in the kitchen dungeons. I watched her deliver the broken cake.
There was an unfathomable silence when she slid her offering onto the stainless steel countertop.
Mostly, I remember how perfect the countertop looked as opposed to the cake.

It was a disaster. and I began to giggle.

Seriously, I laughed. After all, what was a person to do?

She cried, and I laughed.

I can only say that she was incredibly vocal. The crying didn’t help, but still, she had our attention.

“Why is it that the cake is always the last thing to arrive? In the old days, we used to have cake that was doused in brandy and knew how to survive. Why do we no longer have those kinds of cakes?” The head chef was circumspect in his musings, and, of course, he held our attention.

The head chef was a big man with veins that created their own distinct map, running up and down his muscled arms. He sported a curled mustache, which would’ve looked ridiculous on anyone else.

“Cut it,” he suggested.

When everyone was silent. He showed us how.

In a flash of whipped cream, cherries, and a sharp knife, he reconfigured the cake into a masterpiece that shaped its own destiny.

It was a spectacular thing to behold.

She clapped her hands, and her blonde hair fell in a fetching question mark across her now bright face.

“You are a genius,” she said, and the chef bowed.

Applause rang out, and the day, as they say, was saved.

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That was another wedding, and it turned out just fine.

This wedding is different, but the same chill wind seems to be blowing.

She makes cakes, and he caters weddings. We all run in the same crowd. We do, but I’m only a waiter, not a magician.

I’m on a balcony, staring down at them…and I’m watching him kiss her.

There’s music filtering into my space on the back of the wind :

Oh, ohhh, oh!

I’m not the guy she’s taking home.

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Inspiration is a song :