Bloom E-Book

Delilah S. Dawson

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 246

Beschreibung

A sweet sapphic romance takes a deadly dark turn in this sharp-as-a-knife novella with the slow build menace of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber—from a New York Times-bestselling author hailed by Chuck Wendig as "a storyteller working at the top of her class." Rosemary meets Ash at the farmers' market. Ash—precise, pretty, and practically perfect—sells bars of soap in delicate pastel colors, sprinkle-spackled cupcakes stacked on scalloped stands, beeswax candles, jelly jars of honey, and glossy green plants. Ro has never felt this way about another woman; with Ash, she wants to be her and have her in equal measure. But as her obsession with Ash consumes her, she may find she's not the one doing the devouring… Told in lush, delectable prose, this is a deliciously dark tale of passion taking an unsavory turn...

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

Acknowledgments

About the Author

PRAISE FOR BLOOM:

“A cottagecore dream turned nightmare, astonishing in its beauty and violence. Every page drips with delicious dread. This bite-sized tale is perfectly wicked.”

RACHEL HARRISON, author of Such Sharp Teeth

“Sumptuous, lyrical prose meets horrific brutality in Delilah S. Dawson’s harrowing tale of obsession and cruelty. An elegantly written nightmare, Bloom will beguile unsuspecting readers before finally slicing deep and drawing blood.”

ERIC LAROCCA, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“Dawson has brought the kind of irresistible treat you’ve been hungering for. Sapphic longing with a dash of darkness—the perfect recipe. Superbly seductive.”

HAILEY PIPER, author of A Light Most Hateful

“Sensual, smart, biting, and downright nasty, Bloom is a dizzying, heady feast for the discerning palate. I devoured this book in one greedy sitting.”

PAUL TREMBLAY, author of The Pallbearers Club

“Delicate and murderous, Bloom is the perfect encapsulation of a subgenre I’d only heard of in theory but now exists in its final form: cozy horror. Delight in the berries, blood and cupcake frosting—find yourself enraptured by the farmers’ market aesthetic as designed by the Mads Mikkelson version of Hannibal Lecter.”

CHUCK WENDIG, author of The Book of Accidents

“Like an unwary visitor to the Goblin Market, I was swept away by Delilah S. Dawson’s Bloom, with its lush cottagegore settings and heart of absolute darkness.”

ALLY WILKES, author of All the White Spaces

“Gruesome and lovely, Bloom is compulsively readable. Like being slowly boiled alive, by the time you see the rot beneath the beauty, it’s already too late. You’re hooked.”

KRISTI DEMEESTER, author of Such a Pretty Smile

BLOOM

Also by Delilah S. Dawson

The Violence

THE BLUD SERIES

Wicked as They Come

Wicked As She Wants

Wicked After Midnight

Wicked Ever After

THE HIT SERIES

Hit

Strike

Servants of the StormMidnight at the Houdini

MineCamp Scare

Star Wars: Phasma

Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire

Star Wars Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade

Disney Mirrorverse: Pure of Heart

The Minecraft Mob Squad Series

THE SHADOW SERIES, WRITTEN AS LILA BOWEN

Wake of Vultures

Conspiracy of Ravens

Malice of Crows

Treason of Hawks

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Bloom

Print edition ISBN: 9781803365756

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803365763

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: October 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2023 D. S. Dawson. All rights reserved.

D. S. Dawson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For my beloved daughter Rhys, a brilliantartist and baker, who requested it.

Thank you for the inspiration.And the cupcakes.

 1 

The modern world is severely lacking in magic, and those who crave it are at a constant disadvantage because they are desperate and it’s in short supply. Some places—amusement parks, country fairs, museums, old bookstores—can temporarily fill the void, but there will always be people who check every armoire for a door to Narnia, every rabbit hole for a road to Wonderland. One such person is Ro, born Rosemary Dutton, age twenty-seven, whose life imploded last year, leaving her an absolute wreck.

Ro has spent so much time deconstructing the great works of literature that she has completely failed to live an adventure of her own. Now, finally finished with her PhD at Columbia, and having published her thesis in book form with a small press and secured an assistant professorship at the University of Georgia, she is trying to create her own everyday magic. That’s why she has come to the farmers’ market enlivening the tree-lined park just off campus. There is a certain sorcery to such a market: rows of stalls and tents filled with homemade cinnamon buns, leggy tomato plants, bear-shaped jars of wildflower honey, vegetables still dusted with dirt, rosy peaches with raindrops trapped in their fur.

This is Ro’s first visit, and she can feel the glitter in the air. This place feels like Stardust and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Labyrinth had an orgy and popped out a slightly bougie baby behind a baseball field. Sure, there was a cute market near Books of Wonder back in the city, but there’s something otherworldly about this place, with the sun filtering through ancient oaks and butterflies billowing through the crowd. Ro is the kind of optimist who was disappointed to discover that the only alchemy behind the hedonistic glory of a handcrafted Starbucks frappé is three pumps of mass-produced sugar syrup, and she suspects that things here are more genuine somehow.

So far, she has a pint of strawberries, a loaf of bread, and a log of cheese made from the milk of a goat named Belinda, according to the label. She’s been in town only half a year and hasn’t made any friends yet, and is definitely not ready to date again, but this market makes her feel like she’s out in the world, doing things, hoping kismet will come calling. Most of the time, she is happy to vacillate between home and classroom, feverishly researching her next book and striving for a good word from her department head even though it’s only her second semester. She can get annoyingly hermetic and obsessive about her work, but this charming bazaar is making her feel like destiny is right around the corner. Right here, right now, she wants to be the kind of woman who carries a jute tote bag as the summer breeze blows through her long, loose hair, the kind of woman who knows exactly what to wear and where to go and what to say. She has always longed to be effortless—effortlessly cool, effortlessly confident, effortlessly thin.

That last one definitely never came to pass. She thinks of herself as curvy on a good day, chubby on a bad day. Most days, she’s somewhere in between, feeling doomed to a body that isn’t what she would choose, like she accidentally stepped into the wrong dress and now can’t get it unzipped.

As it turns out, it takes a lot of effort to seem effortless. It takes patience, which is not her bailiwick, plus a sense of preternatural chill that she has never possessed. Ro would like to be breezy, but she seems to swing between periods of dedicated, obsessive effort and slothlike, stubborn inertia. She’d like to think her unpredictability is quirky, but in their big, final fight, Erik called it impossible.

Erik said a lot of things then, most of them cruel.

Ro is still recovering.

He would hate this farmers’ market. Would call it pedestrian and tedious. Would poke fun at Ro’s attempt to blend into this colorful suburban college town when he craves the sharp, shiny sophistication of New York. But it doesn’t matter what Erik would think, because after three years of dating, one day Ro found a pink lady’s razor and a small box of tampons hidden in the back of his bathroom cabinet, did a little digging around in his iPad, and discovered he preferred the sharp, shiny hipbones of one of his sophomore honors students.

Well, she’ll take a sleepy Saturday in the sunshine over getting negged by the guy who broke her heart any day. Her mother cried when she found out they’d split, bemoaning the wedding bells she was now certain would never ring for her weird, studious daughter. There are no rich men in academia, her mother told her when she was filling out college applications. Better to get a bachelor’s degree in something money-adjacent and snag a man with a trust fund. Ro’s middle-class dad never reached his potential in sales and then died at fifty, leaving two mortgages, and Ro knows her expected duty as an only child was to marry well and provide a comfortable retirement for her mother back home in Savannah.

Oops.

Her mother kept trying to set her up with the divorced older sons of her church friends, and during their last fight they both said things that can’t be unsaid.

And so here she is: single, employed, and with her mom blocked on her phone. No contact with Erik or her last close relative. They both warned her she’d be lonely, and she is, but in a good way. She doesn’t hate it here, but she misses New York and fully believes that’s where she’ll end up long term, once she has a few years of teaching under her belt.

The market is unexpectedly crowded, with dozens of people lined up outside of a taco truck wedged in between the white plastic tents. As Ro considers whether or not buying macarons is worth having to talk to the Ms. Frizzle wannabe selling them, there’s a loud thump and a screech. A somethingdoodle the color of toast breaks free of the thickest part of the crowd and darts past Ro with a stolen sausage in its mouth. She lurches back, tripping over a knee-high boy wearing a monkey backpack with a leash attached to it.

“I’m so sorry,” she says to the harried mother, who snatches up her crying spawn like Ro tried to kidnap him.

“You need to be more careful,” the mother says before shaking her head and towing her child away.

Ro watches them go, slightly baffled by the fact that the offended mom was about her age. She still feels seventeen inside, not nearly old enough to be responsible for anything needier than her cat. How do other people already have things figured out? Until now, Ro has lived for her grades and her work and, much to her dismay, Erik. She’s not sure what comes next.

She feels eyes on her, a soft and curious prickle like moth feet, and she turns to find the most beautiful girl in the world staring at her. While attempting not to flatten a child, Ro has somehow managed to stumble into a stall she hasn’t seen before, and the girl behind the counter looks like a goddamn elf, like the apotheosis of cottagecore, like if a Studio Ghibli heroine could be a pale white girl with long hair as tawny and true as corn silk. On the table before her are bars of soap in delicate pastel colors, sprinkle-spackled cupcakes stacked on scalloped stands, butter-gold beeswax candles, jelly jars of honey with thick blocks of comb and gingham tops tied with ribbons. The sides of her stand feature wooden shelves crowded with glossy green plants in grower pots—plants with round leaves like lily pads and pointy leaves like puppet tongues and wide, veiny leaves like elephant ears. Ro doesn’t know their names, but she’s seen them on Instagram.

“See anything you like?” the girl says with a knowing smile.

For a moment, Ro can only stare at her, taking in the details of her ice-blue eyes and her constellation of freckles and her perfect, tiny teeth and the creamy skin revealed by the low-cut neck of her dress, which is lavender and long and airy and looks homemade, exactly like the sort of thing that should be worn right before someone is abducted to Faerie.

Ro doesn’t know what to say. Words are her world, and yet she is speechless. This happens sometimes. She understands books so much better than she understands people. That’s why she writes non-fiction, and that’s why she has trouble making friends and has mostly dated very nerdy guys who share her esoteric literary interests.

Before this moment, she was fairly certain she was straight, but now she is thrown into utter chaos.

“What flavor are the cupcakes?” she asks, deflecting.

The girl—because yes, of course she is a woman, and yet there is something uniquely fresh and innocent about her—points with a long, graceful finger. “Lavender, lemon, strawberry, vanilla. All the chocolate are gone, I’m afraid.”

“Do you make them yourself?” Because yes, yes, the more questions she asks, the more the girl has to answer and the longer Ro can stand here being mesmerized. She briefly wonders if eating the girl’s food is anything like Persephone slipping rose-red seeds between her lips in the Underworld.

“I do. It’s my grandmother’s recipe—well, the base recipe, at least. I like to experiment with frosting flavors.” She points to a dainty porcelain tray loaded with samples of cake, each bite-sized cylinder tufted with frosting. “Try one, if you like. The cupcakes are four dollars each or four for fifteen.”

Ro plucks one of the lavender samples and pops it in her mouth, painfully aware that the girl is watching her with sharp eyes. Flavor explodes on her palate—she’s never tasted frosting this silky before. She rubs it between her tongue and the roof of her mouth, luxuriating in it. Their eyes meet with an electric shock, and she feels seen, she feels known. She feels magic.

“Good God,” she murmurs as she chews. “That’s the most flawlessly unctuous thing I’ve ever tasted.”

The girl’s eyes brighten, and she smiles like a cat—she has a crooked canine.

Ro wants to lick it.

And she doesn’t know what to do with that information.

She swallows and wipes the crumbs from her lips, annoyed because she knows the hunter-green polish on her nails is chipped and that the girl has definitely noticed. Ro thinks of herself as a cozy mess. This girl is precise, polished, and practically perfect.

“Unctuous,” the girl says as if tasting the word for the first time.

“In the best possible way,” Ro assures her. “Can I get a lavender, please?”

The girl nods and takes a moment, as if trying to select the best possible lavender cupcake, before presenting Ro with a square white box. Ro holds the box stupidly for a moment before remembering that this is an exchange. She has to set it down on the table to dig for her wallet, and only then does she remember she has no cash.

“Do you take cards? Because if not, I might have to work it off washing dishes or something.” She feels her cheeks go red as the traitorous words rush out of her mouth. When her dad used to say this at Outback Steakhouse, it was accepted as a dad joke. When she says it to the girl at the farmers’ market, it sounds to her like a proposition.

The girl holds out an iPad with a Square attached. “I take cards.”

Ro gives the girl her card.

“Rosemary Dutton,” the girl muses before sliding the card through and handing it back. “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.”

“I go by Ro.” She always has to say this, short and sharp, every time something becomes official.

The girl hands her card back. “You shouldn’t.”

“I’m more of a Ro. I don’t like Rosemary.”

“You can be anything you want to be. And I think Rosemary is a beautiful name.”

There’s a challenge in the girl’s eyes, and she makes Ro want to want to be Rosemary, for all that she doesn’t know how and has flinched at her proper name since she was little. It does not escape her that the girl has just quoted Shakespeare at her, which is practically foreplay to a literary scholar.

“What’s your name?” she asks, turning the challenge around.

“Ash.”

“Not Ashley?” she teases.

A smirk. “Not Ashley.”

They stand there, and Ro realizes that she has her card back and her cupcake in hand and no reason to keep standing here, smiling like a loon.

“Can I get you anything else?” Ash finally asks.

Your number. Your story. The scratch of your nails against my scalp.

“This should do it. Thanks.” Ro gives a little wave and leaves. Never has she been so aware of walking away. Do women watch for the same things men do, she wonders? Do they like the swing of hips, the bounce of butts, the sway of long hair?

Does…doesshe like these things?

She is aware that for someone who has always considered herself to be straight, she still looks at girls’ butts, but she always assumed this was because she was comparing herself, maintaining an inner rating system to see where she landed because that’s how internalized misogyny works. Now she wonders if maybe she looks for another reason.

She is still carrying her debit card in one hand like an absolute idiot.

Once she’s out of range, she stops and puts away her card and places the cupcake carefully in her jute bag. She’s only seen half of the market stalls, but she can’t imagine that anything else might compare to the small, peculiar magic of what she’s just experienced. There is Disney World, and then there is the speed bump in her neighborhood, and only one makes her want to return again and again.

She heads for her car and checks herself out in the mirror. Same honey-blonde hair, long and wavy. Same warm brown eyes. And yet something has fundamentally changed.

She is thinking of ice-blue eyes and freckles, of hair as fine as silk.

When she gets home, she eats her cupcake with one of her grandmother’s silver teaspoons. She savors every bite, rolling it around her mouth, luxuriously pushing frosting against her palate with her tongue. She thinks of Ash’s finger, dipping in to taste the batter, making sure it’s just right. On a college semester abroad, Ro once touched a painting by Van Gogh in an atelier somewhere in France, and she likes to think about how some of those atoms are still rattling around in her body.

Now the girl is like that, too: with her always, like magic.

That night, as she sips chardonnay and takes notes for her next book, her cat, Anon, vaults out of her lap and rushes to the nearest open window. As Ro rubs at the marks his claws have left on her thighs, he leaps to the sill and hisses through the screen, puffing up like a dandelion as he stares out into the night.

Ro stands and puts her notebook down before tiptoeing to the window. She peeks out but doesn’t see or hear anything unusual outside in the heavily forested backyard. Still, there is some otherworldly feeling of being watched, of not being alone. Anon is still at full puff, glaring into the darkness. There must be an animal out there or something. She’s never seen him behave this way before.

Shooing him off the windowsill, she closes the window and lowers the blinds all the way. Just to be safe, she checks the locks on both doors and closes the rest of the windows, cutting off the high-pitched hum of cicadas and the screams of horny tree frogs. It’s been a change, falling asleep to nature instead of Manhattan’s constant din of honks and sirens. She’s felt so safe here, by comparison. She’d thought Anon did, too.

“Oh, thou lily-livered boy,” she says fondly.

She sits back down and takes up her pen, ignoring her cat’s soft paws battering desperately at the glass.

 2 

It’s Saturday and, like a junkie seeking a hit, Ro is back at the farmers’ market. Last week, she wore the same sort of thing she would wear to the grocery store or to work: jeans, a nice tee, a blazer, light makeup, comfortable flats. Today, she spent an hour trying things on and throwing them back into her closet. She wants to look like what Ash would like, and this is an unusual feeling. She is not the sort of person who generally wants to please complete strangers.

She settled on a silky mauve shell and light jeans. She painted her toenails to match and wore espadrilles. She stared into her jewelry box, trying to remember if Ash was wearing any jewelry. She didn’t think so. There was a simple elegance to her, a glowing plainness. She didn’t need adornment. But does she like that sort of thing on other people?

There’s the real question. Are women attracted to what they are themselves, or to something completely different? And why is it so confusing?

Ro settles on a dainty chain with a sunburst pendant. Someone who raises plants must like the sun, she reasons. As a student of literature, she often thinks in symbols.

The only flaw in her plan is the presence of looming gray clouds. In her mind, it’s a beautiful blue day, and her luscious locks billow come-hitheringly in the wind. In reality, her hair is bouffy thanks to the humidity and she has to carry a bright pink umbrella that in no way matches her carefully chosen outfit.

The market isn’t as popular today, thanks to the weather. There is no huge crowd outside the food truck, no loose dog causing serendipitous chaos, no tethered child of an outraged mother to stumble over. Ro reaches Ash’s stall and chickens out twice before finally ducking inside. Ash is helping an elderly woman select a plant, calmly explaining the level of sunlight and amount of water it requires. Ro steps to the soap, lifting the samples to her nose and inhaling deeply. Vanilla, lavender, chamomile, oatmeal and honey, rose, sage. Each bar she touches evokes moods. She imagines a homey kitchen with a pie in the oven, silver shears cutting a thorny stem dotted with dew, summer sun filtered through a butterfly’s wing. Everything in this booth means something else, layers to be unpeeled. All of it calls to her, shiny glints to a magpie.

“You’re back.” Ash appears at her side as the old woman leaves. She’s wearing a sage-green dress today with her hair up in a braid crown, plus brown boots like something from Anne of Green Gables.

“I always come back for good cupcakes.” Yes. Yes. That sounds suave.

“I’m glad. I made a batch special for you.”

Ro’s heart kicks up like the opening night of a play. Ash goes to her table and holds up a cupcake: plump, pretty, with a high swirl of butter-yellow frosting, crowned with a spiny green sprig. “Rosemary lemon.” She holds it out—doesn’t put it in a box or offer a bite-sized sample, just holds the cupcake out on her palm.

Uncertain, Ro takes it and swipes a dab of frosting off with a finger, popping it in her mouth. She is struck anew with the richness: fresh, bright lemon and the sharp, woody tang of rosemary. Ash is smiling at her expectantly.

“That’s phenomenal. Frisson-worthy.”

“Go on,” Ash urges teasingly. “You have to try the cake with the frosting. It’s a totality.”

Ro gives a lopsided smile. “A conversation, not a monologue.”

Okay, so Ro came here because she is drawn to Ash, but that doesn’t mean she immediately understands her. Ash, so far, is a singular sort of mystery, an outlier, a new species she can’t yet read. Ash feels like a test she doesn’t know how to study for, a scene for which she hasn’t memorized the lines. Is this a normal interaction between artisan and customer, two friendly female strangers, or is Ash flirting with her? Ro has never had a group of girlfriends—or even a best friend—not since Cecilia Looper turned on her in fifth grade. She has been part of a group in various drama clubs or grad-school study circles, but she hasn’t spent much time one-on-one with a woman who wasn’t her academic advisor. There is no clear path. There is only a girl—awoman—about her age, ethereal and beautiful and strange, daring her to eat something too big, too messy. There are no napkins here, no forks. Whatever she does, she will look a fool.

Still, she’d rather be a fool on command than refuse and prove that she’s dead inside—or, worse, that she’s boring.

She peels back the brown wrapper and is about to take a bite right where the frosting and cake meet, but then she remembers an old gif she saw on Tumblr a thousand years ago. With a small grin of triumph, she gently pries the cake into two slabs and squeezes the frosting between them to make a sandwich before taking a more reasonable bite.

The satisfaction and awkwardness of the gesture are lost as she rolls the cupcake around her mouth, luxuriating in the sweet, the tart, the bready, the, yes, moist. A tiny moan escapes her lips, and she glances at Ash’s face in time to see something bright flare behind her eyes, a small triumph of her own. Their eyes lock as she takes a second bite. She wants to keep tasting it. She wants to prolong the magic.

“The rosemary and lemons are from my garden,” Ash says. “Picked fresh yesterday.”

“Not to be repetitive, but it’s incredible.” Ro realizes she’s going to devour the whole thing standing right here and instead wipes the crumbs from her lips. “There’s something about the frosting. It’s got a depth to it—”

“Lard. Most people use butter. I think it adds a certain something.”

“It’s a good thing I’m not a vegetarian.”

Ash chuckles. “If you weren’t supposed to eat meat, you wouldn’t have canine teeth.” She shows her teeth, but it’s not a smile.

“I’ll definitely take four of those,” Ro says, because she isn’t sure what else to say. “Or three, I guess, since I’m already halfway done with this one.”

Ash smiles for real this time and goes behind the table, putting three of the cupcakes in a bigger box and tying it with a pink and white striped ribbon. “See anything else you need?”

Ro notices language, so she notices the different phrasing.

Anything you like.

Anything you need.

“Tell me about the soaps.” Because she doesn’t want to know which one smells better or is more moisturizing. She wants to know if Ash sees objects as stories the way she does.

Ash walks to the soap display and picks up a bar of the vanilla-bean soap. It’s creamy white and flecked with dots of black that remind Ro of melting ice cream. Ash holds it lightly. Her nails are bare, cut short and scrubbed clean.

“Vanilla grows in hot, wet places. It’s a climbing vine that produces a beautiful flower that blooms for only a day. If the right kind of bee comes along during that day, carrying exactly the right kind of pollen, you get vanilla beans. Society has decided that ‘vanilla’ means plain and boring, but it’s actually quite rare and special. I grow it in my greenhouse. What you buy in the little brown jars at the store can’t compare. Smell.”

She waggles the bar of soap under Ro’s nose, and it’s as if she’s smelling vanilla for the first time, or possibly inhaling the Platonic ideal of vanilla after a lifetime of artificial flavoring. She can also smell the lightest waft of rose, which she assumes is from Ash’s skin. Ash seems like the kind of person who would wish to smell of roses.

“I’ll take that, too,” she says softly, tamping down the urge to bite the soap.

Ash places the soap on the cupcake box. “Anything else? Plants?”

“I have a black thumb,” Ro admits.

“No one can kill a snake plant.”

“Try me. I don’t mean to—I have the best intentions—but they die.”

A chuckle. “You love them too much. You love them to death.”

Ro cocks her head. “How so?”

“Snake plants thrive on neglect. They really only die if you water them too much. Hence, they die of love.” Ash plucks a spiky-looking plant from the shelf. “I want you to take this plant home and neglect it. Put it by a bright window where the sun won’t actually touch it and don’t water it for a week. Not a drop.”

Ash shoves the plant into Ro’s hands like someone shoving a baby at a childless aunt. She has no choice but to accept it. She instantly pities it.

“I’m going to kill this plant,” she warns.

“You won’t. I won’t let you. Bring me a picture of it next Saturday, and we’ll see.”

Ro’s heart hiccups.

Next Saturday.

“I’ll do my best to mistreat it, then,” she says, wishing stabby plants weren’t so awkward to hold. “What do I owe you?”

Ash glances around. “Ten for the cupcakes, five for the soap, five for the plant.”

“I thought the cupcakes were four for fifteen…”