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“Give me the –” Steve says, gesturing at the pastry bag on the counter. “The that.”
He pushes his glasses up the end of his nose with the back of his wrist and shakes his hair out of his eyes, frustrated and sticky and – Eddie glances up from where he’s diligently adding glitter sprinkle snow to the top of the iced cupcakes. He makes a face.
“You realize we could’ve just bought these,” he says under his breath as he hands it over. “No one would have even known.”
Steve lets out a hollow laugh. “You clearly haven’t met Jackie from the PTA.” He squeezes out a dollop of chocolate icing. “Sorry, Jaqueliiiine , even though everyone knows she’s not actually French. She’s from Texas.” He ices another cupcake. “Jackie from Texas who’s out to get me.”
“Baby, come on,” Eddie says. “I doubt she’s harboring some secret vendetta against you. You just don’t like her because she put you on ticket-taking duty at the start of year picnic.”
“She told me to buy the cupcakes,” Steve says. He widens his eyes. “Because she was – how did she put it – ‘just so concerned about how difficult it must be to manage a family and a career with a partner who’s always leaving on tour’.”
Eddie snorts. “I take it back,” he says. “She sucks.”
Steve looks up from his cupcakes. “Right? Thank you. Robin said I was overreacting.”
He squeezes the pastry bag again with more force than necessary, and the icing comes out faster than he means for it to, drooping down over the sides of the cupcake.
“Does she realize who she’s dealing with?” Eddie asks, shooting Steve a sideways glance. “I mean, you’re not being nice to her, are you?”
“No, but I’m biding my time,” Steve says. He finishes with the tray he’s working on and sits back in his chair, watching Eddie work. “I just need to figure out how to hit her where it hurts.”
Eddie lets out a laugh as he pulls Steve’s tray of cupcakes toward himself to start adding sprinkles.
“Run against her in the next board election,” he says. “That’d show her.”
And he sort of sounds like he’s joking, but Steve frowns as he turns it over in his mind, staring out the darkened window at the shadowy shape of the lemon tree in the backyard. He doesn’t know why he didn’t think of it first.
“That might actually work,” he says after a moment.
“I know,” Eddie says. He glances up, flashing a smile. “That’s why I said it.”
Steve gives his ankle a little kick under the table. “Don’t be a dick.” He squints. “Do you think I’d win?”
“You’re the only hot dad on the PTA, and you have a very famous rockstar for a husband,” Eddie says. “Just tell them you’ll get Coldplay to do the winter carnival next year or something. They’ll vote you in for sure.”
“Isn’t that kind of cheating?” And then, maybe more importantly because he doesn’t actually really care about being fair, “Can you actually get them to play?”
“Please,” Eddie scoffs. “They owe me a favor after that thing at the VMAs last year. This is worth cashing in for.”
“I love you,” Steve says. He hooks his foot around the back of Eddie’s ankle. “So fucking much.”
Eddie grins at him. “As if I’d let King Steve go down to Jackie from Texas without a fight.”
Steve laughs and reaches over to snag the over-iced cupcake. He peels off the paper and breaks it in two, taking a bite as he passes the other half to Eddie.
“Jackie can suck it,” he says. “She doesn’t even know how to make her own cupcakes. Did you know she brought store bought ones to the Thanksgiving bake sale?”
Eddie looks genuinely scandalized as he takes a bite of his own cupcake half. “She didn’t.”
“She did,” Steve says. “And they weren’t even good ones.”