Chapter Text
Only about twenty people have Nini’s personal phone number. Her family, her friends, her band, and a pitiful slew of exes. And her publicist, just in case of emergencies. But otherwise, being a relatively-well-known pop star has its social limitations.
Which is why she’s only mildly suspicious when she— sitting upside-down on her couch, bored out of her mind— gets a text notification from an unknown number.
Normally, she’d brush it off as a survey or a scam text, but it seems to contain only a group of images.
Nini brings the phone closer to her face, squinting at the small preview to see if she can figure out what it is, or at the very least, confirm that it is not an unfortunate image containing genitalia.
The phone slips out of her hands, crashes onto her face, and then tumbles to the floor.
Nini groans, rubbing the bridge of her nose, and then lays there for a long moment of defeat, eyes closed, face throbbing.
Her phone on the floor buzzes.
She flops like a dead fish, struggling to maneuver herself onto her stomach so she can pick it up.
It’s from the same unknown number. This time, a text. With real words.
Unknown number: Hi Jennifer! Your cake is ready! You can come pick it up before 7 pm today.
Nini opens the text.
Pressed tightly against the couch cushions, her stomach rumbles at the sight of the pastry sitting before her.
Beautifully photographed from all angles is a two-tiered cake with what seems to be a grand piano made out of chocolate sitting on top. The sides of the cake are decorated with music notation that is actually correct for the most part.
It looks beautiful. It looks scrumptious. She wants it in her mouth right now.
Another text comes in.
Unknown number: Just in case, it’s chocolate on the bottom, vanilla on top
Nini texts back immediately.
Nini: hi! that cake looks absolutely delicious, but you have the wrong number
Nini: i’m sure this is an unorthodox method of acquiring a new customer but
Nini: can i order a cake from you??
Nini: assuming you’re in slc based off your area code
The three blinking dots appear.
Nini slides forward, allowing her body to slump forward until her face is pressed to the floor, only her toes still hanging off the couch.
God, she’s so miserable right now.
She manages to push herself to her feet and pads to the kitchen to see if she can make herself lunch before her stomach digests itself.
Her phone goes off just as she begins to rummage through the limited options in her pantry.
Unknown number: Oh no, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to randomly send you cake pics!
Nini shakes her head vigorously, as if the other person could see her right now.
Nini: oh no, don’t be sorry!
Nini: send me pictures of your cakes any time ;)
It takes her a second to realize that her clumsy fingers had hit the semicolon by accident and then another to realize the consequent implication, and she buries the lower half of her face in a hand.
Nini: i mean
Nini: i’d love to see more of your cake pictures
Nini: i mean more examples!!
The three dots blink for an agonizingly long moment.
Nini briefly considers blocking them and sinking into a hole to never resurface. No wonder she only has twenty contacts in her phone.
She turns off her phone and grabs a pack of instant ramen to prepare, ignoring the notifications that come in until the block of noodles is bobbing in a pot over the stove.
Her messaging app opens up to a series of pictures, with such a variety it makes her jaw drop. They range from sophisticated— what looks like a small wedding cake, stunningly simple, elegant, with floral decorations— to so fun they make an involuntary smile break out on her face— silly sculptures, a dinosaur-themed cake obviously made for someone under twelve, but in that moment she had never wanted anything more.
Unknown number: I should also add that I usually just make cakes for friends or my friends’ friends
Unknown number: Definitely not doing anything big or professional, haha
Unknown number: Just saving up extra cash before I go back to college this fall!
Nini’s jaw drops. Not professional? Still in school?
Nini: i never would’ve guessed that in a million years!!
Nini: you’re so talented, you’re incredible
Nini: your cakes are amazing
Nini: AND you’re so young!!!
Unknown number: Well, it’s easier than you think, I’m sure!
Unknown number: Just takes a good recipe and a little practice
Nini: well now you’re calling me out
Nini: bc at the ripe old age of 20 i still cannot bake anything without burning it
Unknown number: No way, I don’t believe that
Nini: like you underestimate me
Nini: i could burn a pot of water trying to boil it
Unknown number: I don't believe that. Maybe I’ll have to teach you sometime
The text makes her pause for a second. She’d have to meet them. A stranger. Who likely has heard at least one of her songs. Or seen her name in a recent headline.
Disappointment coils in her belly; sometimes she wishes she hadn’t picked a career in the public eye, hadn’t decided to chase fame after her first song had gone unintentionally viral on Instagram. Maybe then she could meet random people who texted her on accident, make friends more easily.
Nini shakes her head and turns back to her phone, thinking up a response to gently turn this person down, but then they begin to type again.
Unknown number: About the cake, though, it’s definitely different, but I’d be willing to make one for you!
Nini: fr? that would be incredible?
Unknown number: Yes! I am in SLC, actually, so it’d work out
Nini: what’s your pricing like?
Unknown number: Hmm, I usually bake for people who know me, so it’s all over the place
Unknown number: What size are you looking for?
Nini laughs quietly to herself, her middle-school-brain still fixed on the innuendo.
Nini: i’m hosting a party next week actually and was struggling to find food to provide so…
Nini: can you do 100? is that a lot?
Unknown number: 100? Woah, popular much?
Nini purses her lips. If only you knew…
She could probably count on one hand the number of real friends attending her album-release party. The rest? Record-label executives, other celebrities, influencers she had never met before. She thinks back to a list she was given, and swallows dread at having to remember names and faces.
Unknown number: I’m not sure I have enough pans or even pans that are big enough tbh
Unknown number: This is the biggest cake I’ve ever made, using just about everything I have…
Unknown number: It’ll feed maybe 50 people if you cut small slices…
Nini leans closer to her phone screen, awaiting a photo.
Her heart skips a beat when she sees it.
She’s prepared for the extravagant cake, the multiple layers, the perfect decorations. What she’s not prepared for is the most beautiful person she’s ever seen.
On her phone screen in front of her is a girl posing behind a large cake, her cheeks flushed and hair barely contained in a messy ponytail, a slight sheen of sweat at her hairline, as if she had been working hard. She’s grinning wide at the camera, eyes closed, evidently proud of the incredible creation in front of her.
Nini: holy wow
Her fingers are just as stumped as her brain right now.
Unknown number: I can do that for 75
Nini had forgotten she was asking for a price. She shakes her head, face warming.
Nini: 75???? that’s insane
Nini: i would do that for 175
Nini: maybe even 200
Nini: ignore the ingredients, this cake is worth more than $75 of your time!!!!!
Unknown number: Like I said, I usually only sell to people within two degrees of separation
Unknown number: That being said, if you have $200 to throw away on a cake, then damn, you have money and I’ll take it
Nini: great! can i get that size? i can do $200
Technically speaking, her management could do 200 dollars, but Nini wouldn’t even mind paying this baker herself. If anything, 200 felt a little cheap for a cake like this.
Unknown number: Oh wow, of course!
Unknown number: Color, flavor, decorations?
Nini: for color, definitely purple! maybe darker lilac-ish?
Nini: something like this?
There’s something a little humiliating about cropping her album cover so that her face isn’t visible and sending it to the other girl.
Nini: you can pick the flavor though!! i trust you!
Unknown number: Putting your trust in a complete stranger is pretty bold
Unknown number: I could make it eggplant flavored, and you wouldn’t know until your guests eat it
Nini: …you wouldn’t, right
Her screen goes gray, and then suddenly there’s an incoming call from a number she doesn’t have added.
Nini almost hangs up instinctively before she realizes that the number is the same number she’s been texting for the last ten minutes.
Her heart stutters a little.
She picks up.
“Hello?” The girl on the other end greets, hesitantly.
And even her voice is beautiful. There’s something unique about it, something that makes this thing in her chest—
Nini’s hopeless. She meets one new person who doesn’t know who she is and suddenly…
“Is anyone there?”
Shoot. “Hi!” Nini squeaks, and then clears her throat. “Hi,” she says again, more normally. “Sorry.”
There’s a slight pause, and then the girl on the other end laughs.
Nini likes her laugh. Very much.
“So, the cake?”
“The cake,” Nini repeats. Suddenly her whole body is warm and her palms feel unusually sweaty.
“How do you feel about ube?”
“Ooh, I love ube. Not sure if my party people will. But I think that’s fine. That’s great, actually.”
“...Are you sure?”
“Yeah, screw them. Well, not screw them, but it’s technically my party, so I can do what I want.”
“Oh, your birthday or something?”
“Yeah, or something,” Nini says.
“A hundred people at your birthday party? Damn. That’s like half the neighborhood. Am I invited?”
“Oh, uh,” Nini panics. “Well, I have people from- family! Family, uh, flying in. Sorry, I don’t think-”
Gina laughs, and the sound makes Nini’s already scrambled brain fully shut down. “That was a joke. I’m not going to show up to a stranger’s birthday party.”
“Yeah,” Nini says weakly. This is going really well for her. Really well.
“So, ube? If we’re talking three tiers, I was thinking something like this? Check your texts.”
Nini complies, putting the other girl on speaker so she can see the picture Gina sent.
“I’ve had that picture saved forever, and I’ve never gotten the chance to do it,” Gina says, words getting faster as she speaks. “I was thinking maybe we could split each color into a tier? It’ll be really pretty.”
Nini finds herself smiling as the other girl goes on. “That sounds really good, actually.”
“I can probably do two cakes, if you’d like? I know you said there’s gonna be a hundred people.”
“No, it’s okay, really,” Nini says earnestly. “Not everyone will eat cake anyway.”
“True,” the baker says. “Okay, so ube?”
“Mhm,” Nini says, leaning against her kitchen counter. “Sounds perfect. Definitely not eggplant.”
“Well, hmm,” the other girl says. “You wouldn’t even know until after you ate the cake, and by then it’d be too late.”
“Okay, that’s evil. Maybe I shouldn’t trust you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” the other girl echoes, and Nini feels her own lips curl up at the sound of the unmistakable smile in her voice. “Maybe I’m actually a scammer, and I’m sending you pictures off of some poor girl’s Instagram page.”
“Okay, but would a scammer tell me they’re a scammer?”
“Maybe it’s all part of the lie,” she says teasingly.
Nini finds, very strangely, that she does trust this girl she’s never met before. It definitely helps that she’s very pretty, but Nini’s always had good intuition, so she trusts her gut feeling now.
“You’re not doing a really good job of selling yourself here,” Nini shoots back.
“Okay, my bad, ignore everything I just said in the last 20 seconds. I’m not a scammer, I’m a very honest person, and you should buy a cake from me.”
Nini chuckles. “Okay. Sure. What do I have to do?”
“Well, usually I have to get a 25 percent down payment now, just in case you flake on me, is that okay?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. I’m assuming you’re not a scammer here. But I definitely wouldn’t flake on you. Just so you know.”
The girl laughs. Nini suppresses her smile. “Okay, stranger. Sounds like you’re asking me to trust someone I’ve never met.”
“Okay… pretty girl . I would say I’m pretty trustworthy. I can pay all of it upfront if you want.”
There’s a moment of silence.
“Did you just call me ‘pretty girl’ ?”
Nini might spontaneously combust. “No. I mean, yes. Okay, in my defense, I don’t even know your name. You never told me your name.”
Her face is so hot right now water could probably boil off of it.
“My name’s Genevieve. My friends call me Gina. Well, my five friends.”
Goddammit , even her name is pretty.
“There’s no way you only have five friends,” Nini says. “You’re so- you’re just so…”
“What?”
“No, I just think you’re so cool,” she says, fully aware that she sounds like a fool right now.
“Mm, well, I move around a lot,” Genevieve replies. “Moved here last year. Baking’s how I meet people.”
“Like me, I guess,” Nini says, like a fool.
“Like you,” the other girl echoes.
“Okay, Gen- wait, can I call you Gina?”
“What do you think?” Amusement colors the other girl’s voice.
“Okay, Gina ,” Nini says, feeling a little courageous, praying it won’t backfire. She holds her breath.
“Okay. How ‘bout you?” Gina asks. Nini pulls the phone away to noisily release the tightness in her lungs.
“Huh?” she asks dumbly, her heart suddenly beating fast enough to very well be the kick drum in one of her songs.
“What’s your name, stranger?”
Nini contemplates whether she should give her real name. No matter how quickly they had clicked, it’s never fully safe for her to just reveal her identity to a random person.
“Sounds like you like calling me ‘stranger,’” Nini stalls.
“Yeah, and you’ll be a stranger as long as I don’t know your name.”
“I’m Nini,” she finally says.
She’s met by silence. She can practically see Gina raising her perfect eyebrows.
“You can laugh. It’s a nickname from childhood, but it kinda stuck, so that’s what everyone calls me.”
Gina doesn’t laugh. “I think it’s cute.”
Nini bites down on the thought that springs to her mind: Do you think I’m cute? And then she answers her own question: No, of course not, dimwit, she hasn’t seen a picture of you. She probably should never.
“Oh,” is all she says. The warm fuzzy feelings in her chest are quite undeniable.
She coughs a little bit. “So, 25 percent down payment? That’s 50, right? Do you take Zelle?”
“Yeah,” Gina says. “Zelle’s fine. When do you need this by?”
“Does next Saturday work for you? Not the one this week, but the one after that.”
“Yeah, sure! So, purple, ube, as big as possible, for the 29th? Sounds good?”
“Mhm.” A part of Nini feels disappointed that this call will end so soon.
The line is silent for a while. She scrambles desperately for something to say, but she comes up empty.
“So you think I’m pretty, huh?” Gina says eventually, no doubt through a mischievous grin.
“Stop,” Nini whines.
“So you think I’m not pretty, then?”
“No, oh my God! I think you’re pretty. I do. You are pretty.”
It’s a miracle she hasn’t completely incinerated and burned the house down with her.
“Well, I’m flattered, stranger,” Gina says, with a sincerity that makes Nini’s heart trip.
“Okay, pretty girl.” Nini stops to bury her face in her free hand. “Okay, that was even more embarrassing than last time.”
“Is my name forever gonna be your subjective and superficial perception of my face?” Gina asks, mock-scandalized.
“Okay, first of all, you’re objectively pretty. No arguments. Shh. No. Second of all, would you rather I call you ‘cake girl?’”
There’s a beat of silence as Gina considers. “Are those my only two choices?”
“What do you think about ‘dickhead?’”
Gina snorts in response, and Nini dissolves into giggles.
She’s only thrown out of the moment by an acrid smell that makes her whirl to face her stove.
“Oh no.”
“What’s up?”
Nini dashes over to her stove to turn off the fire. She watches, defeated, as smoke plumes toward her ceiling, her kitchen flooding with the stench of charcoal.
“Um, so while I was talking to you, I was boiling some instant ramen. And I got distracted, so all the water boiled off, and the ramen is now burnt to the bottom of my pot.”
“Distracted?”
“By your pretty face!” Nini closes her mouth so fast her teeth click together.
“Delighted as I am that you think I’m pretty, wow, you were right. I underestimated you.”
“Mhm, you did. I am quite the catastrophe in the kitchen.”
“Well, thankfully for you, I’m more than just a pretty face, and also pretty great in the kitchen. Opposites attract or whatever?”
Nini wrinkles her nose as she peers into the pot, utterly discouraged by the blackened noodles. But there are definitely implications in Gina’s statement that Nini doesn’t want to unpack because her hopes need to stay down and on the floor.
“Thanks a lot. Now how do I get this off?”
“Baking soda. Or vinegar. Or both if you like chemistry. Just add some to water and boil, and then let it sit for a bit.”
“I love chemistry! ...But I don’t have either of those.”
Nini hears a faint slap, probably the sound of Gina’s palm meeting her face. “What normal person- nevermind. Dish soap?”
“I have that one.”
“Okay, use that.”
“Okay! It’s in the pot. See, we work great together!”
After an exaggerated sigh of exasperation, Gina guides her through not burning her house down as she gingerly scrapes at the charcoal clinging on to the bottom of her pot.
Something about their interactions— even as Nini turns her phone on speaker and sets it down to free up both her hands— feels achingly familiar, as if they’d been friends, as if they knew each other. The thought makes something flutter in her, the slightest twitch of butterflies.
When she finally hangs up, she’s left with a single thought that clashes with the stupid grin on her face at Gina’s final Bye, stranger .
I’m so screwed.
By the time Nini sends Gina 50 dollars, cleans her pot, and finishes her lunch (made using the microwave), she’s resolved herself to never talking to Gina again.
It’s just too dangerous, she reasons.
Maybe Gina is a scammer hiding behind a cake business to cheat her of her money. She’ll probably never get those 50 dollars back or a cake to show for it. (Not that money is a problem for her.)
Maybe Gina will find out who she is and hate her for it.
Maybe Gina has realized who she is, and is only talking to her because she knows Nini’s famous.
Maybe Gina’s a fan, somehow dug up her phone number, and set up a fake wrong number scenario to lure her into what seemed like a genuine conversation. It would make sense if Gina were a master manipulator, well-tuned into responding in ways she knew Nini would like. It would explain the instant connection, the way she still feels inexplicably drawn to her.
Maybe Gina is involved in some of those vicious anti-Nina hate groups on Twitter who had managed to reach out under the guise of oops, wrong number! for private or blackmail materials.
So what if Nini spends an hour sleuthing Nina Salazar-Roberts stan Twitter with her fake stan account? And then another hour on her fake hate account, looking up keywords that could maybe lead her to an account potentially run by Gina?
By the end of it, all Nini has to show for her efforts is an Instagram account, found through sending Gina’s pictures through a reverse image search. It’s unmistakably Gina’s Instagram, or at least her baking account.
She has a small (but seemingly loyal) following, with cheers of support in the comments or positive reviews from customers. Her face makes a few rare appearances, and each one of them makes Nini (sheepishly) stop and rethink her plan to never speak to Gina again.
(Spoiler: it doesn’t quite work out like that.)