Free Nothing Tastes As Good (Cupcake Goddess) by Shéa MacLeod

Cupcake Goddess:
    Nothing Tastes As Good
    All she’d wanted was a change of pace. Something different to break up the monotony of life as an immortal. Life got pretty boring without the powers that had once made her a deity.
    Instead she’d wound up with the neighbor from hell. Again.
    “That’s it!” Branwen hopped out of bed. “No more Miss Nice Goddess.”
    Yanking on her fuchsia silk robe (she’d replaced her fuzzy pink one in deference to the heat of San Antonio) Branwen stormed out of the apartment, down the hall, to the door marked 2B. The door that was currently vibrating practically off its hinges due to the sheer volume of the music coming from the other side.
    It took a good three rounds of knocking before someone finally answered the door. Someone perky and blonde with a golden tan and a perfect nose. Naturally.
    “Do you have any idea what time it is?” Branwen snarled at the pretty young thing.
    The girl frowned, furrowing her perfectly smooth brow and biting her perfectly lush lower lip. “You’re not one of my neighbors.”
    “Yes, I’m in 2D.” Branwen pointed to the open door down the hallway. “And thanks to you, I’m missing my beauty sleep.” Which she sorely needed after her flight from Seattle. Not to mention the drive to SeaTac from Granite Falls. During rush hour.
    If she’d still been an all-powerful goddess, she could have transported herself, but thanks to years without any worship from adoring humans, her reserves were pretty much empty. The only place she could zap to without much trouble was Wales, where people still remembered her. Sort of.
    “What happened to Brighid? That’s her apartment.”
    “I bribed her,” Branwen muttered under her breath. It had cost her three months’ salary and her favorite pair of earrings she’d picked up at one of Gilgamesh’s parties in Mesopotamia (that man had known how to throw a party). But she’d needed to get the hell out of Granite Falls for awhile. Sacrifices had to be made.
    Miss Perky frowned. “What?”
    Branwen sighed. “We’re old friends.” Very old. “We’re doing a house exchange thing. You know, for a holiday.”
    “Oh, that’s cool. You want to come in? I would have totally invited you if I’d known.”
    “No, thanks, I…”
    “I have cupcakes,” the girl coaxed.
    That was all Branwen needed to hear. By the time she was on her third cupcake she’d decided Miss Perky, real name Tiffany, wasn’t so bad after all. She was actually surprisingly amusing for a human. And she baked a mean cupcake. Branwen had never trusted skinny chefs, but for Tiffany she’d make an exception.
    Tiffany’s friends were all equally bright, cheerful young things who eventually got over the shock of a chubby woman in a silk bathrobe crashing the party. They adopted Branwen as one of their own alternatively offering her treats and coaxing her to dance. Branwen could feel her strength growing by the minute. They might not have known she was a goddess, but adoration was adoration. She’d take what she could get.
    She begged off dancing with yet another boy in skinny jeans (Really, what were they thinking?) and black rimmed glasses. She’d had quite enough dancing for one night.
    “Oh, you should be careful with those.” Tiffany nodded at the fourth cupcake about to vanish at Branwen’s hand. “ ‘Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.’ At least that’s what my friend, Kate, always says.”
    “She does, does she?” Branwen looked around for this Kate person who obviously had way too much time on her hands if she was coming up with such idiotic, and patently untrue, phrases.
    “Oh, she’s not here.” Tiffany said as she poured more pretzels into a huge glass bowl.
    “Why not?”
    “She won’t come to my parties. She says she feels out of place. Like my other friends make her feel fat. It’s ridiculous, but she swears she’ll come just as soon as she loses how-ever-many-more pounds she’s decided to lose this