Free Cupid's Cupcake by Ivy Sinclair

“You have to do it.” Tiffany’s voice , even coming through the tiny speaker of the phone, was relentless.
    “I don’t want to.” The argument had been goin g on for the past ten minutes. Belle don’t know why she told her best friend about the email sitting in her inbox from Brian Draper, lead columnist for The Daily Gazette . Clearly, she had experienced a moment of temporary insanity. She was just glad she told Tiffany over the phone and not in person. The verbal lashing was painful enough without seeing Tiffany’s over the top facial expressions.
    “ You do want to. You know you do. Because you know as well as I do that you are dying to quit that dead end job and do something with your life! This is your chance to break out of the boring humdrum mold routine you are in. You have a gift, Belle. Geez, it’s like the destiny gods dropped a shoe on your head.”
    “Tell me what you really think about me, Tiffany.” Belle knew that her life had taken a rather listless bent of late, but it wasn’t helpful having Tiffany so blatantly pointing that out. It was difficult for Belle not to be annoyed with her know-it-all friend.
    The part that Belle didn’t care to admit was that Tiffany was right more often than not, and on this particular topic, she was spot on. Belle’s job had no potential of becoming anything more than what it was: a mundane desk job that she could do in her sleep. But she wasn’t ready to jump ship on it though on the flimsy idea that she had some kind of ‘gift’ like her friend so wholeheartedly believed. Belle had one perfect creation that she could take credit for, and it was her secret fear that if she tried ever do anything with it, that everyone would discover she was nothing more than a one-trick pony.
    Belle tried to focus on the discussion at hand. “You’ve read this guy’s stuff. Why on earth would he want to do a story on me and my cupcakes unless he had some kind of ulterior motive?”
    “I admit that it seems a little out of the blue, but c’mon, Belle. You couldn’t ask for better publicity. Everyone reads his column. This is exactly the kind of thing you need to jump into that business you’ve always said you wanted to start. You just needed the right motivation. Plus, hello, the guy is yummy.”
    Belle rubbed the bridge of her nose. Just when she thought that the situation couldn’t get any worse, she now had to deal with the fact that the reporter in question was ‘yummy’. “This isn’t a date, Tiffany. It’s an interview. How am I supposed to explain how everything started around Cupid’s Cupcake without sounding like a pathetic moron? He’s going to think I’m a nut job, and then he’s going to write about the fact that I’m a nut job, and then no one in his or her right mind would want to buy anything from me. I shouldn’t have told you that I ever thought about opening my own store someday. I was drunk, and you were supposed to forget that.”
    “You want my advice?” Tiffany ignored Belle’s last comment and barreled forward.
    “No t particularly,” Belle said. Actually, that was the whole reason that Belle’s fingers dialed Tiffany’s number as soon as she read Draper’s email. But she would have preferred a lot less lecturing after her plea for wisdom and guidance. Tiffany was a year younger than Belle, but her life was essentially perfect. Belle’s life was a hot mess on a regular basis.
    “Dig out that business plan that you wrote in college. Update it. Go to the bank and ask for a small business loan. Then sit down with this guy and pitch the hell out of what you can do. You have an in with Cupid’s Cupcake, but you can totally play that down and talk all about your grand plans for the future. By the time the story comes out, you’ll be in the perfect position to take a limited number of orders for Valentine’s Day. Take that money and reinvest it back into the business. Figure out some other spin-off cupcake recipes. Rinse and