Cake: A Love Story Read Online Free Page A

the crowd, he scanned the wedding party. I felt my heart race as his pretty eyes rolled over me. He didn’t linger. In fact, I doubt he saw me at all. He was clearly seeking out his family and when he found them, he cut across the room. Hushed whispering filled the air. Jake paid no attention to it…although there was no way he couldn’t have heard it. As he passed, every head turned. Jake didn’t reciprocate. He did not have to. He was the star, and, as such, was used to displays of adoration. I wondered what it must feel like to command that kind of attention everywhere you went. Surprisingly it didn’t seem to bother Jake. In fact, he appeared to be totally unaffected by the way he was affecting everyone else. I wasn’t sure if he was just an expert at guarding his emotions or if he really was just that indifferent to the opinion of others. Strangely enough, his apathetic attitude didn’t come across as cocky. Maybe it was just the knowledge of who he was and what he had survived that made him somewhat immune to the typical stereotypes. I’d always been attracted to the smiley, outgoing types but even I had to admit, I found everything about Jake McKallister to be incredibly appealing. Suddenly I wanted to know more…much more…about him.
    With all eyes on him, Jake greeted JimSuey, then his mother, father and two sisters before settling down between his three brothers. Then, as if someone flipped a switch, Jake’s demeanor changed completely. It was like the wall came down around him. Here, amongst his family, he was entirely comfortable and it showed. I watched him interact with his siblings in an easy, relaxed way. The strained smile from earlier was replaced with a genuinely charming lop-sided grin. I was surprised to see him throw his head back when he laughed. To me, that had always been a sign of a person with a good sense of humor. The wariness in his eyes had also vanished. This Jake did not even remotely resemble the same guarded guy who walked in five minutes earlier. Was this the Jake McKallister that was shielded from public view? Was this the real man behind the mask? I found myself becoming more stalker-ish as the minutes passed. I had to will myself to stop staring.
    When the waitress came around, Jake ordered chicken tacos and water, not that I was spying on him or anything. The waitress stumbled on her words a bit and seemed flustered. Being a server myself, I probably wouldn’t have been able to keep my cool around Jake either. It seemed all eyes, including mine, were still trained on him. A few times he looked up from his conversation to scan the room with those beautiful eyes of his. People would quickly look away, pretending like they hadn’t been staring at him the entire time. But he knew. He had to know. None of us were being real subtle with our gawking. He was like some exotic zoo animal that we were all peering at through the cage trying to get a better look at.
    Toward the end of dinner, Jake’s father, Scott, slightly drunk and boisterously entertaining, told a colorful rendition of his path to fatherhood, much to the embarrassment of his wife and kids. The story went something like this. After becoming a father to Mitch at twenty-three years old, Scott met Michelle and they had their first son, Keith. Then, two years later, they had a daughter, Emma. They decided that was enough kids for them. But then three years later, they had an “oops”…Jake. And just 11-months after Jake, they had a “make an appointment now”…Kyle. A vasectomy followed. And as Scott told it, it was the best decision he ever ‘didn’t make’ because, after having to live through the “the twin toddler terrors” as he called Jake and Kyle, more kids was the last thing he wanted. But then, as Scott remembers it, five years later his wife was begging him to have just one more baby after the boys started school. So “poor, suffering” Scott went and had the vasectomy reversed and a year later,