Page 20 of Midnight Snack

After we dry off, we corral stuff into my bedroom. I turn the television on loud and then gather blankets and pillows while Damien heads to the kitchen to grab snacks. Before I know it, we’re huddled under the blankets.

Somehow Damien has arranged everything so the pillows keep the blankets from laying directly on us.

“This is amazing. It’s like you built a little igloo out of bedding,” I say.

“You never made a blanket and cushion fort when you were a kid?”

I swallow thickly but busy myself by opening a box of crackers. He brought in a fancy charcuterie board set up with cheeses and nuts and fruit.

“I guess not.”

He tips my chin up so I’m looking at him.

“Hey, where did you go?”

“I’m right here.”

He shakes his head. “No, something flashed across your eyes and then it’s like you just disappeared. I’m not going to push, but I’d love it if you’d share with me?”

“Answer a question for me first?” I ask.

“Anything,” he says, then pops a square of cheese in his mouth.

“How are you like this? It’s like there’s two versions of you. The hot and sexy bad boy of baking and then this sensitive, sweet man?”

He nods. “Yeah, I get that it could be confusing. This,” he pats his chest, “is the real me. The Damien Leblanc who grew up in a house full of women, the youngest of two kids. The Bad Boy of Baking is a persona. I mean is it me on the camera doing all of those things? Yes. But it legit started as a last-ditch effort to save my family’s bakery.

“It was my sister, Aurelia’s idea. Our bakery has been on the main street square of Sabine Pass. It’s a tiny town right on the border between Texas and Louisiana.” He pauses and looks at me. “Are you sure you want to know all of this?”

“Yes, please continue.” I load up a cracker with cheese and fig preserves.

“Alright. So the bakery has been in the family—my mama’s family, so that’s the Boudreaux’s—since the early nineteen hundred’s. After the pandemic though, things were hard for everyone. So many stores and restaurants closed. Our bakery was so close. We were coasting by on a second mortgage and prayers.”

“There were places in Saddle Creek that closed too. So sad.” I chew, then motion for him to keep going.

“Yeah, so one night she and I were talking about what—if anything—we could do to help. She had this harebrained idea after scrolling through social media. So she set things up in my kitchen and filmed me making, I think it was something simple like bread pudding.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. It seemed stupid, but three videos later, I went viral. Money started pouring in and we saved the bakery.”

“Just like that?” I ask.

“Yeah, just like that.”

“Well, that bad boy has to be somewhat a part of you for you to so effortlessly slide into that role.”

He chuckles. “I took as many non-academic classes as possible to graduate high school. I was fairly good at theatre, so it probably comes from that. My sister calls him Mr. Smexy Pants.”

I bark out a laugh. “I think I’ve met him.”

“Unfortunately, you have. It’s now kind of a shield I put on when I’m in public. The attention can be unsettling sometimes. But with you, I’m afraid it was just my wounded pride.”

“Because I said horrible things about your video. I’d been blindsided by the production team with one of them, and previously I’d been unfamiliar with your work.”

“And it repulsed you,” he says.

Another laugh. “I wish. It had turned me inside out. I’d never seen anything so seductive or sensual. I was not prepared to be filmed while getting aroused.”

I lean over for a brief kiss. “I’m enough of an adult to admit when I was wrong. You have skills and your baking is next level. Are you sure you haven’t had formal training?”

“Formal, as in my mama, my maw maw, and my aunts Aileen and Alice, not to mention my bossy big sister telling me what to do my entire life. I told you, big family of women.”