When Girlfriends Step Up by Savannah Page

and a handful of small, paper dessert plates and napkins.
    “Dessert time!” Claire said, hot on her heels with the plastic forks and spoons in one hand, and a half-gallon of ice cream in the other.
    “Oh you girls did not,” I said, not expecting an official dessert. I figured we’d snack on some Chips Ahoy from the pantry, or maybe pick at the box of leftover doughnuts and assorted pastries that Lara had brought home from work earlier that day.
    “Girlfriend,” Sophie said. “This is a big-ass occasion here. You’re going to have ababy! Of course we need to celebrate appropriately.”
    “Yeah,” Jackie added. “And since you’re off the drinking train until this baby comes out—”
    “Once it’s weaned from the boob,” Sophie corrected.
    “Yeah,” Jackie said. “Since you’re off that train, we still wanted to celebrate in style. Just because we can’t go out and drink doesn’t mean we can’t have a kickass time. So bring on the cake!”
    “And the ice cream,” Claire said.
    Sophie said she hadn’t found the time to make me a homemade cake or one that she whipped up while at work, but she did pick up the next best thing from a delicious all-local-ingredients bakery near Waterfront.
    “My word, this is amazing,” I said in between bites of the red velvet and cream cake.
    “Your new craving now, huh?” Lara asked, smiling.
    “You know, it’s the strangest thing, but it’s like the baby book says: The foods that make me nauseous aren’t really so bad anymore, and I am finding some new cravings.”
    “Or maybe red velvet cake and ice cream always taste good,” Sophie said.
    That was probably more like it, but I’d forgotten that earlier that day for lunch I’d had spaghetti and wasn’t made ill by the tomato sauce. And I’d sneaked in a cookie that had some cinnamon, and I wasn’t sick to my stomach.
    “So, Lara,” Sophie said while flipping mindlessly through the satellite menu’s channels. She stopped the cursor on an episode of HGTV’s House Hunters . “What’s new in your neck of the woods?”
    “Work’s going well; boring, but going well.”
    Lara was an advertising associate for a big agency in Downtown, and before long she was going to become an executive. We all knew it. She was the MBA-holding, very driven, and successful career woman. Total Type-A when it came to business. And sometimes her personal life too. Her ad agency kept her well compensated (hence the sexy little Audi she’d recently purchased), her colleagues loved working with her (Paul, too, though perhaps a little more than the rest of them?), and she was on a great path to becoming a woman with a lot of power in her branding strategies department.
    “Might be traveling again soon,” Lara said. “The last trip I took to Spokane went really well with the client. We might have to go back there again and make some more big decisions and exciting deals.”
    “We?” Sophie asked.
    “Well, yeah…” Lara said. “Like…yeah, me, we…we as in the team. The whole team. My team and me. You know.”
    I wondered if Lara would bring up the topic of Paul in the middle of her stammering (perhaps he was part of the “we” team?) and how he was making things a bit more interesting at work. Was there a potential love affair, or was Lara misconstruing things as I may have done with Bobby? Lara dropped the topic of work, saying there was nothing exciting to share other than another possible trip to Spokane, so I forgot about it and turned my attention to Sophie as she was catching everyone up on her life’s events.
    “The café plans are going slowly right now because it’s major wedding season. I’ve got so many cake and catering orders going Katie needs my full attention at work.”
    “But you’re still going to try to set up your own shop?” I asked. Sophie had a lot of potential. I’d hate to see her give up on it.
    “Oh, of course. I’m still doing some small things like market research and even