The bakery called me at 9:12 in the morning and asked if I still wanted the words hot pink.
Me: What words?
Bakery Lady: Congrats On Your Divorce.
Me: (long pause) I think you have the wrong person.
Bakery Lady: This number is on the order.
Me: I'm not divorced.
Bakery Lady: Then somebody in your family is being very optimistic.
Turns out my younger brother had ordered himself a divorce cake and used my number because he "didn't want weird calls at work."
I called him immediately.
Me: Did you order a divorce cake?
Brother: Technically.
Me: There are no technicalities with cake, Kevin.
Brother: It was supposed to be funny.
Me: It says Congrats On Your Divorce in hot pink.
Brother: Yeah.
Me: That's not funny. That's a cry for help with frosting.
He'd been separated for four months and acting weirdly cheerful about it, which in my family is always suspicious.
Brother: My friends are coming over tonight. We were gonna do a whole reset party.
Me: A reset party.
Brother: New chapter. Bad tequila. Cake. You know.
Me: I don't know. That's why I'm calling.
Then he got quiet.
Brother: She signed the papers this morning.
Me: Oh.
Brother: So now it feels less funny.
Me: You want me to cancel the cake?
Brother: Can you change it?
Me: To what?
Brother: I don't know. Something less... gloating.
I called the bakery back.
Me: Can you fix the cake?
Bakery Lady: Depends. Are we reducing the pink or reducing the divorce?
Me: Both if possible.
She laughed way too hard at that.
By that night the cake said Welcome Back, Kevin.
No divorce. No ex-wife shade. Just his name in blue.
His friends still came over.
One of them brought paper plates and one brought a six-pack and one just walked in and hugged him for a weirdly long time.
Brother: This is so much better.
Me: I know.
Brother: The pink would've been too much.
Me: The pink was insane.
Then his friend Ryan opened the box and read it.
Ryan: Welcome back to what?
Brother: Honestly? Me, hopefully.
That was the first honest thing he'd said all day.
We still ate the whole cake.
Teenagers have started calling AI art “boomer art” and consider it cringe, and YouTubers have stopped using AI-generated thumbnails because teenagers find them cringe and won't click on them. And honestly, I couldn't be happier.