by Natasha West
Robyn folded her arms. ‘Good god. What is it with you? I thought…’
Jodie arched an eyebrow. ‘You thought what?’ she asked sharply.
Robyn shook her head. This was not going well. Why was it always like this? Why did Robyn never really know where she stood or what would annoy Jodie or whether she even liked her?
With that in mind, she wondered if perhaps she should let this fantasy go. The idea of busting down Jodie’s walls, of being let in, of getting close and staying there comfortably… Was it a silly dream?
Robyn let out a long sigh and fixed Jodie with a dark look. ‘You know what? Sod this. When we’ve got the keys, you’re coming to my room.’
Jodie smiled in mild surprise, folding her arms. ‘Oh, am I?’
‘Yes,’ Robyn told her firmly. ‘And you know what I want then? I want you to take your clothes off and shut your bloody mouth,’ Robyn said, feeling steadier than she had a few minutes ago.
Jodie’s face seemed to lengthen to an angry point. ‘Is that so?’
The runner came over right then with the keys, read the vibe, and made a sharp exit.
Jodie stood, keys in hand. ‘Well? Are you going to put your money where your mouth is, or was that just an empty threat?’
Robyn stood too, answering the question with a question. ‘Are you going to shut your mouth?’
They began to stride toward the elevators. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so, no,’ Jodie said sharply.
‘We’ll see about that,’ Robyn said as the doors opened.
‘You gonna shut it for me?’ Jodie asked as she hit the button for the seventh floor.
‘Oh, you fucking see if I don’t,’ Robyn told her as the doors slid shut.
Thirty-Four
In the shower. On the floor. Over the vanity table. Against the wardrobe. In the bath. The bed never saw any action, ironically. Because Jodie and Robyn had thrown each other all over the hotel room, barely stopping to catch their breath. It went on longer and harder than ever before. It went to a point where Jodie wanted to stop but didn’t. She couldn’t. If they stopped, they might talk. Jodie couldn’t have that.
Because as Robyn had shown her last week, Jodie had no idea how to simply be with another person in the way someone like Robyn needed. Robyn had tried to be nice, and Jodie had felt something shut down. Because you didn’t change just like that. You didn’t just figure out how to be a real person over the course of eight weeks of baking. She’d been silly to imagine for a moment that she could. So now she was being shitty. And hurtful. And cold. She was being Jodie, original flavour.
Jodie knew this meant that her brother was right. But so what? Just because he’d found a mummy substitute and clung to her legs to feel safe… Jodie had made a different choice in her life. She was who she was. And that person wasn’t going to love anyone. She didn’t need to cling to another person. She had herself.
She turned to look at Robyn, who was in a stare-off with the ceiling, almost comatose from the session. ‘I’m going to kick your arse tomorrow, you know that, right?’ Jodie said.
Robyn snapped out of her daze, leaning up on her elbows, chuckling, ‘Sure. Fine.’
‘I’m serious. I’m gonna absolutely murder you.’
Robyn raised an eyebrow. ‘Big talk for someone who came second today.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe I didn’t bring my A-game today.’
‘But tomorrow?’
‘It’s coming.’
Robyn sighed through her nose, her smile fading. ‘What are you doing?’
Jodie blinked. ‘What? I’m not doing anything. What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about the fact that I’m starting to figure something out about you.’
‘You don’t know shit about me,’ Jodie said, her pulse racing harder than it had even in that crazy fourth orgasm.
Robyn took a long pause. ‘Yeah. Maybe you’re right.’ She stood and got dressed. Jodie watched her, and she wanted to say something snide or cruel, but she felt that if she did, Robyn was going to break open her whole act right then and there. If that happened, Jodie had this horrible feeling that she’d never recover from it. She’d always feel… She struggled for a word, and her brother’s voice popped into her head and supplied it. Hollow.
Robyn walked over to the door and opened it, got halfway out and turned. ‘You know what? It doesn’t have to be like this. We could be… something. I don’t know. Do with that what you will. But if you can’t stop acting like this, it’ll never…’ She tried to find the words, but eventually, she gave up and walked out.
Jodie gaped at where Robyn had been stood, shocked. Robyn wasn’t the first woman to make that type of plea. What frightened Jodie was that it was the first time she’d ever wanted to say that she was sorry, she’d been acting like an idiot, that she wanted them to be something too. The trouble was, Jodie didn’t know how to say those types of things. She never knew things like that.
So she said nothing. She did nothing. Just stayed where she was and tried to get her breath, tried to shake this silly feeling, this want. All the sex they’d had couldn’t fill this hole in Jodie. But Jodie didn’t think it was a hole that could be filled.
Not five minutes later, her phone rang. Her brother. She was tempted to not pick up, but cracked after nine rings. ‘Hey, burn the house down yet?’ she greeted him.
‘Yeah. I’m just standing out here with the fireman now. I keep trying to tell him it was faulty wiring, but I don’t think he’s buying it.’
Jodie snorted. ‘So what’s up?’
‘I wanted to tell you something.’
Jodie didn’t like how scared he sounded. ‘You didn’t really burn the house down?’
Billy drew a deep breath. ‘I’m moving out. Me and Sasha are getting a place.’
Jodie’s brow scrunched. ‘Right.’
She heard Billy swallow down the phone. ‘Is that… You alright with that?’
‘I’m fine. Only… I thought you wanted to stay in our house?’
‘Don’t get me wrong, I like the house. It’s just, you know, me and Sasha, we want to live together.’
‘You can’t afford that. You’re both twelve and you don’t even have a job right now.’
‘I’m nineteen, and I’ll get one.’
‘You’ll still need a load of money upfront, deposit, application fees, all of that.’
‘I can get those things. We’re getting kicked out in a year anyway. Why are you shitting on this?’
‘Because…’ Jodie closed her eyes. She came close to not saying what she eventually found herself saying. ‘Because I came on this show so we could buy the house. Dad’s house.’
Billy sighed. ‘I didn’t know that. You never told me that.’
‘I didn’t think you needed to know.’
‘Jodie, for fuck’s sake,’ her brother said angrily. ‘I definitely needed to know that. I can stay. I’ll stay.’
Jodie paused. ‘No. You’re right. You should move on.’
‘I don’t want to move on. Not like you’re saying. I just thought…’
‘Billy, it’s alright. Moving on is good.’ She took a moment to think about what she’d said, and she realised she meant it. ‘I think this is good.’
‘I can’t believe I didn’t know you were doing this for the house.’
‘Why’d you think I went on a televised baking competition. For Instagram likes?’
‘I guess I just thought you’d done it for Dad,’ Billy said quietly. ‘He’d have loved to do this.’
Something insane happened to Jodie when Billy said those words. A tear formed in the corner of one eye. She was quick to wipe it away. When she was sure her voice wouldn’t wobble, she asked, ‘You think so?’
‘Yeah. I do.’
Jodie cleared her throat, feeling steadier. ‘I always kind of thought that if you’d been a bit older, he’d have taught you, not me,’ she said eventually.
‘I was ten. I could have learnt.’
/>
Jodie chewed that over. ‘Yeah. Maybe.’
‘He taught you because you were like him.’
Jodie guffawed. ‘I don’t see that at all. People always said I was the spit of mum. You know, a bit… cold.’
‘I never saw mum like that.’
‘But don’t you think that’s why she left? Because she didn’t care about other people?’
Billy sounded astonished. ‘No, not at all. I think she left because she was scared. I think she knew she was too weak to deal with it all,’ Billy said. Jodie thought he was finished, but then he added hesitantly, ‘You’re not like that at all. You looked after dad, and then you looked after me. That took a lot of guts.’
Jodie was shocked. She and her brother never spoke like this. She’d never known he thought any of this.
Thirty-Five
Robyn walked away from Jodie’s door, truly mortified. She’d laid it on the line, against her better judgement. And Jodie had said nothing. It was pretty clear what that meant. Robyn had to accept it. But it hurt. What hurt the most was that the more she thought about it, there was nothing that Jodie had said or done that she could say had been designed to trick her. She’d tricked herself. She’d seen something in Jodie that she’d liked, wanted. And then she’d let herself get carried away. But Jodie didn’t feel that way for her.
There was only one prize she could aim for. The prize of first place on Bake It! Even if there were things that Robyn wanted more, they were not on offer. So she’d do what she always did, bake through the pain. It probably wouldn’t work, but what the hell else was she supposed to do?
***
‘Viennese!’ Madeline nearly screamed.
‘Nice!’ Robyn uttered in surprise, pleased. She liked a Viennese, it had to be said.
‘Mmm,’ Jodie said with a slight raise of one eyebrow.
Robyn glanced at her and wondered if someone had announced that she’d have to make delicious biscuits from the corpses of Adam and Imogen, might that have surprised her just slightly? But unlike the first couple of weeks, Robyn’s thought was tinged with affection for the icy baker. Robyn wasn’t at all sure she wanted that warmth there, but there it was.
‘As you know, the Viennese biscuit can have several variations, but what yours must have today is a sandwich element. Each cookie must be comprised of two biscuits with a filling, and we want twenty biscuits in all. Will you go classic style? Or surprise us? The choice is yours.’
They unveiled the table. Cream and jam were there, as expected for a classic Viennese whirl. There where also oranges and lemons, sugar, vanilla, dark chocolate, coffee, as well as a host of other things that made Robyn think Yuk.
She had a decision to make, that much had been laid out. Go classic or go crazy. She thought about what Jodie would do, and she knew Jodie well enough to come to the conclusion that she’d make a classic flavour. Whatever shit people had given her up to now about jazzing up her recipes, that was who Jodie was. Robyn instinctively thought that for the last thing they’d ever make on this show, Jodie would go back to her father’s recipes.
Which meant that Robyn would either compete with her on her own turf or go in the other direction. It was an old choice. The devil you know or…
Robyn went to the table and picked up brown sugar and sea salt and thought, ‘I can’t do what Jodie does. I have to do something I’d want to eat.’
***
‘Chocolate and salted caramel Viennese whirls?’ Madeline asked.
‘That’s right,’ Robyn said busily, whisking her caramel over a low heat. She didn’t hear a response, and she stopped whisking to look up and see Madeline’s face, to read her reaction. There wasn’t a lot to read. ‘You don’t think the judges will like it?’ Robyn said, hating the way her voice flew up with anxiety.
Madeline chewed her lip. ‘I didn’t say that. Only…’
‘What?’
‘It’s just that Adam thinks that salted caramel… He hates its popularity. He thinks it’s overused.’
Robyn’s face fell. ‘Oh.’
‘But that doesn’t mean he won’t like your recipe. Right?’
‘Umm, right,’ Robyn said. She nearly poured her caramel down the sink right there and then.
‘Is caramel hard to make?’ Madeline asked conversationally.
‘What? Yes. Err, no. I don’t know. Excuse me,’ Robyn said and took the caramel off the heat; it was done anyway. She said, ‘Pee break,’ and walked off the set. Madeline looked a bit shocked by the abrupt departure, but Robyn didn’t have time to think about that. She was spiralling.
In the toilet, she didn’t pee. She just stood looking at herself in the mirror, bent over the sink, eyeballing herself. She had made a mistake. But she was only thirty minutes into the two-hour time allotted. She could scrap her plan, do something else…
‘Oi!’
Robyn nearly headbutted the mirror. She spun to see who was shouting at her. It was Jodie. ‘What’s, what, what…’ Jodie stuttered.
‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ Jodie demanded. ‘You’ve got limited time.’
Robyn didn’t completely understand the question. ‘I mean, there’s only so many options if you come in here-’
‘No, you didn’t come in here to pee. Or the other. You came in to panic, didn’t you?’ Jodie demanded.
Robyn was appalled that Jodie had seen her meltdown. ‘No! I didn’t. I’m not panicking, as such, I just -’
‘I was listening to her, Madeline. She was implying you’d fucked up. So you came in here to lose your shit.’
Robyn bit her lip. ‘No,’ she said quietly.
Jodie didn’t buy it. ‘You gotta stop this.’
‘Stop what?’
‘Caring what other people say to you. You gotta listen to yourself. It’s gotten you this far, for fuck’s sake. Dorothy actually messed with your bakes and you still got here. Just you.’
Robyn fixed Jodie with a sharp look. ‘I should have known you’d say that.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Jodie asked defensively.
‘Because you don’t give a shit about anyone, do you?’ Robyn asked. ‘All of us are just shadows to you.’
Jodie paused. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘No, you don’t say anything. You just let others do that.’ She began to walk out, trying to seem angry. But her face was pink with shame. After everything that had happened, it was confusing to be in this small space with Jodie. She didn’t understand why Jodie was giving her a pep talk. Or Jodie’s version of one. Whatever the reason, Robyn didn’t want it. She got to the door, and she was about to leave, just like last night, in silence.
Only the silence was broken. Jodie, without looking at her, said, ‘I do care about people, you know. I care about my brother. That’s why I put myself through all of this; so we can put a down payment on our house and buy it, so we don’t get kicked out. But it doesn’t matter now, he’s moving out. So I guess this was for nothing.’
Robyn turned back to Jodie, shocked. ‘You never told me that…’
But Jodie was still going, talking, not stopping for anything. ‘And I… I care about you. That’s why I’m saying this. Because you need to know that it won’t matter if you win today. It won’t fix what you think it will. Not if you don’t figure out how to block out the noise of other people. I’ve done that too well, I know that. I know,’ she said darkly. ‘I don’t know if I could… Look, you said something to me last night, and it scared me. I liked it too. But I don’t know how to…’ she gestured at her chest. ‘I just don’t know how to be, I don’t know, a person, I guess.’
‘You’re a person,’ Robyn said firmly, finding her voice in amongst her wonder. ‘You’re the most person person I’ve ever known.’
Jodie looked at her at last, eyes wide.
‘You’ve saved my bacon so many times in these few short weeks. Alex, Dorothy. You don’t speak nicely, you don’t throw compliments around or wear your heart on your sleeve. Bu
t I’ve seen something in you I’ve never seen in anyone else.’
Jodie sighed. ‘What, when I was throwing you around my hotel room instead of just talking to you?’
Robyn smiled, feeling weak, almost faint. ‘I was there too, I did the same. I liked you being gentle with me. But I liked it that way too. You didn’t… You’ve let me see the worst of you, and that let me be the worst of me. You don’t understand what that means to someone like me.’