Baking and Babies

by Tara Sivec

  “She’s got long dark hair and pretty blue eyes, she’s twenty, and ooooooooh, she’s one of Marco’s students! You naughty boy, you.” Rosa giggles with her eyes glued to the phone in her hand. “Forget writing cookbooks, you could write one of those ‘I Bent the Rules and Bent Her Over My Desk’ taboo student/teacher romances.”

  Mom turns around and flicks Rosa’s ear, causing her to yelp and complain loudly, distracting her enough for me to reach around my mother and snatch my phone from her hand. Glancing down at it, I see that Rosa found Molly’s Facebook page and was knee-deep in her investigation, going by the fact that she was in a photo album dated five years ago.

  “After tomorrow, she will no longer be my student, so there won’t be anything taboo about it,” I inform them, clicking out of her Facebook page even though all I want to do now is sit and scroll through her pictures. “If any of you say one more word about this, I will pack up that Tiramisu, go home, and eat the entire thing myself.”

  I can see each of them struggle to keep their mouths closed, their nosiness at war with their stomachs.

  “Did you soak the Lady Fingers in hazelnut coffee?” Tessa asks with wide, hopeful eyes.

  I nod.

  “Did you put vanilla AND almond extract in the mascarpone?” Rosa questions with a dreamy sigh.

  I nod again, crossing my arms in front of me and refusing to budge until they all agree to stay out of my love life. Or what I hope will be a love life and not a complete disaster when Molly finds out I’m the ass she thinks can’t bake.

  After a few seconds, they concede reluctantly.

  “Fine,” Tessa mutters. “But if that tiramisu sucks, all bets are off.”

  I laugh, long and hard, as they trudge back into the dining room and I grab dessert from the fridge, knowing without a doubt I would never make a sucky tiramisu. I’m insulted she would even suggest such a thing.

  The rest of the night continues with only a few more minor arguments and no more violence from my mother for my behavior. With a kiss on her cheek and three Tupperware containers filled with leftovers, I leave my childhood home and head across town to my apartment to put together a plan of charming the pants off of Molly Gilmore, and hope my comment about kids on my Facebook page doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass.

  Chapter 3

  – Soup –

  Molly

  Staring proudly at my soufflé display that still sits on the middle of the stainless steal counter in the kitchen at school, I look around the huge room, making sure I’m alone. Confident that the rest of my classmates have long since gone home after receiving their pass or fail grades, I start shaking my ass and dancing around the counter. When I get to the other side, I pause my celebration long enough to grab the sheet of paper next to my display that officially declares me a French Pastry Chef, waving it around above my head as I resume my horrible moves.

  “What are you doing?! You can’t be dancing like that in your condition!”

  I freeze mid hip thrust with my arms in the air and watch Charlotte stalk across the room, snatching my final exam out of my hand and smacking it on the shiny surface.

  “Shaking your hips like that could hurt the baby,” she continues. “It could also hurt my reputation if anyone else witnessed that horrible display that resembled white girl wasted drunk moves.”

  With a sigh, I drop my arms and start unbuttoning my pastry coat. “In case you forgot, you’re the one with the fertilized egg in your uterus, not me. What are you even doing here at my school?”

  She crosses her arms in front of her as I toss the white fabric onto the countertop. “I didn’t forget, Molly. It’s hard to forget something like that when you’re constantly puking. If this is going to work, you have to be one hundred percent dedicated and that means behaving exactly like a pregnant woman would. I wanted to catch you here at school before you got home.”

  Reaching into the giant purse she has slung over her shoulder, she pulls out a thick book and thrusts it at me.

  “Here, I got you this. Skim through it and pay close attention to the things I marked with post-it notes.”

  Taking the book from her hand, I stare in irritation at the picture of the happy pregnant woman on the cover and the big bold words that say “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”. My hopes that Charlotte would forget this shit, come to her senses, and tell Gavin the truth was clearly a waste of time. Going by the fact that there are post-it notes in a multitude of colors sticking out of practically every page in the book, she still hasn’t grown a brain and has instead boarded the crazy train to La La Land and offered to drive.

  “Charlotte, this is insane. I am not going to learn about…” I flip through the book and pause on a random page, realizing this thing is probably the cause for her puking. “Growing hair on your nipples and hemorrhoids.”

  I close the book with a snap and shove it back at her. “I did you a favor by taking one for the team yesterday when you panicked. That doesn’t mean I’m going to keep up with this charade just because you’re too chicken shit to tell Gavin.”

  Her bottom lip starts to quiver and her eyes fill up with tears.

  “Oh, no,” I scold, pointing my finger in her face. “Don’t even try that shit with me. I know for a fact you can cry on command, and you do it every time Dad tells you no.”

  The tears immediately disappear and she huffs, moving on to a different tactic.

  “Molly, please,” she begs. “Just do me this one favor. Just until after the wedding and I have enough time to ease Gavin into the news. I’ve never asked you for anything in your entire life…”

  She trails off and I laugh, shaking my head at her audacity.

  “Took the blame for the dent in Mom’s car when the mailbox magically jumped out in front of you so you wouldn’t get grounded and miss prom. Took responsibility for the vodka you puked all over the bathroom floor the day AFTER prom so you could still go to a pool party. And let’s not forget the week I spent in my room after I falsely admitted to dying the cat’s hair pink so you wouldn’t miss Stephanie Johnson’s birthday party,” I remind her, ticking the items off on my fingers.

  “Oh my GOD, that happened when you were six! Get over it already!” she complains. “See? Look how good you are at making Mom and Dad believe whatever you say. What’s one more tiny little favor?”

  I roll my eyes at her as I turn away and pull my display to the edge of the counter. It’s a three-foot-long thick piece of cardboard covered in foil with my different soufflés resting neatly on top. It’s heavy and awkward, but I need to move it to the display case in the lobby with the rest of the pastry student’s projects.

  “It’s hilarious that you can call this a tiny favor, Char,” I tell her as I slowly lift the makeshift tray with both hands and turn to face her. “You’re asking me to tell our parents I’m pregnant. To lie to our entire family for four weeks, have them spend that whole time being disappointed and upset with me, just because you couldn’t remember what a condom looked like.”

  Tears fill her eyes again and I can tell she’s not faking them this time. I hate that I actually feel sorry for her. She’s the most selfish person on the planet, and I feel sorry for her stupid ass. She hasn’t even asked about finals when she knew what a big day this was for me. Two years of not having a life and working my ass off and she comes in here thinking only about herself.

  “You don’t understand, Molly,” she whimpers. “I love Gavin more than anything else in this world. You have no idea how dead set he is against having kids. I thought I felt the same way until I took that test. I know it will just take him time to get used to the idea. I just need a little while to convince him how good it will be.”

  I close my eyes and count to ten, trying really hard not to give in.

  “Mom made me clean up your vodka puke,” I remind her, trying at the same time to remind myself all the reasons why I shouldn’t cave. “I had to listen to a forty minute lecture about knowing my limits, and then
she made me watch fifteen episodes of Intervention with her.”

  Cleaning up Charlotte’s puke wasn’t as bad as my mother trying to convince me that vodka was a gateway drug to meth and I should think about how embarrassing it would be if she put me on a reality show where the entire world would see me huffing air dusters and sleeping with eighty-year-old men to pay for crack.

  “I know, I’m sorry,” Charlotte whispers. “I’ll make it up to you this time, I promise.”

  My arms are starting to get heavy, and if I don’t agree to this, she’s never going to leave me alone. It’s not like I have anything else going on in my life now that I’m finished with school. I start working full-time at the Seduction and Snacks headquarters in a few days, but that’s a regular job with regular hours and nothing like the time I had to put in for school. And it’s not like I’ll be busy having a hot romance since I was too much of a chicken to finally try and have a real conversation with Marco instead of just sniffing him. He didn’t say one word to me when he studied my project earlier, made several notes on his notepad, and then walked away. He didn’t even look in my direction when we came back into the kitchen a few hours later and he handed out our final scores. Now that I’ll be walking out of this school for the last time, I’ll probably never see him again, and I completely blew whatever opportunity I had to flirt with him and see if he might be interested. My life sucks. It’s only four weeks, I guess I can handle a month of this nonsense to save Charlotte’s marriage.

  “I want every baking item and pastry utensil you get at your shower. Including the KitchenAid mixer I know Aunt Claire already bought off your registry,” I inform her.

  Charlotte squeals and claps her hands together happily. “Deal!”

  “I also want ten percent of your profits from cards at the actual wedding.”

  Her smile falls and she glares at me.

  “Five,” she counters.

  “I’m fake carrying your baby for four weeks, and you know Mom is going to want to talk about nipple hair! TEN!” I argue.

  She stomps her foot and huffs. “Fine! Ten. But you better be the most convincing fake pregnant woman in the history of the world.”

  “I’ll even dump a can of soup in the toilet when I have fake morning sickness,” I reassure her.

  Charlotte quickly clamps her hand over her mouth.

  “Dnsh shtak ashtok shtup,” she muffles against her palm.

  The look of confusion on my face makes her pull her hand away, swallowing a few times to keep, what I’m assuming is a little vomit, in her throat.

  “I said, don’t talk about…soup.”

  She whispers the word soup, and I can actually see her face turn an interesting shade of green.

  “You are so weird,” I mutter, shifting the display in my hands as my arms start to cramp. “So, what’s the plan?”

  It’s her turn to look confused and she’s lucky I’m holding twenty-five pounds of soufflé’s or I’d smack that look right off of her face.

  “How and when am I supposed to tell Mom and Dad this joyous news?” I growl in annoyance.

  “Well, I told Gavin not to say anything until you could talk to them, but he might have already said something to Tyler who probably told Ava. So you should do it really soon. Like, as soon as you get home,” she tells me, having the decency to wince delivering the news that our sister and her weird boyfriend might already know about my fake delicate condition.

  “So, I’m supposed to just walk into the house and say ‘Hey, Mom and Dad, good news! I passed all my exams, I’m finally done with school, graduation is Friday at seven, I made a chocolate cake to celebrate, and oh, by the way, I got knocked up by a guy I never told you about and who you’ll never meet because Charlotte already told Gavin he was a horrible man that wants nothing to do with me. What’s for dinner?” I ramble, picturing my father’s head literally exploding all over the living room wall if I said that.

  “Perfect!” Charlotte says with a nod, not hearing the sarcasm in my voice.

  I open my mouth to call her a range of creative names, but a male voice coming from the doorway cuts me off.

  “That won’t work at all. What if I go home with you and pretend to be the father?”

  I jump and turn so fast towards the doorway that my display slips right out of my hand and splats to the floor, sending pastry crust and pounds of different flavored fillings all over mine and Charlotte’s shoes.

  “Eeeeeew, it looks like tomato soup,” she whines, probably talking about the cherry filling dripping from her shins.

  I ignore the gagging sounds coming from her and stare with my mouth wide open at Marco as he lounges against the door jam, not even caring that I just ruined my display that I spent weeks agonizing over and all day today baking and perfecting.

  “You’re not doing this alone, Molly. Let me help you out,” he tells me softly.

  I’m too mesmerized by the sound of his voice and how his eyes got all sweet looking when he said my name, that it takes me a couple of seconds to process what he said. He cocks his head and smiles at me, and it finally hits me that he must have overheard the last part of my conversation with Charlotte and he’s offering to help me. He thinks I’m pregnant with another guy’s child and he just volunteered to walk right into the lion’s den of my parent’s house and take some of the heat off me.

  Butterflies flap around in my stomach and a giddy grin starts to take over my face, realizing I didn’t blow my opportunity with him and he clearly likes me a little bit if he’s being so sweet and offering to stand in as the baby daddy for me.

  OH, MY GOD HE’S OFFERING TO BE MY BABY DADDY BECAUSE HE THINKS I’M PREGNANT WITH ANOTHER GUY’S CHILD!

  “Yes. YES!” Charlotte shouts next to me in between gags as she shakes her leg to try and get the cherry filling off. “This is perfect! I don’t know who you are, but you are a very nice and generous guy to help Molly out like this.”

  I’m still unable to form words as she takes over speaking for me, telling Marco about the fake horrible man that fake knocked me up whose name she can’t even bare to utter (BECAUSE HE’S FAKE) and how he left me in this condition and it would be just awful if I had to face it alone.

  Marco nods in understanding while she prattles on, wrapping her arm around my shoulder and giving it a sympathetic squeeze when she tells him how much she loves me and how she feels so much better now that I won’t be going through such a trying time alone.

  When she finally finishes her long-winded, TMI explanation to the guy I’ve had a crush on for what feels like forever, who is now looking at me like he wants to give me a supportive hug instead of ripping my clothes off like I always dreamed, I finally find my voice.

  Turning away from Marco’s sad smile, I look right into my sister’s eyes and whisper the words I know will hurt the most.

  “Soup, soup, soup. Cream of mushroom soup, green pea soup, chunky gelatinous globs of soup from a can. Soup.”

  Our faces are so close I can literally hear the vomit fly up into her mouth. Her cheeks puff out to keep it in, her eyes widen in fear, and without another word—thank God—she turns and runs from the room as fast as she can, bumping into Marco on her way out.

  “She has a thing about soup; so weird,” I tell him with a shrug as the clack of her shoes running down the hall to the closest bathroom fades away.

  “Listen, Marco, you don’t have to—”

  “Molly, stop,” he cuts me off, moving out of the doorway and walking towards me. “I know I don’t have to, I want to. I’ve wanted to get to know more about you for a while now, so I guess this will give me that chance.”

  He stops when he gets to the counter, resting his palms on top and leaning across it towards me. I can’t help myself from leaning towards him as well, the smell of cookie dough filling my nose and making my knees weak.

  “Let me do this for you. We can go get some dinner to get our stories straight, and then I’ll give you a ride home so that we can talk to your pare
nts together,” he suggests.

  All I can do is nod in agreement when he gives me another smile. I’ve waited two years to be alone with this guy and now I’m getting my chance. By making him the father of the baby I’m not really pregnant with.

  “How about I clean up this mess on the floor and you check on…?”

  “My asshole sister,” I mutter as he comes around the counter to grab some towels from near the sink.

  Marco laughs as he bends down and begins cleaning up the floor.

  “She’s probably still got the soup pukes, she’ll be fine,” I tell him.

  He smiles up at me as he stands and drops the dirty towels into the sink. When he finishes washing his hands, he walks to my side and threads his fingers through mine, pulling me gently to the door of the kitchen.

  We walk through the school and out into the parking lot, and all I can think about is that Marco Desoto is holding my hand. Marco Desoto is taking me on a date.

  I mean, a date where we’ll talk about hairy nipples, hemorrhoids and afterbirth, and how my father’s brain matter will stain his blue dress shirt when his head explodes, but still.

  If being the pretend father of my pretend child is the only way I can get him to spend time with me, so be it. I’ll just ask Charlotte if I can catch a ride on that crazy train of hers when this is all over.

  Chapter 4

  – Toxic Spooge –

  Marco

  I stare at Molly across the table as she picks at her food, wondering if she’s going to puke. Do pregnant chicks puke at night too or just in the morning? Should I go sit next to her and hold her hair back just in case? What if she doesn’t have pregnancy sickness but Marco sickness? Maybe I disgust her. I kind of disgust myself right now that I opened my mouth without really thinking about what I was doing.