Chapter 7
Robin
Monday. I've been baking for six hours and Ash's kitchen looks like a pastry bomb went off.
There are cupcakes on every surface. The counter, the table, the top of the microwave.
Three different frostings in piping bags lined up like ammunition.
A sheet of brown butter blondies cooling on a rack.
A batch of snickerdoodles that I over-spiced because my hands were shaking and I dumped in too much cinnamon, so now they're sitting on a plate labeled DO NOT EAT — CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.
I'm halfway through batch number seven — vanilla bean cupcakes with brown butter frosting — when I realize what flavor I've been making for six hours.
Vaughn's favorite. Vanilla and brown butter. Every single batch.
I turn off the mixer and stand there with my hands braced on the counter, staring at the batter like it betrayed me.
"I'm spiraling," I inform the empty kitchen. "This is a spiral. I'm aware that I'm spiraling."
Awareness does not stop the spiral.
I couldn't go to the bar last night. I texted Toby some excuse about being busy — Toby, who can identify a Robin lie from three zip codes away — and then I sat in my room and stared at the wall for two hours replaying every second of Saturday night.
Vaughn's voice in the dark. Because I see you.
His lion, warm and enormous, curled around me in the grass.
My lips on his jaw. The way he went still. The way he touched the spot after, like he was pressing the memory into his skin.
And then I said it doesn't mean anything and walked inside and closed the door, because that's what I do. That's what I always do. Get close to something real and then run before it can prove me right — that the real me isn't worth staying for.
The front door opens and Toby walks in carrying a tote bag and wearing his "I'm going to fix you whether you like it or not" face. He takes one look at the kitchen — the cupcakes, the frosting, the cinnamon casualties — and sets his bag down slowly.
"Recipe testing?" He already knows the answer.
"Obviously."
"How many batches?"
"Six. Seven. Somewhere in there."
"And they're all..." He picks up a cupcake from the nearest batch. Peels back the liner. Takes a bite. Chews thoughtfully. "Vanilla bean with brown butter frosting."
"It's a classic combination."
"It's Vaughn's favorite combination outside of salted caramel." He sets the cupcake down. "Robin. What happened?"
"Nothing happened."
"You missed Sunday night for the first time in months. Something happened."
I turn the mixer back on so I don't have to answer. Toby walks over and turns it off.
"Talk to me."
"There's nothing to talk about."
"Robin."
"He came and got me from a bad date." The words come out before I can stop them, a dam breaking.
"Brett was being — it doesn't matter. I texted Vaughn and he came in eight minutes and he didn't ask questions and he just put himself between me and this guy and walked me out.
And then we rode to the overlook and I lay in the grass and I told him—" My voice catches.
"I told him I don't know if there's a real me underneath all the performing. And he said—"
I have to stop. Grip the counter. The batter in the mixer bowl sits motionless, waiting.
"He said he sees me. The real me. Not the performance. He listed specific moments — story hour with the kids, cooking, the way my face changes when I'm not pretending. He's been watching, Toby. For months. He's been watching and he sees the thing I'm most afraid doesn't exist."
Toby is very quiet. "And then what?"
"And then he shifted into a lion and I curled up against him in the grass and it was the safest I've felt since—" Since Ash left.
Since before our parents stopped pretending they gave a shit.
Since ever. "And then a cop woke us up and he drove me home and I kissed his cheek and told him it didn't mean anything and went inside. "
"You told him it didn't mean anything."
"Yes."
"After he told you he sees the real you."
"Yes."
"Robin." Toby's voice is so gentle it makes me want to break things. "Why?"
I open my mouth to deflect. To make a joke, change the subject, perform my way out of this conversation the way I perform my way out of everything. But Toby is looking at me with those steady brown eyes behind his glasses and I can't.
"Because everything I know about love is performance.
" It comes out raw and ugly and I hate the sound of it.
"Our parents performed a marriage for years.
They screamed at each other and cheated on each other and made up and pretended everything was fine over breakfast and called that love.
Dad had a different girlfriend every few months and told them all they were special.
Mom did the same thing. And I watched that my entire childhood and learned that love is a thing you perform for an audience, not a thing you actually feel. "
Toby doesn't interrupt. He pulls out a kitchen chair and sits down and waits.
"I perform interest in everyone I meet. Every guy I've slept with, every date I've gone on — it's a performance.
The flirting, the charm, the making people feel special.
I'm good at it because I learned from the best. Two people who spent years pretending to love each other and then pretending to love everyone after.
" I'm pacing now, circling the kitchen island, hands in my hair.
"And when Vaughn looks at me and says he sees the real me, I panic.
Because what if there IS no real me? What if the performance is all there is?
What if I peel back all the layers and underneath it's just — nothing?
An empty kitchen. No recipe. Just a guy who knows how to fake every flavor but doesn't have one of his own. "
"Robin—"
"And what if I let him in and he figures that out? What if he sees the real me and the real me is boring or broken or not enough? What if—"
"Robin." Toby stands up and crosses the kitchen and puts both hands on my shoulders, stopping the pacing. "Listen to me."
I stop. My eyes are burning. I will not cry. I'm twenty-eight years old and I'm standing in a kitchen full of cupcakes and I will not cry.
"The caring is real," Toby says. "The way you take care of everyone?
Real. You drove me to the library at six AM when my car broke down and never complained once.
You stress-baked a cake the night I got lost in the storm because you were worried.
You make themed treats for story hour every week — not because anyone asked you to, not because you get paid for it, but because you know the kids love them. That's not performance. That's you."
"That's just—"
"It's not 'just' anything. The baking is real.
You don't bake for people because you're performing love.
You bake because it IS love. It's the language you found when the one your parents taught you turned out to be garbage.
" He shakes me gently. "You made seven batches of Vaughn's favorite flavor today.
You weren't recipe testing. You were loving him in the only language you trust."
I look at the cupcakes. Rows and rows of them, golden and perfect, each one frosted with the careful precision I bring to everything I make. Vanilla bean. Brown butter. Vaughn's favorites.
I wasn't recipe testing.
"Oh god," I say.
"Yeah." Toby almost smiles.
"I'm in love with him."
"I know."
"Toby, I'm in LOVE with him. This isn't a crush. This isn't me being flirty. I am in actual love with a man who does crossword puzzles in reading glasses and communicates exclusively in monosyllables and I have been baking him cupcakes ALL DAY like a complete—"
"Like a person in love. Yes." Now Toby is definitely smiling. "It looks good on you."
I sink into a kitchen chair. Put my head on the table. The wood is cool against my forehead and smells like vanilla extract. "What do I do?"
"You go to the bar tonight. You bring the cupcakes. You stop avoiding him."
"I can't just show up with cupcakes. That's — he'll know."
"Robin. He already knows. He told you he sees the real you. He drove in the middle of the night to rescue you from a bad date. He turned into a lion and kept you warm. He knows."
"Then why didn't he say anything? At the door? When I said it didn't mean anything?"
"Because you told him it didn't mean anything and he respected that.
That's what good people do. They don't push past your boundaries even when your boundaries are stupid.
" Toby pulls out his phone. "I'm texting Knox that we're coming to the bar tonight.
You're going to shower, put on something that isn't covered in flour, bring these cupcakes, and be a human person in Vaughn's vicinity.
That's all. You don't have to confess anything.
You don't have to be perfect. You just have to show up. "
"Showing up is the hardest part."
"I know." His voice goes soft. "I showed up at that bar in a rainstorm wearing a wet cat cardigan and Knox decided I was his. Sometimes showing up is the whole thing."
I lift my head from the table. "What if I mess it up?"
"You will. Vaughn will too. That's what relationships are — two people messing up and choosing each other anyway. Your parents never taught you that part because they never did it."
I look at the cupcakes again. Seven batches. Six hours. Vaughn's favorites, made with trembling hands and too much love and not enough sense.
"Fine," I say. "But I'm bringing the blondies too. As a decoy. So it doesn't look like I made seventy cupcakes specifically for one man."
"Brilliant strategy." Toby starts boxing cupcakes. "Go shower. You have flour in your eyebrows."
"That's a look. It's very artisanal."
"Go."
I go upstairs, strip off my baking-destroyed clothes, and stand under the hot water for a long time. The steam smells like vanilla. Everything in my life smells like vanilla because I've been baking Vaughn's favorites since dawn like a lovesick idiot.
I'm in love with Vaughn.
Not the flirty, surface-level attraction I've been calling it.
Not the casual interest I perform with every attractive man who crosses my path.
Real, stupid, terrifying love — the kind where I made him a cookie with hazel eyes and extra detail and told him not to read into it while desperately hoping he would.
I get dressed. Dark jeans. A soft grey sweater that Toby once said made me look "touchable," which is either a compliment or a diagnosis. I fix my hair.
Downstairs, Toby has boxed the cupcakes and the blondies and is waiting by the door with the patient expression of a man herding a disaster toward salvation.
"Ready?" he asks.
"Absolutely not."
"Perfect. Let's go."