Chapter Seven
Having three days off felt weird after going full speed for more than a week. But it was also nice to wake up and be able to just chill, even though she was still on bakery time. A glance at her phone told her it was just approaching five a.m. Then she noticed the date.
How the hell was it June already?
Regan couldn’t figure out how time was moving so quickly. She felt like she’d just gotten to Black Forest Hills, yet it had already been nearly two weeks. With a sigh, she tossed off her covers, deciding to go for a walk, get some fresh air.
She was surprised to see Ava sitting up in the dark, feet dangling over the side of her bed, still.
“You okay?” she whispered, not wanting to startle her.
“I thought I heard something,” Ava whispered back, then reached for the bedside lamp and clicked it on.
On the floor near the door was an envelope that looked like it had been slid underneath.
“What’s that?” Ava asked as Regan went and picked it up. It had both their names on it, and she held it up so Ava could see. Ava came to stand next to her, smelling faintly of laundry detergent and that soft, inviting scent that Regan had begun to think of as simply…Ava.
She tore open the envelope and read out loud.
As many of you may know, June is Pride month for the LGBTQ+ community. As such, I would like you to think about creating a tiered wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Could be male, female, nonbinary, trans, whatever you wish. I expect creativity not only in the look of your cake, in its overall appearance, but also in the flavor. I know a lot of competition shows use premade cake, but we don’t do that at the Bennett-Schmidt retreat. You will bake your own. Choose the flavors, the colors, the design. It’s all up to you. Use today to hash out your design, and we will begin putting them all together first thing tomorrow morning.
One more thing…for this project, you will be partnered. This time, we’ll go with roommates. Therefore, teams are as follows: Ava and Regan, Maia and Vienna, Madison and Paige. Assistants will not be on hand to help this time. It’ll just be the two of you.
Impress me.
The two of them stood there staring at the paper in Regan’s hand for a long moment. Then their eyes met, but they continued without words for another moment before Regan finally said, “Wow. Okay, I didn’t really expect that.”
“Which part?” Ava asked with a snort. “The Pride project, that it’s a wedding cake, or the creation of teams?”
“Yes,” Regan said. “All of it.” She had mixed emotions around this project. Of course she did. She was pretty sure Ava did as well, considering how she couldn’t seem to look her in the eye. Regan finally sighed. “Look, I know you’d rather not partner with me. To be honest, the feeling is mutual. So let’s just get through it, okay?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to partner with you.” Ava seemed to be going for insulted and added, “Don’t assume you know what I’m thinking, okay?”
“Of course. Sorry. It’s fine. We can manage this. We’re grown-ups. And you can’t get me fired from here, so we should be good.”
Ava poked the inside of her cheek with her tongue but said nothing. Instead, she turned back to her own side of the room and pulled her covers up, making her bed.
Okay. Fine. That’s how we’ll play this.
Regan returned to her own space as well and dug out clothes for going outside. A long time ago, she was a runner, but getting up by three thirty in the morning just to get to work didn’t leave much time for jogging. By the time she was out of work, she was exhausted, so she’d graduated from running to simply walking. She took her clothes into the bathroom, changed, brushed her teeth, pulled on a black hat with the Sweet Temptations logo embroidered in pink, and was done in mere moments.
In the bedroom, Ava was sitting at her desk with her laptop open. She didn’t look up.
“I’m going for a walk,” Regan said, then immediately wondered why she felt she needed to report her intentions to Ava. She sighed at herself, grabbed her phone, and headed out of the room.
* * *
Ugh. That woman.
Ava had to consciously unclench her jaw so that she wouldn’t get a headache. Stress did that to her, and Regan was giving her some stress, it was true.
She would never say anything, but losing to Regan in air hockey the night before was still niggling at her. She’d expected to win. She hadn’t been prepared for Regan to be that good. Who the hell else under forty was good at air hockey? She stifled a groan of frustration because she didn’t lose well. She knew this about herself, which was the only reason she was able to school her expression afterward and be gracious. Inside, she’d been seething that she’d lost. To Regan, of all people.
Before she could dwell any longer, there was a soft knock on the door. Who in the world was visiting before six in the morning? She crossed the room and opened the door to find Maia and Vienna standing there.
“You guys up?” Maia whispered, craning her neck to look around Ava.
Ava nodded. “Regan went for a walk.”
Maia held up an envelope. It was identical to the one Ava and Regan had received, but with Maia and Vienna’s names on it. “You see this?”
Another nod. “We got one, too.”
“What are you guys gonna make?” Maia asked, and Vienna gave her a light smack.
“You can’t ask them that.”
“Why not?” Maia’s voice held a slight whine. “They have an unfair advantage with Regan being gay.”
“What?” Ava asked. “How?” She didn’t add that she was gay, too, because she was far too curious about this so-called advantage it gave her. “Do you think she’s better at rainbows?”
Vienna rolled her lips in behind Maia, clearly trying not to laugh at her pastry partner.
“What? No. That’s silly. It’s just…” She seemed to fumble for words, then tugged at the ever-present purple bandanna. “I don’t know. It just seems unfair.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Vienna said, her tone good-natured.
“Hey, what’s with the bandanna?” Ava asked. “I’ve wanted to ask since the third time I saw you wear it.”
Maia looked down at it. “This? It’s lucky. I actually have about eight of them, so they do go in the wash, for anybody who’s wondering.” She eyeballed Vienna, who held up her hands like she was being robbed.
“I didn’t say a thing.” But Vienna smiled.
“Ah, okay.” Ava stifled a grin as she said, “’Cause it looks kinda gay.”
Maia’s eyes went wide. “What? Does it?” Again, she looked down at her bandanna, pulling it out as far as it would go while tied around her neck. “Seriously, does it?”
Vienna’s laugh was throaty as she began to pull Maia away. “Let’s go before you dig yourself a hole you can’t get out of.” Behind her Vienna met Ava’s eyes and they both laughed, then she tugged her roommate away.
Ava grinned and shook her head as she closed the door. She returned to her desk where she’d been about to jot some notes on ideas when Regan returned. “Short walk,” she commented.
“Rain.”
“Bummer.” Ava hadn’t even glanced out the window, so she had no idea it was wet out. She watched Regan as she took off her sneakers, crawled onto her bed, and sat back against her headboard. “So, we had a couple visitors,” she told her.
Regan furrowed her brow. “At six in the morning?”
Ava nodded with a grin. “Yup. Maia and Vienna came to see if we’d gotten an envelope, too.”
“Ah.”
“Also, Maia thinks we have an unfair advantage because you’re gay.”
Regan’s snorted laugh somehow gave Ava whatever it was she needed to say the next words.
“I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’m gay, too. I was afraid her head might explode.”
Regan’s bark of a laugh was so quick and loud, it made Ava jump in her seat, and she laughed along with her.
“I also questioned that purple bandanna she wears all the time. I may have told her it was a little gay.”
“Oh my God.” Regan laughed harder. “It so is, though.”
The two of them laughed for a moment before Regan pushed to her feet and grabbed some clothes out of her wreck of a suitcase, still open on the floor. “The rain made me cold. Gonna shower and think about how we can use our gayness to make better gay cake.” As she walked past Ava’s desk, she pointed at her with a grin. “I knew it, by the way. I knew you were.” Then she closed the bathroom door behind her with a click.
Ava kept smiling.
The rain that had arrived that morning slowly became angry and morphed into storms, complete with thunder and lightning, and while Ava couldn’t speak for Regan, she was glad to be able to just stay in their room and work on design ideas. She’d never liked thunderstorms. They frightened her, which she knew was silly and childish, but she’d never been able to shake it.
As if to underline her thought, a loud crack of thunder shook the house, and Ava nearly jumped out of her skin.
“You okay?” Regan asked from where she sat on her bed across the room, laptop open, seemingly unaffected by the crashing of the clouds above them.
Ava nodded, and she needed a moment to swallow her heart back down out of her throat and into her chest. “Thunder’s not my favorite.” She grimaced as she glanced out the window, bracing for the next crack.
“You’re welcome to come sit here with me. I promise I won’t bite. Or say something assholish.” Regan shot her a look that was half grin, half grimace. “Plus, we’re both working on the same thing. Might make it easier…” She let the idea drift off, then made a show of scooting over on her bed.
Ava glanced around the room. Regan’s bed was quite a ways farther from the window than Ava’s desk. And they were working on the same thing, namely their idea for the Pride cake. With a quiet sigh and one nod, she picked up her laptop, pen, and notepad and moved to sit next to Regan on her bed.
As if making their anger about her move known, the clouds crashed together again, and this time, the lights flickered. Ava flinched, a quiet gasp escaping her lips.
And then Regan’s warm hand was on her thigh. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “I’m right here. No worries.”
The combination of embarrassment for being such a baby and arousal from Regan’s hand on her body annoyed her. But she found herself giving Regan an explanation anyway. “When I was a kid—I was twelve, actually—there was a night when my dad didn’t come home. This wasn’t unusual. He was a drinker and a womanizer and verbally and emotionally abusive, but my mom always did her best to keep him out of trouble. So that night, the bar he normally frequented called my mom and told her to come get him because he was being ‘unruly.’” She made the air quotes. “She left me home alone in case it got ugly, and it did. He apparently got in a fight and was arrested, and Mom had to follow him to the police station, and it was a whole thing. She ended up being gone for hours.”
“During a thunderstorm,” Regan guessed.
Ava nodded. “During a raging thunderstorm that knocked out the electricity and the phone. So, I was alone in the dark, expecting my parents home in a few minutes that became several hours, with no way to contact them.”
“At twelve?” Regan’s eyes were wide. “Yikes. I’m so sorry. You must’ve been really scared.”
“I hid in my closet the whole time.”
“You poor thing.”
“And I wet my pants.”
“Oh God, that’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”
Ava turned her head to meet Regan’s gaze and saw nothing but sympathy there. At the same time, it was as if she’d been in some kind of trance and just been snapped back to reality. She covered her eyes. “Jesus, I don’t know why I felt the need to tell you all that.” She felt the red crawling up her neck and settling into her cheeks, the hot shame making itself known.
Regan squeezed her leg once, then pulled her hand back, as if sensing that the touch was no longer welcome. “Hey, like I said, no worries. I’m a vault.” She turned an imaginary key in front of her closed lips and mimed tossing it over her shoulder. Then she pointed at her laptop screen. “Wanna focus on this instead?”
Grateful, Ava nodded, and they got to work. The next rumble of thunder was loud but didn’t seem quite as nerve-racking, but she wouldn’t let herself dwell on the fact that maybe it was because Regan was so close.
Nope.
Not dwelling. At all.
* * *
When Regan glanced at her phone and saw that it was almost six in the evening, she did a double take. Holding up the phone, she nudged Ava with an elbow.
Ava looked up from her notes and gasped. “Oh my God, how did it get so late?” Her head snapped to the side so she could look out the window to see that though the storms had eased, it was still gray and gloomy out. “Maybe because it’s been so dark all day.”
“And we’ve had our noses stuck in our laptops for hours.” She rolled her head around on her shoulders, and her neck gave a loud pop that had Ava’s eyes going wide.
“Is that gonna fall off now?”
“What?” Regan asked.
“Your head. Should I brace to catch it?”
“I mean, feels like maybe…” And at that, her stomach gave a loud rumble. “God, I’m freaking starving.”
“Same.”
By unspoken agreement, they set their laptops and notes aside and worked their way off Regan’s bed, stopping to stretch. More of Regan’s joints made noise.
“I hate to tell you this,” Ava said as she grabbed her hairbrush off her desk and ran it through her dark hair, “I think you might be falling apart.”
Regan snorted a laugh as she walked around with one shoe on. “Story of my life.” She bent to look under the bed for the other, found it, and put it on. “Ready?”
Down in the dining room, they met up with the other four women seated at the table, two bottles of wine open.
“There you are. We were about to send somebody up to get you two.” Vienna was pouring and looked expectantly at each of them.
They both nodded, and Regan pulled out a chair, then collapsed into it. Ava sat next to her.
“We lost track of time,” Regan said.
“Easy to do in this weather,” Paige said.
Vienna set the filled wine glasses in front of them, then took her seat. “So? How does everybody feel about tomorrow?”
Murmurs went around the table, everybody nodding or shrugging. Regan couldn’t resist teasing Maia, so she said, “I mean, I’ve had my idea done for hours, considering the massive advantage I have.”
“And with both of us on the same team,” Ava added. “We can’t lose. All our big gay juju on one big gay project…” She shrugged, then took a sip of her wine, watching in delighted satisfaction as Maia’s face turned very, very red.
“Okay, listen. I was dumb.”
“Truth,” Regan said, hiding a grin. “Despite the bandanna.”
Maia covered her eyes as the others laughed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.” To her credit, she did look apologetic. Contrite.
“I suppose we can forgive you,” Ava said, and Regan was surprised by her playing along.
“Wait,” Madison said, seemingly just catching up. “You’re both gay?”
Regan glanced at Ava and they both nodded.
“And Maia thought that gave you an advantage in making a wedding cake for a same-sex couple?” Madison went on.
“Yup,” Regan said.
“Okay, I’m caught up now,” Madison said, shaking her head at Maia.
“What?” Maia whined. “I said I was sorry. I panicked.”
“I mean…” Vienna said softly. Regan had noticed that she seemed to be nearly as quiet as Ava, silently taking in the people around her, actively listening to conversations but contributing very little. “It would really suck if you guys didn’t win. Right?” Her expression was dead serious for about three seconds before she burst into laughter.
Soon, the entire table was cracking up, and it felt good to release the tension Regan thought they’d all been unknowingly shouldering.
Then Ava leaned her way and whispered, “It would, though.”
Regan laughed harder and nodded. Because she was right. The gay team losing the battle of the gay wedding cakes would be kind of pathetic. She leaned back toward Ava. “We’d better win, then.”