Chapter Nine
The rest of the week had flown by. Honestly, it was crazy how fast time seemed to be going. Ava felt like she’d only arrived a day or two ago, but the reality was, it had already been two and a half weeks.
It was Sunday, and Liza had given them the day off. Nothing had slowed down after the same-sex wedding cake bake-off. They’d gone right back to work the next day. Liza had helped them perfect their scones for the second time on one day and pizza dough the next. Friday had been soufflé day, which Ava didn’t really need any help with, but she’d picked up pointers anyway. Then yesterday they’d worked on macarons, the most deceptively difficult cookie, in her opinion. It had taken her four batches before she got the feet just right on hers. Liza seemed to grow slightly impatient with her, and her scrutiny only made for more nerves for Ava, which didn’t help her to focus. Vienna had had the same issue—not able to get the feet right—and it was clear Liza’s continual criticism was flustering her. Ava felt bad for her.
Now she sat at her desk with her laptop open, initially reading an article on commercial mixers, but found herself gazing out the window more often than not.
Behind her, and on the other side of the room, Regan sat on her unmade bed, phone in hand. If Ava had to guess, she was texting with somebody, judging by how often her thumbs flew as she typed.
“I’m gonna go for a walk.” Ava blurted the statement out as if she was reporting to somebody, though she wasn’t sure why.
Regan looked up, clearly surprised. “Now?”
“Yeah.” She pointed out the window as she took off her glasses. “There’s a pond in the back with a path around it. It’s nice out. I thought some fresh air might be good. I’m tired of sitting around.”
Regan seemed to think about it for a moment, then gave a nod. “Can I go?”
Surprised, Ava turned to meet her gaze. Honestly, some company might be nice. “Sure.”
“Awesome. Lemme just send this text.” Her thumbs flew some more, and then she stood up and slid the phone into the back pocket of her joggers.
A few minutes later, they both had sneakers on and were headed out the front door of the mansion.
She’d been right about the day. It was gorgeous. Not too hot. Bright sunshine in an electric blue sky. She inhaled deeply and let it out.
“There’s something to be said for being surrounded by trees and grass and green after living in the city for a few years, isn’t there?” She didn’t really expect an answer. The question was kind of rhetorical, just thoughts she’d spoken out loud. But Regan answered.
“God, yes.” She mimicked Ava’s deep breath. “Can you smell that? Leaves and woods and earth . It’s intoxicating.” They started walking along the mansion, then around the side, Ava leading the way. “So, you’ve been out here before?”
“A couple times, yeah. I’m not usually up until after ten in my normal life, but for some reason, I wake up early here.”
“I’m sure it has nothing to do with the number of us that work bakery hours and are awake before the ass crack of dawn.”
Ava gave a soft laugh.
“Or maybe it’s the quiet.” Regan’s sneakers whooshed through the blades of grass as they walked. “I had a really hard time sleeping the first week because there’s no sound. No traffic, no sirens, no arguments on the street at midnight…”
“No garbage trucks emptying dumpsters at four a.m. or street cleaners buzzing by before dawn…”
They looked at each other, and Ava felt a solidarity with Regan she hadn’t before. City girls in the country.
They reached the back of the mansion where the pond became visible. “Oh,” Regan said quietly. “That’s so pretty.”
“Isn’t it? My watch says it’s not quite a mile around, so I’ve just been walking it until I feel like being done.” She shrugged and set her watch, then looked at Regan.
“Sounds good to me.”
They began the first lap.
They seemed to have an unspoken agreement to start off quietly, to simply enjoy the sounds of nature they didn’t get to listen to in the city. Birds singing. A light breeze rustling the leaves in the trees. The faraway sound of a jet high above them. They made it more than halfway around before Regan sighed, then spoke.
“I miss my cat,” she said, a wistful tone in her voice.
“Oh my God, me too,” Ava said in surprise. “So much. It’s just me and him. I hope he doesn’t think I left him for good.” It was a thought she’d had since the first week at the retreat, and it had only tugged harder at her heart as time went on.
“Who’s watching him?”
“My neighbor. She’s a sweet elderly woman who just loves him, so I know he’s being spoiled rotten.” She had a flash of Jiminy all curled up in Mrs. Carter’s lap, watching Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy , and she was both happy and sad. “Still…”
“You want to be the one spoiling him.”
“Exactly.” They walked. “Who’s got yours?”
“I have two roommates,” Regan said. “So they’re taking care of him. But I think the same thing you do: What if he thinks I’m never coming back? That I’ve left him for good? Eight weeks is a long time.”
“It really is.” Ava sighed. “What’s yours named?”
“King Arthur.” Regan shot her a look.
“For the flour?” Ava asked with a grin.
“I found him behind the bakery, near the dumpster with his head in an empty bag of flour, so it seemed perfect. I call him Artie.” Regan’s entire face lit up when she talked about her cat. Her blue eyes got brighter, and her smile grew wider.
“Okay, that’s officially adorable.”
“And yours?”
“Jiminy Cricket.”
Regan laughed. “Oh my God, that’s so freaking cute. Why?”
“Because when I got him as a kitten, he used to jump around and he’d sort of…pop straight into the air like a cricket.” She mimicked the action with her hand, curving it and then popping it straight up, the way he used to. “He doesn’t do it anymore because I’m sure he was just trying to figure out his body and how to move it, but it was stupidly cute.”
“Jiminy. I love it.”
Silence fell again for several moments before Ava ventured to ask a question she’d been thinking about for a while. “So…what do you think of Liza?”
Regan glanced at her quickly, then looked down at her feet, then gazed out over the pond.
Ava released a small chuckle. “I get it.”
“I mean, I’m enjoying learning from her.”
“Same.”
“This place is amazing.” Regan swooped her arm out to encompass the pond, grounds, and mansion.
“Agreed.”
“She kind of…” Regan seemed to struggle with finding the right words, but Ava waited her out until she finally said, “She kinda seems to enjoy when one of us fucks up.”
“Thank you.” Ava’s relief was palpable. “I was worried I was the only one who saw that.”
“You’re not. I think she’s determined to get Paige to throw up at some point during this retreat.”
Ava snort-laughed, but caught herself. “I shouldn’t laugh. Paige is a sweetheart. So is Vienna, and Liza seems extra rough on her.”
“She does, right? I actually like everybody here. All the attendees.” Regan started to say more but seemed to think better of it.
“What?”
Regan shook her head. “Nothing.”
Ava avoided rolling her eyes in annoyance. Regan clearly had something to say, but she wasn’t about to pry it out of her.
They kept walking.
* * *
Apparently, the walk hadn’t been enough because Ava decided to go hit Liza’s little gym and “get in a workout,” as she’d put it.
Now Regan was alone in their room, and she was kind of happy about that. She knew she’d ticked Ava off by not sharing something she’d thought better about sharing, but so the fuck what? She didn’t owe her anything, right? Plus, what she’d been about to say was that she almost wished Liza hadn’t put the money into play. Regan wasn’t there to compete, but thinking about that money and what she could do with it, how she could use it to give Billy a fair offer for Sweet Temptations and what that would do to her life, had changed the way she thought about the others. People who had started off as potential friends were now competition to be eliminated. Or at least defeated. The change was unnerving, kind of sad, and she didn’t want Ava to know she felt that way about it. She wasn’t cutthroat and she didn’t like that she now felt forced to be exactly that.
Ava was pretty cutthroat, she suspected, judging from their history. Ava seemed to want the best and seemed to want to be the best, so this kind of thing was probably right up her alley, which was a big part of why Regan hadn’t wanted to talk to her about it.
With a resigned sigh, she picked up her phone and FaceTimed Kiki, who picked up before the second ring.
“Hey, bitch,” her roommate said with a grin. “I was just going to call you. How’s it going up there in the Land of Baked Goods? Have you voted all the others off the island—er, out of the mansion yet?”
Just hearing Kiki’s voice made her muscles relax a bit, and she started to feel better almost instantly. “Not exactly how it works. Which is…strange.”
“No? What do you mean?” Kiki set the phone against something on their counter, and Regan watched as she poured herself a cup of coffee.
“I don’t even really know. Apparently, Liza decides at the end of the eight weeks who she thinks deserves the money. She didn’t really give us rules or details other than that.”
“I have read more than once that she’s an egomaniac, you know.”
Regan grinned. Kiki loved celebrity gossip. She read all the sites that reported on bad behaviors, the lists of worst celebrity tippers , that kind of thing. Regan wasn’t at all surprised that she had dirt on Liza Bennett-Schmidt. “I know. You’ve told me many times.”
“Are you alone in your room?”
“Yes.” Regan drew the word out, not understanding why Kiki would ask that until she continued.
“How’s the roommate situation? You haven’t killed her in her sleep yet, have you?”
“Not yet.” Regan’s brain decided right then to show her an image of Ava at her desk, black-rimmed glasses on her face, looking studious and, yes, damn gorgeous. “It’s been fine. But listen, I want to see my cat. Where is he? You’re not letting him go to parties, are you?”
Kiki bent out of the frame, then stood up with Artie in her arms. “Nope. Only strip clubs. I hope that’s okay.”
Regan’s voice devolved into baby talk, as it often did when she spoke with her cat, and her heart clenched in her chest as she was filled with a sense of longing. Damn, she missed her boy.
She had just hung up from Kiki when there was a soft rap on her door. When she called for the visitor to come in, she was surprised to see both Madison and Paige.
“Hey, you guys,” she said, hopping to her feet. She noticed Madison look from Ava’s very tidy side of the room to her own disheveled side and, for a moment, wished she’d at least made her bed that morning. “What’s up?”
“We’re bored,” Paige said. “We’re gonna go into town for lunch. Wanna join?”
Well, she’d already talked to her cat, and her plan for the rest of the day had been to look over some of her recipes for upcoming bakes, but she certainly didn’t need the entire afternoon to do that. “That sounds excellent. I’m in.”
* * *
When Ava returned to the room from her workout, she was relieved to see a pile of freshly laundered towels on each of their beds—courtesy of Liza’s household staff—but no sign of Regan, and she blew out a breath. Man, that woman could push her buttons, and what was worse, she didn’t understand why.
The workout had helped. Liza had a state-of-the-art treadmill—no surprise there—and Ava had lifted some weights, then done a three-mile run before walking for another two. She felt invigorated now, realizing how much she’d missed regular exercise being away from home. She vowed to use the gym more often as she headed into the shower.
Once she was all refreshed and had decided to let her hair air-dry, she combed it back from her face, then got comfy on her bed and sent a text to Mrs. Carter, checking on Jiminy. A surprisingly tech-savvy senior, Mrs. Carter texted back immediately and even sent a photo of Jiminy looking right into the camera with his bright green eyes. Ava smiled and felt a pang of sadness hit her right in the chest. “I miss you, buddy,” she whispered softly, running her fingertips over the photo. A quick check of the calendar told her there were five and a half more weeks left in the retreat, and in that moment, they felt like a lifetime.
Shoving down her homesickness, she pulled out her laptop. She’d intended to do some surfing and check out some of the bakers she followed on TikTok and YouTube, but suddenly, she just felt sad and low-energy. The exercise had invigorated her, but missing her cat had pulled her down off that high. She clicked on to Netflix and had just settled in to watch a movie when the door opened and Regan came in. Or stumbled in, which was more accurate.
“Hey,” Ava said, looking up from the screen.
Regan blinked at her several times before waving.
Ava studied her for a moment before venturing a question. “Are you drunk?”
Regan held her thumb and forefinger close together as she dropped her butt onto the end of her bed. “I’m not drunk, but I am most definitely a little tipsy.” Except she said the word little like l’il .
“And how did that happen?”
“I had some drinks, that’s how.”
Ava nodded, gave her head a quick shake, and turned back to her movie. When a few moments went by and it stayed quiet, she glanced back up to see Regan still sitting on her bed, staring at her. “Something I can help you with?” she asked. She hadn’t meant it to come out snarky, but it kind of did, and she grimaced slightly at her own tone.
“Yes. Why did you fire me?”
Here we go. Ava paused the movie and said simply, “I didn’t fire you.”
“Okay.” Regan drew the word out, clearly annoyed by the semantics. “Why did you get me fired?”
Ava cleared her throat. From the moment she’d realized she was rooming with Regan, she knew this subject would likely come up. She just didn’t think it would happen while Regan was clearly inebriated. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t mean to get you fired. That wasn’t my intention.”
“Well, it’s worth nothing because I did get fired.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that.” She played with a small hangnail on her thumb.
“Are you?”
Ava looked up and squinted at Regan. “Yes.”
“I loved that job. And I would’ve gotten better. I learn fast. I just needed a chance and somebody to guide me. I’d hoped that would be you. Instead, you complained.”
A deep breath and a slow exhale. “Look. I didn’t complain. I was concerned. You weren’t keeping up. You were causing others to fall behind because they had to pick up your slack. I know you wanted to learn, and I know you’re good. Now. But then? You were a detriment.”
“A detriment?” Regan’s eyes went wide. “Wow. Harsh.”
“You asked.”
“I did. And certainly, don’t sugarcoat it for me or anything.” She stood and walked around the side of her bed.
“I’m sorry.” Ava didn’t know what else Regan expected her to say. But she still felt bad. She wasn’t lying; she hadn’t expected her boss to fire Regan on the spot. She’d been as shocked as Regan had by that.
“So you said.” Regan stepped out of her pants, then peeled off her shirt. “I need a shower,” she said softly, seemingly to nobody—or maybe just to herself—and Ava couldn’t pull her eyes away as the bra and then the underwear followed the pants and top, and then Regan was standing there naked. And there were her glorious breasts. Again.
This time, Ava didn’t look away.