3. Eden
EDEN
“Okay, but if your dad’s a chef and your mom is, allegedly, the best baker in the world, how come you’re looking for someone to teach you?
” Kaan asked, almost spilling his beer with all the hand gestures he was throwing my way.
“I mean, can’t you just ask either of your parents to give you a recipe and instructions? ”
For a moment, I wondered how we even got to this topic.
One second we were talking hockey stats and discussing strategies to win the game in Wisconsin next weekend. The next, I was asking my best friend if he knew someone who could bake, and if they’d teach me.
“I can’t actually tell you that.” The more people knew about what was happening, the higher the chances it was going to come out before my sister told anyone.
“Aw, come on, dude.” Kaan swung his arms around, spilling some of his beer onto the picnic table. “I’m your best friend. You know you can trust me when you’re in trouble. We’re brothers, man. I got your back.”
“It’s not about me,” I said.
“Okay? So? I won’t tell anyone.”
Kaan never told anyone anything before, so I knew I could trust him, but… it was Brooke’s news to share, not mine. But surely she wouldn’t have minded if I told Kaan, right? She knew Kaan.
Sighing, I looked around us to make sure we were far enough away from the next drunk people.
“Brooke’s pregnant. She’s due in July, I think, so she’s planning to have her baby shower in late May when Reece is probably off from hockey.
She wants tons of different cookies and cupcakes or other fun stuff—whatever that’s supposed to mean—but refuses to go to a bakery, so someone else has to bake all that. ”
“So, why not your mom?”
That was what I had asked Brooke when she told me about her pregnancy.
“Mom doesn’t know Brooke’s pregnant yet…
and she won’t know until Brooke’s about four months along, I believe.
She said something about not wanting to disappoint everyone should any problems arise, which is bullshit because our parents would find out if she lost the baby either way.
But whatever, it’s her decision. So, Mom won’t know until three months before the planned baby shower, and with her tight work schedule, Brooke’s afraid our mom would just overwork herself because she’d want everything to be perfect for Brooke and Reece.
Then Brooke asked me to do it, but I didn’t have the guts to tell her that I can’t bake to save my life. ”
I could cook because Dad taught me from a young age, but baking? So not for me.
The few times I did try to bake something, I burnt it, undercooked it, or it tasted like garbage. Cooking was far easier and didn’t need so much precision. I could throw stuff together and make it taste great—no recipe needed at all.
Baking required attention to detail and it was so hard to fix a mistake. And let’s not even get started about the whole decorating process. I had zero talent for that. A recipe I could follow, but a talent for decorating wasn’t as easy to develop.
Kaan’s chest rose as he took a deep breath, blinking at me a couple of times as if he was waiting for me to tell him what to tell me.
“I could take classes, I suppose, but I don’t want to be in a stupid room with five or more other strangers, learning how not to suck,” I rambled on.
“And if my parents find out I’m taking baking classes, they’ll get suspicious.
Especially since I could’ve asked my mom to teach me.
But if I ask my mom to teach me, she’ll still get suspicious because I’d never been interested in baking before. ”
He nodded as if he understood a word I said. I was sure he didn’t. “The Devil can bake,” he said.
“Alana?” I questioned, just to be sure he wasn’t talking about the actual devil. Everything was possible with this guy.
“Yeah. Every time she comes over, she brings pastries. Sometimes cookies, too. They always look great, and they taste even better.”
“Hm…” I looked across the yard, my eyes finding her almost instantly.
Alana stood there with Asiya and a few guys, a red cup in her hands, talking, laughing, looking carefree and far less awkward than she’d been with me two hours ago.
Why was she nervous with me, but could speak to those math guys as easily as she did? These guys were the spitting image of Hollywood nerds: white shirt, checkered pants, too colorful suspenders, and a bowtie.
How were they even invited to this party?
“You could ask her to teach you, you know?” Kaan suggested, and when I looked at him, he went back to taking sips of his beer after remembering he had one.
I laughed. “Yeah, right. She couldn’t even talk to me. What makes you think she’d be able to spend one-on-one time with me?”
He shrugged. “Maybe she’s different when there are no other people around. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to ask.”
“But it would,” I argued, my eyes back on the brunette girl. “If I walk up to her right now and ask her to teach me how to bake and someone hears her rejection… do you know what Tori would write about me on her stupid blog?”
Kaan’s hands shot to his head, eyes wide.
“Fuck. You’re right! She’d ruin your image.
She’d be all like Eden King’s time as ‘The King on Campus’ is over.
Girls are now rejecting him, which makes me wonder if this is just the start of his downfall.
What’s next? He fails at hockey? Something like that. ”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, something like that.”
Tori was a much better writer than Kaan made her out to be, but he was still right; she would’ve somehow managed to ruin my hockey career while ruining the fuckboy image she created for me.
But perhaps I didn’t care about either of those things as much as I once thought.