Zain’s face lit up with delight. “I didn’t know if they’d actually come,” he whispered to me. “None of them seemed very enthusiastic about trying out something I baked.”
“You can’t blame them,” I said. “They’ve been watching us make a mess of things for weeks. I didn’t have much confidence in our abilities, either, until I found this Yogurt Cake recipe.” I pressed the buttons on the oven to set the timer. “Do you want to go over and chat with them for a bit?” I asked. “I can keep an eye on the cake.”
He pressed a kiss to my lips and sprinted over to them with a grin.
When the instructor had mentioned guests, Zain had asked me, in a cute, sort of embarrassed way, if I wouldn’t mind him inviting the band to come. He’d actually taken this whole baking thing seriously and wanted to show off to his friends what he’d learned.
I hadn’t minded, but that also meant we were under a lot of pressure to make really sure we didn’t screw this up.
Fortunately, the hard part was over. Now all we had to do was wait. I leaned against the counter and watched the cake through the little glass window on the small oven.
For a cake this size, in a round pan, it wouldn’t take too much time. I just had to keep an eye on it to make sure nothing went wrong. Which, considering how often Zain and I screwed up, was actually pretty likely.
At least we’d never burned something so bad it set off a fire alarm. There had been more than a few times while baking with my sister when I’d forgotten to keep an eye on something in the oven and it would trigger the smoke detector in the ceiling. Our parents would come running down the stairs to see what all the commotion was, I would burst into tears, and Meg would reassure me while trying not to laugh.
I smiled faintly as I thought back. This was the reason why I’d wanted to take baking classes in the first place. To bring back some of those fonder memories. To reminisce about happier times.
I’d never once considered that those happy memories might have been a lie.
I sighed deeply to myself as I watched the oven.
It wasn’t so much that they were lies, really. Meg had been a wonderful older sister. It was just the last year or so, before her death, that it felt as if everything changed. I’d thought I’d known the cause of that change. But nothing was what I thought it was, at all.
I’d put all the blame on my sister’s boyfriend. I’d put all the blame on one guy. I’d thought everything bad that had happened was because of him. But I’d been wrong. According to my mother, Meg had been getting into trouble long before she’d met Peter, and he’d been completely sober the night of the car crash. Meg hadn’t died because of a reckless boy. She’d died because of a horrible accident.
In one way, it was almost harder to come to terms with what happened. There was no one to blame. There was no one to be angry with. But in another, more important way, it was a relief to know the truth. I was finally beginning to release all the simmering anger and low-level anxiety I’d been clinging to so tightly all these years.
I still had a lot of work to do when it came to processing everything I’d learned, of course. I wasn’t completely healed, not yet. But I was on the way there, and that was good enough for now.
This wasn’t what I was here for, though. Today wasn’t for reminiscing. Today was for me and Zain to show off our baking skills, as scant as they were.
“Hey.”
I looked up from the cake to find Finn on the other side of the counter, hands in his pockets with an abashed expression on his face.
“Hey,” I replied hesitantly.
I hadn’t seen much of Zain’s friend since that night with the incident. It seemed to me like he had been making himself scarce around me. I’d been over to the mansion and hung out with the others enough times that his lack of presence had been conspicuous.
“Look,” he said heavily, lifting his blue eyes to meet mine. “I wanted to say I’m sorry.” He shifted from foot to foot. “I never meant to freak you out or whatever. I was just fooling around and having fun, but I guess my version of fun isn’t the same as everyone else’s. I never meant to scare you, or hurt anyone, or anything like that, and I shouldn’t have told Zain you were overreacting. So I’m sorry. I’m going to stop acting like an idiot from now on.”
It was an unexpected speech, coming from someone like Finn.
“Thank you,” I told him. “I appreciate that. You were kind of right, anyway. My reaction wasn’t all just because of what you did. I was dealing with some stuff, and it really influenced my response to the situation.”
“All of us have got some ‘stuff’ we’re dealing with, I guess,” he said with a small smile. “I’m sorry I made yours worse.”
“Things are getting better now,” I said. “But thanks.”
Finn looked around at our baking station.
“Can I help with anything?” he offered.
“Sure,” I said, pleasantly surprised. “We’ve still got to mix the glaze for when the cake is done. I also wanted to take the lemons and make curly strips with the peel for decoration, if we have time. And we should also start cleaning up whatever we can so we’re not stuck doing it all at the end.”
Finn’s eyes went wide and nervous.
“I’ll stick to cleaning,” he asked. “Sounds like the one thing I can’t fuck up.”
