“After tomorrow, she will no longer be my student, so there won’t be anything taboo about it,” I inform them, clicking out of her Facebook page even though all I want to do now is sit and scroll through her pictures. “If any of you say one more word about this, I will pack up that Tiramisu, go home, and eat the entire thing myself.”

I can see each of them struggle to keep their mouths closed, their nosiness at war with their stomachs.

“Did you soak the Lady Fingers in hazelnut coffee?” Tessa asks with wide, hopeful eyes.

I nod.

“Did you put vanilla AND almond extract in the mascarpone?” Rosa questions with a dreamy sigh.

I nod again, crossing my arms in front of me and refusing to budge until they all agree to stay out of my love life. Or what I hope will be a love life and not a complete disaster when Molly finds out I’m the ass she thinks can’t bake.

After a few seconds, they concede reluctantly.

“Fine,” Tessa mutters. “But if that tiramisu sucks, all bets are off.”

I laugh, long and hard, as they trudge back into the dining room and I grab dessert from the fridge, knowing without a doubt I would never make a sucky tiramisu. I’m insulted she would even suggest such a thing.

The rest of the night continues with only a few more minor arguments and no more violence from my mother for my behavior. With a kiss on her cheek and three Tupperware containers filled with leftovers, I leave my childhood home and head across town to my apartment to put together a plan of charming the pants off of Molly Gilmore, and hope my comment about kids on my Facebook page doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass.

Chapter 3

– Soup –

Molly

Staring proudly at my soufflé display that still sits on the middle of the stainless steal counter in the kitchen at school, I look around the huge room, making sure I’m alone. Confident that the rest of my classmates have long since gone home after receiving their pass or fail grades, I start shaking my ass and dancing around the counter. When I get to the other side, I pause my celebration long enough to grab the sheet of paper next to my display that officially declares me a French Pastry Chef, waving it around above my head as I resume my horrible moves.

“What are you doing?! You can’t be dancing like that in your condition!”

I freeze mid hip thrust with my arms in the air and watch Charlotte stalk across the room, snatching my final exam out of my hand and smacking it on the shiny surface.

“Shaking your hips like that could hurt the baby,” she continues. “It could also hurt my reputation if anyone else witnessed that horrible display that resembled white girl wasted drunk moves.”

With a sigh, I drop my arms and start unbuttoning my pastry coat. “In case you forgot, you’re the one with the fertilized egg in your uterus, not me. What are you even doing here at my school?”

She crosses her arms in front of her as I toss the white fabric onto the countertop. “I didn’t forget, Molly. It’s hard to forget something like that when you’re constantly puking. If this is going to work, you have to be one hundred percent dedicated and that means behaving exactly like a pregnant woman would. I wanted to catch you here at school before you got home.”

Reaching into the giant purse she has slung over her shoulder, she pulls out a thick book and thrusts it at me.

“Here, I got you this. Skim through it and pay close attention to the things I marked with post-it notes.”

Taking the book from her hand, I stare in irritation at the picture of the happy pregnant woman on the cover and the big bold words that say “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”. My hopes that Charlotte would forget this shit, come to her senses, and tell Gavin the truth was clearly a waste of time. Going by the fact that there are post-it notes in a multitude of colors sticking out of practically every page in the book, she still hasn’t grown a brain and has instead boarded the crazy train to La La Land and offered to drive.

“Charlotte, this is insane. I am not going to learn about…” I flip through the book and pause on a random page, realizing this thing is probably the cause for her puking. “Growing hair on your nipples and hemorrhoids.”

I close the book with a snap and shove it back at her. “I did you a favor by taking one for the team yesterday when you panicked. That doesn’t mean I’m going to keep up with this charade just because you’re too chicken shit to tell Gavin.”

Her bottom lip starts to quiver and her eyes fill up with tears.

“Oh, no,” I scold, pointing my finger in her face. “Don’t even try that shit with me. I know for a fact you can cry on command, and you do it every time Dad tells you no.”

The tears immediately disappear and she huffs, moving on to a different tactic.

“Molly, please,” she begs. “Just do me this one favor. Just until after the wedding and I have enough time to ease Gavin into the news. I’ve never asked you for anything in your entire life…”

She trails off and I laugh, shaking my head at her audacity.

“Took the blame for the dent in Mom’s car when the mailbox magically jumped out in front of you so you wouldn’t get grounded and miss prom. Took responsibility for the vodka you puked all over the bathroom floor the day AFTER prom so you could still go to a pool party. And let’s not forget the week I spent in my room after I falsely admitted to dying the cat’s hair pink so you wouldn’t miss Stephanie Johnson’s birthday party,” I remind her, ticking the items off on my fingers.

“Oh my GOD, that happened when you were six! Get over it already!” she complains. “See? Look how good you are at making Mom and Dad believe whatever you say. What’s one more tiny little favor?”

I roll my eyes at her as I turn away and pull my display to the edge of the counter. It’s a three-foot-long thick piece of cardboard covered in foil with my different soufflés resting neatly on top. It’s heavy and awkward, but I need to move it to the display case in the lobby with the rest of the pastry student’s projects.

“It’s hilarious that you can call this a tiny favor, Char,” I tell her as I slowly lift the makeshift tray with both hands and turn to face her. “You’re asking me to tell our parents I’m pregnant. To lie to our entire family for four weeks, have them spend that whole time being disappointed and upset with me, just because you couldn’t remember what a condom looked like.”

Tears fill her eyes again and I can tell she’s not faking them this time. I hate that I actually feel sorry for her. She’s the most selfish person on the planet, and I feel sorry for her stupid ass. She hasn’t even asked about finals when she knew what a big day this was for me. Two years of not having a life and working my ass off and she comes in here thinking only about herself.

“You don’t understand, Molly,” she whimpers. “I love Gavin more than anything else in this world. You have no idea how dead set he is against having kids. I thought I felt the same way until I took that test. I know it will just take him time to get used to the idea. I just need a little while to convince him how good it will be.”

I close my eyes and count to ten, trying really hard not to give in.

“Mom made me clean up your vodka puke,” I remind her, trying at the same time to remind myself all the reasons why I shouldn’t cave. “I had to listen to a forty minute lecture about knowing my limits, and then she made me watch fifteen episodes of Intervention with her.”

Cleaning up Charlotte’s puke wasn’t as bad as my mother trying to convince me that vodka was a gateway drug to meth and I should think about how embarrassing it would be if she put me on a reality show where the entire world would see me huffing air dusters and sleeping with eighty-year-old men to pay for crack.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Charlotte whispers. “I’ll make it up to you this time, I promise.”

My arms are starting to get heavy, and if I don’t agree to this, she’s never going to leave me alone. It’s not like I have anything else going on in my life now that I’m finished with school. I start working full-time at the Seduction and Snacks headquarters in a few days, but that’s a regular job with regular hours and nothing like the time I had to put in for school. And it’s not like I’ll be busy having a hot romance since I was too much of a chicken to finally try and have a real conversation with Marco instead of just sniffing him. He didn’t say one word to me when he studied my project earlier, made several notes on his notepad, and then walked away. He didn’t even look in my direction when we came back into the kitchen a few hours later and he handed out our final scores. Now that I’ll be walking out of this school for the last time, I’ll probably never see him again, and I completely blew whatever opportunity I had to flirt with him and see if he might be interested. My life sucks. It’s only four weeks, I guess I can handle a month of this nonsense to save Charlotte’s marriage.