Baking and Babies Read online

  “I’m going to wind up on MTV’s Real Life: I’m a Crack Whore in Love With a Brony,” she mutters to herself.

  “Um, what?”

  She looks up at me and pulls her shirt back down. “Well, you know, I’ll be alone and I’ll be so depressed without Gavin that I’ll turn to crack to take the pain away. At that point I’m sure Tyler will start looking pretty good to me so I’ll most likely steal him away from Ava and then she’ll kill me. I’ll wind up a crack whore dead in an alley. It’s what I deserve!”

  This, right here, is why Charlotte and I have never been close. She’s certifiably insane.

  “HON! ARE YOU UPSTAIRS?”

  Gavin’s shout from downstairs immediately throws Charlotte into more of a panic than she’s already in. Her eyes grow so wide I’m surprised they don’t pop right out of her head. I hear stomping up the stairs and I know it’s only seconds before Gavin walks in here and sees Charlotte holding the positive pregnancy test in her hands.

  “Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God!” Charlotte whispers frantically. “I’m not ready! I can’t do this! OH, MY GOD!”

  Gavin is at the top of the stairs now and the thump of his shoes echo on the hardwood floors.

  “Char? You in the bathroom?” he calls.

  Her eyes immediately fill with tears, and I sort of feel bad for her until she thrusts the pregnancy stick towards me.

  “Take it!” she insists in a hushed voice.

  I throw my hands up in the air and take a step back. “Eeeew, you peed on that!”

  “TAKE IT!” she snarls through clenched teeth as she presses the purple and white stick up against my stomach.

  “Get your pee stick away from me!” I whisper back in horror.

  Her bottom lip starts to quiver and her eyes fill with tears as she looks over my shoulder.

  “Hey! What are you guys doing in here?” Gavin asks from behind me.

  Without giving it a second thought, I grab the test from her and quickly twist around to face him, hiding the thing behind my back and trying not to think about the fact that my sister’s pee is most likely touching my hand.

  “Oh, you know. Just girl stuff,” I reply with a nonchalant shrug.

  Gavin looks back and forth between us and then cranes his neck to try and look around me. “What’s behind your back?”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing,” Charlotte tells him in the guiltiest voice imaginable.

  I silently curse her and her inability to lie in a believable fashion. Every time she lies, her voice goes up at least twenty octaves until she sounds like a mouse being stepped on by someone wearing stilettos.

  Gavin laughs. “Nice try. Seriously, what’s going on?”

  He keeps trying to get a look behind my back and I keep turning my body in the opposite direction. Too late, I realize we’re standing in front of a fucking mirror. Gavin looks up into it and his jaw drops open.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think it’s a hot new shade of lipstick that Charlotte was just about to put on me?” I ask innocently.

  “No, no I don’t. That’s a fucking pregnancy test,” he replies in a low, slightly angry voice.

  In that moment, I see now why Charlotte was freaking out. Gavin does NOT look happy about the possibility that she could be pregnant. I love this guy like a brother. I’ve known him since birth and in four weeks he WILL be my brother through marriage, and I’ve never wanted to punch him straight in the mouth more than I do right now.

  I always think before I speak. Always. I carefully process every word to make sure I get the desired outcome.

  Until now.

  “I’m pregnant!” I blurt out.

  Charlotte starts to cry loudly and Gavin’s eyebrows rise up into his hairline.

  “Yep, I’m knocked up. With child. In the maternal condition. Preggers. Can I get a woohoo?!”

  I raise my arms in the air and shake them around, wondering what the hell is wrong with me. Who the hell says woohoo?

  “Why is Charlotte crying? Hon, why are you crying?” Gavin asks gently.

  She sniffles and wraps her arms around my waist from behind. “I just love Molly so much.”

  I lower my arms and shrug, trying not to roll my eyes.

  “Charlotte is just overcome with excitement about the love child in my womb.”

  I pat my stomach for added emphasis, figuring I might as well make this a stellar performance for Charlotte’s sake. She is seriously going to owe me for this shit. Like, name her damn kid after me or something.

  Gavin sighs and runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what to say. I mean, are you happy about this? I didn’t even know you were dating anyone. Shit, ARE you dating someone? Who is he? I’ll kick his fucking ass.”

  Gavin goes back to being pissed and now I don’t know what the hell to do. I didn’t exactly think this whole thing through when I blurted out I was pregnant to save Charlotte. Everyone is going to see right through this charade. Shit. Everyone is going to KNOW. There’s no way Gavin is going to keep his mouth shut. Oh, my God, my parents are going to kill me.

  “It’s horrible, Gavin! He’s a horrible man! He got her pregnant and now he doesn’t want anything to do with her!” Charlotte wails dramatically.

  I look over my shoulder at her and give her the most evil eye I can muster.

  “Seriously?” I whisper in irritation.

  I turn back around to see Gavin looking at us in confusion.

  “I mean, SERIOUSLY. She’s serious. It’s horrible. I’m so distraught.”

  With a sniffle, I rub my eyes and curse Charlotte to hell.

  Gavin reaches out and pats my shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’re not going to go through this alone. We all love you, and we’re going to find this guy and make him pay.”

  Awwwww, shit. What the hell have I done? Why didn’t I just stay in my room and ignore the blood curdling scream from down the hall like any sane person would have done? When I said I needed to get a life, this isn’t really what I had in mind.

  Chapter 2

  – Satisfaction and Sugar –

  Marco

  “Hey, Ma! What was that secret ingredient you use in your Zeppole filling again?” I shout from the living room, trying to finish up a few last minute questions on my laptop to add to the final exam for the students tomorrow.

  I should know the answer to this question considering I’ve been helping my mom make her favorite Italian dessert since I was five, but just like everything in my brain lately, it’s turned into a pile of mush thanks to one beautiful, shy student I haven’t been able to stop thinking about for the last two years. Stupid fraternization rules.

  My mom pokes her head out from the kitchen doorway and points her wooden spoon covered in red sauce at me. “Get off that gadget and help your sisters set the table before I whoop you with this spoon.”

  She disappears back into the kitchen and I shake my head, closing the lid to my laptop and pushing myself up from the couch. I’m twenty-four years old and I still tuck my tail between my legs and run when my mother scolds me. It’s not like I’m sitting in her living room writing porn on the Lord’s Day. Well, not really. I guess it could be considered food porn to some people.

  Walking into the dining room, my ears are immediately assaulted by the sounds of my two older sisters arguing.

  “You’re just jealous because I can date whoever I want and you’re an old married hag at twenty-six!”

  “And by date, you mean screw anyone with a penis. Give me a fucking break,” Tessa groans, placing a fork next one of the plates.

  “Contessa Maria Desoto! Watch your mouth!” mom scolds, setting a huge bowl of pasta in the middle of the table. “We are going to have Sunday dinner like normal, civilized people for once. No swearing, no fighting, and no throwing food.”

  She looks directly at me as she says the last part. You throw one dinner roll six months ago when your sister calls you a tool and you never live i
t down. It’s not my fault it ricocheted off her shoulder and up into the ceiling fan before one of the blades sent it flying into our mother’s face.

  Rosa looks across the table at me and sticks out her tongue. I slyly flip her off without our mom seeing as we all take our seats. Even though it might not look like it, we really do love each other. We’re your typical loud, eating, breeding Italian family, although our mother likes to remind us on a daily basis that we aren’t doing our part in the breeding department. She met our father (God rest his soul) when they were sixteen years old, got married at eighteen, and popped out my oldest sister Contessa nine months later. Rosa followed a year after that, and I came screaming into the world a year after her.

  “Alfanso, honey, say grace.”

  My mother folds her hands in front of her and closes her eyes, thankfully before she can see the scowl on my face and the laughter my sisters are just barely holding in.

  “Ma, how many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?” I complain, trying not to whine like a little girl.

  I spent my entire childhood saddled with that name and constantly being teased—mostly from my sisters, and when I left middle school behind and started high school, I refused to let anyone call me by anything other than my middle name of Marco. Sadly, my mother continues to ignore my request.

  “Alfanso is a strong, Italian name and you should be proud you share—”

  “The same name as my mother’s father’s uncle’s brother from Sicily,” my sisters and I cut her off and finish in unison.

  “And by Sicily, we mean the planet Melmac, Alf,” Tessa snorts, earning a one-eyed glare from my mother who still has her head bowed, eyes closed, and hands together in prayer.

  I bow my head and close my eyes, refusing to take my sister’s bait when she uses the same, tired joke comparing my name to some furry creature on a TV show long before any of us were born.

  “Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub. Yay God!”

  Mom’s hand smacks me upside the head as soon as I finish and Tessa kicks my shin under the table. One of these days I should try not being an asshole, but it’s just too much fun.

  We all start digging into our food and the only sounds that fill the room for a few minutes are forks scraping plates and ice cubes clinking in glasses. It reminds me of every single Sunday dinner we’ve ever had, even if it is surprisingly quiet for the time being. Regardless of my sisters and I being adults with our own lives and our own homes, it’s an unwritten rule that no matter where we are or what we’re doing, that we always come home for Sunday dinner.

  “So, Alfanso, when are you going to bring a nice woman home to meet the family?” mom asks casually as she slathers butter on a slice of homemade bread.

  “He doesn’t know any nice women; he only knows skanks.” Rosa laughs.

  “Skanks with the I.Q. of a banana,” Tess adds.

  I glare at both of them with my fork halfway to my mouth. “Hello? I’m sitting right here. They aren’t skanks and they aren’t stupid. I prefer to call them ‘scantily-clad ladies with limited vocabulary.’”

  Mom sighs. “All of my friends have photos of grandchildren on their bookshelves. Do you want to know what I have on my bookshelves? I have porn.”

  In a moment of insanity and a little bit of depression after my father passed away, I got the genius idea to write a cookbook, filled with my family’s favorite Italian dessert recipes. When the publishing house I sent it to told me it was too boring, instead of getting drunk and crying about it, I got drunk and added a bunch of tips for men on how they could get any woman they wanted just by making those recipes. It included the best recipe for Italian buttercream that wouldn’t leave grease stains on their sheets after they smeared it on their girl, as well as how to give a woman an orgasm using only cannoli filling and a spatula.

  “Hey,” I bristle at her porn comment. “That’s a signed copy of Satisfaction and Sugar. If you announce on Facebook you have that, women will start clawing each other’s eyes out for it.”

  I don’t mean to sound conceited, but it’s true. I get emails from a ton of women on a weekly basis, thanking me for spicing up their sex life while teaching their significant other how to bake and asking if I give in-home demonstrations. It’s really great for the ego and it’s made my popularity grow so much in the book world that the publisher has requested another cookbook from me.

  Rosa snorts. “Try not to break your arm patting yourself on the back there, little brother.”

  My family really is proud of my accomplishments, even if they don’t sound like it sometimes. They are my biggest supporters and always tell me how impressed they are of everything I’ve done at such a young age, but to them, I’m just Alfanso Marco Desoto. The son and brother who refuses to settle down, gets a cheap thrill out of teasing his older sisters, and had to grow up real fast when our father died suddenly of a heart attack three months before I was supposed to go to Paris to be the head pastry chef for one of the most popular restaurants in the city. I’ll never regret the decision to stick close to home to teach at my alma mater and take care of my family, but I’m not going to lie and say that I don’t still dream about Paris, although helping men all over the land get laid with desserts does take the sting out of things.

  “What’s the deadline for your next cookbook? Do you still want me to edit?” Tessa asks, wiping her mouth with a napkin.

  Tessa is a copy editor for our local newspaper. It’s nice to have someone in the family with editing skills that I can trust my cookbooks with, who won’t dry heave when I confirm that I try out every piece of advice I give before putting it in a book.

  “I want to have this thing finished in a few months. If all goes well, and I don’t have any distractions for the next four weeks, this puppy could be on shelves in bookstores by early next year,” I tell everyone proudly.

  “Rosa, put your phone away at the dinner table,” Mom chastises.

  Rosa ignores her, scrolling through something on her screen and laughing. “It’s Marco’s phone and I’m just checking the notifications on his cookbook page. You really pissed this chick off.”

  Rosa has floundered between jobs ever since she graduated college, never quite being able to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. When my cookbook started gaining popularity a couple of years ago, I was spending more time answering emails and dicking around on Facebook, instead of doing lesson plans and preparing finals. So when I offered her a job as my social media assistant, she jumped at it. I might be regretting the decision of giving her my Facebook password right now though.

  Tessa leans closer to Rosa and looks over her shoulder. “What did he do?”

  “Some guy on the page asked if all of the tips and recipes still gave you the same outcome if you had kids, and Marco told him that his first mistake was having kids,” Rosa snorts with a chastising shake of her head.

  “ALFANSO MARCO DESOTO!” Mom yells, bringing out my full name for extra, angry emphasis.

  I hold my hands up in surrender. “Ma, it was a joke. I was just being my usual charming, sarcastic self.”

  I turn back to Rosa. “Who commented and what did she say?”

  Tessa grabs the phone from her hand. “Her name is Molly and she said, ‘You’re an ass. You probably don’t even know how to bake and just copied all these recipes from your mommy. Cut the cord and get a life.’”

  Rosa takes the phone back and Tessa smacks her in the arm. “Ooooh, burn! She’s got your number, Marco!”

  I roll my eyes and help myself to another serving of pasta. “Whatever. She’s obviously got a stick up her a…” I glance quickly at my mom and correct myself. “…foot, and doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

  “Her name is Molly Gilmore, and it says she’s from Ohio too,” Rosa continues, completely ignoring me.

  The spoon slips out of my hand and drops with a loud clatter, splattering red sauce all over the table.

  “Ooops, slippery little bugger.” I laugh uncom
fortably, grabbing a handful of napkins and sopping up the mess, hoping no one notices I lost all bodily functions as soon as I heard that name.

  Tessa gasps and points at me with wide eyes. “Oh my Gosh, you know her! You know her and you like her and she thinks you’re an ass!”

  Seriously, how does she do that? People drop spoons all the time; it doesn’t mean they like someone. How does she know my hand didn’t go numb? Maybe it’s early onset Parkinson’s or a stroke. I could be dying and she doesn’t even care.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I mutter as I wad up the dirty napkins, getting up from my chair and heading into the kitchen. “Who wants dessert? I brought my special Tiramisu!”

  Not even chocolate, mascarpone, and the special thing I do with the Lady Fingers can deter the three women in my family when they smell something fishy.

  They bum rush me in the kitchen so fast all three of them get stuck in the doorway pushing, shoving, and arguing until one of them manages to break free and get to me first.

  “Is she pretty? Can she cook? When are you bringing her to dinner so I have enough time to bring out the good china and your grandmother’s lace tablecloth?” Mom asks in a rush of excitement.

  Figuring there’s no point in lying to them since I already planned on making my move with Molly as soon as she finished her final tomorrow and will no longer be my student, I grudgingly answer my mother’s questions, hoping it will shut her up.

  “Yes, yes, and never.”

  She puts her hands on her hips and my sisters do the same, standing behind her and giving me equal looks of annoyance.

  “So, you know who this Molly Gilmore person is, but clearly she has no idea you’re the same Alfanso D. whose Facebook page she was on, cookbook author and the guy she just knocked down a few pegs,” Tessa states. “What does she look like? How old is she? Where did you meet her?”

  I roll my eyes at all the questions that just won’t stop. When I first found out my cookbook was going to be published, I spoke with the school I worked for to make sure it wouldn’t be a conflict of interest. They suggested using some sort of penname just in case and since I’m only known as Marco Desoto at work, Alfanso D. was born. None of my students know I’m the author of that widely-popular cookbook and only a very small handful of the faculty knows.