I’m triple-checking that the gluten-free goods are being separated from the rest of the baked goods when I hear Amber, Mo, Marcus, and Holden all chatting amiably.
“My nanny taught me to angry-bake,” Amber announces after the seventh straight compliment on her lemon bars.
“Angry-bake?” Marcus repeats, chewing vigorously on some fudge. “Is that like a hate-kiss?”
“Marcus, stop eating our merchandise!” I must sound like a broken record at this point, but he just grins. I swear he’s doing it to annoy me.
“A love bite, maybe?” Mo offers.
“It’s putting everything you feel into whatever you’re making. I angry-bakedsomany treats for my parents,” Amber says. “I’d just be like, ‘You think you’re going to work nineteen-hour days and never come to my school plays? Takethisfreaking macaron.’ ”
Holden roars. “Oh, you really showed them!” I can’t get over how helpful he’s been, how he’s followed Marcus’s lead in, like, not being a jerk today. Holden, I’ve realized, is one of those people who always needs a partner, a second half. His boyfriend, Bennett, is a junior and they can’t be together all the time, so Jason and Holden are normally inseparable. But in Jason’s absence, Holden seems to have affixed himself to Marcus’s side.
Marcus, for his part, always seems to do his own thing. Slippingin and out of groups like he belongs in them but somehow doesn’t need them.
“Then I realized you couldlove-bake, and, well, it’s what I want to do forever and ever.”
“What areyoudoing for college, Marcus?” Mo asks.
“I’ll probably stick around here, actually,” he says, reaching for a cookie. When our eyes meet, he grins and defiantly eats it, but, really, I’m only listening to what he’s saying. “My dad needs an extra pair of hands at his shop and my sister’s just a kid, so it helps if I’m here.”
“That is so sweet,” Amber says.
“An extra pair of hands?” Holden scoffs. “Plan B practically runs that place ever since his dad got sick.”
I feel a squeeze of sympathy for Marcus, which is odd since I don’t know Tommy Riddick well at all, other than the occasional story from Jason about his uncle.
Everything Holden said, really, is news to me.
I knew that Marcus’s dad owned a car shop, but I didn’t know Marcus helped out, much less “ran” the place.
“Dude, I’m pretty sure Hailey Chow just got here. Did your ESP tell you that?” Marcus teases Holden. To us, he explains, “Hailey is Bennett’s ex.”
“Oh shit!” Holden says, immediately ducking to pretend to pick something up from the ground. “Tell me when she walks past.”
Marcus laughs. “That’s your plan? You want us to tell you when she walks past?”
Everyone is laughing and having fun again, and I wonder if I’m the only one who notices that Marcus successfully diverted theconversation away from his future plans. Right at that moment, though, I notice Jason’s mom walking over to our table.
“Zadie! Did you help put this on? You kids have done such a good job. Hi, Marcus!” Mrs.R leans over the table and Marcus kisses her cheek.
“It’s so nice of you to come and support us,” I say. Thedespite Jason not being heregoes without saying.
“Of course,” Mrs.R says. “Can I try some of that pie?”
I put a slice of coconut cream pie on a paper plate for her.
“Have you been feeling well, though? Or I suppose it’s that you’ve been busy planning all this?” she says, motioning around us.
I blink at her, unsure of her meaning. Then it hits me.
I’ve missed seeing Jason twice.
But that can’t be what’s bothering Mrs.R.
“Yeah, I have,” I say.
She takes a bite of her pie. “Mmm,” she says. “This is delicious. You did all the baking too then, Zadie?”
