Page 76 of Go Cook Yourself

“Ruby, I need to do this before we go.” He yawns again. Something is off, but I can’t put my finger on it. He moves around the cookery school like a man on a mission, grabbing different things, but with his back to me, I can’t see what.

“Sure,” I reply, forcing an airy sound as if I couldn’t care less, but I do, and that annoys me more. He grabs his demonstration cakes and pops them into a tin. He adds another cake tin to the pile. “Who are the cakes for, Garett?”

“No one.”

A realisation has me gnashing my teeth behind his back. They’re for Chantelle at the wine merchants. He wouldn’t do that, but I fist my hands like I’m making dough anyway.

“Are we going, then?” I ask a couple of minutes later. All his jobs are done, and he’s wearing his coat, but we’re still in the cookery school. He checks his phone before sliding it into his pocket.

“In a minute.” He drums his fingers against a countertop before reaching for his phone again.

He checks it before sliding it back into his pocket. “Right. Let’s go,” he replies casually but won’t look at me.

“Okay.”

Maybe he’s ready to end our agreement that we never really started because of how difficult things are. It’s all rules without sex. A flashback so heady that it makes my stomach roll over with arousal hits me. I glance at his lips and instantly regret it. He licks them slowly as if he knows what I’m thinking, and I have a vision of him lifting me onto the countertop. I want his hand in my hair and my legs wrapped around his waist and–-

“Rubes?” I shake my head as if it’s an Etch A Sketch where one shake will delete the sexy thoughts from it for good. “We should go.”

He’s standing by the door, tapping his foot repeatedly against the tiling.

He rechecks his phone, his face pales.

“You okay?”

“Yep,” he stutters, but his eyes widen as he looks back at me. “We’d best go. Are you ready?”

“Yeah, sure.” The sooner we’re back and I can get home to my vibrator, the better.

???

As we drive to the merchants, the cakes resting in my lap, I consider asking him who they’re for. He won’t look at me. I flip down the visor, but it’s too dark to check my make-up.

He signals left.

“This isn’t the way to the wine merchants.”

“I know,” he replies.

He’s guarded and keeps yawning. I grip the tins and squeeze my lips tight to stop shouting. The scent of chocolate orange buttercream fills the van.

I stare out the window. Garett’s reflection looks at his watch and then at me, but by the time I turn, his focus has returned to the road.

We cross roundabouts that signal we’re nearing the small town where Amber and I live. “Are you taking me home?”

When we stop at traffic lights, the cake bangs in the tin. He glances over at me. The whites of his eyes glow in the semi-darkness of the van. The sudden terror that he wants to end what we nearly had because of my behaviour in class today makes bile rise in my throat.

That doesn’t explain why he brought me home without my car. I turn towards him, my eyes tight in interrogation mode. “Do you need something from Amber? Are the cakes for her?”

“Huh?” He taps his hands against the steering wheel as we wait for the light to change. It’s barely green before he takes off.

“We’re nearly at my house.”

He pauses too long. “Oh yeah.” He brought the cake because I’m going to need comfort food after he dumps me, although we’re not even dating. “I thought I’d give her cake and go over kitchen stuff. You know?”

“What sort of kitchen stuff?”

He mumbles incoherently as he pulls up to my sister’s house. The top cake tin topples out of my hands when he breaks hard. It flips onto the floor. “Shit.”

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