Chapter Nine
Layla
Ryder had a big grin on his face as he came into the kitchen, a few shopping bags hanging from his arm. He laid out the contents of the bags out on the small island. A bag of sugar. Brown sugar. Flour. Baking soda. Butter. Eggs. And the holy grail of ingredients, two packages of chocolate chips. Those delectable little morsels were my kryptonite. Basically anything chocolate was my Kryptonite...
“What’s all that?” I asked.
“We’re making chocolate chip cookies!” Ryder said, rummaging through the cabinets and pulling out a mixing bowl and a baking pan. He set a metal whisk and a set of measuring spoons beside the bowl. I stared at him. He nodded toward the sink. “Well, what are you waiting for? Wash your hands.”
“You didn’t wash your hands,” I accused.
“I didn’t get pulled off the streets.” He snickered as I slapped his arm. “Just kidding! Just kidding! I’ll wash my hands too.” I moved over so he could wash his hands as I dried mine.
I eyed the ingredients warily. “I told you I didn’t know how to cook. I barely made it through making mac and cheese once when I was twelve. And that was from a box.”
“Ah, young Layla, don’t worry. I’ll teach you. Making cookies isn’t that hard. And we aren’t cooking. We’ll be baking.”
I smirked. “Hope you got a fire extinguisher,”
He chuckled. “Nope, but we got baking soda,”
Baking soda. I bit my lip.
The day after my seventh birthday, my dad and I came home from getting ice cream to find my mom passed out on the couch. We hadn’t seen her in three days. Dad had told me she’d been visiting an old friend for a few days when in reality, she’d been on a coke binge.
The burning smell from the oven was acrid. Dad rushed into the kitchen to turn off the oven. I followed him and saw him throwing baking soda into the oven. After a minute, he donned an oven mitt and carefully pulled out a gloopy mess of a cake. At least Mom had almost remembered my birthday. That was more than I could say for other years.
Pulling myself from the memory, I smiled. “That’s good, wouldn’t want an oven fire.”
He smiled wide. “Of course not! Can you preheat the oven?”
“That I can do What temp?”
“Three seventy-five,” he said as he cracked two eggs. The shells split evenly, not even a speck of shell in the bowl. For most people, that probably wouldn’t be so impressive, but I had never seen someone crack an egg so cleanly. Whenever Dad had cracked eggs for breakfast on Sundays, he used to have to pick shells out of the bowl and there would always be a few left over in the food. Dad would laugh and say it was just extra protein.
Turning the oven to three seventy-five, I saw Ryder dumping spoonfuls of brown sugar into the bowl. I watched him without a word until he was done, his lips silently mouthing the numbers. He looked up. “You can dump the chocolate chips in after we mix the dough.”
“That reminds me, why do we need two packages? Seems like a lot of one batch of cookies.”
“One is for the cookies. The other is to eat. I thought you’d like that. You seem to like sweet food.”
“That’s…really thoughtful. Thank you.” I was taken aback by his kindness. I wasn’t used to guys being nice to me, except when they wanted something in return. Ryder didn’t seem like he wanted anything. He just smiled and went back to putting the rest of the ingredients into the bowl, like it was no big deal that he had done something so nice.
It was like that day when I asked for waffles. Any other guy I knew would have complained about how I was too picky and how it was a waste of money. But Ryder hadn’t commented on it. He just went along with it. My needs mattering to anyone was a strange feeling.
The mess of ingredients was starting to look more and more like dough as he stirred it. “Okay, time for the chocolate chips.”
I was ready and waiting, the package already open. After carefully pouring them into the dough, I grabbed a spoon and swiped a bit of dough to taste. The sweetness danced on my tongue. It was wonderful.
Ryder laughed, stirring in the chips. “Any good?”
“Perfect. Can’t wait to see what they taste like when they’re baked.” I smiled. Baking cookies was really fun. This was the most fun I’d had while sober in a long time. I wanted the feeling to last.
“I can make eggless dough next time if you really like it that much.”
“Teach me how to make that! Please!” I begged.
He chuckled and nodded. “Sure. It’s basically just like this without using eggs, or the oven.”
I opened up a brown bottle labeled ‘Vanilla Extract’ and sniffed it. “What is this? It smells amazing!”
He laughed again. “You’ve never smelled vanilla?”
“I have. I’ve just never seen it this way. Didn’t bake much as a kid, at all actually.”
“Vanilla extract doesn’t really do anything on its own, other than smell good. It’s used to enhance the other flavors in a recipe. Or to get drunk, if you’re desperate.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Drunk? There’s alcohol in this?”
“Yup, about forty percent,” he replied. “My dad, he was alcoholic. Trust me. When your dad sweats out the stuff, it doesn’t smell that great. He used to drink this stuff whenever he’d run out of beer money.”
I was amazed he had said that without looking the least bit upset. It was something he just accepted. It made me admire him.
“My mom was a coke addict,” I blurted out. “My dad loved her anyway. She did drugs even while pregnant with me. I was a crack baby.” A nervous giggle escaped my lips. “I didn’t start using again til fifteen years later.”
“Oh, wow, that sucks,” he said earnestly. “I really hope you can kick the habit, Layla. I’ll help any way I can.”
I opened my mouth to say something about how touched I was by his sentiment, but what came out was something entirely different. It shocked both of us.
“Mom was high the night she died.” My brain screamed at me to stop talking, but my mouth wouldn’t listen. Damn, was that vanilla extract some kind of truth serum? Well, there was no turning back now.
“She called my dad, freaking out, late that night. Like the loving husband he always was, he dropped everything, told me he loved me, and that he’d bring mommy home in an hour. After finally getting her out of the drug house, into the car, and buckling her in, he started driving home. As they went down a straight stretch of road, Mom suddenly jerked the wheel. She was freaking out again, probably saw the eyeless monsters again. She saw those a lot. Dad tried to right the car, but Mom still had her hands on the wheel. They plowed through a guard rail and flipped, rolling a few times down a steep hill, landing upside down in a ditch. Mom died instantly. The impact had broken her neck. My dad held on a little longer.”
Ryder placed his hand on mine. I barely felt it, but I knew it was the only thing tethering me to safety, away from the world of flashing lights and pain. “Layla, you were at home. How did you-”
“Know all that? I was in the back seat. I hid there until Dad brought Mom out of the house. He was furious with me but once I told him I’d just wanted to make sure Mom was okay, he softened. He told me to buckle my seat belt and that he loved me. We were both singing along to the radio when it happened. I walked away with a few cuts and bruises from the shattered windows, a broken collarbone from the seat belt, and one hell of a concussion. My dad died on the way to the hospital. An EMT told me my dad kept asking about me right up until the end. The EMT was able to assure him I was okay, so that was slightly comforting.”
Ryder’s mouth was hanging open slightly. “Layla, I’m so sorry…”
I put on a happy face to disguise the fact I wanted to cry. “It’s okay. I’m starving. Let’s get those cookies baked, huh?”
Smiling, he sprayed the pan with cooking spray. It made me sneeze. He grinned, grabbing a strange metal thing that looked like a spoon within a bigger spoon and a weird handle. Ryder explained. “This is so we can get the scoops of dough even so the cookies will be pretty much the same. See?” Digging the strange spoon into the dough, he scooped a good-sized chunk out and squeezed the handle. The chunk of dough formed a perfect ball on the pan. He handed the spoon to me. “This’ll be your job.”
“Okay,” I said. I mirrored Ryder’s actions. The scoop came out looking the same as the one beside it. Producing another identical spoon out of a drawer, he stood on the other side of the island and scooped from that side. Working together, we ended up with two pans of cookies. Placing both pans in the oven, he set the timer for eight minutes.
He turned back to me. “Great job, team!” He held his hand up for a high-five. I indulged him and gave him a high-five.
“God, you are such a nerd.” I couldn’t help but smile. Even though it was nerdy, it made me feel good. It was nice, having a friend again. I hadn’t had a real friend since high school. Having a friend, especially a guy, who didn’t expect anything from me was really nice. A nagging part of my mind told me not to get too happy.
Good things never lasted long.