Page 64 of Strawberry Kisses

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Connor

I stared around at the bomb site that was my tiny kitchen and sighed exasperatedly. How the fuck had it gotten to this point?

There were two burnt tins of cake on the side, cake mix dripping onto the floor from a beater perched near the sink, flour everywhere, and a sticky patch of egg crusting itself onto the counter. The window was wide open, letting in a soft, summer breeze, which was lovely but not enough to dispel the God-awful smell of burnt cake. Baking wasn’t supposed to be this hard.

I was a reasonable cook, everyone I knew would attest to that, but apparently my skills did not stretch to cake. Baking seemed to be a magical art in which I had exactly zero power. I didn’t think it would be that difficult. The BBC website where I’d gotten the recipe hadn’t made it sound like I’d be attempting alchemy, but that’s what it had felt like. I hadn’t even been trying to do anything hard. I just wanted to make a fucking sponge cake.

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck happened in here?” The front door banged open, and I heard Levi’s voice coming down the corridor towards me. “It smells awful.”

“Thank you for stating the fucking obvious, babe,” I said, turning to look at him. Levi grinned from the doorway and brandished a yellow bag for life. It always surprised me how much Levi looked like his older brother, Ben, except Ben was a literal giant while Levi was more of a regular-sized human. He had bronzed skin and light brown hair and these deep soulful eyes that reminded me of a Labrador puppy, except they were accompanied by a square jaw and full lips that seem permanently set in a wry smile.

We were ridiculously similar in personality, and on paper, we should have clashed, but somehow things just worked. Out of the two of us, he was probably the more measured. But only just. He was a horrible enabler, but he was also the one who knew when I needed to take a step back, and I trusted him.

“Why the fuck are you still trying to make it from scratch?” Levi asked, staring around at the chaos in front of me. “I know you wanted to surprise Patrick, but at this rate you’re just gonna give him food poisoning, and nobody wants that.”

“They’re not that bad,” I protested. “Just a bit… crispy.”

“Yeah, no. I’m not letting you declare your undying love for him with burnt cake. It’s just fucking rude.” Levi put the bag on the floor and pulled out two red and blue boxes with pictures of a cake on the front. “We’re gonna use Betty Crocker because at least that way you can’t really fuck it up. I got devil’s food cake or vanilla, take your pick. And I got icing to go with them too.”

“You didn’t… This is…” I sighed, my dream of presenting Patrick with the perfect homemade sponge cake that even Mary Berry couldn’t fault dissolving in front of me. I grabbed the box of devil’s food cake mix. “Ugh, this is so much easier in movies.”

“At least if you fuck this one up you have a spare,” Levi said with a grin. I shot him a look that I hoped expressed my displeasure. “Come on, it’s not that hard. Even I can make these!”

“Since when do you bake?”

“Since I was like fourteen. Mum got stuck working extra shifts at the hospital, and I didn’t want Ben to have a seventeenth birthday without a cake, so I got a box mix and made it. It wasn’t hard.” Levi shrugged and began to look for a clean mixing bowl. The joke was on him though because there wasn’t one. I hadn’t done the washing up.

“You’re very sweet.” I took pity on him and moved over to the sink to begin rinsing a bowl. Maybe I’d let Levi make the cake while I washed up, then it might end up being edible. Behind me, I heard Levi flicking the oven on and making a slightly disgusted sound at the burnt cake bits still littering the hob.

“It’s a good thing your soon-to-be boyfriend is a pastry chef because I’m never eating anything you attempt to bake.”

“That’s a bit harsh.”

“Have you even tried it?” I looked over my shoulder to see Levi raising an eyebrow in challenge.

“No, but it can’t be that bad.” I’d followed the recipe exactly. It wasn’t my fault it was burnt and flat as a pancake. Levi grabbed one of the bits of cake and tapped it suspiciously on the side. The fact that he could even do that wasn’t the best sign. He broke off a piece and passed it to me. Wiping my damp hands on the old T-shirt I was wearing, which was already covered in various baking-induced stains, I took it from him. The cake was suspiciously solid. Fuck, this did not bode well for my poor intestines. Did I actually have to swallow it? Couldn’t I just taste it and spit it out?

“You film this and I will fucking murder you,” I said to Levi, whose grin had widened gleefully.

“I thought you said it wasn’t that bad.”

“I changed my mind.” Suddenly the box cake was looking like a much better idea. I opened my mouth and took the tiniest bite.

For about half a millionth of a second, everything was fine. Then the sour taste of salt and burnt cake and something powdery hit my tongue, and I gagged. I spat the cake into the sink, coughing violently and forgetting everything about looking like a dignified human being.

“Fuck my life,” I said when I could finally speak again. I grabbed the glass of water I’d been drinking when Levi arrived and downed the whole thing. It made me feel marginally more human, but my tongue still felt fuzzy, and I could still taste salt. Where the fuck had the salt come from? “That was disgusting.”

Levi’s smug expression was the epitome of “I told you so”. He didn’t say it though. He took the bowl off the drainer and opened the box mix. “Let’s not poison Patrick before you get to the good stuff,” he said. “I don’t think he’d be up for anything if your reaction was anything to go by.”

For once I had to agree.

An hour later, and under Levi’s slightly bossy but well-meaning instruction, two large chocolate cakes sat cooling on my kitchen counter, ready to be sandwiched together with chocolate fudge icing. The kitchen smelled a hell of a lot better, and this time I’d managed not to burn anything, spill anything, or accidentally swap sugar for salt. The washing up was done, and my counters didn’t look like a bomb site either. I was surprisingly pleased with myself, and I had to admit, painful as it was, that Levi had been right.

“So,” Levi asked from his position on the sofa, his long legs stretched out along the cushions. “When are you going to give it to him?” I snorted. “Get your mind out of the fucking gutter for a minute. When are you gonna tell him?”

“Tomorrow,” I said, curling myself up into the armchair opposite him. Usually the chair was a dumping ground for clean laundry, shoes, bags, and whatever else I happened to throw there, but it was surprisingly clean at the moment because I’d ended up blitzing my flat over the weekend while trying to work out how to talk to Patrick and simultaneously trying to help Levi plan for his last-minute summer showcase. A suspicious nugget of my brain wondered if the showcase was just a distraction concocted by Levi to distract me from thinking about the fact I hadn’t gotten into the East Midland championships.

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