Page 67 of The Way I Am Now
“I am serious! You should have lots of junk food around for all your late-night studying.”
“Okay, I’ll get right on that.”
“I’ll email you the recipe,” she says, and I can hear the smile in her voice. “Or, I could try to text it.”
“Email’s fine. I can get it on my phone either way.”
“Sending now.” I hear her typing again.
“Thanks, I’ll let you know how it turns out.”
“Well, let me know if you need help.”
“Okay.”
“See you next week. And, Eden?” she adds. “You’ve got this.”
I’m not sure if she’s talking about the cake or the hearing, and I don’t know that I agree with either, but I tell her, “Thanks, Mom.”
A minute after I hang up, I get a notification from my bank that my mom has sent me thirty dollars with the note:For the birthday cake fund!
Since I’ve been away, she’s been surprising me with these small gestures that tell me she really does care that I’m doing all right here.
I decided to buy everything—mixing bowls, a baking pan, a whisk, a spatula, measuring cups—because I correctly assumed we didn’t have any of those things at the apartment.
It feels good to not have to be thinking about anything but whisking the eggs and water and oil into the powdery chocolate mix. To be doing something for someone else.
Parker gets home just as I’m putting the cake in the oven.
“Whoa, what’s happening in here?” she asks, stopping at the kitchen island to run her finger along the inside of the bowl. “I honestly didn’t even know if that thing worked.”
“What, the oven?”
She nods and licks the cake batter off her finger, murmuring, “Yum.”
“I’m making a birthday cake for Josh.”
“Aww, roomie.” She gives me these big doe eyes. “That’s really freaking sweet.”
“You’re still coming tonight, right?” I ask her for the twentieth time.
She hesitates. “Actually, I was thinking about staying in because this week has kicked my ass, but okay. You convinced me with this damn cake. What time should I be there?”
“Eight. Sharp. No, seven forty-five. You and Dominic are bringing the balloons with you so he doesn’t suspect anything.”
“So, what you’re saying is I really never had a choice in the matter, did I?”
I smile, shake my head. “Nope.”
“Fine, you master manipulator you,” she says, and drags her bag behind her as she heads to her bedroom. “Grabbing a nap. Wake me at seven fifteen.”
“Okay,” I call after her.
I’ve never had a friend like Parker. But then, I haven’t really had many different kinds of friends at all. I like her, though. She’s not very touchy-feely with emotions or overly polite or warm, but somehow it feels good. She doesn’t seem to mind that Josh is here all the time or that I spend half my time there. She’s comfortable with who she is, and for some reason that makes me feel comfortable too. Like, neither of us has to pretend to be anything other than who we are. Although we have created an alter ego for takeout by combining our names “Kim McCrorey” and “Eden Parker.” We laughed way too hard about it the other night when a delivery guy buzzed up to our apartment and said that he had an order for a Kimberly.
I go to pull up the recipe for the frosting and see that I have a text from my mom:
Hi Eden, Mom here. Remember that
