Nothing but cutesy, I swear.
When Blaine came home from work that Saturday, he was not expecting to walk into a battlefield of flour, sugar, butter, and chocolate.
But he did.
"Del," he coughed as he passed through a cloud of flour. "What the hell are you doing?"
"I'm making Mom a cake for her birthday," she said through gritted teeth as she stuck a wooden spoon into a bowl and started to stir heatedly.
Blaine made his way across the kitchen carefully, noting certain things as he passed: The counter was covered in foodstuffs from one end of the room to the other; there were at least a dozen eggs smattered across the room (some intact, some not so much); the oven was on at a ridiculous five hundred and twenty five degrees; and there was probably twice the amount of ingredient in Del's hair than there was in the bowl she was stirring.
"And we're out of boxed cake mix?" Blaine asked, raising an eyebrow and plucking a piece of eggshell from her shoulder.
She snapped around to glare at him, revealing cocoa powder streaked across her cheek. "Baking is relaxing," she snarled.
He held his hands up as if to say 'don't shoot' and took a step back. "Alright then. Would you mind if I just—?"
"Yes! Yes, I mind! Don't touch anything! Just…back away and ensure that you won't be baked into this cake yourself!" Her eye twitched as she said it, and her arm never stopped stirring.
"I won't touch anything, I promise. I just want to turn down the oven before it blows up. Is that okay?" He pointed to the corner of the kitchen where the oven sat.
"Fine! Turn down the oven! Then go away!" She set down the bowl with a sharp thud on the counter and looked back to her cookbook. "I'm almost done."
"Um, Del?" Blaine asked, looking over at the sink full of bowls. "How many cakes are you planning to make for Mom?"
"This is my fourth try," she said without skipping a beat. "The first one had salt in it instead of sugar, the second didn't have baking soda—or—baking powder or something like that…so it just kind of sat in the oven and turned into this molten, boiling, chocolate goop, and that last one"—she nodded over her shoulder to two small discs of chocolate cake, still smoldering on their cooling racks—"was the victim of a phone call."
Blaine stared at them, noticing that they were not only covered in black char, but soaking wet. "Do I want to know what happened to them?"
"I was talking to Harvey and didn't hear the timer go off," she continued as she poured the contents of her bowl into two cake pans. "By the time I smelled the smoke, it was either save the cakes, or save the house." She dropped the bowl into the sink and turned around to face Blaine, hands on her hips and eye still twitching. "So I took a glass of water and threw it into the oven."
Blaine just stood there with his mouth hanging open, shocked speechless.
Del, however continued to bustle around the kitchen, rambling on about baking to mostly herself. "And if this batch doesn't work I'm screwed because we're out of eggs." She slid the pans into the oven and kicked the door shut. "…flour…sugar…eggs," she listed off to herself. "…butter…baking soda and powder—what's with that anyway?" She crossed her arms and looked at Blaine, who was still frozen. "I mean, what the hell is the difference between baking soda and baking powder? And why do we need both?"
Blaine blinked a little, finally coming back to his senses. "You've never baked anything in your entire life! Why the hell did you decide that today, right now, unsupervised would be the time to start?" He threw his hands up in exasperation. "And look at this kitchen!" He leaned on the counter only to jump back, wiping something bright yellow from his hands onto his jeans. "Mom is going to kill you!"
"I'll clean it!" she protested, but Blaine didn't seem to hear.
"I didn't even think we had this much flour in the house!" He brushed off a section of the counter, sending a puff of white dust into the air.
"I said I'll clean it!" Del hollered, setting a time for the cake. "Just relax and grab me the roll of paper towels please."
"Fine. But that's it. I'm not helping you out of this one. This,"—he waved his hand around, gesturing to particularly messy spots—"is not my problem."
"I get it. I'll clean. Just, hand me the freakin' paper towels!" She moved her hands to rub her eyes, but decided against it and lowered them back to her sides, after noticing the egg yolk dried onto her knuckles.
"Here," he said, handing her the roll. "Just—don't—I…" He sighed, looking at his little sister, dusted in a layer of white, rubbing desperately at her face with a paper towel, and shook his head.
"What?" she snapped at him, her hair bouncing a little as she spoke.
Just then, Zoey popped out from under the kitchen table, her brown head also dusted in flour, wagging her tail at Blaine.
"Oh," Del whimpered. "I must have woken her up. She was snoring just a few minutes ago."
Blaine's glance moved back to his sister and he sighed again, rolling up his sleeves. "I forgot it was Mom's birthday," he admitted, offering a hand out towards Del. "So since you're the perfect child this year, I figure the only appropriate thing to do would be to…um…salvage the kitchen."
Del just smiled wearily and tossed him the roll of paper towels.
Did you like it? Can you guess what I was doing this afternoon? (hint: BAKING!) Please review, it means so, so, so, so much to me. I love all of my readers! Goodnight all!