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This chapter says more about my taste in music that I honestly care to admit…
Cheesy eighties rock blared through the CD player. It was the only thing stopping the car journey being completely silent.
It wasn't that Bianca didn't like Becky; she seemed like a really sweet girl and everything, but… Bianca couldn't quite shake the feeling that her very existence offended Becky on some level. She never knew what she was supposed to say to her beyond small talk, and even then she still seemed to somehow manage to shock and horrify the poor girl.
Admittedly, the boiler room thing may have been going too far. She mostly just wanted to see how big Becky's eyes could widen from horror. She was starting to wonder if that was a little too mean. She knew Drew wouldn't mind – everyone else they knew was well aware of how she and Drew first got acquainted, but everyone else wasn't quite as sheltered as Becky Baker.
She was staring out of the window, absentmindedly plaiting strands of her long blonde hair. The cartoon birds who probably usually helped her with this were conspicuously absent. Not that Bianca was expecting much conversation, Becky never really said much around her anyway; the boys put most of the effort into keeping a conversation going between the four of them. And Bianca had no idea what she supposed to talk to Becky about-
"It's really nice of you to drive me home," she suddenly said, shaking Bianca out of the autopilot mode she had fallen into.
"Don't worry about it."
A sentence each – perhaps a combined total of a dozen words. That had to be a new record. Mr. Mister filled the silence that followed the dead conversation. Bianca let herself slip back into autopilot.
The gap between the last song ending and the next song beginning only highlighted how truly awkward the silence was. Bianca rolled through conversation starters in her head. There must have been something she and Becky could talk about that wouldn't completely shock Becky and utterly bore Bianca.
Luckily, Becky broke the silence for them.
"Ooh, Cherry Pie," she cheered as the opening chords of the Warrant song crunched through Bianca's crappy speakers. "Adam likes this song – he says I'm his cherry pie."
Bianca cocked an eyebrow at her.
"Because I'm all-American?" Becky explained, "like cherry pie?"
Bianca smiled to herself; Becky may not have known what Cherry Pie was really about, but Adam definitely did. He wasn't nearly as innocent as he looked. But apparently Becky was just as innocent as she looked – perhaps even moreso.
"It's one of his favourites," Becky added for good measure.
"I should hope so," Bianca said, nodding to the stereo, "it's his CD. It's been in there since last summer and he's never actually bothered to take it back."
"I never realized how much time you all spend together," Becky said, her "smile" almost a completely straight line across the bottom half of her face.
Bianca took a deep breath, taking her time to reply to a statement that was more complicated than it seemed on the surface.
"Well last summer was pretty intense for all of us, I think we really needed each other. We all got really close."
She tried to keep her voice steady, but was sure she could hear it shaking. That summer didn't even feel real anymore; Mr. Torres telling her she made a better paralegal than some of the people on his staff, Mrs. Torres giving enough of a damn about her to ask her about her future and college and how she was going to make that a reality, Drew and Adam pulling out all the stops to make her laugh while they blasted Toto in her car. It felt like family. Bianca had never had that before. Then her shitty exhaust would bang and everyone would duck for their lives, screaming until they could make sure they were all still alive. Bianca had to pull over at the side of the road until everyone had calmed down again, crying and shaking because it was her fault that her car sucked so much and she had managed to further traumatize a guy who had received beatings and death threats from a gang (because of her) and another guy who had just been shot by a gang member (because of her.) Drew, flung himself forward from the back seat, throwing his arm tightly around Adam, then Adam, seeing how upset Bianca was, leaned across from the passenger side to hug her with his good arm, then Drew hugged her, then Adam joked that they all needed a "super friendship group hug" and suggested that they get matching bracelets which helped put everyone's nerves to rest for a while. But Bianca still felt totally shit about it all day.
"Besides," she said, snapping herself out of it. "I made him enough cookies that summer, I think I at least deserve a CD out of it"
Becky straightened up, snapping her head around at meerkat speed to look at Bianca.
"You like to bake?"
Bianca was pretty into baking; it was fun, it was relaxing. And legal - legal was always a plus. There was something so great about being in total control of something; to create something and have it turn into something good and useful. To do something that makes other people happy. To put time and effort into something that doesn't hurt people. She mostly just stuck to cookies, fearing that the intricately decorated cakes and pastries she watched the celebrity bakers create with sheer amazement would end in catastrophe. She loved to draw out the cake designs, though; topsy-turvy hat boxes wrapped in brightly coloured bows, giant roses made of chocolate ganache framed with strawberries with sugared leaves, wedding cakes drapes with real lace and dotted with pearls, but she never dared to take the idea further than paper. Then, inspired by watching too many episodes of Cake Boss, she tried to make Drew a football themed cake for his birthday back in January. He was still technically seeing Katie at the time, and Bianca wanted to give Drew something special without spending a suspicious amount of money on someone who was just supposed to be a friend. She created the design in her sketch book - it was two tiers high; the bottom one chocolate sponge covered in green fondant and the top one vanilla sponge covered in blue fondant, white icing piped along the border and the number "18" on top in brown fondant with thin white icing laces. Only, in her excitement, she didn't quite wait for the sponge to cool down before decorating and the whole thing melted, looking more like a horrific surrealist painting that anything else. Then, as she tried to salvage it, the top tier started to sink into the bottom one. Apparently she was supposed to put rods inside the sponge to stop that from happening. She brought it over to Drew's anyway. Katie seemed quite smug with the mess Bianca arrived with, but Drew, turning his head to the side and squinting through the catastrophe to see what it could have looked like before it all went to hell, loved it. No one had ever made him a cake from scratch before and he happily dug into it, getting melted turquoise fondant down the Ralph Lauren shirt Katie had bought him as a present. After that, Bianca decided that baking was really quite awesome.
"Sure, I follow along with Rachel Allen sometimes," Bianca shrugged. "With the subtitles on. Do you bake?"
"Well my name is Becky Baker," she sang-songed. "I love to bake. We have a church bake sale once a month, it's my favourite thing in the world!"
Bianca couldn't help but grin. Of course Becky was a baker.
"Were you, like, created in a lab by Walt Disney or something?"
It was supposed to be a light-hearted joke, but Becky's smile faltered as soon as she said it. Shit. She had kicked the puppy.
"I just mean," she added hastily, "you're just such a sweet girl."
"Oh," Becky muttered, pulling a long blonde section of hair behind her ear.
"And Adam's like a kid brother to me," she threw in, "and he's really sweet. He deserves a girl as sweet as you."
Finally, a real smile again.
"Thank you," Becky blushed, "and Drew's lucky to have you; you're a sweet girl too."
Bianca scoffed, more bitterly that she would have cared for. "I am not sweet."
It was supposed to be self-deprecating; a dig towards herself, not Becky. But if Becky's little animated face was anything to go by, she didn't take it that way.
"And there's nothing wrong with being sweet," she insisted as she pulled into Becky's street. "Sweet is good."
She pulled over in front of Becky's perfect suburban house. Waiting to awkwardly say her goodnights to her and letting her go Bianca could accidentally hurt even more of her feelings.
Instead, Becky let out a deep sigh, drumming her hands on her lap.
"Would you like to come inside?" she asked, unclicking her seatbelt. "My mom has a huge stack of baking books in the kitchen if you want to have a look."
"Uh-"
"Great! Do you like Julia Child?"
"Um-"
"Yay," Becky clapped, jumping out of the car, running to the diver's side and all but yanking Bianca out into the street.
Becky, having spent most of the car journey sitting in awkward silence, suddenly couldn't stop taking.
"-For the Easter service I made hot cross buns. Have you ever tried them? They're almost like scones, but with the texture of a sweet bun-"
Bianca locked her car and Becky bounded to the front door. She hadn't heard Becky say more than two sentences infront of her before. Bianca had suspected that she was may even be a Stepford wife on more that one occasion. Suddenly there was a girl infront of her who had a voice and interests and opinions - albeit quite a strange girl, but an actual human person nonetheless.
"-And you could just make the crosses with icing after they've baked, but really that's cheating-"
She hadn't really seen the forceful side of Becky before. She had always just been sweet, smiley, shy- almost meek around Bianca. Quite frankly, Bianca wasn't all that sure what Adam saw in her even if she was very sweet. Sweet, whilst a very nice quality in a person, was quite dull on its own. This enthusiastic, persuasive girl was way more his speed.
"-It's best to eat them fresh out the oven with butter spread over them and glass of milk to wash it down."
She was so passionate; it was almost impossible not to get swept in her enthusiasm. Bianca was certain she almost caught herself bouncing along to the front door along with her. Almost.
"Come on in," Becky said, pushing the front door open.
A blast of heat hit Bianca as soon as she set foot inside the house. It was sweltering.
"It's good to get out of the cold, huh?" Becky said, hanging her coat up in the hallway.
It was July. Bianca had been living in booty shorts all summer. It was in no way cold.
"That's one of the things I miss most about Florida," Becky sighed, signaling for Bianca to take a seat and joining her in the living room, "it's just so cold up here. Nice to get away from the humidity though."
An image forced its way into Bianca's head of Becky's perfect blonde Rapunzel hair frizzy and massive from the humid air, her face completely obscured like Cousin It receiving an electric shock. She involuntary let out the tiniest snort of laughter.
"What's wrong?"
"Oh, uh, nothing. I guess you just get used to the cold."
It was easier getting used to the cold than it was the intense heat of Becky's house. The Baker house, rather appropriately, was like an oven.
"I can get those books for you if you want," Becky offered. "Do you want anything to drink, or-"
"Buttercup?"
Mr. Baker wasn't anything like Bianca had pictured. She was expecting a big, foreboding man adorned in a reverend's collar and waving a giant bible at all times. Mr. Baker looked pretty harmless, friendly even. He was wearing slacks. He finished walking down the stairs and joined the girls in the searing heat of the living room.
"I didn't hear you come in," he said, "and with a friend."
"Dad, this is Bianca, she drove me home," Becky explained. "She's Drew's girlfriend - uh, fiancée."
Mr. Baker offered his hand and Bianca took it. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Baker."
He nodded to her with a warm smile. Maybe Becky and Adam were exaggerating his evils. She knew that Drew painted Audra as a gigantic monster when she was nothing but. Parents always seem awful when they stop their kids from doing whatever they want whenever they want, but at least Becky and Drew had people who actually gave enough of a damn about them to ruin their fun.
"Drew, do I know Drew?" Mr. Baker asked. Becky took a shaky breath.
"Drew Torres," Becky answered defiantly. "Adam's brother."
"You were with Adam tonight?" Mr. Baker asked in a low and quiet voice.
"Yes, we watched a movie at his house."
"Becky you know how I feel about-"
"-I don't see why you're annoyed, I though your new tactic was to wait for me to come to my senses anyway."
"Becky-"
"Funny thing, I'm still waiting for you to come to your senses."
"Rebecca Baker you won't talk to me like that," he said, his calm tone making the words more threatening sounding that yelling ever could.
Becky didn't say anything back, but her sweet little Disney Princess face was re-inked into a perfectly pretty scowl. Her cheeks rosy with anger (or from standing in the sauna of a living room.)
"Bianca I'm sorry you had to witness this," he said, his voice still eerily calm. "Thank you for brining Becky home, but I think you should go now."
She turned to red-cheeked Becky, her face steely with determination. Bianca twisted her car keys around her fingers, wondering is her face was equally red from the heat.
"Becky?"
"It's fine, Bianca," Becky said, her tone lower and more serious that Bianca had ever heard. "Thank you for driving me home."
Bianca nodded, keeping an eye on the two of them before she had to turn around to open the front door again.
The summer evening suddenly felt icy cold as Bianca left the Baker's oven. It suddenly didn't feel like shorts weather anymore.
She shut down the AC before turning the engine back on. ZZ Top warning that the girl had legs, and she knew how to use them as she pulled out of suburbia and back home.
Becky Baker: the rebellious preacher's daughter.
She was a little bit more of a badass than Bianca thought.