Borrowed Beauty

Chapter Fourteen: Tantrum

Renee

I sat in front of the vanity and stared long and hard at my reflection in the mirror. On the outside, everything looked perfect. I hadn’t been sleeping well, but I had carefully covered the dark shadows under my eyes with makeup. I forced my lips into a smile that I definitely didn’t feel.

Brock and Aaron had slipped away this morning without telling me where they were going or when they would be back. I told myself they were probably just trying to be considerate by letting me sleep in. That was a plausible excuse, except for the fact that it was almost eleven and my phone remained silent and devoid of messages. They hadn’t even responded to my good-morning texts yet.

“They are just busy,” I reassured the face in the mirror, as my fake smile fell. And besides that, we weren’t officially an item yet, so it wasn’t like they were under any obligation to tell me their plans for the day.

But…I squirmed on the stool…wasn’t it kind of an unspoken rule? Didn’t basic dating-and-living-together etiquette dictate that you at least give your partner an idea of your plans for the day? Wasn’t it polite to at least say goodbye before you rolled out the door?

Maybe…they were already losing interest.

I squashed down that thought and turned away from the mirror, wishing I could just as easily turn away from the dull empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I checked the phone one more time before I slid it into my pocket and went in search of something to do. I didn’t think I could stomach another rom-com movie. I wasn’t in the mood for a happily ever after. Maybe I could find something dark, bloody, violent. And undead.

“Zombies it is,” I muttered, but when I reached the top of the stairs, the most delightful and amazing scent hit my nose. The warm sugar-sweet smell of baking cookies was wafting through the house, and not just any cookies. My mom’s cookies.

A feeling of sadness and nostalgia hit me hard, like a punch to my solar plexus. Old memories escaped from the box in my mind where I kept all thoughts related to our mother. She had left us when we were only seven, giving adult explanations that a little girl couldn’t possibly comprehend before she set off into the sunset to “find herself.” Hell, even as an adult I didn’t get my mother. She still showed up now and then, blowing in like a freak storm and causing just as much havoc before she disappeared again. She always sent Olivia and me identical generic cards on our birthdays, with a crinkled twenty-dollar bill pressed inside. I called it her annual guilt offering.

But I remembered the baking days when Olivia and I would sit on the counter with flour in our hair and all over our clothes, while Mom baked her special vanilla-cinnamon rolled sugar cookies. In my little girl's mind, she looked so pretty, with her wild hair pulled back in her favorite clip, and her freckled face wreathed in smiles. She would let Olivia and I take turns measuring ingredients and stirring the dough with big wooden spoons. There was always a lot of giggling and taste-testing as she rolled the dough out on the counter and we cut it into shapes from her big box of assorted cookie cutters.

I don’t know how Olivia memorized the recipe when we were so little, but she did. A couple of times a year she would pull out the rolling pin and Mom’s old apron and set to work. The cookies were delicious, but they had a way of putting the whole house in a mood. Even Daddy would become melancholy and thoughtful once the aroma had permeated the house all the way to his office. I’d seen him cry once while dipping one of the cookies in his coffee.

When I reached the grand kitchen of the Prosperity Springs pack house, I was greeted by a high-pitched squeal of laughter. That weird little kid was standing on a chair, with an adult-sized apron haphazardly doubled up and tied around his little body. The bag of flour seemed to have exploded and every surface from the floor to the stainless steel countertops was covered in a fine dusting of white powder. The pack didn’t have a cool collection of cookie cutters, but Olivia had improvised by using an upside-down glass to cut circles from the sheets of rolled dough.

Apart from the racks of cookies, there was also a golden yellow cake, still cooling in its pan. She was now in the process of whipping up her signature chocolate buttercream frosting, and the kid was already licking one of the chocolate-covered beaters from the electric mixer, smearing the sticky-sweet confection from his nose to his chin, as well as gooping up his stubby little fingers.

They seemed very natural together. Olivia was relaxed and unphased by the mess as she laughed and chatted with the kid. When he had licked all the frosting from the beaters, she took him to the sink and lifted him so that he could wash his hands. Then she gave him a wad of cookie dough so that he could make his own shaped cookie while she finished rolling and cutting the last bit of dough. Just like our mom used to do for us.

Olivia didn’t even look up or acknowledge me, even though she must have sensed me there. She was probably still pissed about the restaurant thing. It was that obnoxious little boy who looked up at me with a frown and asked, “Who are you?” He was just a kid, but his demanding and impudent tone put me on edge.

“Who are you?” I challenged back. Who are you to be making my mother’s cookies with my sister? I don’t even know why it pissed me off so much, but it did.

His face scrunched up, and it looked like he was going to go full-on tantrum, but Olivia distracted him. “Thomas, this is my sister. Her name is Renee.”

“Your sister?” The kid scowled at me. “I don’t like her.”

“Renee,” Olivia continued in that calm, mild, kindergarten teacher voice, “this is Thomas.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell the little booger that I didn’t like him either. He stuck his tongue out at me. As soon as Olivia had turned to put the last pan of cookies in the oven, along with the messy cookie-shape that Thomas had crafted, I made a face and stuck my tongue out back at him.

“Thomas, why don’t you give Renee some of the cookies that have already cooled,” Olivia suggested after pulling off her oven mitts.

The kid looked at me out of the corner of his blue eyes, like he was calculating something. “I don’t want to. These are our cookies. We made them.”

“Yes, we made them, but we made them to share,” Olivia reprimanded him gently. She picked up three cookies from the rack and handed them to me. I thought briefly about throwing one of the cookies at the little brat, but they were still warm and I knew how delicious they were. I stuck one in my mouth, only the sweet-cinnamony goodness did not uplift my crappy mood. Especially when I saw Olivia give a cookie to the boy, and then brush his hair out of his face, exactly the way mom used to do.

Fuck knows why I was so angry, but as I turned to leave, I just wanted to do something to make Olivia feel as rotten as I did. I wanted to spoil the happy mood in the kitchen. I spied that beautiful golden cake within reach, and without even thinking, I opened my hand, spread my fingers, and squashed my hand down into it. I didn’t even care that it was still so hot in the center that it burned my hand.

I heard the kid start screaming like a banshee behind me, and that brief moment of satisfaction was gone almost immediately, replaced by a deep sense of shame and confusion. I knew I was acting stupidly. Why did I even do that? I couldn’t even turn around to look at Olivia after that, I just ran from the kitchen. There didn’t seem to be anywhere in the packhouse where I could hide from myself, so I headed for the door, and the woods beyond.