“You are so weird,” I mutter, shifting the display in my hands as my arms start to cramp. “So, what’s the plan?”

It’s her turn to look confused and she’s lucky I’m holding twenty-five pounds of soufflé’s or I’d smack that look right off of her face.

“How and when am I supposed to tell Mom and Dad this joyous news?” I growl in annoyance.

“Well, I told Gavin not to say anything until you could talk to them, but he might have already said something to Tyler who probably told Ava. So you should do it really soon. Like, as soon as you get home,” she tells me, having the decency to wince delivering the news that our sister and her weird boyfriend might already know about my fake delicate condition.

“So, I’m supposed to just walk into the house and say ‘Hey, Mom and Dad, good news! I passed all my exams, I’m finally done with school, graduation is Friday at seven, I made a chocolate cake to celebrate, and oh, by the way, I got knocked up by a guy I never told you about and who you’ll never meet because Charlotte already told Gavin he was a horrible man that wants nothing to do with me. What’s for dinner?” I ramble, picturing my father’s head literally exploding all over the living room wall if I said that.

“Perfect!” Charlotte says with a nod, not hearing the sarcasm in my voice.

I open my mouth to call her a range of creative names, but a male voice coming from the doorway cuts me off.

“That won’t work at all. What if I go home with you and pretend to be the father?”

I jump and turn so fast towards the doorway that my display slips right out of my hand and splats to the floor, sending pastry crust and pounds of different flavored fillings all over mine and Charlotte’s shoes.

“Eeeeeew, it looks like tomato soup,” she whines, probably talking about the cherry filling dripping from her shins.

I ignore the gagging sounds coming from her and stare with my mouth wide open at Marco as he lounges against the door jam, not even caring that I just ruined my display that I spent weeks agonizing over and all day today baking and perfecting.

“You’re not doing this alone, Molly. Let me help you out,” he tells me softly.

I’m too mesmerized by the sound of his voice and how his eyes got all sweet looking when he said my name, that it takes me a couple of seconds to process what he said. He cocks his head and smiles at me, and it finally hits me that he must have overheard the last part of my conversation with Charlotte and he’s offering to help me. He thinks I’m pregnant with another guy’s child and he just volunteered to walk right into the lion’s den of my parent’s house and take some of the heat off me.

Butterflies flap around in my stomach and a giddy grin starts to take over my face, realizing I didn’t blow my opportunity with him and he clearly likes me a little bit if he’s being so sweet and offering to stand in as the baby daddy for me.

OH, MY GOD HE’S OFFERING TO BE MY BABY DADDY BECAUSE HE THINKS I’M PREGNANT WITH ANOTHER GUY’S CHILD!

“Yes. YES!” Charlotte shouts next to me in between gags as she shakes her leg to try and get the cherry filling off. “This is perfect! I don’t know who you are, but you are a very nice and generous guy to help Molly out like this.”

I’m still unable to form words as she takes over speaking for me, telling Marco about the fake horrible man that fake knocked me up whose name she can’t even bare to utter (BECAUSE HE’S FAKE) and how he left me in this condition and it would be just awful if I had to face it alone.

Marco nods in understanding while she prattles on, wrapping her arm around my shoulder and giving it a sympathetic squeeze when she tells him how much she loves me and how she feels so much better now that I won’t be going through such a trying time alone.

When she finally finishes her long-winded, TMI explanation to the guy I’ve had a crush on for what feels like forever, who is now looking at me like he wants to give me a supportive hug instead of ripping my clothes off like I always dreamed, I finally find my voice.

Turning away from Marco’s sad smile, I look right into my sister’s eyes and whisper the words I know will hurt the most.

“Soup, soup, soup. Cream of mushroom soup, green pea soup, chunky gelatinous globs of soup from a can. Soup.”

Our faces are so close I can literally hear the vomit fly up into her mouth. Her cheeks puff out to keep it in, her eyes widen in fear, and without another word—thank God—she turns and runs from the room as fast as she can, bumping into Marco on her way out.

“She has a thing about soup; so weird,” I tell him with a shrug as the clack of her shoes running down the hall to the closest bathroom fades away.

“Listen, Marco, you don’t have to—”

“Molly, stop,” he cuts me off, moving out of the doorway and walking towards me. “I know I don’t have to, I want to. I’ve wanted to get to know more about you for a while now, so I guess this will give me that chance.”

He stops when he gets to the counter, resting his palms on top and leaning across it towards me. I can’t help myself from leaning towards him as well, the smell of cookie dough filling my nose and making my knees weak.

“Let me do this for you. We can go get some dinner to get our stories straight, and then I’ll give you a ride home so that we can talk to your parents together,” he suggests.

All I can do is nod in agreement when he gives me another smile. I’ve waited two years to be alone with this guy and now I’m getting my chance. By making him the father of the baby I’m not really pregnant with.

“How about I clean up this mess on the floor and you check on…?”

“My asshole sister,” I mutter as he comes around the counter to grab some towels from near the sink.

Marco laughs as he bends down and begins cleaning up the floor.

“She’s probably still got the soup pukes, she’ll be fine,” I tell him.

He smiles up at me as he stands and drops the dirty towels into the sink. When he finishes washing his hands, he walks to my side and threads his fingers through mine, pulling me gently to the door of the kitchen.

We walk through the school and out into the parking lot, and all I can think about is that Marco Desoto is holding my hand. Marco Desoto is taking me on a date.

I mean, a date where we’ll talk about hairy nipples, hemorrhoids and afterbirth, and how my father’s brain matter will stain his blue dress shirt when his head explodes, but still.

If being the pretend father of my pretend child is the only way I can get him to spend time with me, so be it. I’ll just ask Charlotte if I can catch a ride on that crazy train of hers when this is all over.

Chapter 4

– Toxic Spooge –

Marco

I stare at Molly across the table as she picks at her food, wondering if she’s going to puke. Do pregnant chicks puke at night too or just in the morning? Should I go sit next to her and hold her hair back just in case? What if she doesn’t have pregnancy sickness but Marco sickness? Maybe I disgust her. I kind of disgust myself right now that I opened my mouth without really thinking about what I was doing.

The girl I’ve been fantasizing about for two years is having some other guy’s baby, and instead of doing what any normal guy would do, I offered to pretend to be the father. I’ve lost my goddamn mind. I can’t be a fake dad to someone else’s kid, even if I AM hot for the woman carrying said kid. My dreams of Molly included seeing her naked and asking her to help me test out a few new ideas for my next cookbook, not watching her hot body turn into an alien WITH SOMEONE ELSE’S KID.

She didn’t say much on the drive over to the diner aside from letting me know the girl with the long, dark brown hair who has a strange aversion to soup was her older sister, Charlotte. She pretty much gave me one-word answers to every question I asked, or flat out refused to answer them. Dinner isn’t going much better, no matter how hard I try to get her to talk. As much as I don’t want to know about the other guy she was seeing, I still think she’ll feel better if she talks about it, and it will give me a way to ease into telling her I made a big mistake.