Don't Go Baking My Heart

Devon

“I wantto do something impulsive, but I need to know if it would be a bad idea.”

The silence on the other end of the phone grated on Devon’s already extended nerves. It had taken everything in him to admit that, get the words out. He expected laughter or something, at the very least.

“Are you there? Hello?” he prompted.

“Um, who is this?”

“You know damn well it’s me, Keiran.”

“I’m not sure cuz the brother I know wouldn’t be calling me at six on a Sunday morning for advice. But then again, you are calling me to ask if you should do something impulsive. Which defeats the entire purpose of being impulsive.” Keiran chuckled. “Yeah, it’s definitely you, isn’t it?”

Devon had known this would be a mistake, but he didn’t know who else to ask. His rekindled friendship with Jeremy was too new to call him this early on a Sunday, even though they’d had that chat last night. So his next best option after the weirdness of the party had been Keiran.

He really needed to work on fixing the few other friendships he had abandoned because his siblings weren’t the ideal audience for this. By their very nature, they were inclined to tease him mercilessly, but he needed someone to either talk him out of this or tell him it was fine. Imprudent decisions weren’t his forte.

In fact, the longer Keiran’s laugh went on—seriously, didn’t he need to breathe at some point?—the more he wanted to tell him to forget it and end the call. Yet Reba’s face and body language from last night haunted him. The party had ended around midnight, an hour after Reba had left. He had texted to ask if she had gotten home safely. He’d gotten no reply, the message left unread. It was only when they had finished cleaning up—he’d found himself helping out even though his mother tried to shoo him away—that he discovered Reba’s bag and phone.

Her car was still parked outside. She had to come by at some point for it—they were also supposed to bake today—but a wild thought had wormed its way into his head. She would want her phone right away, wouldn’t she? He could drop off her stuff and just take her back to the house to get her car. They would get a chance to talk about why the hell she had left like that.

The unannounced visit wouldn’t give her much time to dodge him. It was essentially what she had done with her unexpected visit to his office. In spite of his misgivings, he was determined. Last night’s conversation had been playing over and over in his head as they’d cleaned up while he politely told his mother off for inviting Joya like that. He had tried to piece the events together from when he had left Reba in his home office. Given what she’d said before leaving, it was safe to assume she had overheard him talking to Jeremy. Parts of their conversation, anyway.

God, what a mess.

“Would it be weird to just show up at somebody’s house?” he repeated to Keiran. “I have something that belongs to them. Their phone, actually, so I can’t call them. I don’t know her home number.”

“Her?”

Shit. He was slipping. “Irrelevant. I just need to know if…”

“It isn’t Joya, is it?”

“No.” Their chat last night had been brief, a moment to clear up the awkwardness his mother had created. He didn’t think they’d be seeing each other after that.

She had explained she’d only given in to his mother’s invitation because she wanted to catch up with him after all this time and running into his mother at the grocery had been some sort of weird kismet. His mother had definitely “tried a ting” and failed. Joya was talking to someone back in Spain, exploring the potential for more. She had just returned to Trinidad for a family event. All things she had not told his mother since she hadn’t considered her invitation had an ulterior motive behind it.

She’d laughed off the entire thing, urging him to do the same. He couldn’t because of Reba’s reaction, which had surprised him.

“Just go drop off the thing and stop thinking so hard,” Keiran told him, big yawn following his words.

“It’s probably too early to go right now.”

“I think she—who you refuse to name, but we both know that I know who you mean—might like that you did something a little unexpected. But your choice at the end of the day. I’m out.”

Keiran hung up. He didn’t allow himself the time to pick this idea apart. Twenty minutes later, he was in front of Reba’s house. He used the doorbell, wondering who would answer. The one time he had been here to pick her up for the karaoke with his co-workers, she had hustled him away before he could say a thing to her parents. He braced to be faced with an annoyed Reba.

The woman who answered the door definitely had her face, but the black hair with blunt bangs and the khaki-coloured dress were so not her style he wondered for a second whether this was the sister he had heard about. Until she opened her mouth.

“What the hell are you doing here?” She squinted at him. “And this damn sunlight out here is doing too much.”

Well, it was definitely her, and she wasn’t happy to see him. “Your hair is black.”

“Yes, how observant of you.” She folded her arms.

He blinked at her. “I didn’t know you owned hair in that colour or clothes in that shade.”

“Well, you see, I woke up, hungover, to my mother telling me we have to go to church for somebody’s child’s christening and if I could please not come with my usual flair?”