Royalty

Sixty Eight

"This is wonderful!" Marilyn smiled as she finished taking a bite of one of the desserts Summer bought earlier. "Where is it from?"

"Magnolia Bakery," I answered, covering my mouth as I spoke because I was still eating a piece of the banana cupcake. "Summer went out to buy them earlier. Apparently I'm not so trustworthy with baking my own desserts."

"Oh, Harry, nonsense!" My mom waved her hand at me as she held a fork to her tiny slice of carrot cake. "How could you be untrustworthy with baking?"

"He burned it last time," Marilyn nodded, smiling in amusement at me. 

I shrugged my shoulders as I flashed a sheepish grin, "Yeah, I kind of forgot it was in the oven."

Both my mom and Robin looked at me completely appalled by the fact that I burned a dessert. I didn't know why it was so surprising to them. I mean, I could barely cook, so I wasn't sure what gave her the impression that I was some fabulous baker. Just because I live on my own doesn't mean that I know how to make my own food. That's what TV dinners are for.

Robin took a piece of some peanut butter brownie and looked at me, "You're going to need to learn to cook. I hear these days you don't need to pay for classes. There's videos on the YouTube to teach you."

"I think I've been doing fine so far," I laughed, taking another bite of the banana cupcake. Fucking best thing out of all the bakery items Summer bought. 

"Couldn't hurt, you know," my mom nodded her head at me, as well as pointing her fork in my direction. "Girls love when a guy can cook. One day, you're going to cook a surprise dinner for Summer, so you better learn now."

"He did make a wonderful salmon dinner for us just last week," Marilyn spoke in my defense.

My mom turned her attention to me, her eyes wide as she was pleasantly surprised, "Did you now?"

I nodded proudly as I remembered how that dinner meal, minus the dessert, turned out really well, "I did, actually. It was probably my best dish."

Robin laughed and swallowed the food in his mouth, "I'm impressed, Harry. Never thought you could cook so well."

I just rolled my eyes at all three of them, continuing to eat the cupcake. As they started talking amongst themselves, I started wondering how the talk between Summer and Robert was going.

They had been gone for quite some time. I swore I heard the elevator ding, so I assumed they weren't in the penthouse having a chat. I was hoping and praying that things were going alright, that things weren't so tense between them anymore. With the amount of time that they had been gone, I knew this conversation was getting pretty deep.

Maybe they started to talk about this whole attitude change of Robert's. Maybe they started talking about Summer's feelings towards how he acted. For all I knew, maybe they were talking about unicorns and pumpernickel bread. Who the fuck knows?

I was just hoping that whatever it was they were discussing, it wasn't turning into an argument. The two of them together, without someone to intervene in their arguing, could be risky.

But after they left the table, my mom offered to help clean up all the dishes. No matter how much I tried to protest, saying she was a dinner guest and that I was supposed to be the one to clean, she refused to sit down and watch. Marilyn helped a little, too, as did Robin. All three of them were helping and ignoring my every request for them to stop.

I was totally outnumbered.

My mom was making some excuse as if we still lived in the same house. "You cooked the dinner, honey, so it's my chore to clean." No, Mom. That's not how this works. We invited you to dinner, so you have to sit down and do nothing but eat the food we provide, damn it.