Too Sweet To Last

Whirlwind Of A Life

I actually feel better now that my father has made an actual appearance instead of just spying on me going about my life. He claims that he’s coming back, but it won’t be for a while. I know this from what happened when I was younger – the longer he waits the more I’m caught off guard.

I push that incident to the back of my mind, knowing that at this point it’s useless to worry about. I unfortunately have a cooking lesson with Kathy to attend to.

“Are you ready or what?” Kathy asks me as I walk into the kitchen.

“Yup, I’m ready,” I respond, less than thrilled. She thrusts a ratty old apron at me that I put on even though I don’t want to.

“Damn, that’s hot!” Jason yells as he appears in the room, referring to my apron. “I can’t believe she actually got you to wear it.”

I glare at him. It’s his fault that I’m in this mess anyway, learning how to cook and all.

“We’re making spaghetti and meatballs, with homemade noodles and everything,” Kathy informs us, taking out some meat. “You can roll these into balls and put them on this cookie sheet, but make sure they’re all pretty much the same size.”

I widen my eyes at Jason and he laughs at my suspense and I dig into the raw meat container and start rolling them into balls. I do it as quickly as possible, thoroughly grossed out at the bright red raw meat that I was handling.

“I’ll be right back, dear. Do you think you can handle putting my balls in the oven?” Kathy asks me as she exits the room.

I suppress a laugh as she leaves and mutter “I wish I was really putting her balls in the oven.”

Jason chuckles. “Don’t be so hard on her, she likes you. She just shows it in…strange ways.”

“Get real, the woman hates me. Do you know how many times she’s insulted me since she’s been here?”

“She’ll be gone within a couple of days, okay? She really wanted to meet you, so just do your best to put up with her. She’s really great once you get to know her,” Jason says, making me feel bad for complaining about her.

I roll my eyes. “Fine, I’ll deal with her. But you need to start standing up for me when she starts talking about how she disapproves of everything I do.”

 “That bathroom of yours is very unclean. But like Jason told me, he isn’t dating you for your housekeeping!” Kathy blurts out the second she returns to the kitchen.

I turn to Jason, gesturing for him to say something. “Mom, you know that Leah doesn’t do that bad of a job,” Jason offers.

“I have news to share at dinner!” I come out with. If she’s already against everything in this house, why not give her more?

After I survived the cooking lesson, it was time to eat dinner. Except I wasn’t hungry. Thinking about what I was about to share made my stomach twist, but I know that I can’t push it off any longer than I already have.

“What’s the big news, Leah?” Jason asks me before even taking a bite of spaghetti.

“Okay, well I don’t even know how to begin what I’m about to say,” I begin. “The past few days I was having these really bizarre symptoms and I didn’t know what to make of it, until somebody said something to make me discover what’s going on. So I took a pregnancy test and it turns out…I’m pregnant.”

Jason sat at his seat at the table like a statue, still and emotionless. “How is this possible? You’re on the pill.”

“Yeah about that…I was examining the pills yesterday and they were taken apart and put back together,” I report. “Cassie did it.”