Sugar, Butter, Flour, and Love

Chapter Nineteen

"Do you realize how ridiculous you sound?" Ai cut in. "Anyways, if we have to wake up at 3AM then I want to get some sleep. Goodnight Richard!" Ai ushered him out of the room and promptly closed the door. "Fuck, he's so annoying."

After he left, I got ready for bed while Ai showered. Eventually, I sat on the edge of my bed and covered my face. What. The. Heck.

He'd held out a box of condoms like the two of us were most certainly sleeping together. Even if both of us were straight or even bi, why would sharing a room imply that kind of intimacy? Was this all because I hadn't yet told everyone I was gay? Would people keep thinking me and Ai were an item? I hadn't even considered something like that would happen. Ai was my friend.

Ai was still showering but she surprised me by poking her head out of the bathroom. Steam clouded out of the bathroom and it didn't seem like she was wearing a towel. She reached her arm out to signal to me.

"Hey, can you pass me a pad?" She gestured to her bed area but I didn't see anything. "The second drawer of my night stand."

I went over to it and opened the drawer to see...girl stuff. Oh wow...there was so many things. Tampons, pads, pills, and a hot water bottle container. I grabbed what looked like a pad and shuffled over to Ai's outstretched arm and handed it to her awkwardly.

"Thanks!" She said, before closing the door.

Well, maybe I couldn't blame people if they thought we were sleeping together. I mean, there I was touching Ai's lady stuff... I took a deep breath and started to head down to the kitchen for a glass of water. I stopped at the top of the winding staircase because it sounded like people were talking. I wasn't sure if I wanted to interrupt or not, but their voices carried enough for me to comfortably eavesdrop.

"I really thought I'd win that challenge. My kids love my whoopie pies,"  Mary Lou said bitterly. Except, she didn't bring up how her chocolate cookie sandwich with a marshmallow icing filling was too sweet. I mean, most kids liked sweet things but our desserts were supposed to do something interesting. There wasn't anything interesting about an overly sweet dessert and that was what the judges had said in not so many words.

Mel's voice was deep and carried even more than Mary Lou's. "Well, obviously the big guy was the one who ended up winning. He works in a bakery for Christ's sake. He's probably gonna coast through tomorrow, too. Then he gets to come back here and sleep with a young, pretty thing by his side."

A pit fell in my stomach when Mary Lou laughed. "He hasn't worked in a bakery long enough for it to make a big difference when he bakes. Not to mention where I was raised the only time you share a room with someone of the opposite sex is when you're married. It's inappropriate."

"At this point it's just a honeymoon for the two of them. Did you see him help her with her dish? She definitely had time to scoop out the dough onto the baking sheet. Of course it's easy to bat your eyes at the biggest guy here and get help."

Mary Lou paused. "He is really big..."

Something shifted in the air, and it was disconcerting.

"I wonder how they do things," Mel continued in a low voice, "I mean, the beds are so small. And she's pretty small, too. He must be a beast in bed."

Mary Lou made a disapproving noise. "Mel, I— I don't think that's appropriate to say. My room is right next to theirs and I never hear anything. And she's got a girlfriend, right? A woman wouldn't lie about being a lesbian..."

Mel scoffed. "Oh come on, some of my students are one thing one day and another the next. People can be confused."

It was getting hard to breathe, and I tried to remind myself to calm down but it was too late and I'd heard too much. Somehow, I felt like I was going to throw up. My anxiety hadn't caused nausea since I was a kid but what I'd heard was so messed up. Why were they discussing me like I was some kind of animal?A beast? Is that how people saw me?