Baking Up Love

by Simone Belarose

  The keys were in the ignition.

  With a twist of my wrist, the engine roared to coughing, spluttering life. Yep, they definitely didn’t take care of it. I threw it into reverse, backed up and left the bakery behind.

  I headed out of town and while I did, I called up Thomas’ contacts one by one. Most of them didn’t answer right away, so I kept bothering them until they did. Each and every one of them I asked about Claire. If they’d seen her. If she was there.

  They seemed confused, probably because the caller ID came across as Thomas, but the voice was decidedly sexier. I didn’t have time to explain and when they gave me the answer I was looking for I hung up.

  Thankfully Thomas didn’t have a landline, so any calls to him would ring on the only phone he had. The one in the car with me. That gave me the precious time I would need to track Claire down without his interference.

  I needed to do this for him. I had to make things right. Even if it meant exposing my shame and vulnerability to a stranger.

  Each of his friends had said pretty much the same thing. No, they hadn’t seen her. Was she okay? Why was I asking? Who am I? Where was Thomas? Yada, yada. It was pretty clear nobody was harboring her, or else Thomas knew some pretty solid liars.

  My bullshit radar was exceptional, and I didn’t detect anything that would make me think twice about any of them. So that left me with one option: Claire had left town.

  Could she have gone home to New York? If so, I’d be in for a very long drive and probably would never find her.

  I had to believe that she’d still be unsure, that her love for Thomas would keep her tethered here in the valley. That meant there were only about four or five places she could be. I knew all the hotels, motels, and inns in the area and most of them were closed this time of year.

  They’d open in another week or so when the fall gawkers arrived in full force, but until then it was still offseason. That left only the bigger hotels like Holiday Inn, Motel 8 and the rest.

  When I reached the first hotel, a Comfort Suite just off the road, I parked the car and hopped out, running full sprint into the lobby and up to the clerk. Most people didn’t appreciate the hard work of nailing the subtle notes that really sold a lie.

  I was red-faced and panting with Thomas’ phone in my hand. The woman behind the desk gave me a surprised double-blink. “Is everything all right miss?”

  I gasped out the lie, “Sister. Forgot. Phone. She has…interview.”

  The middle-aged lady looked very kindly at me and smiled. “Aren’t you a good little sister, we can definitely get this back to her. Do you know what room number she’s in?”

  I shook my head, catching my breath. I wasn’t quite as winded as I had wanted to be, but the pain in my legs was surreal. It felt like somebody soaked my thigh muscles in acid overnight. Fucking Thomas and his running. I’m going to kill him.

  She rubbed her chin between her thumb and index finger. “How about a name, dear?”

  “Claire.” Oh fuck. I was blanking on her last name. I know Thomas had told me what it was once. It was there somewhere. Walsh? No. Walken? Closer but I’m pretty sure not it either. Like a lightning strike, it finally hit me. “Walker.” I added just a touch of breathlessness to the word, hoping she’d buy the delay as being out of breath.

  With what sounded like an unnecessary amount of keystrokes, she typed in the name. “I’m sorry, but if your sister is going under that name she’s not here. Or maybe she registered with somebody else?”

  Double fuck. “Nobody here under Walker?” By now the woman was getting suspicious. She eyed me while I kept my eyes firmly down, arm on the counter as a brace.

  “No,” she said, a definite sharp note to the word. “If you-“

  I didn’t give her time to poke holes in the story. Time for Plan B. I was already angry with myself so this next part was easy.

  Making a small scene I began to hit the counter angrily. “Stupid, stupid, Melanie! You always make these dumb mistakes and now you’ve forgotten which hotel your sister is at! God I should just throw myself off a bridge!”

  The outburst had its intended effect.

  The woman was shocked, dark brown eyes glancing around the lobby to see how much of a scene I was going to continue making. “Miss, please calm down. There’s another hotel just down the road, it’s older and probably not as well-known as this one. Perhaps your sister went there. Let me get you some directions.”

  I sniffled and nodded, quieting down. Tears threatened to spill onto my cheeks. That hadn’t been part of the act. I’d been so fucking emotional lately. And this was bringing it all up to the surface.

  The lady at the front desk scribbled something on hotel stationery and handed it to me. “There you go, I hope you find your sister, Melanie.”

  “Thanks,” I said dragging my sleeve across my nose. The woman cringed and with a flick of her hand pulled two tissues from behind the desk and offered them to me. I took them and began my march back to the stolen car.

  Son of a bitch. I really thought she’d be here. Of all the hotels this was the best one. At least it was the most expensive and newest, which I thought would draw Claire to it.

  Hopping back into the car I pulled out onto the side road off the two-lane highway. It didn’t take long to get there. I was beginning to see what the front desk clerk had meant as I parked. It was a little rundown.

  This time I pulled out Thomas’ phone before I got out of the car. It was newer and the screen wasn’t cracked so I could see the browser easier as I pulled up the phone number for the Holiday Inn.

  The phone rang twice before an older man picked up the phone. “Holiday Inn, this is Travis speaking, how can I help you?”

  I pushed my voice down into a deeper register, approximating an older woman. Hopefully, it was old enough. “Hi, Travis. My daughter’s in town, and she gave me the phone number to the hotel, but forgot her room number! Could you connect me to her room?”

  “Sure thing, ma'am. What’s the name?”

  “Walker.”

  “Got it, connecting you now.”

  The phone clicked and began to ring. I hung up immediately.

  That didn’t help me too much, but now I knew Claire was here. I still didn’t know what room she was in, but I was cooking up an idea to handle that.

  Unfortunately, it’d require me to wait a while until it was believable. Travis didn’t sound to me like the sort of guy who was a stickler for the rules, but then again I didn’t want to risk it on five seconds of phone conversation either.

  So, I sat and waited, playing games on Thomas’ phone until about an hour passed. By then Thomas would have been awake for a while, realized I was gone and had probably taken his phone.

  He was fairly smart, he’d put it together. But just like his problem with Claire, he’d have no idea where I was. Though I should probably expect a phone call soon.

  That gives me an idea...

  Once more I sprinted from the parking lot through the lobby to the clerk who had just finished helping somebody check-in. I wheezed and held up Thomas’ phone. “Sister. Phone. Room. Please.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss, but we’re not allowed to give out the room number of guests. You can leave the phone here and she can come pick it up at the front desk.”

  I spared a glance around the slightly shabby lobby. There weren’t a lot of guests here, it was certainly bigger than the hotel that I took a job at back in Sunrise Valley but it had definitely seen better days.

  Boredom makes assholes of us all. I thought to myself, trying not to judge the clerk too harshly.

  I dropped the phone out of his view and hit the fake call button I had waiting on the screen as soon as it was unlocked.

  The roiling emotions were there, right below the surface waiting to be tapped into. Tears sprang to my eyes, a torrent of surging anger and guilt flooded from my eyes. “Please you have to-“

  Thomas’ phone rang. Right on cue.

  I pretended to an
swer it and looked straight at the clerk’s uncertain eyes. “Hi, Mom. No, I haven’t given it to her yet. I know I screwed it all up. I’m trying! The clerk’s just doing his job, Mom it’s not his fault I couldn’t get her phone to her before the job interview. I know…I’m sorry.” I hung up the phone and stared at my feet, letting a few tears more leak out.

  Without another word I walked away, dragging my feet like a child that’d been spanked.

  A heavy sigh loomed out from behind the desk. “Stop. I think I remember your mom asking after her daughter. Walker, right?”

  I looked back and gave the most pathetic nod I knew how.

  A few keystrokes later he gave me her room number and I was off like a bullet to the nearest bank of elevators. I only realized then that I had absolutely no fucking idea what I was going to say to Claire once I was there.

  It didn’t take long to get up to her floor and find the room.

  Just like a bandage, gotta rip it off quick before you realize what you’re going to do. My hand knocked on the door. I heard a voice call out and I waited there impatiently fidgeting with a loose thread on my jeans.

  A woman answered the door, older far older than I was lead to believe Claire looked. We stared at each other for a moment before I said, “Claire?”

  The woman smiled and shook her head. “I’m her mom Joanne, wait one second and I’ll get her.” She shut the door enough to leave a crack.

  Claire came to the door next. At least I assumed it was her. She was taller than me, big bust and wide hips with stunning bright green eyes that offset her thick wavy black curls. I didn’t often compare myself to other girls, but Claire made me a little jealous.

  “Claire?” I asked, just to be sure. I didn’t know how many fucking sisters she might have. Or cousins or aunts. Were they having a family meeting in there?

  Her bright eyes hardened and she leaned in the doorway, clearly not inviting me in. Arms crossed over her considerable chest. “What do you want?” So she recognized me. Good, that’d make this a little easier.

  “Listen, I know you-“ Her phone rang and she sighed. I got the impression she knew who the caller was, but considering I had Thomas’ phone she was probably wrong this time.

  The surprise showed on her face and she answered the call. Rude. Then again she thought I slept with her man so maybe rudeness was to be expected.

  “What? I think you have the wrong- Yes this is Claire Walker. Yes…Okay. Um…thanks I guess?” The call ended and she stared at the phone, bewildered.

  I started up again from the beginning. “I know you probably hate my guts and Thomas’ besides, but you need to know the truth. We-“ Her phone rang again.

  Fucking really?

  This time Claire answered the phone tersely. “Who is this? Oh. Hi, yes I remember meeting you. No, he- Listen that’s-” She stopped talking and seemed resigned to listen to the voice on the other end. Claire blinked slowly, breathing in deeply to take a moment to herself.

  I’ve done my fair share of customer service jobs. What Claire was doing was classic. She couldn’t hang up without offending whoever was on the line, so she did deep breathing exercises to calm her nerves.

  The feeling of being overwhelmed and knocked off balance was plain on her face. It was a feeling I was intimately familiar with. It was what I was feeling right at that moment.

  Before another phone call could interrupt me, I blurted out, “We weren’t sleeping together!”

  Claire looked like I’d just slapped her. The color rose in her cheeks and her eyes glittered like the edge of a knife. Just as she was about to answer me the phone rang again. She answered it, her sharp gaze never leaving me.

  I stared her down with my own blue eyes. She wasn’t going to intimidate me. Whatever she was going to dish, I could take it. For Thomas.

  “Yes?” Whatever the voice on the other line said, she seemed to expect it. Rather than fight or interrupt them, she stood there in silence listening to whatever they said until the call ended.

  Claire stepped out of the room and into the hall. She sidestepped away from me, placed her back to the wall and just slid down it. I almost felt bad for her. She looked so hurt and lost, confused and unsure.

  Like somebody had just told her Santa didn’t exist.

  With an effort, I forced my jaw to unclench and my fists to relax. I knew without looking that I’d have four small, half-moon crescents pressed into the palm of each hand.

  Her phone rang again. “Yes?” And then more waiting. She banged her head against the wall, a few tears leaked out of her eyes and trailed down her apple cheeks.

  I barely got more than five or six words in over the next fifteen minutes.

  Claire looked like the only reason she wasn’t openly crying was because I was standing across the hallway from her. I had expected anger, not this dark pit of sadness sitting in front of me.

  I’m not sure what was going on with her but she seemed to be expecting more phone calls so I eventually sat down on the wall opposite her and watched her silently take one phone call after the other.

  This was not how this was supposed to go. So much for my brilliant idea.

  22

  Claire

  My head was spinning. I lost count of the phone calls I’d gotten from random strangers telling me how much Thomas loved me. That he didn’t - that he would never - cheat on me. They kept rolling in, one after the other interrupting the blonde as she tried to talk.

  I recognized her almost immediately, though her face wasn’t peacefully sleeping on Thomas’ lap this time. She seemed to dislike the phone calls interrupting whatever she had to say almost as much as me.

  At first, I was furious. I felt betrayed that Thomas would go around town airing our dirty laundry like that.

  Then something began to change inside me. I started to realize that it wasn’t a betrayal, he was willingly opening his heart not just to me but to all his friends. All the kind people in Sunrise Valley, the lives he’d touched over the years.

  And each of them was rooting for him. For us. I had just gotten my mother back and before that my sister. I felt like I finally had a family, but Thomas had nobody. To him, the town was his family and now I felt like they were mine too.

  It was like my family grew ten times larger, and continued to grow with every phone call.

  He had to have told them what happened, and if so many people were calling they must have been damn sure he wasn’t lying. How could I hold out against so many sweet words of encouragement - and a few chiding ones too - and insist he was lying?

  Even the girl I had thought he was sleeping with somehow managed to track me down just to tell me herself - nearly shouting, really - that they weren’t sleeping together.

  It was adorable. It was sweet. And my heart swelled like the Grinch’s.

  I began to pull away the layers of grief, anger, and betrayal that overlaid themselves atop the memory. One by one I mentally peeled them away like my therapist taught me to do with other painful memories.

  Slowly I brought myself back to that night, now mostly stripped of the emotions that had been coursing through me back then. Forcing myself to look at the memory I noticed things I hadn’t picked up on the first time.

  Thomas was fully clothed for one. He looked like he’d just come off a run, he still had on one of his deliciously tight shirts, his cell phone strapped to his bulging right bicep and his running shorts on. He even had his shoes on still. Now I could see a pillow on his lap where the girl was resting her head.

  His arm looked protective on her shoulder, not possessive. It was a fine line but I could see the way he was touching her and it was nothing like the way he touched me. There was an intimacy here, maybe one that rivaled our own but I couldn’t see how it was sexual.

  How had I missed that? It still didn’t explain why he was there, or why she was naked under the blanket. I could see her bare shoulders from where I stood. You have the girl right in front of you, why not ask her?

/>   She was looking at me, I still didn’t understand the circumstances around what happened. But since I hadn’t gotten a phone call in the last five minutes I risked being interrupted again. “What’s your name?”

  “Samantha Bridges,” her voice was a hoarse whisper. She lifted her gaze from the carpeted floor, pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin atop them. “But everybody calls me Sam.”

  A lot of things started to fit together but there were still glaring holes. He’d wanted us to meet for days now, hadn’t he? Why would he want me to meet somebody he’d cheat on me with?

  “You work at the bakery?”

  “Yeah. Though probably not for long now.”

  I filed that bit away for later, there were more pressing things I needed to understand. “You said you never slept with Thomas.”

  “Right.”

  I tilted my head to the side watching her, she shifted and reached into a pocket pulling out a crumpled tissue and handing it across the hall to me. I took it, wiped my eyes and blew my nose.

  “Thanks. Mind giving me a little more context?”

  Sam shrugged her shoulders and scrunched up, trying to get smaller somehow. It was obvious she wanted to be anywhere but here, so then why was she here?

  “I’m not going to give you my life’s story or something, but you need to understand that what Thomas and I have…it’s not something new. I’ve known him going on seven years now. He’s my best friend, he’s my brother. He’s the only family I have and I’ll do anything to protect him, even if it means embarrassing the shit out of myself in public.”

  A few tears dripped from her soft blue eyes and she scrubbed at them viciously with her forearm. “I love Thomas. ”

  My heart stuttered in my chest as I heard those three words from this young, beautiful girl.

  Instantly, I began comparing myself to her and I did my best to shut it down as fast as I could. It was hard not to see how incandescently beautiful she was. What Dad would call a “bombshell blonde.”