15. Drop Half The Batter

During Juno's fit of sneezing, coughing, blinking rapidly, sleeping and wiping his nose on anything nearby which included the sleeve of Logan's shirt - much to his distaste - the little kid had finally perked up a bit. That of course meant that he went back to good old Juno who made sure it was blatantly obvious that he was related to the freedom fighting, shit-talker that was Logan.

The little blonde had managed to boss Logan around the whole kitchen, getting two pieces of toast, a bowl of soup and crackers. Juno had then attempted to get chocolate and Maisie watched in amusement as the kid ate nearly half a bar then ran to the toilet to throw up.

Logan sighed and got up. "Dumbass."

She wanted to comment that he was more of the dumbass because he gave Juno the chocolate but stayed silent as he disappeared into the bathroom and Maisie heard a toilet flush before Logan reappeared with Juno latched to him like a monkey.

"That's the last time you're eating chocolate for a long time," Logan grumbled.

"But it tastes good," Juno pouted, resting his head on his brother's shoulder.

"I'm sure the aftertaste of vomit isn't as good though, is it?" Logan asked as he sat down on the couch beside Maisie and Juno made a retching noise.

"Don't say that word," he winced. "You know I hate it!"

"What?" Logan grinned mischievously. "Vomit?"

Juno made another reaching noise and Logan proceeded to chant the word 'vomit' over and over again in his face. When Juno began to turn green, Maisie decided to intervene.

"Okay, shut up," Maisie said. "The poor guys still sick you know."

Juno stuck his tongue out at Logan and crawled over him to sit beside Maisie. "I like her more than you."

"We're blood related, you have to like me," Logan flicked Juno's ear.

"Do not!" Juno frowned.

"Uh yeah you do," Logan scoffed.

"No I don't!" Juno yelled then grabbed the side of his head when a shot of pain ran up from his ear to his eye. "Ow."

"You're still sick and your sinuses are blocked so try not to get too energetic," Maisie said. "You'll give yourself a migraine."

Juno yanked a tissue out of the box on the coffee table and blew his noise obnoxiously loud then turned to Logan and spoke in a sickly voice. "Can I still go to West's birthday party?"

"Fuck no," Logan said. "I'm not having crazy ass mothers smacking me up because my infected brother made their spawn sick."

"But I wanted to eat the cake."

"Dumbass, you'll just vomit it back up on everyone."

"Don't say that word!" Juno screeched.

"Okay, time out!" Maisie stood up from the couch and leaned the backs of her legs against the wooden coffee table. The house was for some reason an unbearable freezing temperature and Maisie could swear that for a few moments she thought she had transported to Alaska. Logan said the AC was on a 'shitty-good-for-nothing' timer and that he doesn't know how to fix it so now the three of them were stuck in an igloo of a house with a baker who's copping out on her job, a minor criminal who's skipping community service and a sick child who insists on eating things he's only gonna throw up.

Tough day.

"Juno, you can't eat anything rich or chocolatey until your stomach has settled otherwise you'll just be sick. Logan, stop taunting him," Maisie said.

Logan looked over at his brother and rolled his eyes before flicking him between the eyes. Juno fell backwards dramatically and slapped a hand over his eyes.

"I'm wounded," the youngest croaked out.

"Okay I have a plan," Maisie clapped her hands together. "So honestly I have no idea why I'm still here but I'm not in the mood to deal with delinquents that can't make strudels properly so this is the next best thing. You, Juno, can't eat anything rich, but that doesn't mean you can't make it."

Juno frowned before he realized what Maisie meant and his face split into a grin. "And I can eat it after?"

"Um, yeah maybe," Maisie said. "But that's not the point. Have you ever baked before?"

Juno shook his head. "Mother doesn't like baking...or cooking...or domestic activities."

Maisie internally shivered when Juno said 'mother' and blinked at the boy before turning to face Logan.

"Do you have baking stuff then?" she asked.

Logan shrugged. "Maybe, I don't really know. Delilah does the cooking usually."

They had a babysitter that doubled as a cook. Was this poor woman a masseuse too?

Logan showed Maisie where the pantry was and she scavenged around the place and the giant fridge, throwing and dumping things she needed on the counter. She looked down at the ingredients and frowned.

Butter - check.

Flour - check.

Baking powder - no check.

Sugar - no check.

Eggs - half a check.

"You have half an egg," Maisie said with bewildered confusion.

"What?" Logan asked.

Maisie held up the offending opened egg shell that had a pool of egg yolks sitting in it. "You literally have half an egg. How long has this been here?" Maisie sniffed the egg and pulled back immediately. "Almost too long. And you have no sugar, who has no sugar?"

"Never needed it," Logan said.

"Right well, that's changing," Maisie said. "Every self-respecting household should at least have sugar as a basic necessity. You can barely bake anything without sugar unless you want to be weird and make cakes with celery and beetroot which would make my grandma roll in her grave."

"We don't bake," Logan grumbled.

Maisie looked up at him. "Well that's changing too."

***

Grocery shopping is a tedious and annoying task that Maisie had always hated. She lost any enjoyment out of the process when she became too big to sit in the shopping kart and had to walk around herself. Strangely enough, Juno had the exact same problem.

"I wanna go home and pretend I don't exist," the little guy said as he trailed along the floor of the grocery store.

"Well too bad, you do exist," Logan said and swept Juno up off the ground and onto his hip. "Jesus kid you're heavy."

"Okay we need to find an aisle with sugar in it," Maisie said, looking down at her shopping list which had Juno's input also.

The three found some sugar and baking soda and were throwing cocoa in the kart when Maisie's phone went off in her pocket. She cursed under her breath and pulled it out.

Fuck shit fuck.

"Logan, can you continue getting the ingredients? My dads calling," Maisie said.

Logan nodded and took the list out of her hands before dragging Juno down the aisle by the hand. Maisie hit 'accept' and moved to a quieter part of the store.

"Hey dad," she winced.

"Hey Maisie," her dad, Robert said from the other end. "How are you?"

"Good, yeah. You?" she asked.

"Not too bad, not too bad," he answered. "Look I was just calling to say that I got some time off work and that I'll be coming down this Saturday."

Maisie looked down at her watch and actually cringed. It was already Thursday.

"That sounds good, dad," she said easily. "How long you staying?"

"Two days, one night," he said.

"Oh," Maisie said. As usual. "That's okay, we'll still have time to see each other, go out for dinner maybe and oh!...there's a new theatre that opened up just fifteen minutes away, we could try and catch a show-"

"Woah slow down there," her dad laughed. "I'm just coming over to see your college."

Maisie's heart dropped with disappointment the same time it panicked and began to go into a frenzy. Fuck shit fuck.

"My college?" Maisie choked out.

"Yeah, I was hoping you would show me around campus, let me get a feel for your everyday life," her dad said and Maisie felt sick.

"Um I...actually..."

"And Rachel will be coming down with me," Robert added.

Maisie frowned. "Rachel? Why's she coming?"

"She got time off work so we thought we would both head down and have a small vacation," her dad explained. "Vicki isn't coming though."

Oh perfect, bring your new daughter to a practical desert so she can upstage your ex-daughter who wasn't even good enough to stay in school. Sounds like a great fucking vacation. At least Vicki (the effing evil queen of stepmothers) wasn't coming too.

"That going to be okay?" he asked. "You're not busy or anything this weekend are you?"

Maisie sighed and pressed a palm to her forehead. "No, no, it's all fine here."

"Great," her dad said in the way that always infuriated Maisie. Like he was still in a damn business pitch and he was praising one of the interns. "I'll text you what time our flights are. See you soon, Maisie."

"See you soon," she said. "Lov-"

The line had already ended.

Maisie rolled her eyes. "Love you too. Bye now," she said to the phone, "you bastard."

"Maisie!" a voice yelled from the end of the aisle and Maisie looked up to see Juno running over, his hands full of ingredients with Logan trailing behind him.

Juno dumped all the stuff in the kart. "We got everything."

"Plus three bags of candy," Maisie observed.

"For when I'm better," Juno said.

You're already getting a freakin' cake, kid.

Logan came up and handed Maisie the list back. She double checked and everything they didn't have was now in the kart.

"Perfect," Maisie smiled and ruffled Juno's hair. "Let's pick up anything else you want then pay for this."

After getting a couple bags of microwave popcorn, more candy, a ready-cooked chicken and potato wedges, the three of them went through the check out and had at two bags each. Well two for Logan and Maisie and a light one with only popcorn in it for Juno. When it came to paying, Maisie had insisted to go half at the least but Logan just held up a card.

"Dad's card. His money is his parenting...and love apparently," Logan said and paid for all the groceries.

The walk back to the house was fast and Juno fell asleep on the couch as Maisie and Logan put the ingredients out on the countertop to get ready to bake. They both stole a potato wedge from the box and slid it over to wait beside the chicken for dinner. Logan leaned against the rust coloured countertops and stretched his back until it cracked. Maisie did the same and stood beside him.

"Thanks again for looking after him," Logan said. "I know you should have probably been at work instead of here."

Maisie turned her head and looked at him before shrugging and smiling lightly. "It's okay. I haven't had such a bad time so far."

"That's good," Logan said then rubbed the back of his neck, white shirt moving up slightly as he did. "Listen, do you maybe wanna go out sometime?"

Maisie was taken aback. "What like, out-out?"

Logan laughed. "Yeah, out-out."

"I uh..." Maisie's couldn't help but actually grin. "Yeah, yeah I would like that." A lot.

Logan grinned back. "Good. Friday night alright?"

Maisie nodded. "It's perfect."

Juno took that moment to drag himself into the room, cocooned in a blanket. Logan reached down and put him on a stool in front of the counter where the ingredients were.

"You ready to bake?" he asked Juno.

The boy nodded. "Yeah," he said and grabbed a handful from the bag of candy when he thought no one was looking.

The rest of the day was spent with Maisie teaching Juno how to bake a basic chocolate cake. She watched as Logan held Juno up to the tall countertop as he mixed all the ingredients together before giving up and grabbing a chair for him to stand on as the stool was too tall. He poured the batter into a tin and Maisie put it in the oven which slowly warmed up the house, although Logan had left halfway through the baking process and had come back throwing one of his hoodies at Maisie's head before she froze to death. Two hours later, a frosting covered chocolate cake was sat in the kitchen behind the three of them as they sat on the couch with a plate of chicken and wedges in their laps.

Juno's stomach had settled well enough for him to be able to keep all the food down as well as all the handfuls of candy he had been grabbing. Afterwards they ate cake with Juno getting it all over his face before he fell asleep again and Logan switched the TV to a movie. Maisie rolled out the microwave popcorn and the three of them sat there, domestic and mundane and for a moment, she forgot to worry about her dad visiting.

- Ellie x