“Skanks with the I.Q. of a banana,” Tess adds.

 

I glare at both of them with my fork halfway to my mouth. “Hello? I’m sitting right here. They aren’t skanks and they aren’t stupid. I prefer to call them ‘scantily-clad ladies with limited vocabulary.’”

 

Mom sighs. “All of my friends have photos of grandchildren on their bookshelves. Do you want to know what I have on my bookshelves? I have porn.”

 

In a moment of insanity and a little bit of depression after my father passed away, I got the genius idea to write a cookbook, filled with my family’s favorite Italian dessert recipes. When the publishing house I sent it to told me it was too boring, instead of getting drunk and crying about it, I got drunk and added a bunch of tips for men on how they could get any woman they wanted just by making those recipes. It included the best recipe for Italian buttercream that wouldn’t leave grease stains on their sheets after they smeared it on their girl, as well as how to give a woman an orgasm using only cannoli filling and a spatula.

 

“Hey,” I bristle at her porn comment. “That’s a signed copy of Satisfaction and Sugar. If you announce on Facebook you have that, women will start clawing each other’s eyes out for it.”

 

I don’t mean to sound conceited, but it’s true. I get emails from a ton of women on a weekly basis, thanking me for spicing up their sex life while teaching their significant other how to bake and asking if I give in-home demonstrations. It’s really great for the ego and it’s made my popularity grow so much in the book world that the publisher has requested another cookbook from me.

 

Rosa snorts. “Try not to break your arm patting yourself on the back there, little brother.”

 

My family really is proud of my accomplishments, even if they don’t sound like it sometimes. They are my biggest supporters and always tell me how impressed they are of everything I’ve done at such a young age, but to them, I’m just Alfanso Marco Desoto. The son and brother who refuses to settle down, gets a cheap thrill out of teasing his older sisters, and had to grow up real fast when our father died suddenly of a heart attack three months before I was supposed to go to Paris to be the head pastry chef for one of the most popular restaurants in the city. I’ll never regret the decision to stick close to home to teach at my alma mater and take care of my family, but I’m not going to lie and say that I don’t still dream about Paris, although helping men all over the land get laid with desserts does take the sting out of things.

 

“What’s the deadline for your next cookbook? Do you still want me to edit?” Tessa asks, wiping her mouth with a napkin.

 

Tessa is a copy editor for our local newspaper. It’s nice to have someone in the family with editing skills that I can trust my cookbooks with, who won’t dry heave when I confirm that I try out every piece of advice I give before putting it in a book.

 

“I want to have this thing finished in a few months. If all goes well, and I don’t have any distractions for the next four weeks, this puppy could be on shelves in bookstores by early next year,” I tell everyone proudly.

 

“Rosa, put your phone away at the dinner table,” Mom chastises.

 

Rosa ignores her, scrolling through something on her screen and laughing. “It’s Marco’s phone and I’m just checking the notifications on his cookbook page. You really pissed this chick off.”

 

Rosa has floundered between jobs ever since she graduated college, never quite being able to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. When my cookbook started gaining popularity a couple of years ago, I was spending more time answering emails and dicking around on Facebook, instead of doing lesson plans and preparing finals. So when I offered her a job as my social media assistant, she jumped at it. I might be regretting the decision of giving her my Facebook password right now though.

 

Tessa leans closer to Rosa and looks over her shoulder. “What did he do?”

 

“Some guy on the page asked if all of the tips and recipes still gave you the same outcome if you had kids, and Marco told him that his first mistake was having kids,” Rosa snorts with a chastising shake of her head.

 

“ALFANSO MARCO DESOTO!” Mom yells, bringing out my full name for extra, angry emphasis.

 

I hold my hands up in surrender. “Ma, it was a joke. I was just being my usual charming, sarcastic self.”

 

I turn back to Rosa. “Who commented and what did she say?”

 

Tessa grabs the phone from her hand. “Her name is Molly and she said, ‘You’re an ass. You probably don’t even know how to bake and just copied all these recipes from your mommy. Cut the cord and get a life.’”

 

Rosa takes the phone back and Tessa smacks her in the arm. “Ooooh, burn! She’s got your number, Marco!”

 

I roll my eyes and help myself to another serving of pasta. “Whatever. She’s obviously got a stick up her a…” I glance quickly at my mom and correct myself. “…foot, and doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

 

“Her name is Molly Gilmore, and it says she’s from Ohio too,” Rosa continues, completely ignoring me.

 

The spoon slips out of my hand and drops with a loud clatter, splattering red sauce all over the table.

 

“Ooops, slippery little bugger.” I laugh uncomfortably, grabbing a handful of napkins and sopping up the mess, hoping no one notices I lost all bodily functions as soon as I heard that name.

 

Tessa gasps and points at me with wide eyes. “Oh my Gosh, you know her! You know her and you like her and she thinks you’re an ass!”

 

Seriously, how does she do that? People drop spoons all the time; it doesn’t mean they like someone. How does she know my hand didn’t go numb? Maybe it’s early onset Parkinson’s or a stroke. I could be dying and she doesn’t even care.

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I mutter as I wad up the dirty napkins, getting up from my chair and heading into the kitchen. “Who wants dessert? I brought my special Tiramisu!”

 

Not even chocolate, mascarpone, and the special thing I do with the Lady Fingers can deter the three women in my family when they smell something fishy.

 

They bum rush me in the kitchen so fast all three of them get stuck in the doorway pushing, shoving, and arguing until one of them manages to break free and get to me first.

 

“Is she pretty? Can she cook? When are you bringing her to dinner so I have enough time to bring out the good china and your grandmother’s lace tablecloth?” Mom asks in a rush of excitement.

 

Figuring there’s no point in lying to them since I already planned on making my move with Molly as soon as she finished her final tomorrow and will no longer be my student, I grudgingly answer my mother’s questions, hoping it will shut her up.

 

“Yes, yes, and never.”

 

She puts her hands on her hips and my sisters do the same, standing behind her and giving me equal looks of annoyance.

 

“So, you know who this Molly Gilmore person is, but clearly she has no idea you’re the same Alfanso D. whose Facebook page she was on, cookbook author and the guy she just knocked down a few pegs,” Tessa states. “What does she look like? How old is she? Where did you meet her?”

 

I roll my eyes at all the questions that just won’t stop. When I first found out my cookbook was going to be published, I spoke with the school I worked for to make sure it wouldn’t be a conflict of interest. They suggested using some sort of penname just in case and since I’m only known as Marco Desoto at work, Alfanso D. was born. None of my students know I’m the author of that widely-popular cookbook and only a very small handful of the faculty knows.

 

“She’s got long dark hair and pretty blue eyes, she’s twenty, and ooooooooh, she’s one of Marco’s students! You naughty boy, you.” Rosa giggles with her eyes glued to the phone in her hand. “Forget writing cookbooks, you could write one of those ‘I Bent the Rules and Bent Her Over My Desk’ taboo student/teacher romances.”

 

Mom turns around and flicks Rosa’s ear, causing her to yelp and complain loudly, distracting her enough for me to reach around my mother and snatch my phone from her hand. Glancing down at it, I see that Rosa found Molly’s Facebook page and was knee-deep in her investigation, going by the fact that she was in a photo album dated five years ago.