"So, you're dating her?"
"Yup."
"And you thought that through? That's what you really wanted to do?"
"Yeah, why wouldn't it be?" He slid a bag of sugar across the counter towards her and watched as she poured a portion of it into the bowl without measuring it. "Can you at least try to measure things? I want these to come out right."
"Hey, I'm the child of cooking royalty. I don't need to measure shit for it to come out perfect," she said, sticking a finger into the batter and licking the brownie mix off of it. "And no reason. I just think that it happened pretty quickly."
"Finally getting into a real, serious relationship after knowing her for what? Sixteen years? That is pretty quickly," he said sarcastically as he added the last few ingredients to the batter.
"I don't mean it like that, asshole. I'm just saying that like, after all of what just happened, it seems kind of sudden that you'd go from that to dating."
"AKA, you're Sydney's best friend now?"
"Not quite." She hopped off of the counter and slid the tray of uncooked brownies into the oven. "I guess it's safe to say that you aren't either? How'd she take the news of you and Alicia Keys dating?" She knew exactly what Vincent's silence, as he wiped down the counter, meant. Sydney didn't know, and that he knew that was as bad as she thought it was. "She doesn't know? Shit, you really are stupid," she smirked, though shaking her head at the obviously bad place that Vincent had put himself in.
"No one knows. It's not like we're keeping it from her exclusively." When Vincent remembered that they were at Kelley's and that there were house staff to clean up after them, he stopped worrying about the mess they had made while baking and looks over at Kelley. "Besides, it's not her business anyway."
That last comment had Kelley laughing at loud. "Since when has something not being her business ever stopped Sydney Vale from acting like it is?" She leaned back against the island and crossed her arms over her chest. It was apparent that Vincent didn't want to talk about this, but Kelley didn't care. She felt like she not only deserved an explanation, but she needed to knock some sense into Vincent too. Before he responded, her phone buzzed with a text message from Brent who invited her to the library with him. She had school work to do and was in the mood to hang out with him, especially since she hadn't seen Charlotte enough today to pester her about the rumor involving the two. "I'm going to go meet up with Brent at the library, so get lost," she said playfully, before adding, "Unless you wanna chill here alone until Taryn and my mom get back from nursery shopping."
To: Brent
Yeahhhh give me 20
Vincent had been planning on bringing the brownies to the movie night that he and Sienna had planned to have tonight. Just as they had started cooking though, he had seen a text from Sienna explaining that she had to cancel for tonight. With hanging out with her out of the question, he had decided to hang out with Kelley, but now she was ditching him too. He decided not to respond to her inquiry about how he thought Sydney wasn't going to find out, because he didn't have an answer. She became preoccupied with her phone anyway, so it was a seamless transition into skipping over the question. "I'll leave once my brownies are finished."
"You know I don't want them unless there's weed in 'em anyway," she shot back with a grin as she headed out of the kitchen and to her bedroom. When she reemerged fifteen minutes later, Vincent was still in the kitchen, but packing his things into his backpack that he thrust over his shoulder as she entered. "Leaving?"
"Yeah, I'm meeting up with Rick and Connor. The brownies are all yours. Maybe you can eat them after you smoke," he said, rolling his eyes at the last part. Ricardo had texted him in their new group chat a few minutes ago and after a bit of contemplation, Vincent had decided that he had to go out. They were definitely in need of a guy's night out and he was going to have to explain his situation with Sienna to the boys at some point. With Connor, he could probably get away with avoiding the subject, as he had been able to do with the Sydney scandal so far, but that was impossible with Rick. Vincent figured that it would be easier to handle it now over beers than during their lunch period or something.
To: Ricardo, Connor
I'm down. I'll be outside of Kelley's building in 5.
After taking the brownies out of the oven, Kelley had one of the kitchen staff put a few into a container for her to take to Brent. Vincent was right; if the two decided to smoke after the library, brownies would be a nice way to fight the munchies. Minutes later, the cousins left the Hadley apartment together, but Kelley hailed a cab while Vincent waited on the sidewalk outside of the building. He considered hailing a cab himself, but he didn't know what Ricardo had planned for the night and where he wanted them all to go. While he waited, his phone pinged again with another text from Sienna, and he realized he hadn't answered her first one.
To: Sienna
Hey sorry. Yeah movie night tomorrow sounds good. Is everything cool with Charlotte and all of that?
Btw I made brownies for nothing though, so you owe me ;) big time