I been cooking, y'all just stir the pot

“If you were married to Nick’s father so young, why didn’t the two of you ever have any children of your own?”

When Mary asked Amelia that question, the teacher nearly spat out her food.

“What?!” She sputtered in shock and outrage.

Nick sighed and buried his face in his hands.

How did this happen? Well, to answer that question, we’ll have to go back in time a couple of hours and see how this evening started.

Several hours ago…

Nick felt a little awkward, bringing Amelia up to the Master’s Suite like this. The elevator ride to the top of the hotel was filled with a crushing tension that made him feel like throwing up.

In the irony of ironies, the feeling running through him right now was the uncomfortable uncertainty that came with the notion of bringing a girlfriend home to meet his mother.

Though the less Nick thought about things in that context, the better.

This wasn’t his girlfriend, after all! And he would do well to keep that in mind. No, in fact, it was exactly the opposite, he was bringing Amelia, his stepmother, to a dinner with Mary, his wife.

…And Holly, his sex ****, would be there, too.

He had no idea how that part of the night would end up going over.

But when the elevator opened up and they passed through the entrance hall and into the main room of the Master’s Suite, he was caught off guard by what he saw in front of him.

It wasn’t Mary, or Holly. It was Ella, dressed in her maid outfit and sitting awkwardly on the sofa. When she saw him, she jumped, and her caramel-colored skin took on a strange greenish shade.

“A-ah…” she managed to get out, and her hand quickly jumped to her wrist.

“THWAP!”

“R-right, Ella, um, hi,” Nick said, giving her an awkward wave. In all the commotion of the day’s events, he’d completely forgotten that she was scheduled to come up to the Master’s Suite to clean the place as one of her transformation duties. His face burned with embarrassment as he looked from Ella over to Amelia.

The only hint of emotion on his stepmother’s chilly countenance was the raising of a single eyebrow.

“Good… good evening,” Ella stammered, blushing even deeper than Nick was. She averted her eyes and looked down at the floor, fidgeting with the hem of a skirt that was clearly far too short for her personal tastes.

Nick cautiously walked deeper into the room, and looked around. Everything was immaculate, as clean as could be. He had the urge to congratulate Ella on her hard work, but something told him that she probably wouldn’t be too appreciative of that given her history, so he held off.

Amelia lacked those sorts of qualms.

“Your duty is to clean the Master’s Suite every night, correct?” She said, approaching Ella without hesitation. Ella jumped and her head snapped up to look at Amelia, her eyes wide with what Nick could only assume was wild terror.

Without a word, she jerked her head up and down.

“…Excellent work. The room is spotless.” Even Amelia’s kind words stung with a coldness to them that made Nick wince in sympathy.

Ella swallowed and looked down. She gave the other woman a tense glance.

“I… I didn’t, um… this… this wasn’t me,” she said, shaking her head. “I-I’m sorry… I shouldn’t be slacking off like this, but-! But she told me, she said I could, um…”

Nick tensed. The look on her face was a frightening one. For a moment, he feared that Cinder was going to take control again. But Ella snapped her rubber-band three more times with a “THWAP! THWAP! THWAP!” and her breathing stabilized.

Sensing that she’d crossed a line, Amelia took a step backwards and gazed sympathetically at the poor girl in front of her. She was curious what Ella meant by that, but at the same time she knew better than to press the issue.

Nick felt the same way.

It was Holly who skipped in with a bright smile on her face to answer the question burning in both of their minds.

“Come on, Ella! It’s not slacking off! You’re taking a well-deserved rest break!” She chirped, jumping onto the couch beside her fellow maid and batting her eyelashes at her. “After all! You’ve been working hard! There’s a reason Rose and I worked our butts off to get this place looking spotless before you showed up!”

Ella gulped and looked down at the floor. Her knees knocked together and her face burned with a strange look of happy guilt.

Nick put the pieces together pretty quickly. “So, wait, Rose? You and Rose… you cleaned up the Master’s Suite tonight, before Ella even got here?”

“That’s right!” Holly chirped. “Rose did most of the work though. That girl was really determined!”

Rose: 8400 BP + 100 BP = 8500 BP

Holly wasn’t done with her explanation. “By the time Ella arrived, there wasn’t anything left that needed cleaning, so we said she could just hang out on the couch and enjoy herself until it was time to go home.”

With a shrug, the petite maid let out a long sigh. “You know, I really, really thought that she’d be able to have some fun and relax, but… I guess she’s just not used to that, huh?”

She looked sympathetically over at Ella, who only seemed to feel guiltier at the statement.

“I… I’m not used to something like this,” the young maid admitted. “Not having to work… being allowed to just… relax… it’s so strange… I feel… I don’t even know WHAT I’m supposed to feel, honestly,” she admitted, looking guiltily up at Nick.

It almost seemed like she was begging his permission to relax, which was a sad thought. For a moment, Nick was reminded of Kim, and how much work it was to convince her that she could take time for herself and not spend her whole life being ruled by her job.

And Kim didn’t have half the problems Ella did.

“Ella, just because your transformation says you have to come up to the Master’s Suite to clean, that doesn’t mean you should feel bad about all your work being done for you,” Nick said, walking over to her. He was cautious, because he didn’t want to push her too hard in case she had a breakdown, but he was still concerned. “Today, Rose and Holly wanted to do something nice for you. It’s alright for you to accept that.”

“Yeah!” Holly nodded in agreement. “Think of it like having the night off, so you can look forward to the beach party tomorrow!”

A crooked grin broke across Ella’s face. “R-right,” she stammered, trying to feel happy about what was coming. “The beach party, I almost forgot…”

It was a strange feeling of anticipation in her gut. After all, until she came to this island, Ella had never seen the beach before in her life. She’d never been to the ocean, or even a lake before. The only water she was familiar with came out of a faucet to wash dishes in, or she scrubbed up in a toilet or the bathtub.

But being able to just do nothing… to actually enjoy herself, and spend her time thinking about what would come next?

It made her heart soar with delight.

“It’s almost six,” Nick said, glancing up at the clock. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to your room pretty soon?”

Ella would have to stay for a few minutes more, but he wanted her to know that as far as he was concerned, she was off the hook.

The maid swallowed and nodded. “If… if that’s really okay with you all, then, yes, I think that would be best,” she agreed.

It felt so surreal, having people supporting her like this.

She was so overwhelmed that she actually hesitated to head out the door, just for a moment. Almost like she didn’t want to leave.

That part was the strangest of all for her.

Nick watched her go with a sigh on his lips, and shook his head. “I wish I could help her out a little more,” he admitted. “But I’m not a therapist.”

“No, you’re not,” Amelia bluntly informed him. “…But you did well.”

He smiled. It was the closest thing to a real compliment his stepmother tended to give him, and it made him feel like all this was worth it.

For now, though, he had other issues to deal with. Now it was just his stepmother and Holly in the room together, and Mary was nowhere to be found. He had hoped that the redhead would be a more reasonable buffer in contrast to the lurid maid, but without her here, any discussions he had with Amelia would be colored a very naughty color by Holly’s eager hand.

He’d very much like to avoid that if at all possible, though he doubted it was.

Amelia cleared her throat. “Holly, is that right?” She asked for the petite girl’s name in clarification, and Holly cheerfully nodded.

Before Amelia could finish her thought, Nick desperately interjected himself into the conversation.

“Where… where’s Mary?” He gasped out, looking around the Master’s Suite. He could smell the aroma of something cooking in the kitchen. “Is she making dinner? Let’s go say hello, Amelia!” He desperately suggested.

Holly could barely hide the grin on her face. “Yeah, something like that,” she said with a nod. Her eyes shined with delight.

It was an unnerving look that was enough to bother Nick, but not enough to stop him from heading into the kitchen with Amelia.

He really wished he hadn’t, though.

Mary was in the kitchen alright, but she wasn’t the one cooking dinner. No, that responsibility fell on the shoulders of a certain sunny-smiling blonde toiling over the stove.

“Oh! Nick! You’re here already!” Rose looked up at him, her sea-blue eyes sparkling with delight. “Just in time, I’ve almost got dinner prepared!”

He didn’t hear a word of that, because he was too focused on what she was wearing. Or rather, what she wasn’t wearing.

Rose: 8500 BP + 300 BP = 8800 BP

Save for the white apron clinging to her curvy figure, the actress in front of him didn’t have a stitch on. Her hair was longer than he imagined, and grew longer still, although it hadn’t quite reached her normal length just yet.

The sight of her model proportions squeezed into one of the sexiest homemaker outfits he’d ever seen caused his brain to short-circuit, and for a long while he didn’t even realize that his stepmother was standing right beside him and seeing exactly what he was seeing.

If he had, he might have screamed.

“…Nicholas,” Amelia said, adjusting her glasses and looking over at her stepson, “is something like this common for you?”

Nick gasped. “A-ah! Uh… I, that is… N-no!” He managed to get out, shaking his head frantically. “This isn’t usual for me at all, I swear! This is just… Rose is just… Mary?!”

He looked desperately at his wife, hoping that she could get him out of this somehow. But her expression was adamant and she sharply shook her head, staring at him with fierce eyes that made it clear this wasn’t something he could just ignore.

It was Rose who broke the awkward silence.

“I-I’m sorry,” she apologized fretfully as she toiled over a bowl of fragrant liquid. “I know this is a little… direct… and I didn’t mean for it to happen like this, I swear,” she said, shaking her head. “But I… I really need to earn the BP.”

Nick realized what she was talking about. “…Oh, it’s for your bounty sheet, isn’t it?”

She sighed and nodded. “Yeah. I-I have to cook a meal for you, wearing a naked apron. I got 300 BP for it just now. I know that’s not a lot, but…”

Stirring with one hand, she raised the other to her head, and smiled a little as she felt how long her hair had grown. For just a few extra points, she was making such great progress!

Nick didn’t have it in him to be upset or embarrassed when he saw that smile. But at the same time, he needed to work things out with his stepmother or who knows what she would think?

He looked warily over at Amelia, and found her expression unreadable. And as a rarity, he and Rose were on the same page. The blonde’s flawless features were flushed, and she squirmed a little as she felt Amelia’s eyes boring holes into her.

In her usual display of shortsightedness, Rose had gone and humiliated herself in front of the woman she wanted to impress most. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought that Mary encouraging her to go down this route tonight was an act of sabotage to make her look like some creepy streaker in the eyes of the stepmother of the man she loved!

“…I believe that is a very excellent decision, Rose,” Amelia stated, and Rose nearly dropped her ladle in the soup.

“H-huh!?” Her eyes widened in shock and she stared at the older woman. “You… you’re not… huh!?”

Rose was certain that Amelia would have given her some long lecture about how improper she was acting, and how disgusting she was. She’d practically resigned herself to being scorned by the uptight brit.

And yet, Amelia’s eyes didn’t show the slightest trace of judgment or disgust. She almost seemed to respect Rose’s actions, but that was crazy!

…Right?

“M-mom?” Nick was so stunned by Amelia’s statement that he made a mistake, which he hastily corrected. “Err, I mean, Amelia, what are you talking about?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, young lady, but your intention here tonight was to cook a meal for my stepson, correct?” Amelia inquired. “Wearing an outfit designed for seduction?”

“W-well, I mean, yeah, basically,” Rose stammered, not sure what else to say.

“And in doing so, you would earn BP. I believe that making a choice like that is an admirable one,” Amelia continued. “There is nothing improper or incorrect about a woman trying to please the man she loves in such fashion. But in the future, I would advise you to be mindful of time and place.”

She cleared her throat, and Nick thought he could see a blush on her face for a moment. But that was crazy, right? This was his stepmother he was dealing with here!

“…Such actions should be reserved for moments of intimate privacy, not large gatherings with family members,” Amelia concluded, and hastily retreated from the kitchen.

Nick was too stunned to even consider going after her. He just turned to Rose and Mary, who were both looking back at him with expressions of muted shock.

Nobody had expected something like that to happen.

Still feeling numb, Nick staggered out of the kitchen to find his mother waiting for him by the dining room table, having recomposed herself in their brief separation. Any sign of prior unease or doubt had drained from her face, and she once again looked like the picture of perfect authority.

“…I… Amelia, about Rose, that was…”

“Nicholas, I was not being polite to her just because she is sleeping with you,” Amelia bluntly headed off Nick’s terrible attempt at an explanation and apology. “I simply recognize the depth of that girl’s affection for you, and gave her the consideration she deserved for her efforts. I believe that is something that you would benefit greatly from doing more of yourself, in the future.”

Nick pictured Rose’s smiling face, recalling how happy she was to cook for him wearing that skimpy outfit. And how much he’d enjoyed it, in spite of the situation.

“…Yeah, you’re right,” he admitted with a sheepish nod. “You’re right… I really need to make it up to her somehow.”

Amelia shook her head. “You’re not listening to me,” she chastised him. “That girl did not do that out of expectation for repayment, no matter what she may say. She did it because she cares about you, that’s all there is to it.”

“I-I know that!” Nick exclaimed. “I didn’t mean it that way! I know Rose was cooking for me because she cares! That’s why I need to show her how much I care about her, so she doesn’t feel like I’m taking her for granted! That’s all!”

Amelia blinked. She looked stunned, and then a wave of embarrassment crossed her face. “…Yes, that’s correct,” she admitted, averting her eyes. “I never meant to suggest otherwise. …I’ve made a mess of this, haven’t I?”

That might be going a bit too far. There were already too many issues that they’d faced tonight to pin the blame for anything on any one person.

But Nick didn’t have anything to say in regard to that.

Still burning with embarrassment, he couldn’t think of anything more to say than just asking his stepmother if they should sit down and wait for dinner.

Amelia was open to that suggestion.

Of course, it didn’t help the awkward silence hanging in the air. And since Holly was happy to just sit back and watch the fireworks, she wasn’t about to bail them out, either.

Sometimes Nick wanted to punch that adorable gremlin right in her smug little button nose.

Mary exited the kitchen a few minutes later, to the relief of Nick and Amelia both. She wore a sunny smile on her face, and informed them that Rose was finished making dinner and would be out to serve them shortly.

“Excellent,” Amelia said with a soft smile. “That’s wonderful to hear.”

“So how did your date today go?” Mary asked, sitting down beside Nick, as was her place to be. “I hope Nick wasn’t too romantic!”

That was an odd and uncomfortable joke if Nick ever heard one. He tried to laugh it off, but it just made him come across as even more nervous than he was.

Amelia seemed unfazed by that.

“The purpose of our day together wasn’t to spur romantic development,” Amelia reminded the redhead, as if that was something that needed to be stated outright. …On this island, maybe it did.

“I wanted to help him develop his skills at pleasing the women in his life better,” she continued, glancing up at the kitchen door, where Rose exited holding a large cooking pot of hot soup. “In terms of their emotional needs, of course.”

In a stunning display of awareness, Amelia had, for once, followed up her ambiguous statement with a clarifying remark, to remove any doubt that one might use to interpret it in a way other than her intended purpose.

Not that Mary would ever do that. She nodded along in perfect agreement. “I totally understand what you mean! But of course, my Nick would never be inattentive.”

“Excuse me, ‘your’ Nick?” Rose interrupted, standing over the table (still nearly naked) like a spiteful ghost.

Mary looked up at her with a sheepish smile. “I-I just meant…”

Rose sighed and rolled her eyes. This wasn’t a fight to be had right now. “It’s fine, I’ll let it slide,” she relented. “Moving on, though, I’ve brought you your first course for tonight! French onion soup, one of my specialties! Please, enjoy!”

She ladled some soup into each of their bowls, and stepped back to see how they would enjoy it.

Amelia had just brought the spoon to her lips for the first taste when Mary asked a question nobody saw coming.

“If you were married to Nick’s father so young, why didn’t the two of you ever have any children of your own?”