Here I was thinking that we’d have a slow, lazy morning after the wrap party—after Shay cemented her hold on my heart in the pouring rain, dancing to the distant sounds ofMonster Mash,of all things. Preferably a lazy morning in bed, with no clothes. But Shay’s side of the bed was empty when I woke up—almost empty, anyway. Croissant had the same idea as me about the lazy morning.
No part of me thought Shay would want to bake.
“I’m not meeting your family empty-handed,” she says, inspecting an apple before tossing it in a bowl to wash.
“You’re not meeting my family at all. You met them years ago.”
“Not as your girlfriend,” she points out, and I melt.
“That’s true.” I step closer to her, and she tugs me in, wrapping her arms around me and leaning in to kiss the tip of my nose.Girlfriend. It’s more than I let myself hope for, eventhough it’s all I’ve thought about since I peeled her clothes off in the basement kitchen.
“Good morning,” she murmurs against my lips.
“Morning. You’re not nervous about tonight, are you?”
“A little, I guess. I know you said your parents are cool with it, but I haven’t officially done the “meet the parents” thing since I was in my twenties. And Rora scares me a little.”
I snort, because Rora is, without a doubt, the most intimidating person in the family. “It’ll be good, I promise. Everyone is going to love you, including Rora.” Including me, I want to say, but thankfully, my brain isn’t totally useless before caffeine. Jumping from girlfriend toI love you, please stay with me forever, in less than twenty-four hours, is a little too eager.
We both said we were falling for each other, not that we loved each other. But the second I realized she feels the same way about me as I do her, falling turned to fallen real fast. It’s like my heart was just waiting for my anxiety to scoot out of the way and let my head get on board.
Right now, I want to get onShay. In her bedroom.
“You know, I keep cookie dough in my freezer. We don’t have to make anything from scratch,” I say, trying with all my might to pull her back to bed.
She doesn’t budge, laughing softly. “I like baking. And I like baking with you,” she specifies. “Seriously,mon délice, when was the last time you baked for fun?”
I can’t answer that, and she knows it. It’s been over a year, at least.
“Fine,” I relent with an overexaggerated sigh. “What are we making?”
“Apple and amaretto caramel pie with cardamom whipped cream,” she answers, and my mouth waters. I’ve never been the biggest almond person, but Shay does things with them that Ican’t describe. I’ve yet to taste something she’s made that I don’t love.
“Put me to work, Chef,” I say, grabbing the spare apron she has hanging over the back of a chair.
Shay chuckles and swats my ass with a spatula before handing me an apple peeler.
I make quick work of the apples, snacking on the peel and feeding some to Shay. The nicer, twirlier pieces, we save for a garnish. When the apples are peeled, I take a break to make us coffee, then thinly slice them while Shay makes the pie filling. The whole thing comes together in twenty minutes, and I’m surprised by how much I enjoy baking with no purpose beyond having something delicious to share with the people I love.
And watching Shay bake has become somewhat of a favorite pastime of mine. Move overGrey’sandGilmore Girls—there’s a new show in town, and I’m hooked.
She starts the whipped cream in her stand mixer until it forms soft peaks, then unhooks the bowl, because she likes to finish it by hand in case she overwhips it.
I sip my coffee and enjoy the view as she works. There are a lot of differences in how Shay and I work—her in disarray, me with order—but the most striking is how happy she always looks when she’s baking. There’s a light in her eyes that fizzled out of mine the second I made a job of this. A light I’d love to get back.
It’s a naive thought, perhaps, that I could find it again with Shay. Baking is less stressful when she’s in my general vicinity, but I’m still always running through mental checklists of things to do for the bakery that aren’t baking. It takes me out of the peace that measuring and weighing and folding ingredients usually brings me.
The last thing I want to do is be taken out of the moment with Shay.
She opens a drawer and pulls out the first thing her fingers touch—a mini whisk, no longer than seven inches from the tip of the wires to the end of the handle. Shay notices me eyeing it dubiously.
“I know, I know. It’s absolutely useless and I never use it. I only bought it because it was small, and small things are cute.”
I snort, stepping closer as she swipes a dollop of the cardamom cream with the wires and holds it out to me. The instant I close my lips around the cream, my eyes flutter closed, and a moan slips from my lips.
“Holy shit, sweetheart. This is incredible. I want to put it on everything,” I say, licking the last of the cream from the whisk.
A rosy pink blush colors Shay’s cheeks.
