Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“Well, if your idea of pebbles is sand, you’re on the right track,” he says.
I look at the bowl contents and sigh. He’s not wrong. It looks like sand.
I thrust the bowl at him and pick up my wine glass. “You fix it.”
“Why me?”
“You’re the domesticated one,” I say reasonably. “Some day you’re going to be hosting holidays, and I know you’re not going to be one of those guys who thinks his wife should be doing all the cooking and baking.”
“No,” he says, “I’m not. I’m one of those guys that thinks that store-bought pie is just fine. And for all your accusations that I’m the domesticated one, baking apple pie was your suggestion.”
“What else were we supposed to do with all those apples!” I protest. “Plus, it was just my idea to try and make a pie. Your idea to do it here at your place.”
And for reasons I’m choosing not to contemplate at this moment, I hadn’t just agreed, I’d actually happily agreed. In fact, if I’m going to be all the way honest, my heart had done a happy little squeeze when he’d suggested it.
“Because when I asked if you have a mixing bowl, measuring cup, measuring spoons, pie dish—”
I hold up a finger. “Hey. You didn’t have one of those either.”
“Easily remedied.” Thomas lifts the pie dish that still has the sticker and bar code on it from when we’d picked it up from the bodega. “But I had everything else.”
“Not that you’ve used any of it,” I say, settling onto a bar stool and helping myself to more wine. “What did you do, buy some sort of kitchen starter kit when you moved in?”
He blinks. “Yes. Doesn’t everybody?”
I smile. Adorable. “No. Not everyone. But I’m glad you did. Now I can taste-test the pie you’re about to finish making with all your fancy equipment.”
“You’re lucky you’re cute,” he mutters, as he lifts a measuring cup that we’ve filled with ice water, per recipe suggestion. “What do you think? More water?”
“It certainly can’t hurt!” I say cheerfully.
“Uh huh,” he says, pouring a little drizzle into the bowl and beginning to massage it into the dough. “If you’re done offering up such helpful bits of advice, how do you feel about peeling apples?”
“I feel like that sounds relatively straightforward.” I set my glass aside after another sip. “Where’s the peeler?”
“No clue,” he says, nodding with his chin towards the drawers. “Try one of those.”
I find it after a bit of rummaging around, and grabbing another bowl, I come to stand beside him and begin peeling as he curses the dough.
My motions are slow at first—ordering a pizza on my phone is way easier than actually having to work for my own food—but eventually I gain a bit of confidence, my motions becoming faster and more efficient.
Thomas, too, seems to be having a bit of luck. He tilts the bowl my way. “These are pebbles, right?”
I lean down, inspecting, and grin. “Pebbles!”
“Now to turn pebbles into crust,” he says, upending the bowl and forming it into a mound. “Remind me again how you ended up with the easy part and I got this?”
“Because you love a challenge.”
“Apparently,” he mutters, rather cryptically.
We work in companionable silence for several moments, pausing only when he says, “wine me,” so I can lift his wine glass to his mouth, since his hands are covered in flour.
I can’t resist sneaking a few peeks as he painstakingly rolls out the uncooperative dough. Had somebody told me a month ago that I’d be lusting over a clean-cut guy holding a rolling pin, with his white dress shirt rolled up to his elbows, I’d have laughed in their face.
Now, here I am, getting a little hot and bothered wishing he had a manly looking apron to complete the look.
Who am I?
Finally, in what probably takes way longer than it should, he has the bottom crust adequately, if not prettily, in the pie dish, and I have a bowl of cinnamon and nutmeg flavored sliced apples that I carefully dump onto the dough.
“Now for what I have to imagine is the hard part,” he says, nodding at the awkwardly rolled out top crust.
I swipe at my forehead with the back of my hand. “Go for it.”
“Uh uh. Together.”
“This isn’t a corporate retreat where we have to pump up the importance of teamwork. It doesn’t take two people to make a pie.”
“Obviously, it does,” he says with a quick smile. “But no, we’re both doing this, because then we’ll both have the satisfaction of victory when this piece of shit comes out of the oven.”
I laugh, because the combination of romanticism and impatience pretty much sums up so much of what I like about him.
I shrug, and carefully peel up the other side of the dough. We probably could have done it with one person, but a double-crusted pie is no joke for one’s first attempt, so it’s sort of nice to have company in making a hash out of it.