“Nope.” I walk into his office and emerge with my coat. “Let the rain baptize me and wash away this evening.”
“Stop being dramatic and listen to me. You’re right, okay? We shouldn’t have done . . . what we did. We work together, and this will make things awkward, and . . . I’m sorry, okay?”
I stop in my tracks. Obviously I wanted Nick to agree with me, to concur that this was all one big mistake and that we, as coworkers who see each other every day, shouldn’t be involved in any sort of physical manner. So why does hearing him say those words out loud make me . . .
Disappointed?
I turn around and pull my hood over my head. “Yep.”
He takes a step toward me, and then another. My heartbeat quickens as his heavy boots step across the creaky wood floor, and I know I should move. I should go home. But I can’t, because I don’t know what’s going to happen, or what I want to happen . . .
He holds out a hand, pinky crooked.
“Um . . .” I say.
“Pinky swear,” he says, so seriously you’d never know he’s uttering words primarily used by junior high school students.
I hold out my pinky and hook it in his.
“Nothing happened,” he says, holding my gaze, not blinking.
I stare right into his brown eyes. “Nothing happened,” I whisper.
And then I let go and bolt out of the shop. The rain has let up to a light drizzle, so I take my hood off and let my head get wet. With the power restored, the glow from the neighborhood businesses and homes makes the wet sidewalks shine, lighting my way home.
Nothing happened, I remind myself as I touch the tip of my pinky finger to my mouth, pretending that it’s Nick’s mouth instead.
Chapter Six
It all started when I made a bad pie.
The dough seemed fine when I rolled it out. It was sturdy, smooth, and flecked with butter. My filling, a peach, whiskey, and ginger mixture, was sweet and spicy and just the right amount of boozy. I crimped the hell out of that crust, stuck it in the oven, and prepared to have a beautiful, delicious dessert when the timer went off.
Only that’s not what happened. When I pulled my pie out of the oven, the crust was shrunken and warped, burned in places and almost raw in others. When it finally cooled enough for me to cut into it, the filling oozed out, far too liquidy. And that once-beautiful crust had, as the judges on The Great British Bake Off are all too fond of saying, a soggy bottom.
In other words, it was a pie disaster of epic proportions, and I took it personally. How could I have screwed this up so monumentally? I mean, isn’t the saying “easy as pie” supposed to mean something? How is it that I can make a baked Alaska, turn out a perfect tray of macarons, and decorate a layer cake in my sleep but I can’t master pastry dough?
And so Project Pie began. I started experimenting with different fats—lard, butter, shortening, a mixture of butter and shortening. I added vinegar. I added buttermilk. I added vodka. I used a pastry cutter, a food processor, my bare hands. I tried every thickener out there for my fruit fillings: flour, cornstarch, tapioca, arrowroot powder. I made lattice crusts, cut decorations out of dough, tried egg washes, milk washes, cream washes, you name it.
It worked—I made some good pies. Some great pies, even. But have I hit upon that mythical perfect pie, the one with a flaky-yet-flavorful crust and a filling that sets up and tastes so good that I can’t stop eating it? No. And so my quest continues.
Tonight, after I read some article for class and write a quick reaction paper, I pull my pie dough out of the fridge. That’s the first secret of good pie: just as in yacht rock, everything needs to be very chill.
After covering the counter in plenty of flour, it’s time for my favorite part: rolling out the dough. At first, this was the part of pie making that scared me. What if I tore a hole in the dough? What if it got stuck? What if it . . . sucked?
But a few pies in, the practice of rolling out the dough became truly therapeutic. In my tiny kitchen, it’s me and the dough, working out our annoyances. Sure, maybe I’m bringing an unhealthy amount of sexual frustration to this pie-making session, but the dough can keep a secret. It isn’t going to tell anyone that I want to jump my boss’s bones and totally have sex in his office.
I pause and blow my bangs off my forehead. Not that I’ve imagined that scene, or anything.
Once my dough is securely in the pan, back in the fridge it goes (remember: the dough must be more chill) as I get my filling all mixed up. Tonight it’s an apple-cinnamon-ginger mixture—perfect for a rainy and cold night, not that I’ll be eating it tonight. Perhaps one of the biggest pie mistakes is cutting into it immediately after it comes out of the oven. I mean, is it warm and delicious and kinda irresistible? Yes. But resist it you must, because if you cut into it now, all will be lost. Your filling will gush out and leave your pie one big, deflated mess.
Patience is a virtue when it comes to pie. By tomorrow morning, when the pie is cooled and I’ve slept at least a few hours, I’ll have a (hopefully) delicious pie ready for breakfast, and the fact that I threw myself at Nick tonight will be nothing but a distant memory.
But first, I need to talk about it with someone.
Hey. I tap out a quick text to Annie. Are you home, or are you in LA at Drew’s love nest?
In approximately five seconds, I hear Annie’s feet clomp up the stairs before the door swings open. “It’s his house, not a love nest,” she says. “And I’m here. I don’t leave until tomorrow morning.”
My entire body relaxes as soon as I see her. Of course, I know she’d still talk through my Dark Night of Sexual Frustration even if she were out of town, but FaceTime has its limitations. Annie might be a truly hopeless romantic who thinks every part of my life story is merely a beat in a rom-com script, but she’s still my best friend. The one who knows everything about me, better than anyone else.
But keeping up with her schedule these days would be difficult even if I didn’t have a million things on my mind. Sometimes she’s home, staying in her old bedroom and planning stuff for her wedding and her movie premiere. Sometimes she’s in LA, doing whatever it is she has to do to get a movie made (I space out during those parts of the conversation, honestly) or hanging out with Drew when he’s on breaks from the sitcom he’s starring in. And sometimes she’s in New York, doing even more things I don’t understand.
And listen, it’s not like I want her life to go back to the way it was when she lived with Uncle Don full time and she was an Internet content writer who wrote listicles about, like, snack foods and home repairs and celebrity hairstyles. But there was a comfort in knowing she was always next door, hunched over her laptop on the couch or in her twin bed, typing away into the night as she wrote her articles or her screenplay. I’m happy that she’s finally pursuing her dream and kicking ass at it—I mean, she has a real, big-time job, like an almost-thirty-year-old should. But part of me can’t help but feel a little left behind.