“After you,” I tell Addison, motioning with my arm once I’ve locked the front door.
Addison bounces along beside me, telling me about the treats she used to bake. It’s the happiest I’ve seen her. I can’t imagine how happy she was in Chicago, back when she was engaged and running a bakery.
In this moment, maybe she’s a little taste of the person she was before everything was ripped from her.
12
Addison
I feel good.I feel ready.
Maybe it’s because I’m wearing my grandma’s apron. The front reads,Life is short, so lick the bowl. Who wouldn’t feel ready wearing something like that?
Or maybe it’s the person sitting at the island.
Brady smiles reassuringly at me when I look at him. His long sleeve baby blue tee is pushed up, squeezing tightly around his muscular forearms. There’s a soft dusting of hair just barely visible. I know it’s soft because earlier this morning it brushed against me. And, despite the innocence of that swift contact, guilt rushed in.
How can I find Brady attractive? Worse, how can I be attracted to him? It’s irrational. Insane, really.
Or maybe the insane part is entering this baking contest. Isn’t that the very definition of insanity? Doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result the second time? My parents warned me about culinary arts school. They wanted me to get a ‘real’ degree first, then I could dabble if I wanted. They said a degree in culinary arts wouldn’t pan out (pun unintended, I’m sure).
Well, they were right, but not for a reason they could’ve possibly foreseen.
And here I am, giving it a second go.
Yes, insanity. That’s the best fit word.
“Do you listen to anything while you work?” Brady asks, fiddling with his phone.
“Podcasts, sometimes.” I look over my ingredients with the intention of double-checking them, but then I catch sight of Brady out of the corner of my eye. He’s dragging the pad of one thumb over his lower lip. A long-lost sensation starts up in my stomach, and my mouth feels oddly dry. My tongue turns a circle, attempting to moisten the inside of my mouth. “We can listen to whatever you want,” I manage to say despite the desert my mouth has turned into.
This is what I don’t understand. My heart was busted into what felt like a million pieces when I first left Chicago. For heaven’s sake, I yelled at Brady in the airport bar. And then I come here and a week later I’m being enchanted by a rippling, muscled forearm, and an angular chin and a smile that belongs on Captain America.
What is my problem?
Baking. That’s where my focus should lie. In a couple weeks Brady will be out of here and on to his next destination, wherever that may be.
And I’ll go back to the most familiar place I know: heartache. It’s a place I know well, and I’ve been in it so long it’s oddly comforting. When I’m there, I know just what I’m getting.
Brady turns on music I don’t recognize, but something tells me it’s probably a song a majority of the world knows. It has the catchy beat and witty lyrics of something popular. If it’s not, it should be.
“Do you mind if I read while you bake?” Brady asks. “I don’t want to be a weirdo and stare at you.”
For a second I freeze, remembering the ocean and walking in front of him in those tiny shorts. I wasn’t lying when I said they were hold-overs from my high school days. And I knew he was staring at my ass. I could feel it in my bones. Or, ass, I guess.
“Sure, read.” I smirk. “I don’t want you staring at me either.”
He looks up from his phone and gives me that smile, the superhero one. “What are you making?”
“Salted Butterscotch Blondies.”
“Mmm.” Brady’s moan reverberates through my chest. “I get one as payment for keeping you company.”
“If you do a good job, you get two.”
I turn around and get to work, and Brady goes back to reading whatever it is he’s reading on his phone. The song ends and a new one starts.
Browned butter is my secret weapon, so that’s what I do first. It’s what turnsOh, that’s yummytoOh my god, I’ll take a dozen.
