I toe my first boot off. “Nah. Maybe a little. I’ll rotisserie myself in front of the fire and be fine. Good day?”
“Yep.”
This is not normal. I feel like such an intruder right now. “You feel like pancakes?”
She pushes up on her tiptoes, shoves some things around in the open cabinet, and goes flat-footed again as she pulls out a jar of sprinkles. “Only if they’re fun pancakes.”
I kick off my other boot and pad into the kitchen to join her.
“You cook?” she asks me.
“My mom taught us all how to cook as soon we turned ten, and she’d raise holy hell any time any of us boys tried to get June to cook for us.”
“But do you still know how to cook?”
“Pretty sure I can handle pancakes.”
Her eyes sparkle as she grins at me. “Guess we’ll see then, won’t we?”
While I take over in the kitchen, gathering ingredients and setting a pan on the stove to heat up, she pulls out a bottle of wine from a box under the table.
“Where’d that come from?”
“Waverly and Cooper’s collection.”
Huh. Didn’t know Cooper was a wine guy.
“He’s not,” Aspen says as if she’s reading my mind. “I mean, he’s not anti-wine. But Waverly’s driving their collection. She started visiting wineries around all of the baseball cities when she was traveling with him last summer.”
That’s the part of being on the road I miss.
Seeing new things.
Exploring what makes each city unique.
The rest of the guys would sleep in on the bus or at the hotel, and I’d be up heading off to see a brewery or an art gallery or the world’s biggest pencil, getting back in time for sound check or appearances at pet shelters or children’s hospitals or whatever else our manager had lined up for us when we were on tour.
“I didn’t steal the wine,” Aspen says dryly.
I shake my head, realizing I’m frowning. “Didn’t think you did.”
“So what’s with Mr. Grumpy Face?”
I rip open the bag of pancake mix and scoop a cup of it into a large bowl. “I miss it.”
“Wine?”
“Being on the road.”
She pauses with the cork halfway out of the bottle. “Are you serious?”
“I like new things. Checking out wineries at every stop sounds like fun.”
“She had a blast. And I have a blast every time I see her get tipsy on wine now.”
“You ever get to explore while you’re on the road?”
She finishes uncorking the bottle and sets it aside before joining me briefly in the kitchen to grab a mug. “Not when I’m doing shows five nights a week. Maybe once I’m big enough to just do weekend shows, but not right now.”
