I had only made peach cobbler once before, with my grandmother when I was seven. My parents sent us to her for four weeks that summer. She rented a beach house on Long Beach Island and promised us a summer to remember—and it was. My sisters and I were in all our mermaid glory. We spent every day at the beach or on the bay, went on bike rides, and watched fireworks at Fantasy Island Park. Every night, we’d choose a dessert and Gram would whip it up with us. Kat and Ren gave up on the baking early on, but Gram and I—we were tied at the hip.
“Okay, baby girl,” she said as she tied the apron around my back. “Nice and slow. We don’t want to pour allthe sugar at once.” I followed her instructions, slow and steady. “That’s right,” she said softly. “A little at a time. Just like falling in love.”
My head tilted but my eyes stayed focused on the task at hand. “Why can’t you fall in love quickly?”
“Mmm, too much too fast can be too sweet. Make your belly hurt.”
I wrinkled my nose. “But I like sweet things. I like all the stuff we make.”
“Oh, me too, honey,” she laughed. “But love is better when it takes its time. When it’s sprinkled little by little, like this sugar here.” She cupped my wrist as she stopped my pour. “The flavors are all there. Now, we let them sit. Let them melt into something beautiful… and delicious!” She tapped my nose with a flour-covered finger and I giggled.
“Just remember, honey: never be afraid to experiment in the kitchen. You never know where it’ll lead you.”
I nodded as if I understood exactly what she meant, but the weight of the memory suddenly felt a bit heavier than it had before.
“What are you thinking about?” E asked with a warm grin.
I smiled up at him. “My grandma.” He nodded.
“Grandmas are great.”
“The best.” I felt my heart, warm and big, in my chest.
“My grandma taught my mom how to bake,” he said. “And my mom taught me. Said it would keep me out of the trouble my idle hands would find.” He grinned at me with a crooked smile. “I was a bit mischievous as a kid.”
“I couldn’t tell,” I said with an arch of my brow, sarcasm curving my lips, but I meant it. E was the mostwell-rounded person I knew. I could never see him getting into trouble, though I knew he must have when I considered the friends he sometimes kept and the respect he always received. Not to mention the way he always knew exactly what to do to avoid the cops we’d see at times.
I looked over to E’s dish, where he was piling peaches like he was building a tower. He added more filling to mine. “Hey! You’re putting too much in.”
He looked at me over his shoulder with a smirk. “Pies can never have too much filling. It’s the law.”
“It’s not thelaw. And it’s not a pie. It’s a cobbler. It has ratios.”
“Who cares about ratios?” He mocked with a sly grin and a wrinkled brow. I hiked my shoulders up in defense.
“They’re rules!” He licked his lips and his eyes narrowed as he leaned down toward me.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you? Some rules are meant to be broken.”
His deep voice vibrated through me, and settled heavily between my ribs. It was a cliché I’d heard a thousand times, but somehow this felt different. Deeper. His eyes were steady on mine. My mind went blank, and I struggled to find something, anything to say in return. E bit his bottom lip, pulling it in with a small satisfied smile.
“That mischief is still itching, huh?” I averted my gaze to my dish as I tried to recover, but his stood on me, that knowing smirk set in place. I tried to sound steadier than I felt. “You know, if this cobbler ends up a mess, I’m blaming your ungovernable methods.”
He chuckled. “Come on. Let’s get these in the oven and clean up.”
An hour later, our desserts were ready, and I hated to admit it, but E’s over-filled, double-crusted cobbler looked exceptionally better than mine.
“Your pie looks like something Martha Stewart would feature on the front cover of her spring edition.” E laughed.
“It’s not apie, it's a cobbler,” he teased. I narrowed my eyes at him with a smirk. He grabbed the Bryers’s vanilla bean ice cream from the freezer and handed me a spoon. “Doesn’t matter how it looks. It’s how it tastes that's important.” I nodded in agreement. “Shall we?” he asked with raised brows. We tapped our spoons together in a cheer, and dug into the warm filling a’la mode. It was the best peach cobbler I had ever tasted.
E drove me home later that evening, and I sat in my room for a long time, reliving the previous twenty-four hours like I’d forget them if I didn’t run through every detail—my excitement to see E over spending time with Enzo, my argument with Enzo that left me stranded with no way home…how it turned out to be the best night and morning of my life thus far.
I kept playing it all back. E’s rich voice in the dark, the warmth of his body next to mine, the way his eyes lingered as if he was memorizing me there in his bed. The morning at church. The pie.
I didn’t know the trajectory those few short hours would take, but I knew they were, once again, the start of something big. Like the earth’s first rumble before an earthquake.
Something had changed. Not just between me and Enzo or me and E, but between me and everything. It terrified me,but it also made me feel awakened. I felt alive in a way I had never felt before.
