Cherry looked in his eyes.
She shouldn’t say yes just because she missed him... because it hadbeen torture all morning doing this without him. (Any given day without Tom was torture, butChristmaswithout Tom... Dante could never.)
Cherry was taking too long to answer. Tom looked away from her, like she’d already said no. Or maybe like he’d realized that he shouldn’t have offered. He looked like he was about to apologize.
“Okay,” Cherry said. “Thank you. I’d love some help.”
Tom turned back to her, surprised. He smiled and looked away again. “Okay. Good.”
He shuffled out of his coat and hung it over a chair. He was wearing a T-shirt underneath. (Because Cherry was still holding all his long sleeves hostage.) “You want me to clean off the island and give you some room?”
Cherry laughed out a breath, feeling tearful again. “Yeah. Thank you.”
He scooped all the dishes off the island and quickly wiped it down. Cherry moved the finished cookies to a cooling rack.
“There you go,” Tom said. “Clean slate.”
Cherry laid out fresh sheets of parchment paper and started spooning out the tuile batter. “How many wafers do you think I should make at once?”
Tom hummed. “Eight per sheet if you don’t want to break any. Twelve if you want a challenge.”
“I already feel pretty challenged.”
He pointed at the red and green piping bags. “Is that just regular batter with food coloring?”
She nodded.
“Did you see that on Pinterest or something?”
“I saw somebody do it with chocolate...”
“You should do chocolate, too,” he said. “You could make tartan.”
“Why do my plans get more complicated as soon as you walk into the room?”
“You mean, why do your plans get moreawesome?”
“I should let you do the piping,” Cherry said. “It’ll look cleaner.”
“Hush, you’re doing great.”
Stevie was trying to squeeze between Cherry’s hips and the island. “Stevie,” Cherry said. “Not now.”
“Stevie,” Tom said. “Time to go to your house. Come on.”
The dog followed him out of the kitchen.
Tom came back and added chocolate to some of Cherry’s batter. He cleaned out the sink and started the dishwasher. Then he stood behind Cherry, watching her pipe. “You said the Jell-O is half done?”
“More like a third done. I made the colors this morning.”
“I’ll work on that.”
Cherry piped cookies on the island, and Tom stood behind her at the counter. Every eight minutes, they rolled tuiles. Tom didn’t break a single one.
When Cherry ran out of batter, she grabbed a few cookie fragments and leaned against the counter to watch Tom. He was stirring a can of condensed milk into a saucepan on the stove, making the white base for the broken-glass Jell-O ring.
“Did you have this growing up?” Cherry had never thought to ask before.
