“It’s a s’more.”
Sunny closed her eyes. “You wound me.”
“You want more?”
“Yes, I want more. Pretend the food has feelings.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Pretend I do.”
That landed somewhere I didn’t like.
Or maybe I liked it too much, because my eyes dropped to her mouth before I could stop them.
I picked up my s’more. “Classic graham cracker, milk chocolate, and marshmallow toasted slow over coals until the outside’s browned and the inside’s soft. No tricks. No ten-dollar adjectives. Just the thing people came up here wanting before somebody told them it needed a makeover.”
Sunny’s fingers stopped on the edge of her plate.
Then she smiled toward the camera. “Good thing makeovers can be powerful.”
I’d hit something.
I hadn’t meant to.
Caprice checked her watch. “Great. We’ll get tasting close-ups. Ed, catch the pull on Flint’s chocolate. Joelle, plates. Sunny, caramel drizzle again, but slower and toward camera.”
Sunny reached for the squeeze bottle.
The cap stuck.
I saw it the same second she did. A little caramel had dried at the nozzle. She twisted harder. The bottle flexed under her grip.
“Don’t squeeze it like that,” I said.
“I know how a squeeze bottle works.”
“The cap’s blocked.”
“I’m aware.”
“Sunny.”
She looked at me over the bottle. “Did you just use my first name as a warning label?”
“I used it because you’re about to launch caramel across the clearing.”
“I’m not.”
The cap gave.
Caramel shot sideways in a thin golden arc and landed across my forearm.
Ed laughed so hard the camera dipped.
Sunny froze.
The caramel was warm, sticky, and spread in a shining stripe over the skin below my pushed-up sleeve. It wasn’t painful. It was just sweet and hot in the morning sun, and my reaction to it was completely unreasonable.
