Kiss Her Once for Me (46)

And just like that, the cavernous kitchen is empty except for me and Jack and a whole lot of cookie ingredients.

Jack reaches for the bud of the joint Dylan left on the ceramic spoon holder by the stove. “This happens every year,” she says as she draws it to her lips.

“Your family calls you a failure and tries to get you to take money every time you bake Christmas cookies?” I ask skeptically.

The quarter-moon smile creeps onto her face, and Jack leans back against the countertop behind her. She would look so relaxed, so indifferent, if not for the way she jiggles her socked foot, one crossed over the other. “No. They ditch me in the kitchen every year and leave me to do all the baking. My family likes the idea of making Christmas cookies together, but they always forget it’s actual work, and they end up bailing in the first hour.”

Jack pushes her glasses up her nose with those two fingers, and my heart feels like powdered sugar inside my chest. I turn back to my dough and finally pick up a rolling pin.

“You don’t have to do that,” Jack says quickly. “Go find Andrew. Or go join the grandmas in the hot tub. I can make all the cookies.”

“I don’t mind helping.” I press the rolling pin to the dough, but instead of flattening, the dough simply sticks to my pin.

“Here,” a voice says low in my ear, and there’s Jack, standing right at my back, reaching around me to take the rolling pin. “Let’s use flour so it doesn’t stick.”

She grabs a fistful of flour from a glass container on the counter and sprinkles it over my rolling pin and the parchment paper. She’s standing so close to me, I can smell that impossible scent of freshly baked bread that seems to live on her clothes. I can feel the heat of her body and the tension in her muscles from the earlier argument with her family.

“Apply pressure evenly,” Jack orders, and I’m not sure why those words make my toes curl against the cool tile floor. “And don’t let the pin hit the counter. Just roll to the edge and stop.”

She’s still standing at my back, her presence like a palpable shadow behind me. A warm, comforting shadow, one I want to lean into. I grip the handles of the rolling pin and follow orders. The dough begins to spread out before me in a nice, thin layer.

“Perfect.” Jack exhales at my neck. “Just like that.”

I absolutely do not think about her saying those words—perfect, just like that—in a very different context, her husky voice and her sweet moans of pleasure. But then, without meaning to, I arch back, and I feel the solidity of her body against mine. For one second, it’s rough fabric and muscles and heat.

And then Jack is across the kitchen, as far as possible from me, stirring the fudge again.

“Keep going,” she says, her eyes fixed on the saucepan. I keep going, rolling out the dough until it covers the countertop, hoping she didn’t notice the part where I tried to rub up against her like a horny cat.

“So…” I watch the dough spread out before me. “You’re opening a bakery.”

Jack’s only response is the sound of her stirring spoon accidentally hitting the edge of the pot. I swallow. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s not my place. Maybe once, when we were something else to each other, but now—

“Yeah, I am,” Jack says. “I mean, I will be opening a bakery, if I can get everything sorted before the planned opening in two months. I’ve signed the lease, and I’ve secured the loan I need, but the renovations have been a nightmare. It hasn’t been easy doing it by myself.”

“You’ve been doing the entire thing by yourself?”

Jack nods. “There is so much boring business shit involved with starting a business. Which is quite unfortunate, because I get bored very easily. Plus, my finances are kind of fucked since I’ve cut back hours at Patty’s to spend more time getting the new place off the ground.”

“But you won’t accept help from any of the millionaires in your family because…?”

“Because!” Jack says, flicking the spoon. “Taking money from family is complicated.”

I turn to face her standing by the stove top, so solid, so grounded. “Is it because if you accept help from other people, then you wouldn’t be the strong, independent, self-sufficient Jack?”

“Because if I take my family’s money,” she corrects defensively, “it means I’m buying into their ideas about success and failure.”

“And if you take their money, and your business still doesn’t work out—”

“Then I’ll just prove to my dad that I’m the slacker fuck-up he thinks I am,” Jack finishes, mixing the peanut butter now in a rather violent fashion. Then she’s scraping the frosting off the sides of the stand-mixer bowl, then she’s roasting sesame seeds in a frying pan. She is somehow everywhere all at once, a blur throughout the kitchen, her brain on autopilot. She’s laser focused on each task, no part of her restless or fidgety.

Jack bakes like I draw, with all of herself. It’s sort of miraculous to watch. All that restless energy funneled into a beautiful purpose. “I’m going to tell you what you would tell me if our positions were reversed,” I say, watching her fly through each step in the baking process like it’s written in her bones. “Your bakery can’t fail.”