Til You Can’t #2
“We’ll make a few batches.” Maverick nodded and I fought the urge to whip out my phone and snap a picture of him.
Fucker might try and throw it down the garbage disposal though if I tried.
He looked ridiculous wearing the apron I’d bought him, but I had insisted.
Demanded, in fact. And one way or another, Big Daddy always got what he wanted.
His pink and yellow apron said Bake every day the best day of your life in flowery pink lettering.
Mine was just pink and said On the 8th day, God created Baking.
“You read me the recipe and get me what I need, and I’ll make the first batch by myself,” he continued. “Then we’ll do the next batch or two together. Sound good?”
I clapped my hands and rubbed them together. “Sounds perfect!”
The annoyance had washed itself away in Mav, determination and an inkling of excitement in its place.
He might complain, but the fucker loved cooking, baking, grilling, smoking…
you name it. He loved trying out new recipes.
It’s why I’d summoned his help. “Okay, what is the first thing it says?” he asked.
“Okay, hold on.” I grabbed the paper I’d printed out with the recipe. “Uh…okay it says…Pain…au? Choco…lat. Then it says…uh Pour…comm…enser? Jee? D…Deroll?”
What the hell was up with these words? Was this in Spanish or something? Oh shit… Mav was going to kill me.
As if reading my mind, he snatched the paper out of my hands and scanned it for a minute. Dropping his head back, he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You didn’t think to check the fuckin’ language, idiot?” He dropped his piercing gaze on me. “Do you read or speak French? Because I sure as hell don’t.”
Well, fuck. I’d just seen the recipe, clicked on it and pressed print. I mean, the fact that I’d even made it that far was pretty impressive, in my opinion. How was I supposed to know it was in a different language?
“Well, if you recognize it as French, we should be able to make it work, right?”
“No, dumbass.” Maverick huffed. “We can’t make a recipe that we can’t fuckin’ read.”
“Thank goodness for translator apps?” I poked him in the ribs with my elbow. “We can make it work, bud.”
Batting at my hand, he pulled out his phone. “Don’t touch me. Just…give me a minute to find a damn recipe.”
“Okay so first we have to roll the pastry dough out into a rectangle,” I said, looking at the recipe.
“No.” He shook his head, a determined look on his face. “I want to know what else you didn’t think all the way through, before we start makin’ a mess. Read all the way through it first.”
I glanced at the recipe and all the tiny lettering then back at him. “Come on, man. That’s, like, alotta fuckin’ readin’ right off the bat. Can’t we just read as we go.”
School never really had been my strong suit. Trying to sit in a damn chair for hours on end. Listening to boring ass lectures. It’s a surprise I even graduated.
“Cash.” He didn’t shout or yell, but I could feel it looming on the horizon like a storm if I kept trying his patience.
He’d argue that my sole purpose in life was to annoy him.
But that’s not the way I saw it. I liked to think of it as taking the opportunity to remind him that life went by too fast to take it so seriously.
Might as well have some fun along the way.
“Okay, okay!” I clapped him on the back, squeezing his shoulders. “Team Nice Dyamite in the fuckin’ house!”
His glare was scalding as I settled at the countertop once more and grabbed the recipe.
While I read, Mav organized everything on the counter into an order that I didn’t dare question.
there was a method to his madness that only he could understand.
Best to let him do things his way. When I finally relayed the last step to him, I noticed him eyeing a pile of ingredients, a very specific, suspicious scowl on his face.
It wasn’t one of his normal ones. This one was different.
Half perplexed, half annoyed. I wondered which one would rule out in the end.
“Do you want to know what an idiot is?” he asked.
Looks like annoyance won out this round.
“Actually—”
He shook his head and spoke over me, the gruff tone of his voice laced with a hint of anger. “An idiot’s someone who prints a recipe off the internet in a language he doesn’t speak—”
“Hey, I got the ingredients list in English!” I cut in.
“Yeah.” He nodded, but the glower he wore said it all. “Yeah, you sure did, dumbass, and we’ll talk about that little mystery later. For now I’m more concerned with the fact you bought the wrong fuckin’ ingredients.”
I rocked back at that. What the hell was he talking about? At least that part of the recipe I had understood. I’d made sure to get everything off the list. “No, I didn’t. I got chocolate, butter, flour, and milk.”
“You got Hershey’s bars.” He threw one of them at me. “Margarine, whole grain flour, and soy milk. We need semi-sweet chocolate batons, unsalted butter, all-purpose flour, and actual milk.”
“We can’t use some of that stuff?” I asked, taking the wrapper off the Hershey’s bar he threw at me. “I’m sure Mama’s got plenty of this shit.”
Except Mama didn’t have one thing.
With a weary sigh, Mav closed the last of the cupboards. “Stay here,” he growled, grabbing the set of keys on the counter.
“Where are you goin’?” I asked.
“Back to my place. I think I got some chocolate batons at home and I better let Cheyenne know what’s goin’ on before she decides to kill you.”
“Hurry back!”
But he already disappeared into the hallway. The front door closed a moment later.
About half an hour later Maverick came back with a babbling baby Stormie strapped to his chest.
“Took you long enough,” I huffed. “I gotta get these to Ollie before our lesson.”
If looks could kill… “Did you get my text? You went to the store, right?”
“What’re you talkin’ about? That’s why you went home in the first place,” I replied, even as I pulled out my phone.
My lips pursed together as three text messages showed on the home screen.
Two from Mav and one from Ollie. I noticed the little half moon icon and Do not disturb sign on the screen. “Oh…damn.”
The tension roiled and raged through Mav like a living breathing thing, and in that very moment I thought he might storm out of the room and give up on the whole endeavor entirely.
“What’s with the baby?” I asked, trying to opt for lightness in this situation.
He grabbed a handful of empty Hershey’s wrappers and pegged me in place with a hard stare. Okay, wrong choice. “You ate all these chocolate bars? We fuckin’ need ‘em now since your dumbass didn’t go to the store.”
My hands shot up in a placating gesture, and I felt like I was trying to soothe a wild, rabid animal, ““Not all of ‘em. There’s like…two maybe three left.” I offered him a guilty grin and nodded at Stormie. “The baby?”
“I’ll give you three guesses.” He rolled his neck. I could hear the tendons popping from where I stood. Well, he was definitely pissed.
Good thing he loved me.
“Actually—” He started unwrapping Stormie Mae from the carrier and handed her to me. “You take Stormie and entertain her, she ain’t gone back to sleep since some idiot broke into our house this mornin’. You two go play, let me figure this out, and I’ll come get you when I’m ready to deal with you.”
As much as I wanted to argue, I kept my mouth shut.
Mav was a patient man, far more patient than anyone I knew, but even he had his limits.
Best to let him cool down. I could entertain the kid for a few.
Babies loved Funcle Cash. Bouncing her in my arms, I made my way down the hall and into the living room.
“Mommy and Daddy are grum-py!” I sang. Stormie Mae’s brilliant smile rivaled one of my own as she watched me. She really was a cute little thing. All grins and giggles. A little sunshine soul just like her— “Mommy still probably looks frum-py! Funcle Cash is the bestest…Unc-y! Yay! Funcle Cash!”
Stormie giggled, her grin pulling taut over her chubby cheeks.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I adjusted her in my arms to fish it out. Ollie’s name and the time shone on the homescreen.
Damn, it was already 7:30. I opened up my texts and read the one from her:
Ollie: Hux needed me to run some errands with him, can we push back our lesson an hour or so?
Fuck yes. I didn’t know what the hell Mav was doing, but I was running out of time. At least now I had a couple more hours.
“I’m ready for you.”
I jumped, a chill running through me at the deep, gravelly voice at my back.
Well, speak of the fuckin’ devil.
Shooting Ollie a text back, I followed Mav into the kitchen.
Me: Sounds good sugar
“The first batch is done?” I asked, noting the sweet, delicious scent in the air. My mouth watered. Damn, I was hungry.
“The first batch is in the oven,” he corrected with a nod. “But it ain’t that complicated if the recipe’s in English.”
Looking down at Stormie, I bounced her gently up and down, cooing, “Daddy needs to let that go, doesn’t he, little storm cloud?”
Mav blew out a huff, but before he could say anything else, the kitchen door opened with a bang.
Dad strode in, looking between us as he took his gloves off and set them on the little table by the door.
“Do I at least get to hear why you two assholes are in my house so early on a Saturday?” he grunted.
“Perfect timin’!” I cooed in a baby voice as I danced Stormie over to her Grandpa Big Bad.
“Stormie was just tellin’ me she wanted her Grandpa Bad to watch her.
” I handed her off before Dad could try to protest. He’d argue he wasn’t good with kids, but that was a bald-faced lie.
He lit up like a damn christmas tree any time Stormie or Railon came around.