16. ashton #2
“Yummy!” Emmy declares. I can’t help but smile.
She’s the sweetest thing—curious and bright and playful—and in one single morning, I’ve had more fun and felt more peaceful than I ever did in two years in the city.
If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder if my parents hadn’t paid Emmy to do it.
They’ve been begging me to move home after I finish school.
Ellison’s monthly texts have begged me to come back to Texas for good, to consider joining her and expanding her breads and pastries bakery to cupcakes and cookies, too.
I can’t pretend I haven’t given it some serious thought since I’ve been home.
The three of us follow Miss Celia to the counter, where she dumps our plates and rings up our bill. She beams as Brooks pulls a couple crisp bills from his wallet and gives them to Emmy, who hands them over proudly.
“Miss Celia, you treat yourself to something nice, okay? You been lookin’ after everyone in this town forever.” He stuffs another folded bill into the jar marked tips. I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but I’m pretty sure that bill is worth more than our entire lunch cost.
“Thank you kindly, Brooks,” Miss Celia says with a smile. “Now, get. I’m sure you three have much more exciting plans for this afternoon than sitting in a diner watching me pour coffee.”
“Horse!” Emmy yells.
“We rode horses this morning,” I explain to Miss Celia. “And now, what do you say we go bake some cookies?”
“I’ll let Ellison know she’s got some competition.”
“You ain’t tasted Ashton’s cookies, Miss Celia, they’re the best.” I swear Brooks’s chest puffs a little as he speaks and a funny little whirlpool begins to spin low in my abdomen. Butterflies. Brooks’s butterflies. Miss Celia simply grins and waves a hand.
“Go on. Get baking. Bring some cookies by, maybe. Make an old lady happy.”
“Any time, Miss Celia,” I promise. I grab Emmy’s hand as we reach the door, and she takes Brooks’s hand with her other one. She swings in the air between us all the way to Dad’s truck, and she babbles excitedly all the way back to the ranch.
By the time our sugar cookies are out of the oven and cooling on wire racks, Emmy is fast asleep on my sofa, Bunny tucked securely beneath her chin, one long, floppy ear clutched in a tiny fist. Brooks sits opposite me at the breakfast bar, smiling over at his niece like he can’t imagine a better place to be.
And god help me, but here in my kitchen, with Brooks Hart and a sweet little girl beside me… I can’t imagine anywhere better, either.
“She always looks so much like Hattie when she’s sleeping,” Brooks says, turning back to me. I push another small bowl of colorful icing in line with the rest. “When she’s awake, she’s a perfect blend of Harriet and Dean, but asleep…”
“She’s all Hart,” I muse. It has not escaped my notice that Brooks’s name—his family’s name—is the same as the organ said to be responsible for love and affection.
And it has not escaped my notice that the more time I spend on the ranch with him, in our homes, with our combined families, the more affection I feel for him.
Even more than I think I ever did before.
“All Hart,” Brooks agrees. He holds my gaze a beat longer than a friend really ought to, and I drag my eyes away, clearing my throat.
“These are pretty much cool now. You think I should wait for Emmy, or just save some for her?”
“I don’t think she’ll mind if you work some magic, little devil.”
I can’t help the grin that spreads across my face.
I haven’t baked nearly as much as I’d have liked to in the few weeks I’ve been back in Texas, and the lightness I feel this afternoon might be partly down to spending the day with Emmy and Brooks, but it’s also thanks to flexing my baking muscles again.
I prepare a handful of small piping bags with a healthy scoop of colored icing in each one, and then pull one wire rack in front of me.
I start by testing the piping bag on the edge of the baking paper.
By the time I’ve decorated the first six cookies, I have three separate groups.
Three of them read emmy, mommy, and daddy in a pretty blue script.
Two have Everett and Ruth’s names on them, and the third has Brooks’s name.
He watches with rapt attention as I grab a seventh cookie, oblivious to the rest of the world around me.
My brain is working overtime, pushing all kinds of images to me as I hold the piping bag poised.
I begin a mandala pattern with mint green icing.
“Ain’t natural,” Brooks murmurs. “How you get that gloopy shit to do those tiny, precise little patterns on a little cookie like that. Ain’t normal, devil.”
“Takes practice,” I answer. I don’t even look up as I switch piping bags, choosing a light sunshine yellow to accompany the green. “Some skill, sure. Practice. And a little magic.”
“Magic, huh.”
I pull the last cookie toward me and pause, piping bag in hand.
I’ve never really been an artist—not in the way that my brother is, at least. I couldn’t draw Mayo, for example.
Wouldn’t even know where to begin. But little things, mindless patterns, frosting decorations on cakes?
That’s where my skills lie. Satisfied with the idea that has popped into my head, I lower the piping bag and squeeze gently.
Brooks leans in as I pipe a small curved outline.
“I don’t even know what the fuck that is,” he says with a small laugh.
“You’ll see.” I keep the piping bag still and move the cookie until my outline is complete, then I grab a toothpick from the tiny jar on the counter and smooth out the line before filling it all in.
I add the finishing touch—a tiny pinch of edible glitter sprinkled on before the icing sets—and hold out my hands.
“Ta-da.”
“Cowboy boots,” Brooks says with a grin.
Iced on the surface of the cookie is a tiny pair of boots, complete with stars stitched on them.
They were inspired by the red ones I saw Ruth wearing last week.
I push them toward the cookies I’ve earmarked for her and my brother, and take a moment to snap some pictures for my social media, just as Emmy stirs.
“Look who’s awake!” Brooks coos—he coos, and my ovaries begin to sparkle or something equally ridiculous—as he holds his arms open. Emmy runs over and leaps into them.
“Hi, sweet girl,” I say. “Look at your cookies!”
“I draw?” Emmy blinks sleepily, Bunny still clutched tight in one hand.
“You wanna draw on the cookies, EJ?” Brooks brushes a brown curl from Emmy’s face as he speaks.
For such a giant of a man, he’s soft and tender with Emmy in a way I never imagined, and it doesn’t help the swirling storm of butterflies taking flight in my belly.
Neither does the way Emmy looks up at me with a hopeful grin.
“We can draw on the cookies. Come here, let’s put Bunny up on this jar so he can supervise.”
I sit Bunny on top of a jar of spaghetti, where he’ll be safe from any accidental mess. Brooks brings Emmy and a stool around to my side of the counter, and sits with her on his lap. It puts her at the perfect height to reach the cookies, and I hand her the piping bag.