9. Mario
Mario
I should have known better than to accept a cup of coffee from Ben. It’s never just coffee. With Ben, it’s a setup waiting to happen, a friendly offering that conceals an army of obligations.
I was in my rental cottage, trying to read a thriller about a rogue spy that was beginning to feel like a documentary about my life.
The heater hummed. The notebook I used for mechanical diagrams lay open on the coffee table like the kind of homework I pretended not to care about.
The phone on the end table buzzed — Ben, already in full charm mode by the time he stepped through my door.
He flopped onto the couch opposite me with that smile. The one I’d seen a thousand times before, usually right before I ended up holding something heavy or explaining to the authorities why their prize hedge now resembled a Formula One car.
“Big day today,” he said, voice casual.
“Is it.” I didn’t look up from my book.
“The annual Autumn Grove Community Bake-Off for Charity. Huge event. The rivalry between the Methodist pecan pie and the Catholic lemon meringue is legendary.”
I grunted, turning a page. This was the opening move. He was establishing stakes, trying to make me care.
“And Lily’s making her famous Spiced Apple-Cider Cupcakes. Her signature. But she’s running behind—the shop was chaos this morning, and Mom’s monopolizing the stand mixer for some seven-layer potato thing.” He paused for effect. “She could really use some help.”
“And you, her loving brother, are stepping up.”
“Ah, see, that’s the thing.” The false sincerity thickened. “I have to pick up folding tables. Two-man job. Very heavy. Tragic, really.” He sighed as if he were announcing a death. “If only there were another strong, capable man nearby. Someone with incredible reflexes and finely honed precision.”
I lowered my book. Leveled a flat stare at my best friend. “No.”
“Come on. It’s the perfect cover. What’s more boring than helping your girlfriend bake? Gold-standard optics. My mom will be thrilled.”
He’d weaponized my own strategy. The only thing I wanted more than peace was maintaining the illusion that was supposed to get me peace. Perfect Catch-22.
“It’s cupcakes, Mario. Not dismantling a gearbox. Measure some flour, crack some eggs. An hour, tops.” His voice softened. “She’s stressed.”
That did it. The image of her that first day—frantic energy, whacking the register like it had personally offended her. The way her shoulders carried tension like armor.
Since the crash, I’d gotten good at recognizing stress in others. Recognized the signs I’d ignored in myself.
I set down the book. “One hour.”
Ben’s smile turned triumphant. “You’re a prince. She’s at my mom’s, in the kitchen. Try not to get motor oil in the batter.”
I walked the three blocks to the Sage house, hands shoved deep in my jacket pockets against the brisk autumn air. The front door was propped open; laughter and the smell of cinnamon spilled onto the porch as if the whole house had been invited into the street.
When I stepped inside, the house felt like a warm, noisy organism. From upstairs, Olivia was singing something about a unicorn who worked at a car wash. From the kitchen came the clatter of pots and pans—Margaret preparing for what sounded like a siege. Ben waved me toward the island.
The kitchen was a disaster zone that made the festival setup look sterile.
Every surface was covered—from bowls of apples to flour dusting the counter like fresh snow, to butter softening on plates, and everywhere I looked, was a bewildering array of spices.
It smelled warm and sweet. Cinnamon, vanilla, melting sugar.
Fragrant and inviting and utterly chaotic. Caos .
My teeth were on edge before I’d taken three steps.
Lily stood at the center island, back to me.
Hair pulled back in a ponytail, though a few strands had escaped to curl around her face.
She wore jeans and an apron that said I like you a choco-lo t—which I found spiritually offensive.
Puns were the lowest form of humor. Crimes against language.
And this one dragged chocolate, an innocent bystander, into its chaos.
She was studying a recipe card like it held state secrets, muttering to herself.
“Two and a half cups flour, one teaspoon soda, one teaspoon powder, half teaspoon salt...” She grabbed a measuring cup, plunged it into the flour bag with the precision of someone digging a foxhole.
“You’re packing it,” I said.
She spun around, hand to chest. Flour puffed from her apron. “Jesus, Mary, and Joesph, Mario! Don’t sneak up on people!” Her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here? And what’s wrong with how I measure flour?”
“Ben sent me. Said you needed help.” I gestured at the flour bag. “And you’re compressing it. Spoon it in, level it off. Pack it like that, and you get dense cupcakes.”
She stared at me, the one-cup measure of packed flour in her hand. Her expression mixed annoyance and disbelief. “You’re critiquing my flour technique?”
“Baking is chemistry. Exact measurements equal predictable reactions.” I moved to the sink, washing my hands with methodical precision. “Not interpretive dance.”
She set the measuring cup down with deliberate force. “Interpretive dance? These cupcakes have won three county fair blue ribbons. People drive from two towns over just to taste them. I think I know what I’m doing.”
“Then why are you stress-muttering over a recipe you supposedly know by heart?”
Her cheeks flushed. “I’m not stress-muttering. I’m being thorough.”
“You’re being frantic.” I dried my hands, moved to inspect her setup. “And your mise en place is chaos. Where’s your scale?”
“My what?”
“Kitchen scale. For accurate measurements.”
She laughed—short, incredulous. “I don’t need a scale. I’ve been baking since I was Olivia’s age. My grandmother taught me these recipes, and her grandmother taught her. We measure with our hearts, not machines.”
That was it. It was the most unscientific thing I’d ever heard. “Your heart doesn’t understand gluten development. Or leavening ratios. Or thermal dynamics.”
“Oh, my God.” She threw her hands up. “You sound like a robot cookbook. Next you’ll be telling me I need to measure the humidity and barometric pressure.”
“Humidity does affect?—”
“Stop.” She held up a flour-dusted hand. “Just... stop. Look, I appreciate Ben sending reinforcements, but I don’t need a lecture on food science. I need someone to crack eggs and not judge my technique.”
But I couldn’t help myself. Watching her dump vanilla extract with reckless abandon, estimating spices by sight—it was like watching someone perform surgery with a butter knife.
“At least use the measuring spoons,” I said, unable to keep the edge from my voice. “That’s not asking for the moon.”
“Fine.” She yanked open a drawer, pulled out the measuring spoons with unnecessary force. “Happy now, Iron Chef?”
“It’s a start.”
We worked in tense silence. Every move she made, I wanted to correct.
When she cracked the eggs directly into the batter bowl instead of a separate dish first, my jaw clenched.
When she dumped in apple chunks without measuring, my eye twitched.
When she started the mixer on high speed instead of building up gradually, I couldn’t stay quiet.
“You’re going to overmix?—”
“I’ve got it.”
“But the gluten will?—”
“I said I’ve got it!”
The mixer lurched. Batter flew in a perfect arc, splattering across my shirt in a sticky, cinnamon-scented mess.
The kitchen went deadly silent except for the mechanical whir.
Lily stared at the brown smear across my chest, her face cycling through horror, mortification, and something dangerously close to laughter. “Oh no. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—the mixer just?—”
I looked down at the damage. Looked back at her. “This is what happens when you start on high speed.”
That did it. Her mouth twitched. “Are you seriously giving me a technical critique right now? While wearing my cupcake batter?”
“I’m making an educational observation.”
“You’re being insufferable.” But she was fighting a smile now. “And you have apple chunks in your hair.”
I reached up, pulled a piece of apple from behind my ear. Looked at it. Looked at her. “This is why we measure ingredients.”
She lost it. Full-blown laughter filled the kitchen, the kind that shook her whole body. “You’re hopeless,” she gasped. “Absolutely, completely hopeless.”
Maybe it was the laughter. Maybe it was the way she looked—flour in her hair, apron askew, eyes bright with mirth. Maybe it was how long it had been since anyone had laughed at me instead of walking on eggshells around the washed-up driver.
I scooped a finger through the batter on my shirt and, before my rational brain could stop me, flicked it at her.
It caught her square on the nose.
Her laughter cut off. She touched her nose, looked at the batter on her fingertip, then back at me with an expression of pure shock. “Did you just...?”
“Educational demonstration,” I said. “Equal and opposite reaction.”
“Oh, you did not just start a food fight with me in my mother’s kitchen.”
“I didn’t start anything. You started it with your reckless mixing technique.”
“Reckless mixing—” She huffed, then grabbed a handful of flour from the bag. “I’ll show you reckless!”
The flour cloud caught me full in the face, a white explosion that left me blinking and probably looking like a ghost. For a second, neither of us moved. Then she started giggling again—this bright, infectious sound that made something warm unfurl in my chest.
I wiped flour from my eyes, looked at her through the white haze. “It’s war.”
What followed wasn’t elegant. Or strategic. Or anything resembling the controlled precision I prided myself on. It was pure, chaotic, ridiculous warfare. Flour clouds and batter flicks and the two of us moving around the kitchen like overgrown children, both laughing too hard to aim properly.
She got me with a handful of cinnamon sugar. I retaliated with a dollop of frosting that somehow ended up in her hair. She tried to dust me with powdered sugar and got herself instead, sneezing through her own attack.
By the time we collapsed against opposite counters, breathless and covered head to toe in various baking ingredients, the kitchen looked like a tornado had hit a bakery. And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed that hard.
Lily wiped tears from her eyes, leaving clean streaks through the flour on her cheeks. “We’re going to be in so much trouble when my Mom sees this.”
I looked around at the devastation—flour everywhere, batter dripping from the ceiling, both of us looking like we’d wrestled in a sugar factory. “Totally worth it.”
The kitchen door swung open. Margaret Sage stood there, taking in the scene with the calm of someone who’d raised three children. Her gaze moved from the flour-dusted ceiling to the batter footprints on the floor to the two of us, both trying to look innocent while covered in evidence.
A slow smile spread across her face.
“Having fun?” she asked mildly.
Lily and I looked at each other—two adults caught making a mess like kindergarteners—and started laughing all over again.
Margaret just nodded, looking entirely too pleased with herself, and quietly closed the door behind her.
That’s when it hit me. The warmth in my chest, the ease of laughter, the way Lily looked at me like I was more than just the grumpy guy who fixed her register—this wasn’t part of the plan. This wasn’t fake.
This was real. Mamma mia , I was in serious trouble.