“This was a mistake,” I say, my voice firm. “Both of us have been acting weird ever since stuff with Annie’s movie started ramping up—”
“You think this happened because of the movie?”
“And the Buzzfeed lists.”
“What the hell is a Buzzfeed?”
“Why are you a million years old?” I shout. “Wait. Forget it. I don’t have time to explain the concept of websites to you. We have to remember that Annie’s movie is fictional. It’s about characters, not about the real us, the people who should absolutely, under no circumstances be making out in their place of work. We just . . . need to forget about this.”
“Chloe.”
“Stop saying my name.”
Nick scowls. “Fine. Valued Employee . . . I think this is going to be a little hard to forget about.”
“Well, try,” I say, taking off my apron and tossing it over the counter. “Put the memories in the ol’ spank bank and throw away the key, dude.”
Nick screws up his face into a look of horror. “You are disgusting, you know that?”
“All the more reason to pretend this never happened,” I say. “You good with cleaning up the rest of this?”
He takes a step toward me. “At least let me give you a ride home. It’s pouring.”
“Nope.” I walk into his office and emerge with my coat. “Let the rain baptize me and wash away this evening.”
“Stop being dramatic and listen to me. You’re right, okay? We shouldn’t have done . . . what we did. We work together, and this will make things awkward, and . . . I’m sorry, okay?”
I stop in my tracks. Obviously I wanted Nick to agree with me, to concur that this was all one big mistake and that we, as coworkers who see each other every day, shouldn’t be involved in any sort of physical manner. So why does hearing him say those words out loud make me . . .
Disappointed?
I turn around and pull my hood over my head. “Yep.”
He takes a step toward me, and then another. My heartbeat quickens as his heavy boots step across the creaky wood floor, and I know I should move. I should go home. But I can’t, because I don’t know what’s going to happen, or what I want to happen . . .
He holds out a hand, pinky crooked.
“Um . . .” I say.
“Pinky swear,” he says, so seriously you’d never know he’s uttering words primarily used by junior high school students.
I hold out my pinky and hook it in his.
“Nothing happened,” he says, holding my gaze, not blinking.
I stare right into his brown eyes. “Nothing happened,” I whisper.
And then I let go and bolt out of the shop. The rain has let up to a light drizzle, so I take my hood off and let my head get wet. With the power restored, the glow from the neighborhood businesses and homes makes the wet sidewalks shine, lighting my way home.
Nothing happened, I remind myself as I touch the tip of my pinky finger to my mouth, pretending that it’s Nick’s mouth instead.
Chapter Six
It all started when I made a bad pie.
The dough seemed fine when I rolled it out. It was sturdy, smooth, and flecked with butter. My filling, a peach, whiskey, and ginger mixture, was sweet and spicy and just the right amount of boozy. I crimped the hell out of that crust, stuck it in the oven, and prepared to have a beautiful, delicious dessert when the timer went off.
Only that’s not what happened. When I pulled my pie out of the oven, the crust was shrunken and warped, burned in places and almost raw in others. When it finally cooled enough for me to cut into it, the filling oozed out, far too liquidy. And that once-beautiful crust had, as the judges on The Great British Bake Off are all too fond of saying, a soggy bottom.
In other words, it was a pie disaster of epic proportions, and I took it personally. How could I have screwed this up so monumentally? I mean, isn’t the saying “easy as pie” supposed to mean something? How is it that I can make a baked Alaska, turn out a perfect tray of macarons, and decorate a layer cake in my sleep but I can’t master pastry dough?
And so Project Pie began. I started experimenting with different fats—lard, butter, shortening, a mixture of butter and shortening. I added vinegar. I added buttermilk. I added vodka. I used a