he starts to squeeze the handle. “You have to tare out the scale first.”
Rickie holds up his free hand like a busted perp. “I don't know what you just said, but okay.”
“Sorry.” I reach over to set the kitchen scale properly, and my knuckles brush against the ridges of his abdominal muscles. Not even a frilly apron can disguise how cut he is. Wowzers.
Like I need to be any more distracted than I already am. “We use three hundred grams per double crust, and we can do two double crusts at once,” I ramble. “Six hundred grams. Go.”
“Yes sir, thank you, sir!” he barks.
My mother chuckles. “Daphne can be a bit of a drill sergeant. She can't help it. She was born into chaos, and she hates chaos.”
Et tu, Mom? “I’m right here, you realize?”
“Yes, you are.” She picks up the cherry pitter and gives me a knowing smile.
Rickie squeezes the sifter repeatedly, and I kind of hate myself for noticing the flex of his forearm muscles on every stroke. “I know,” he says. “We can sift Daphne to make her lighter and easier to work with.”
“Excellent plan,” my mother agrees, and I want to smack them both.
The kitchen is just too small. Coming home already felt claustrophobic. I have secrets to keep, and a family to appease. My inconvenient curiosity—that’s the word I’m using—about Rickie shrinks it even further.
And did I mention it’s legitimately hot in here? The thermometer stuck to the outside of the kitchen window says 86 degrees.
My mother pulls the stems off the season’s first cherries, while I measure out salt and a bit of sugar for the crust.
“What else do you use?” Rickie asks. “Oil? Shortening?”
“Butter,” my mother and I say at the same time.
“And then ice water,” I add. “The butter and the water have to be absolutely frigid. Like my cold little heart.”
The two of them laugh. And when my eyes meet Rickie’s, I feel an unwelcome tremor. His smile sees right through my bullshit and confusion. There’s heat in those gray depths.
Just what we need around here. More heat.
“Brace yourselves,” my mother says, which is funny because I’ve spent the whole summer doing just that. "I'm going to preheat the oven."
“Gawd,” my grandpa says, shuffling into the room. “It's going to be hotter than the devil's armpit before these pies are baked. Totally worth it, though.” He glances at Rickie. "Nice apron, boy. A real man can always rock the ruffles."
He holds up a fist, and Rickie bumps it. “Damn right.”
I busy myself checking the total weight of Rickie’s flour and then whisking in the other ingredients. But my mind is back three years, to the day when Rickie put on that eyeliner and told me, Don't give anyone that power.
But how do you stop? I’ve spent a lot of energy trying to be a certain kind of person. The smart twin. The ambitious kid. The overachiever.
It's so exhausting. But I can’t find the off ramp. It’s not like I could just suddenly unload my troubles on my family, either. I’d get six or eight conflicting opinions about how best to unfuck my life. No thanks.
“Okay, now what?" Rickie asks.
"Now we quickly add butter chunks. You’ll use this." I hand him the pastry blending tool, which is made of wires attached to a wooden handle. “You’re going to break up the butter into gravel-sized globules, surrounded by flour. Then we add just enough ice water to bring it together.”
“Let's do this. Butter me.” He picks up the blending tool, giving me a lazy wink.
He means it as a joke, and yet I still feel it in some inappropriate places. And the kitchen seems to shrink yet again.
“Ruth, we're going to make it to that library talk, right?” Grandpa says. “I heard there’s mini cheesecakes after.”
My mother glances at the clock and frowns. "I hope so," she says. "An hour isn't much time to finish four pies, and we’re just starting.”
"With all this labor?" Grandpa asks. "I'll help, too. Rickie got the fun apron, but mine is still here somewhere, right?"
"I'm sure it is,” Mom says as Grandpa disappears into the pantry.
He returns a moment later, wearing an apron that reads: I turn all the grills on. "Now pass me that cherry pitter, Ruth. This old man wants to go to the library talk.”
“What’s the book?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I’m in it for the air conditioning and the snacks. Is that so wrong?”