Who We Could Be - Chelsea M. Cameron Page 0,8

usually forgot to charge you. Not that I had any experience with that or anything.

“Do you ever knock?” Monty said, coming around the corner, oven mitts on.

“I thought about it, but then I didn’t,” I said. “Something smells amazing.” Monty jumped and ran back into the kitchen and I followed.

“Yeah, I’m making a pie.” Of course she was.

“What kind?” She pulled said pie out of the oven and it was a work of art. She’d done an elaborate braided lattice on the top. Carefully, she set the pie on a cooling rack near the small window. The curtains softly fluttered from the steam of the pie.

“Cherry,” she said. “I’d say you can have a slice, but this is for Linda.” TJ’s mother. She wiped her forehead with her arm and set the oven mitts down. “But I had enough crust and filling left over to make a few mini pies. I just have to finish the crust.”

I spied another tray of unfinished pies. “Can I help?” I went to the sink and washed my hands.

“Sure,” Monty said, and we stood together over her tiny dining table where she had a wooden board laid out, covered in flour.

“Will you get mad if I fuck them up?” I asked, as she pushed a ball of dough toward me. Let’s just say that I’d tried to bake and cook with her many times before and it hadn’t gone that well.

“I’m not going to get mad,” she said, but I gave her a look. “Okay, I’ll try not to get mad.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” I said as I started to roll out the dough. I sort of knew what I was doing, but I could feel Monty vibrating with anxiety next to me.

“Okay, I know you’re not getting mad, but I can feel you stressing, Ford. What does it matter if the crust is perfect? I’ll eat the ones that don’t look good. It’s the least I can do.” The dough looked relatively flat, so I started cutting out strips.

“You’re not going to measure?” Monty squeaked.

“No, I’m going for a rustic look,” I said, and watched her eye start twitching. Sure, if I was making a pie for someone else, I might have been a little less haphazard, but winding Monty up was part of the fun.

I swiped a flour-covered finger under her eye.

“You’re twitching, Ford.” Monty slapped my hand away and pressed both hands onto the board and closed her eyes.

“Shut up,” she said, and there was a tension in her voice that didn’t seem to have anything to do with me messing up pie crust.

“Hey,” I said, putting a floury hand on her shoulder. Monty wore an apron that looked like it was ripped from the corpse of an exhausted 1950s housewife. I already had flour all over my clothes somehow. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, flexing her fingers and rolling her shoulders back. “I’m fine.”

“You know, the more you tell me you’re fine, the less I believe you.” Monty shrugged my hand off her shoulder and walked to the rack to stare at the finished pie.

“I’m fine,” she said again. “Can you just not pester me right now, okay? I have a lot going on. I need to pack up some of my stuff and start moving it over to TJ’s.”

That last sentence made my stomach drop. I’d been ignoring the fact that she was going to be moving in with TJ after the wedding. I didn’t want to think about the fact that I couldn’t just show up at her place and crash on her couch or annoy her whenever I wanted like I did now. Things would be different, and I didn’t like different. I didn’t like it at all.

But I swallowed all of those feelings and asked, “Do you need any help?”

Monty shook her head.

“No, it’s fine. I’m not going to take much. We’re going to get new stuff, so most of my furniture is going to be donated.”

I couldn’t express how much I hated that she had to get rid of her stuff, but I guess it made sense. She’d buy shit with TJ and it would be romantic. Made me nauseated to think about that too. There wasn’t much about her upcoming nuptials that didn’t make me want to hurl my guts out. Ugh. I needed to talk about something else.

“Are you sure you can’t let me have one slice? Just say your dog got it,” I said, inching toward the pie.

“I