by Gina Henning
“Is everything all right?” Jack asks as I try to give him the phone.
There isn’t much slack in the cord because it’s wrapped around my wrist. Jack holds my hand, and then slowly unravels the cord. His gaze moves from my wrist and then to my eyes. My stomach is clenched tight. It’s like Jack is holding my oxygen hostage. Breathe.
With the final coil, he massages the indentions on my wrist and tries to smooth them out. My wrist has returned to its normal shade now that the blood is flowing again. But my face probably isn’t a normal shade because the heat on my cheeks is blazing. Jack returns the phone to the receiver.
“Yes, everything is great.” I barely remember what he asked. I’m still trying not to wobble in my heels from the mini wrist massage. I need to forget about his magic fingers and focus on getting the pies done. His bag from the pecan farm is sitting on the counter. In the bag rests all thirteen packages. I’m sure there must be an extra two ounces in his pile for me.
Jack walks back to the Formica counter. A white apron covers his button-down shirt. He’s lining up all of the ingredients from his recipe on the counter. Canisters of flour, white sugar, a bag of brown sugar, are in a row. I’m taken aback by his professional chef attire. I’ve never had a chef fantasy, but with that apron and jawline… I bite my lip. Wow. Jack could be the highest-rated chef on Food Network. I’d watch whatever program he hosted, live.
There’s a white apron and a hairnet lying on the counter. I pick up the apron and slide it over my bouffant of a hair wreckage. I shudder as I tie the strings around my waist.
“You don’t expect me to wear this?” I ask, holding the hairnet away from my body.
Jack smiles and continues adding more ingredients into his bowl.
“Hello? Paging, Jack Walker.”
“This is a business, which is regulated by the Texas Beverage and Food Commission. The rules are mandatory,” he says in a somewhat authoritative tone.
“Rules.” I drop the hairnet on the counter.
Rules. How mandatory is he about other things? I remove the shiny metal lid from the flour canister and scoop up a handful. I prance over to him. I stand on my tippy toes, and paint a white stripe on each of his cheeks. He resembles a football player except his eye black is a nice powdery white. I hold in a chuckle.
Jack peers down at me as if I’ve admitted to being an alien. “Lauren, has anyone ever told you that all things in life have consequences?” he asks as he strides towards the refrigerator. He opens the door and takes out the milk and eggs and brings them to the counter.
“Maybe,” I say, trying to anticipate his next move. Playing defense isn’t a good method in the game of chess, and probably not in this scenario, either. I can just imagine some sort of tackle move, especially with the flour on Jack’s face. Although, that might be fun.
“Here is a bowl for you, we can each make five batches and you can add an additional pie to your bowl.” Jack slides the shiny silver bowl on the counter next to him. My chest is tightened. My breathing is constricted. I know when I offered to help it was really about getting the pecans and not actually baking the pies. I’m nervous about making my own pecan pie and now I’m actually going to bake five pies in addition to the one for my family? Little droplets pop up against my hair line. I pucker my lips together and blow.
“Are you alright, Lauren?” Jack is staring at me from across the kitchen. My vision is blurred. I blink several times. I need to pull it together. I can do this. I can bake a pie. Yes, I believe I can make a pie, but now I’m making six pies.
I flitter my lashes. “Yes, I was just adding up the math in my head. You said we would each make five pies and I’ll make an additional one?”
Jack raises and eyebrow at me. “Correct.”
“I thought you only had to make ten pies?”
“True…but I think I’ve got enough space for one more,” he says with his head cocked to the right. Our eyes meet.
The pecan hoarder is letting me bake my pecan pie here? Wow, maybe the Thanksgiving spirit has corralled him. Or maybe he is “that into me”.
“Thanks, Jack.” I squeeze his arm. His biceps is solid. I trace the circular muscle with my fingertips.
He breaks our eye contact to inspect my fingers. “You’re very distracting. Let’s focus on getting these pies in the oven.”
“All business, all day…” I say, not finishing my sentence on purpose. The boundaries of our flirtation haven’t exactly been laid out. I don’t want to smudge the lines by two-stepping over them, either. Especially since he’s being generous with his pecans, finally.
“We’ve each got ten eggs to crack, plus two more for your pie. Do you want to share the duties and I’ll get the butter melted?” Jack taps on the stack of lime green egg cartons.
I raise my eyebrow. “Maybe you should crack the eggs, I think I’m better at melting things.” I slide the eggs back towards him.
“Yes, you are good at melting things.” Jack picks up my hand and places the package of butter in it. His grazes my wrist with his thumb.
My stomach clenches. The only thing melting right now is me. Jack is very persuasive, but he is really not on my radar for anything more than pecan pie. I made a promise to myself. No long-distance relationships. This pecan pie recipe requires melted butter, not melting hearts. Or swooning in the kitchen.
“Where is a pot I can melt the butter in?” I raise an eyebrow at him.
Jack releases my wrist and strides to the stove. He tugs on the drawer underneath and pulls out a cast-iron skillet.
“Here you go.” Jack says as he sets it on the burner.
Hmm…okay, gosh he goes from hot to cold so quickly. I definitely wouldn’t want to attempt anything serious with him anyways. I turn on the gas burner onto low heat and open up the butter package. I probably should cut the sticks into pieces before dropping them onto the burner. I think that’s the way they do it on the Food Network. Of course I could peek at the recipe and see how my grandmother suggests it be done.
I eye the recipe. It doesn’t say one way or the other. I’ll go with slicing it. This makes sense. I reach for a knife out of the knife block and spin around. Jack has an egg in each hand and taps one time on each of our bowls and splits the eggs open and drops them into the bowls. The cracked shells are tossed into a third bowl. I guess he is a fan of Rachel Ray and prefers to have a “garbage bowl” as he cooks. He picks up two more eggs and repeats. I place the knife down on the counter. I don’t want to ask him questions with a knife in my hand, this seems unnatural to me.
“Jack, where can I find a cutting board?” I peek over his shoulder. He has finished cracking all twenty-two eggs and I haven’t even begun to melt the butter. I had the easier job. I bite the inside of my mouth.
Jack turns around. “Sure, let me wash my hands and I can get it for you.” Jack makes his way to the deep farmhouse stainless sink. He taps the nozzle with his wrist and water pours out of the faucet. He pushes down on the soap dispenser and washes his hands. Jack is multi-talented with his hands and wrists. I can’t say I’m not impressed. From the counter he picks up a towel and dries his hands. He strides over to the row of cupboards, crouches down and grabs a white cutting board out of a stack of perfectly lined boards which are separated by dividers. Underneath the shelf is a label with the word “non-meat cutting boards”. I nod my head.
Jack places the cutting board on the counter for me. “Slice away, my little sous chef.” He flashes a big grin at me.
My eyebrows furrow. Little sous chef…does he realize what a bad baker I am? So he thinks it’s only possible for me to be his assistant rather than the person in charge? Maybe I would have already had the butter melted if I had all the proper equipment ready. Ha! I laugh as if this could possibly be true.
I slice the butter into little half inch chunks. Most of them are the same size. I’m not as precise or talented with the eggs as Jack but I think I’ve sliced these sticks of butter quite well. I smile as I slide off
all of the butter into the hot skillet. Little bubbles scatter across the pan as the squares shrink in size. The aroma of melting butter reminds me of the holidays and being with my family. My mom basting the turkey with more and more butter. She uses almost a pound of butter on the turkey. Paula Deen would be very proud of my mom’s use of butter. I think she even puts a stick of it inside the turkey. Every ten minutes or so my mom cracks open the oven and sucks up the juices from the pan with her baster and drizzles it over the turkey. It’s really important for the outside of the turkey to be crispy golden brown and for the inside to be as juicy as possible. Nobody likes dry turkey meat.
An arm reaches around me and turns the knob on the burner to the left. I jump.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. The butter was about to burn.” Jack rests his hand on my shoulder. “You don’t want it to get too hot.”
I stir the golden liquid. The only thing I don’t want to get too hot is my back. His hand is so warm against my blouse. “Thanks.” I wasn’t going to let the butter burn. I simply got lost in thought. “Yes, it looks done.” I back up and walk it over to our bowls. They are foamy egg perfection. I pour almost half of the pan into his batter and the remaining in mine. I nod my head. I think I did a great job in making them the right amounts.
“Alright, next up on our directions is for you to give me some sugar.” Jack takes out a measuring cup from the drawer underneath the cabinet in the far end of the kitchen. His back is facing the cabinet. I can’t tell if he’s joking or if he is seriously asking me to give him a kiss. He does have kissable lips, but I’m on a pecan pie mission. Jack turns around and our eyes meet. He glides across the linoleum floor and stands right next to me. His hip bumps into mine.
“Could you please pass the brown sugar my way?” Jack raises an eyebrow at me.
I’m hesitant to give it to him. This could be a trick. The entire sack of sugar could be poured on me. No, I am not transmitting Def Leppard in my internal sound system. Is he going to repay me in some way for my flour painting on his face?
Reluctantly, I slide the bag over to him, watching like a child who is going to be reprimanded. He grins at me and begins methodically measuring it out. From time to time he checks the laminated recipe card. Good planning.
I walk over to the card. I snatch it off the counter and read. Why are these ingredients and amounts so familiar?
“Where did you get this recipe?” I hold it up like a clue.
“One of the residents gave it to me.”
I snatch the letter from my purse and compare the ingredients and instructions. They’re the same except for the personal notes that my grandmother wrote on mine.
“Unbelievable.” I slam my fist down on the counter. “This must be some regular pecan pie recipe. This isn’t special.”
My heart sinks. Tears are building in my eyes. My grandmother didn’t trust me with anything. She didn’t pick me to uphold the family tradition of the Hauser Family Pecan Pie recipe. This is probably something she wrote down from Southern Living. My grandmother was one of their first subscribers.
I want to release the tears. But Jack is watching me, and I’ve already appeared to be a fool more than once today in front of him.
“What’s upsetting about this pie recipe?” he asks, taking it from me and scanning it.
“It’s not the recipe. It’s a long story. It doesn’t matter.” I take my letter with my average recipe and stuff it in my purse. I should have known my grandmother hadn’t given me the prize recipe. I blow up air through my face and knead my lips together. Well so be it. Whether it is her actual recipe or not, I’m going to make our pecan pie and the ones I offered to help Jack with. He’s an innocent bystander to my grandmother’s pie recipe.
I skim Jack’s recipe card and measure out six times the amount of white sugar I need and dump it into my bowl. Next up on the list is the brown sugar, which is still sitting next to Jack.
“Can you please pass the brown sugar?” I eye his bowl, he is working much faster than me.
Jack lifts the bag and hands it to me. His fingers reach past the bag and he grazes over my knuckles and then down to my fingertips. My heart skips a beat as I make eye contact with him. He releases my hand and picks up the bottle of vanilla.
Oh sweet vanilla, this man is setting my body ablaze. I cannot get sidetracked. I can’t make any mistakes in the numbers of cups I’m dumping into this batter. And six I count as the last of the brown sugar makes touchdown in my bowl, on to my next ingredient. At this pace I won’t be done until after midnight. I grab the flour and lift the shiny metal lid and scoop out six servings of the white powder and pour into my bowl. I eye Jack’s bowl, it’s fluffy, creamy, caramel tastiness. I want to stick my finger in it and sample his mix.
My own bowl pales in comparison to his. It’s like which bowl is made by a professional and which one is made by a child, not even an amateur. Even my area is a mess compared to Jack’s not a spot of flour around the outside of his bowl. Take it easy, Lauren, it doesn’t matter if he finishes before you. It only matters to get this recipe done correctly, exact servings. I pour the vanilla into the glass cup and drop the dark liquid into the creamy batter. If I were alone in this kitchen I would have already tasted the batter. I lick my lips instead.
“Here comes the milk man, making a delivery.” Jack bumps me with his elbow. I’m still mixing my batter. He pours the white liquid into my bowl.
“Moove it mister, this is my bowl.” I nudge him back. I might be slow, but I do want to make my own batch of pie, the point of the recipe was that I did it, not some pro-chef. If I was going to have someone else bake our pie I could have just bought one at the store and avoided all of this.
“Lauren, I’m trying to help you moooove it, but you’re moving as slow as molasses.” He places the cup of measured bark-colored liquid next to my bowl.
I grab the glass handle of the measuring cup. I’ll be the one dumping the molasses no matter how long it takes. I drizzle the dark syrup into my bowl. “This might come as a surprise to you, but this is my first pie-baking experience, so I’m working with a learning curve, okay?” I slant my eyes in his direction.
“Lauren, all of your curves are great, but it’s getting late. We still have to get these pies in the oven.” He runs his fingers through his blond hair.
“For being so salty, I wouldn’t think you would forget to add it to the ingredients.” I hold up the recipe card and show him the amount of salt we need.
Jack eyes the card. “You’re a good catch, Lauren.” He strides to the pantry in the back of the kitchen and returns with canister of salt.
I am a good catch. I finally caught something in the recipe before screwing it up. I don’t even want to know what would have happened if we had made the pies without the salt. If my home economics teacher were here she would be ready to roll out a big sermon about missing ingredients and how important it is to read each item carefully and measure out the exact amount, not a particle of salt over the listed amount. “It matters, it always matters.”
I take the precision part seriously and toss the exact amount of salt into each of our bowls. They are similar now. Other than the mess on the outside of our bowls, I don’t think there is much of a difference other than mine has one extra pie. A pie I will be taking home to my family.
Jack opens up one of the refrigerators. Inside is what you would expect to see at a bakery. Rows and rows of piecrusts. I count them as he removes them from their metal shelves and places them on the white counter. Eleven, which is one more than he actually needed. I guess that falls under his good planning skills of having an extra piecrust just in case. Jack steals a glance in my direction as he places the last pan onto the counter.
He picks up his bowl and evenly pours the mixture into his five pie pans already filled with crusts. Precise would be a good word to describe the way Jack works. Science and math were probably easy subjects for him in school.
I lift my own bowl and fill
the pies in front of me. A bit of batter covers up some of the crust, I try to clean the crusts as much as possible with a paper towel from the counter. They are not as perfect as Jack’s but for my first pie-baking experience I think they are something to be proud of.
“I think it’s time for the pièce de résistance.” There’s a playful glimmer in his eyes.
What is he thinking? Is he scheming about how he’ll reciprocate the flour that I painted on his face? Or is this another innuendo at my expense?
The bag of pecans is still in my purse. I toss it with Jack’s pile.
“Would you like to do the honors?” Jack hands me a mallet of some sort.
I imagine Thor handing over Mjölnir. In a way, Jack does have some resemblance to Thor. Hmm…dark armor instead of that buttoned-up collar shirt. Then again, just popping the buttons open, one by one… What lies underneath all that starch? Underneath all that business, what kind of man is Jack covering up?
“It’d be my pleasure.” I take the silver hammer, ready to do some damage to the pecans.
I peek over my shoulder, like a golfer about to tee off. Jack’s watching me—with what? Is that anticipation? The mallet comes down hard, crushing the pecans beneath my wrath. I smash and smash until they are tiny bits of their former selves. Little pecan particles lie inside the bags.
Jack takes the hammer from me. His eyes flicker and he nods in appreciation, as if I achieved the ultimate level of smashing status on a game. Jack offers me a pair of black handled scissors. “Shall we?”
I accept the scissors. “We shall.” And as if a race gun has been fired we speedily snip through each of the bags racing to see who can cut the most bags.
“Finished.” I slam down the last bag and let out a deep breath.
“It wasn’t a race, Lauren.” Jack raises an eyebrow at me.
“Wasn’t a race? Then why were you cutting them bags so quickly?” I crinkle my eyebrows.
“I’m just a fast guy.” He lifts my chin up and our eyes meet. I break our stares.