“Laminate the dough…What are you talking about?” Then it suddenly hit her. “Wait. You make the baked goods?”
He laughed. “Yes, of course I make them, where did you think they came from?”
She walked over to the island to look at what he was doing. “I don’t know, I thought maybe the mixer and the oven became sentient and just popped them out on their own after we went to bed.” She grinned at him. “That, or Michaela.”
He went back to rolling the dough. “Michaela does do everything important around here, but no, it was me.” He shrugged. “When I got here, I had nothing to do other than just sit around and feel bad about everything. And I did that for a while, and then one night when I was up late—I haven’t slept all that well in…a while—I watched some cooking show. One of the old ones, where no one looked camera-ready and they were all kind of boring and pedantic, but I sort of got into it. And so I dug out some of my grandmother’s old cookbooks from the library and tried to make biscuits.” He shook his head. “They were terrible, that first time. Heavy and dense. But it just made me want to try to get them right. And once I did, I kept trying, with other stuff.” He looked down at the dough, and then turned to open the refrigerator. “I tried croissants once before, and they were good, but I knew I could do better. It’s been a while, though, so we’ll see how they turn out. But I figured I’d wait until I really needed to, and last night felt like the right time.”
He took a flat square of something out of the fridge and peeled the plastic wrap from around it.
“What do you mean, wait until you really needed to?” she asked.
He set the square in the center of the dough.
“It’s—this is going to sound stupid—a good distraction for me, when things are…difficult. And the more complicated the recipe is, the better it is at taking my mind off things. I mean, it’s fun, too, don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten very dorky about different kinds of flours, and I now have a favorite brand of vanilla, please don’t ever tell anyone I said that. But having to do a million steps means I can’t think about anything else. And croissants take a lot of concentration.”
He folded the dough around the square and pinched the corners together. She couldn’t take it any longer.
“Is that butter? Because if so, that’s a LOT of butter.”
He laughed, definitely at her, this time. “It is butter. That’s why croissants taste so good.”
He picked up the rolling pin again and rolled the dough-encased butter gently, from the middle outward. Izzy came closer to the island to watch.
“You have to let the butter soften and then sort of press and squish it into a square shape, and then roll it out so it’s flat enough, and then refrigerate it again.” He picked up the dough and turned it sideways. “And then you fold it up like this, in your dough, and roll it all out. And once you’ve done that, you fold the dough in thirds, like this. Then roll it out again. That’s called laminating—it’s how you get all those flaky layers.” He made a face. “Well, if you do it right. I didn’t last time; I was too impatient.”
She looked down at the dough. “I didn’t realize it was that complicated.”
He held up the rolling pin. “Do you want to try?”
She walked around the island to stand next to him, and he handed her the rolling pin. She put it down at the edge and started to press down, when he stopped her.
“No, not like that—have you never rolled out dough before?”
His voice was teasing but not mocking. She could tell the difference now. She shook her head. “My grandmother makes biscuits, too, but she never lets anyone else help.” She thought back to those times and laughed. “Plus, I was always busy reading.”
He put his hands on hers, still holding the rolling pin, and moved them to the center of the dough, and then took a step back.
“You roll from the middle outward. That way, it makes the dough more even in the end.”
She pressed down and felt the dough move as she rolled the pin in one direction and then in the other.
“Like this?” she asked.
He nodded, but she could tell something was wrong.
“What is it? Am I ruining your dough?”
One corner of his lips tipped up. “Not ruining it…exactly. It’s just that…”
She laughed. “I knew there was something. Show me.”
He moved behind her and put his hands on top of hers. “You need a little more power here, that’s all.” They rolled the dough together, first in one direction, and then in the other. “It’s easier for me, because I’m so much taller.”
It felt nice, with him standing behind her like that. Surrounding her with his warmth. With his strong hands on top of hers, with his arms around hers. She wanted to lean into him. Into all this.
It felt far too nice.
She dropped her hands, and so did he.
“I’ll let you finish this part, then.” She stepped back, and he moved away. “I can, um, get dinner warmed up? Because I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
She had forgiven Beau, but that didn’t mean that she had to let herself go back down that particular path. It would be too easy, and it would hurt too much. Especially since she was going back to New York in a week.
He nodded, without looking at her. “Good idea. I’m starving, too.”
She turned to the fridge, then stopped. “Wait. So you’re telling me that up to a few weeks ago, you did all this baking, and then just…left the kitchen like this for someone else to clean up? With lots of dishes and flour everywhere?”
He looked around at the kitchen, then back at her. “When you put it like that, it makes me sound like an unmitigated jackass.”
She cracked up, and so did he.
“I didn’t say it, you did.”
By the time dinner was ready, he’d chilled, rolled, and folded the dough again. They decided to eat in the kitchen so Beau could keep working on the croissants. When he brought silverware over to the kitchen table, he picked up his phone, and then stilled, his back to her.
“Beau?”
After a few seconds, he turned around. “She, um, texted me back. My mom. She asked if I could come to LA next weekend, to see her.”
Izzy looked at Beau to try to gauge his reaction to that, but she couldn’t tell from the tone in his voice or the look on his face.
“How do you feel about that?” she asked. She shook her head. “Sorry, I sound like I’m trying to be your therapist or something, that’s not what I mean, but—”
He looked at the kitchen island, still dusted with flour. “I don’t know,” he said. He walked over to the toaster oven and scooped pigs in a blanket on their plates. They were going full-on frozen snack foods for dinner tonight. “Do you want honey mustard or barbecue sauce? We have a number of different kinds of each, of course.”
Well, that was a clear change of subject.
“Both, obviously,” she said, “but I’m not picky on what kind.”
After they sat down at the table, Beau looked over at her. “Sorry. I’m just a little talked out, if that’s okay.”
Izzy reached for a pig in a blanket. “That’s totally okay.” And then she stopped. “Also—if you want to be alone now, that’s okay, too. I can just—”
He shook his head. “I don’t. I was actually kind of…looking forward to this.”
She looked at him for a second, then down at her plate. “Me too.”
They didn’t talk about anything else hard, for the rest of the night. They just ate dinner, and finished the croissant dough, and made cookies, and watched TV. But somehow, she felt closer to him at the end of the night than she had at the beginning.
On Monday afternoon, Izzy met Beau in the library. He raised his eyebrows at her as she sat down.
“Are you still up for our deal?” Beau asked. “About us both writing, I mean.”
Izzy gestured to the notebooks she’d brought with her. One was Beau’s, the one they passed back and forth every time. The other was her own.
“I’m not one to back out of a deal,” she said. “Haven’t you learned that about me yet?”
There was a certain amount of bravado in her voice, bravery she didn’t exactly feel. Yes, she’d been tinkering with an idea for the past few weeks, jotting down notes, tiny scenes, here and there. But she was scared to really commit to writing again.
She was glad, in a way, that this deal with Beau would force her to write. But another part of her was terrified. That she’d discover Gavin was right, this was too hard for her, she was no good at this. Or, even worse, that her experiences with writing and publishing over the past few years had taken away all her joy in writing, that joy she used to have when she was a teenager, sitting on her bed with her notebook for hours, deep into a world she’d created.
But it scared her even more to never try again, to leave that part of her life, of her dreams, behind.