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 pastry cutter, a food processor, my bare hands. I tried every thickener out there for my fruit fillings: flour, cornstarch, tapioca, arrowroot powder. I made lattice crusts, cut decorations out of dough, tried egg washes, milk washes, cream washes, you name it.

It worked—I made some good pies. Some great pies, even. But have I hit upon that mythical perfect pie, the one with a flaky-yet-flavorful crust and a filling that sets up and tastes so good that I can’t stop eating it? No. And so my quest continues.