So I touched the screen on my phone, went to favorites, and my fingertip touched the word “Slim” (I’d changed it, obviously).

I put the phone to my ear.

It rang twice before I heard, “Yeah, babe.”

“Hey,” I replied.

“Everything cool?” he asked.

“I need to tell you something,” I told him.

Pause, then, “I’m listening, Tess.”

I bit my lip.

Then I shared. “The reason I don’t really care about your drinking from the milk jug isn’t because it’s debatably ridiculous the reasons a woman doesn’t like a man drinking from a milk jug. It’s because I don’t much care what you do because I like you in my kitchen.”

This was met with silence.

I held my breath.

I got more silence.

That was when I considered maybe not letting it all hang out anymore.

Then I heard Brock ask, “Debatably ridiculous?”

The tightness forming in my chest released and I felt my lips form a smile as my eyes closed.

I opened them and said, “I will grant that just you drinking from it isn’t all that bad. But we didn’t get into other options, say, should you be eating cookies or cake and you get backwash into the milk. That’s gross. No one wants to drink someone else’s backwash, even if it’s cookie or cake backwash. This is where it becomes a gray area.”

An attractive, low chuckle sounded in my ear through which I also heard, “Babe.”

“Just saying,” I said.

“Noted,” Brock replied.

“Okay, I have cakes to bake.”

“All right, darlin’, and I got the hint your girl is avoiding your cupcakes but your man is not so if you bring some home tonight, they will not go unappreciated.”

“Will you drink milk out of a glass when you eat them?”

Another attractive, low chuckle sounded through which I heard, “We’ll see how it goes.”

“Right,” I whispered.

“Go bake cakes.”

“Okay, later, honey.”

“Later, babe.”

I disconnected.

Then I smiled

I exited my car, entered my bakery, and commenced baking cakes.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Mountainous Swirls of Frosting

I STOOD AT my front door waiting.

Then it came. Martha stopped folding her body into the driver’s seat, and her eyes came over the roof of her car, up the steep rise at the edge of my front yard, the four steps up my front stoop to me at my arched front door.

She pressed her fingers to her lips, stretched them my way, and blew me a kiss.

My throat got clogged but I blew one back.

She folded her petite body behind the wheel, started up her car, and rolled away.

I watched until I lost sight of her brake lights and then I watched for longer.