Page 88 of Love on the Waiver Wire

He nods.

“I feel like you can answer that question yourself. You’re a smart man.”

“He really makes you bake all of these every time?”

“Yep.”

“That’s cold.”

“Yep.”

The two of us get to work making more pie dough. By the time we’re done, we’ve gone through multiple bags of flour, I don’t even want to know how many sticks of butter, and half a bottle of vodka.

“Vodka?” Owen had asked when I started pouring it into a cup.

“Makes the pie dough extra flaky,” I inform him. It’s a recipe Leo has been obsessed with since he learned about it.

By the time we’re done my fingers are dead, my head hurts a little, and I never want to look at another pie.

“We have enough to make a little pie for tonight, want me to throw it in there?” Owen asks as we line the unbaked pies up in a line, ready to be thrown in when the others are done.

“Why the hell not,” I shrug. May as well try it. Owen made the fillings this time, so maybe they’ll actually be good.

“Cool. Throwing it in now before this next one and we can eat it as we wait for the others.”

I watch as he slides the pan in, his shirt sticking to his skin from sweating.

It’s hot as hell in here.

“Thank you for making these with me,” I mutter, laying my head on my hands.

“I’ll make them with you every year if you want me to, Peaches.”

“I appreciate it.”

Owen pours us two glasses of wine, pushing mine over to me as he gets to work cleaning the kitchen. I object, but he shuts me up quickly, telling me it’s the least he can do to make up for the previous years of me making an ungodly amount of pies to feed them all.

I let him.

“It’s nice that he does this,” he says, and I agree. It is nice.

“It is. I just wish he wouldn’t be as psycho about things as he tends to get.”

“Reasonable.”

We fall into a comfortable silence as I down my wine, filling the glass halfway up again. Owen scrubs the caked-on butter and flour from my counters, and before I know it, the whole thing is spotless.

When the alarm for our pie dings, he retrieves it and places it on the counter. “You know what this calls for?” he asks as he looks down at it.

“What?” I lean in, smelling the most delicious scent I’ve ever encountered.

“Whipped cream.”

I shake my head. “I don’t have any. Leo usually gets a ton of cans and stocks the fridge.”

But Owen goes into my fridge, retrieving a container of heavy cream. “That’s why we can make it ourselves.”

“Doesn’t that take forever?”

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