Page 47 of Swift and Saddled

All I could think about was the way her bare skin felt under my hands. Now that I knew what she felt like, nothing would ever be enough.

She wanted me. She was the one who’d asked me to kiss her—who’d demanded that I touch her. And now I was ruined.

Totally fucking ruined.

That’s what was going through my head as I assembled a bunch of ingredients to make one of her favorite foods—the spinach pie thing that she’d told me about in the truck when I took her to town.

I was taking Dusty’s advice and doing something that showed her that I was thinking about her. All the time.

There was only a small problem. I wasn’t a very good cook. I could cook, and I did cook, but I wouldn’t say everything was always one hundred percent edible. My dad made sure all of us knew cooking basics, especially Gus and me. From the time we were little, he told us that someday we might have to share a home with someone, and when that happened, it would be important to split labor—whether that was cooking, cleaning, or whatever.

Gus was like my dad. He loved to cook, and he was good at it. It was another thing he was better at than me. Which was a good thing, because now he had to keep a small human alive.

I could do the basics—eggs, grilled chicken, pasta, and I could toss the hell out of a salad—but spanakopita—that spinach pie—was a little out of my wheelhouse. Especially because it started with homemade pastry, which felt like it could go very wrong very quickly.

Whatever.

I was a capable guy, and I was going to do this—maybe not well, but I was going to do it.

Ada had gone down to Aggie’s to talk about the stuff she wanted her to build. Teddy came and picked her up—apparently they were going shopping too—so I figured I had at least four hours to make this happen.

So far I’d been at it for a little over an hour, and all I had to show for it was a kitchen covered in flour.

When the front door opened, I heard Gus call out, “Anyone home?”

“In here,” I called back.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Gus asked when he came into the kitchen. His eyes widened at the sight of me and all of the flour.

“I’m baking, obviously.”

“You sure as fuck are not baking.”

“Okay, well, I’m trying,” I said. And no, it wasn’t going great. “Ada mentioned that she liked this spinach pie thing that her mom makes, and now I’m trying to make it for her.”

Gus came closer, and he took stock of all the ingredients on the counter and the pieces of pastry that I couldn’t get to stick together. “No offense,” he said, “but I don’t think you’re doing a very good job.”

“That’s really helpful, Gus, thank you,” I snapped. His eyes widened again. I didn’t get snappy very often.

“Tell me the breakdown,” he said. “Maybe I can help.” Gus walked over to the kitchen sink and started washing his hands. He was serious.

“In theory, it’s easy,” I said, running a floured hand down my face. I didn’t even want to know what I looked like. “Like a spinach mixture and phyllo pastry?”

“Okay,” he nodded. “Where’s the phyllo?”

“That’s what I’m making?” I said, unsure. It’s what I was trying to make, anyway.

Gus looked a little too concerned for a conversation about pastry, but he said, “You’re trying to make phyllo pastry? Have you never seenThe Great British Baking Show?”

“What? No. Why are you watchingThe Great British Baking Show?” If there was one thing I could not imagine my older brother doing, it was sitting down and choosing to watch a TV show about baking.

“Riley likes it, and their accents are soothing.” He shrugged. I looked at him with my mouth agape. “Whatever,” he said, brushing me off. “That’s not the point. The point is that store-bought phyllo dough is your friend because you’re never going to be able to roll it thin enough.”Or roll it at all,I thought, considering that it was in pieces all around me.

“Well, I don’t have store-bought phyllo dough.”

“I’ll call Emmy.”

“Why are we calling Emmy?” I was confused about how my sister got brought up in this situation. Was she a phyllo expert? Did she have a skill set I didn’t know about?

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