Page 26 of Hard Rock Desires
“The what now?” I asked. The absolute last thing on my mind was lemons and meringue and baking. All I wanted to do was bury my hands in her hair and feast on that beautiful mouth.
“Never mind,” she sighed. “I’ll get it myself.” She grabbed the wedge of lemon and squeezed a few drops of juice into the mixture. “That should do it.” She eyed me. “Think you can handle greasing the tart pan?”
I gave myself a mental shake. “Right. Tart pan.”
Shit. I had to get it together. I didn’t want to fuck things up for Grace, especially since I was partnered with her. I had ducked my head into three other baking classes before finally finding this one. The one with her.
I hadn’t been lying when I said I was interested in learning a new skill. After releasing our album and doing a promo tour, the band finally had some down time. Something we hadn’t had in years. Soon we’d have to get back into the studio to compose and record songs for the next album, but for now we had a little freedom.
Kaylee was concentrating on getting some more credits for school. Anya was doing her poetry thing. Chris practically lived in our home gym, and Micah was really getting into the production side of things. As for Finn… Well, when Finn wasn’t spending time perfecting his violin or playing video games, he was sleeping in until two in the afternoon every day and going out partying with a different girl every night.
To each their own, I guess.
Aside from music, I’d never really had a ‘thing’ of my own. Usually Chris and I tagged along with Finn on his exploits whenever we had free time.
But there had been something Grace had said. Something she’d mentioned in that alley.
There’s that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you make or eat home-cooked food,she’d said.When you eat something that you know was made with love, or when you cook something for your family.
Family. It was a word I’d been thinking about too often recently.
What did family mean, anyway? Who was considered family? Only blood-relatives? Or was family something you chose? If that was the case, then my band was my family. They always had been.
Or, at least, that was what I’d thought. Then everything changed so quickly.
So when Grace had talked about family, and baking and feeling loved…
I didn’t know how to explain it. Something about it stuck with me. For some reason my mind kept coming back to what she’d said.
My mind kept coming back toher.
Eventually Kaylee had kicked me in the shins and told me to get my head on straight. So I searched online for all the local French baking classes currently being taught by a professional chef actually from France. Surprisingly, there had actually been four. Of course, the last one I’d checked was the right one.
“I think we did it,” Grace said with a grin.
Once the lemon tart — or, as our instructor called it,Tarte au Citron Meringuée— was out of the small oven and topped with the fluffy goop, Grace looked pleased.
“I thought you said you were awful at baking?” I asked. “This looks as good as anything you’d find in a real bakery.”
“And now the real test,” she said.
We each took a forkful of the tart and brought it to our mouths.
I paused.
I choked.
“UGH!” Grace’s expression was one of horror and disgust. She visibly forced down a swallow and blanched. “Whatwasthat?”
“How could we have fucked it up that badly?” I looked at the tart in a sort of dismayed awe. It tasted like pure, bitter lemon peel with a pie crust texture that resembled gritty dirt. “We followed all the instructions.”
“I told you I was bad at baking,” she said mournfully. “Maybe this class was a bad idea.”
“It’s just the first thing you made.” I tried to console her. “You’ll get better.”
“An announcement before we depart,” the instructor spoke up. “Several months from now, to celebrate finishing the course, we’ll be holding a friendly competition between students. It will be, what I believe you call, abake-off. I look forward to seeing what creative dishes you come up with.”
“Terrible dishes, more like,” Grace muttered.
