Page 61 of Divorced from Number Thirty-Eight
It’s a…stand-up mixer?
And Gray cursing—an impressive string I couldn’t have come up with in a book, not even on my most creative day in Writing World.
I turn the corner, get a full look at him…and the mess that’s the kitchen.
Flour is dusting the counters, the floor, the cabinets, even that mixer, like fresh snowfall. And Gray isn’t immune to it either.
It’s on his cheek, sprinkled throughout his hair, dotted on his beard.
It coats his bare chest, his abs, the waistband of his low-slung sweats.
Holy hot baking fantasy.
I tug at the neck of my sweatshirt, needing some cool air since my body is suddenly hotter than the oven.
He curses again as a cloud of flour blooms, the mixer going too fast, and now I know exactly how the snowfall of flour was created.
But I’m too busy watching to intervene.
Too busy taking it all in.
The mess.
But also fresh bags of groceries and several bunches of bananas, a tablet perched up on the counter, a video playing, describing how to make…
Banana bread.
My heart convulses.
Because I also spot the source of the burnt smell.
Loaves—at least a half-dozen of them—spread out on counter.
All charred within an inch of their lives.
Like seriously, they could be bricks, could be used to build a wall.
“…add one egg and combine well…”
Gray opens the carton, pulls out and egg and tries to crack it on the bowl.
Tries because he makes a mess of it, the shell going everywhere, the white exploding, the yolk breaking.
“Fuck,” he hisses.
“…then add your oil and?—“
“Slow down,” he snaps at the iPad, hurrying to the trash can and dumping the abused egg inside. He washes his hands then wipes them on a towel as he turns back to the mixer.
Which is still rumbling.
But he only makes it a step before his head flies up and his eyes come to mine and?—
“Now pour your mixture into a buttered and floured loaf pan and…”
Twenty-One
Gray
