Page 40 of Willow Vale

“Potty mouth, huh?” Travis smirked.

I laughed. “Hey, I have an innocent kid in the house. I have to keep him that way for as long as I can.”

He pulled out a few pans to place them onto the iron stove top before coming back to the table. “I’m surprised he isn’t already unleashing an onslaught of them given your grandfather was around him.”

At the mention of my grandfather, I was reminded of Irene. My conversation with her the other night and all the creative ways she called me names faster than a gun shooting bullets. The threats she made about coming back to Willow Vale…

The thought of seeing my mother again made my chest ache. It…it scared me. Not for myself, but for River. The last thing I wanted was for him to ever see her the way I did my whole life. I never wanted him to be scared or disappointed by someone, even though I was sure it would happen later down the line because that was the reality of growing up.

But I’d try my damn best to shield him from all of that for as long as I could.

Noticing my sudden my mood shifting, Travis nudged my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” I smiled. “Let’s just read Manny’s instructions.”

Travis didn’t push me to talk about what was clearly bothering me, but I knew he kept a watchful eye on me. Together we deciphered the instructions on how to get the ovens going for the pizza dough Manny prepped last night.

“The dough is already made so all we have to do is get it rolled out and assemble it,” I said, squinting at the instructions as if that would make me understand better.

Travis grumbled as he went to the fridge and pulled out two bags labeled “pizza dough.” He was about to dump them onto the chopping block when I yelled, “Wait!” Travis startled, looking at me as if I grew two heads. “You can’t just put it onto a surface without putting flour down first!”

He made a face. “Really?”

I snorted. “Man, you really aren’t a cook, are you?”

A wry grin spread across his lips. “I am. I just choose not to be if I can avoid it.”

I watch him turn toward the pantry, reappearing with a bag of flour in one of his large hands. He rolled the sleeves of his flannel shirt up his arms, revealing the corded muscles beneath the dark blue fabric.

I quickly looked away, tying my hair up into a messy bun atop my head to get it out of the way before washing my hands.

“Okay, let’s get started then. I’ll roll out the dough and you get to finishing it up.” I reached for the bag of flour and started to open it.

“And here I thought I was the boss.”

“Well, I’d rather be the boss than be on Manny’s shit list,” I said as I kept trying to lift the flaps of the crinkly bag. WhenI finally got it open, I accidentally ripped it with a little too much force. I gasped as a plume of flour shot up. I started coughing the moment I inhaled it.

“What the hell am I doing?” I groaned as I waved my hands to get rid of the grains floating around the air. When I could finally see, Travis was standing across the table from me.

I caught him looking at me with a funny expression on his face. His lips were in a flat line and his eyes were wide. He brought his fist up over his mouth as his shoulders started to shake.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You…” His voice shook and by the sound of it, I thought he was about to start crying or laughing. Both of which seemed impossible for him. “Your face…”

“What about my face?” I caught my reflection over his shoulder from the mirror hanging over the hand sink and gaped. My face was covered in flour along with a few strands of my hair. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I frantically wiped the flour off my face only to stop when I heard it.

A deep raspy laugh.

I looked at Travis and found him practically hunched over the table.

“You are not laughing at me right now!”

“I’m not…” he gasped before chuckling some more. “I swear I’m not.”

“Do you not know what laughing is? Because that’s what you’re doing right now.”

“The look on your face…” He wiped his eye as he struggled to compose himself.

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