Page 21 of Trick or Treat with the Mountain Man
She dusted some of the flour off my shirt. “And there’s been no one in your life to make you homemade treats for a while? That’s sad.”
Thinking back, I couldn’t recall a timeanyonehad made me a home-cooked meal. My mom hadn’t been the mothering type, and my dad was only marginally more interested in me than she was.
I’d left home early, spent time on the streets, then some more time in juvie. The day I turned seventeen, I joined the military.
The girlfriends I’d had, well, they’d been more interested in fucking than baking. There’d never been anyone serious in my life.
“Naw, it’s been a long time,” I said, answering her question. “So this feels… kind of special.”
“And imagine… there’s going to be a cake at the end of it!” she said with a giant smile spread across her lips.
Ava finished sifting the flour and added the wet ingredients. “Do you feel up to mixing it?” she asked.
She’d come over equipped with enough supplies to feed an army. One of those items was a mysterious contraption with round metal sticks.
“How do I use it?”
“Easy. Let me show you.” She took a step closer to me, plugged in the device and began mixing the ingredients, her motionmaking a smooth steady circle around the edges of the bowl. “It’s called a hand-mixer. It does the work for us. You want to try?”
“Uh. Sure.”
She’d made it look simple. I should be able to replicate it.
I took the mixer and the bowl from her.
“Turn this button on low, then begin circling the inner rim of the bowl slowly, making sure to—oh,shit!”
Batter flew up and landed on my chest. More landed on the counter.
“What the fuck happened!” I growled.
When I looked over at her, I saw that she was covered in batter, too.
I lifted the mixer out, and more batter flew around the kitchen, spattering us and every solid surface with flecks of whathadbeen our cake.
Ava wasn’t mad. Or frustrated.
She was laughing her ass off. “Tyler, turn it off!”
I hit buttons until the machine finally stopped.
“I’m never doing that again,” I told her as I looked at the disaster I’d made of my kitchen.
She wiped batter off my cheek and licked it. “I don’t think there’s going to be a cake tonight, Tyler. We’re both wearing it.”
Fuck. This was not how a first date was supposed to go.
“I messed up your dress.”
“Not worse than you messed up your shirt.” Her eyes were sparkling like she was having the best time with me.
“Why did the machine work so well for you? It was like it was possessed when I tried to use it. Maybe it was the ghost.”
She grinned up at me. “That was no ghost, Tyler. That was one-hundred percent you. But it’s not your fault. You turned the hand mixer on high instead of low, and you didn’t get your beaters all the way in the batter.”
“What the fuck is a beater?”
“The metal sticks.”
