Page 21 of Ashes of Us
"I ran out of space."
Maya took a bite of the cookie, then set it down and walked over to me. She grabbed the rolling pin out of my hands and set it on the counter.
"Hey, I wasn't?—"
"You've been baking for twelve hours straight, haven't you?"
I looked at the clock. 7:14 PM. I'd started at six this morning.
"Maybe."
"Babe." Her voice was gentle. "You need to stop."
"I'm fine."
"You're covered in flour. There's butter in your hair. And I'm pretty sure you haven't eaten anything that wasn't cookie dough all day."
My throat felt tight. "I just needed to stay busy."
"I know." She squeezed my shoulder. "But you've been staying busy for weeks now. You've baked enough carbs to feed a small army. My coworkers are starting to get concerned about the amount of baked goods I bring to the office. Rachel from analytics asked if I have a side hustle she doesn't know about."
I let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh.
"Come on." Maya steered me toward the sink. "Wash your hands. We're ordering pizza and watching trash TV and absolutely not thinking about what you would have been doing now.”
"It’s 7:15. We'd be doing the first dance right now," I said quietly. "Liam picked the song. Some Ed Sheeran thing."
"Well, Ed Sheeran is objectively terrible, so you dodged a bullet there."
This time I did laugh. Small, but real.
An hour later,we were on the couch with pizza and wine. Maya had changed into sweatpants and I'd washed the butter out of my hair. The TV was on but neither of us were really watching it.
"So," Maya said, picking pepperoni off her slice. "I got the final numbers from the venue today."
I set down my wine glass. "And?"
"They refunded half the deposit. The caterer gave back about thirty percent. The photographer was a total loss, but the florist felt bad and gave you everything back." She pulled out her phone and scrolled. "All together, with what Mom and Dad didn't end up spending and what we got back from vendors... you've got about nine thousand dollars."
Nine thousand dollars. Money that should have paid for flowers and food and a DJ. Money that should have celebrated a marriage that was never going to happen.
"Okay," I said. "I'll pay you rent?—"
"Absolutely not."
"Maya—"
"You're my sister. You're not paying rent." She set down her pizza and turned to face me. "But I do think you should spend that money on yourself."
"What do you mean?"
She gestured toward the kitchen. "Look at that disaster in there. You've been baking non-stop for more than a month, and not because you're sad. I mean, you are sad, but that's not why you're baking. You're baking because you love it. Because you're good at it. Because when you're covered in flour and swearing at croissant dough, you look happier than I've seen you in months."
I opened my mouth to argue, but she kept going.
"You know what Rachel said when I brought in those lemon bars last week? She said they were better than anything she'd ever bought. She asked if you took orders. And she wasn't the only one."
"Maya—"
