Page 54 of Merry Mayhem
He smiles down at me. “This is the most fun I’ve had in averylong time.”
“We haven’t even started,” I protest with a laugh.
“I know.”
Dang, it’s really going to be hard to resist him in public for much longer, too.
“Ready, set, go!” Nora calls.
Jingle bells ring, and everyone reaches forward, the table bouncing as we bump into it.
“Grab the round one,” I say. “We’ll start easy with an ornament.”
Josh grabs a round cookie and puts it in front of us.
“Are you right-handed?” I ask him.
“Yep. But pretty ambidextrous. I can start an IV with either hand. Can do sloppy sutures with my left if Ihaveto. Can’t intubate lefty though.”
I stare at him.
“I mean, I can stabilize the tubing with my left, of course,” he goes on. “I just can’t thread the endotracheal tube with my left hand. Unless Ireallyhad to. I probablycould.” He seems to be thinking that over now.
I laugh. “Okay. I definitely think you should frost. I’ll hold the cookie still.”
Can the guy dosuturesand intubate? Yeah, he can handle a piping bag.
He grins and grabs for the white icing, painting on a plain background, then reaches for the red piping bag.
Across from us, the brothers are bickering.
“I can’t do it left-handed either!”
“Well, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know! Just dosomething!”
“I can’t do shit with my right hand,” one of the twins—I can’t tell them apart—whispers to his brother.
“I can draw with my left hand, but I’m still shit. I’m a terrible artist,” the other says.
“I’ve never used one of these things to decorate anything,” the first twin says. “Can we just do sprinkles?”
“We can, but we won’t get as many votes.”
The twin who claims to be shit at drawing picks up one of the piping bags. “How does this work?”
I lean over. “Just squeeze from the top, like a tube of toothpaste. The frosting will come out the tip. Then just use it like a pencil.”
The kid nods and puts the tip of the icing bag against the cookie. But he does it too hard. It digs into the frosting they’ve already spread on the cookie and drags that frosting with it.
“Not like that!” His brother protests.
“I don’t know how to do this!” the one with the bag exclaims.
“Gentler,” I say. “You’re just writing on top of the other frosting.”
I glance down at our cookie. And damn. Josh can do sutures, and he can draw a pretty great design with red frosting. It looks like basket weaving across the middle of our white round cookie.
