Page 61 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

“I smelled it from the porch. Can I have some?”

“It's not finished.”

“I can wait.”

He sits down at the table like this settles the matter, unbothered by the fact Beck and I are both standing here covered in flour looking suspiciously rumpled.

Cassidy wanders through not long after, drawn by the same smell, and asks if there's enough for her too.

“You didn't even eat lefse at the festival,” I say, remembering.

“I know. I really wanted to. I was saving room.”

Nolan sits up straight. “Saving room. For what?”

“The pie contest.”

“You planned that?”

“Of course.”

Nolan stares at her like she's just confessed to a conspiracy. “I ate three meals before that contest.”

“That sounds like a you problem,” Cassidy says, unsympathetic, and goes to fill a glass of water like she hasn't just retroactively made her own victory a hundred times funnier.

The kitchen stays busy for a while after that. Dani comes through for water and stays long enough to steal a piece straight off the griddle. Reid and Trevor get back from wherever they went and want to know what's happening. Somebody's always coming or going, grabbing something, asking a question, and through all of it Beck's just here, standing at the counter, making my grandmother's lefse. It’s unremarkable to everyone. Except me.

Once we've got another batch finished, I make one the way I love mine best. Warm off the griddle, butter melted generously across it, cinnamon and sugar, rolled up. I hand it to Beck and watch him take a bite, invested in his reaction.

He chews. Swallows. Says absolutely nothing.

“Well?”

He takes another bite. “I need a larger sample size.”

“I knew you'd like it,” I say.

My grandmother taught me this in a kitchen two hundred miles from here, years before Beck ever existed in my life. Now he knows how to make it too, badly, but he knows, and something about that feels bigger than it should over a piece of fried potato dough.

Eventually Nolan and Cassidy disappear with their share. The kitchen empties, leaving Beck and me with the cleanup. Flour on the counter. Flour on the floor. Flour, somehow, on the ceiling, which neither of us can explain.

Beck starts wiping down the counter without being asked, and I survey the wreckage of what used to be a functional kitchen.

“My grandmother would be horrified,” I say.

“At the mess?”

“At your rolling technique.”

He throws the dish towel at me, which I dodge.

“What are you doing Friday night?” he asks, once we've gotten most of the flour under control.

“After work?”

“After work.”

“Nothing. Why?”