Page 27 of Serving Bunt

If Penelope wandered too close while I was measuring out the brown sugar for the third time, he’d flash them a toothy grin and start rambling about how I had the soul of a sixty-year-old church lady trapped inside a twenty-nine-year-old baseball player.

Rude, but effective.

The cameras loved him. And it helped that he seemed genuinely relaxed, like this was just another day for him instead of a nationally televised disaster waiting to happen.

He flirted shamelessly with the judges during walkthroughs and somehow managed to keep up the banter, even while piping his guava filling. With irritating precision, I might add.

Unfortunately, our brief stretch of competence had come to a violent end the second we’d started assembling the cookie box. As it turned out, buttercream mortar was less structurally sound than we’d hoped.

“Matty, stop fussing with it,” he said, voice tight.

“I can fix it.”

“It’s cracking.”

“I know it is,” I said through gritted teeth. “But if I can just fill the cracks with buttercream—”

“In less than two minutes?” Diaz crowded in beside me, reaching for the spare piping bag. “Here, let me help with the corners—”

Our elbows collided. Hard.

The box tilted.

And suddenly, everything slowed.

I saw the exact moment disaster struck. The wobble in the left wall, the way the buttercream seam split down the middle, Diaz’s eyes widening as the whole structure started to lean.

“No, no, no—” I chanted.

It was no use. Two walls gave way with a sickening crack, sending half the structure sliding off the counter and onto the floor in a catastrophic heap of crumbs and frosting.

The entire barn seemed to gasp.

Diaz froze. “Shit, Matty. I’m sorry—”

“Don’t.” I cringed when my voice cracked. “Just . . . don’t.”

I could feel the cameras circling like vultures. The weight of the judges’ concern burned a hole in the back of my head. It was too late now, and we all knew it.

“Bakers, that’s time! Please step away from your cookies.”

Well, shit.

I stepped back from our baking station, suddenly questioning how we had gotten here. This was supposed to be fun. A way to raise funds and awareness for charity, while rebuilding my relationship with Diaz.

Instead, I was standing here, staring at the wreckage dripping off my favorite pair of shoes, ten seconds away from a full-blown meltdown.

I couldn’t help that I was a perfectionist. In baseball, that kind of precision made me great.

Off the field, it had wrecked me. More than once.

The added pressure had led to sleepless nights, anxious days, and carrying a bottle of Tums with me at all times—even in my game day bag. I had spent the better half of a decade working on it in therapy, but right now, standing in front of rolling cameras with a collapsing cookie box, all that old anxiety came roaring back.

James and Nora were called up to present first. I pretended not to notice how flawless their shortbread cottage looked.

Holy buckets, were those sugar glass windows?

A hand landed gently on the small of my back, hot and steady through my shirt. The touch was light, but it grounded me instantly.