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I busiedmyself with the fryer to try to compose myself after that little stunt I’d pulled with the icing, until I heard a thud and an, “Oh no!” so I shot back around.
“Are you okay?” I asked and saw Lettie standing in the same place I’d left her, covered in flour. She had flour in her hair and all over her face, and there was a pile of it in front of her next to a large paper bag,
She groaned. “I dropped it. I dropped the whole bag of flour. I’m so sorry, I promise I will pay for this.” She kneeled down and began to try to scoop it up in her hands. She sputtered, coughing out white powder as she did and tried to wipe her face with her flour-covered hands. “I’m a klutz. I’m sorry.”
I pulled my lips in, but then I couldn’t stand it any longer.
I burst into laughter. I laughed harder than I had laughed in years. I was heaving over, my hands on my stomach, laughing at the sight of her. She looked up slowly and tilted her head to the side. The only color besides the white flour were her green eyes looking at me in disbelief.
“You think this is funny, do you?” she said, still scooping up the flour.
I attempted to respond between breaths of laughter, “I’m… sorry…. It’s… just… you look ridiculous!”
Lettie pursed her lips, and I walked closer to help her clean up. As soon as I was within reach, kneeling down to help her, a wide smile grew across her face, and she whipped a large handful of flour right into my face.
I closed my eyes, frozen in place before sputtering out some white powder. I wiped one eye. “You”—I started wiping the other one—“better run. Because it is on.” I gathered flour from the floor as Lettie shot up and took off around the corner.
We were ducking behind the counters, running through the back of the bakery with handfuls of flour as our ammunition. Fistfuls were flying through the air as we laughed until we were out of breath. I threw a good lob at her, smacking her right in the chest as she got me square in the face before she slipped and fell, hitting the ground with a scream.
I ran to her. “Oh my God, are you okay?”
Lettie was sitting with her back against the cabinet, having practically slid all the way down it, and she was laughing and moaning simultaneously. “Owww,” she said, giggling.
I reached my hand out to help her up, but she pulled me down next to her. She rubbed her back as we sat side by side, laughing, covered in flour.
“I told you I was a klutz,” she said, her head turned toward me and leaning against the cabinet.
“Maybe a little,” I admitted before I brushed a piece of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “But mostly, you’re beautiful.”
Our eyes remained locked while my hand found its way to her neck and my thumb traced her cheek and across her nose, wiping away the flour. I liked the way her skin was soft. There was not a blemish in sight, and she had freckles along her nose that I desperately wanted to kiss.
I heard her breath shudder.
“Can I kiss you?” I asked, hoping with everything in me that she would say yes. I had never wanted to kiss a girl more than I wanted to kiss Lettie. I’d wanted to from the moment I laid eyes on her, and if we hadn’t been interrupted by Evelyn that night at Green Gables, I would have by now. But it was probably good we’d been interrupted because I wasn’t sure I could stop once I got started.
She nodded but lowered her eyes and whispered, “I might be bad at it.”
I tilted her chin, her gaze meeting mine again. “I don’t think that’s possible.”
When her eyes closed and her mouth moved closer, I took her lips to mine, savoring the feeling of them against me, and when my tongue parted her lips and met hers, I knew instantly that Lettie was everything I hadn’t known I was missing.
THIRTY-FOUR
LETTIE
I layon my bed staring up at the ceiling after my date with Tuck, feeling euphoric and tingly and ridiculous with a goofy smile that had been planted on my face the entire evening.
I’d had my first kiss.
And it was the most perfect first kiss that I could have ever imagined with someone who made my soul feel like it was on fire. I was so happy that I hadn’t forced my first kiss during a game of spin the bottle or on a dare at one of those middle school parties like most girls. I’d been teased mercilessly for sitting out during those games and spent years being called a prude and a square. None of that mattered now because while Avery could say her first kiss had been Trenton Barker in seventh grade during a game of seven minutes in heaven, I could say that mine had been with Tuck Anderson, the most perfect guy I’d ever met, during a flour war.
Tuck and I had spent the rest of the evening eating the donuts we’d made and kissing and talking and more kissing, and by the time I got home, my lips had been raw. I had been sure my mother would have been able to tell that something was different about me, yet she hadn’t even looked up from her book when I walked in the door.
And so I held my secret in the depths of my heart, and I would carry it with me until I could set it free the next time I saw him.
The phone rang and my mother hollered that it was for me. When I answered—my voice lazy and dreamy—I heard Avery’s voice on the other end.
“Why do you sound so weird?” Avery asked. I sat up in bed and shook off the stupor I was in. “Oh my God, it’s because of Theo isn’t it? I heard your date went really well! He was talking to Fletch and said you guys hit it off. Are you in looooove, yet?” She elongated the word love and I rolled my eyes.
