Page 78 of Ship Happens

Mel smiles, though, and moves on with the instructions, explaining a bit about her own recipe as she works through the first few steps. When everyone else goes to open their own bags of flour, Owen picks up where he left off, ignoring Mel’s steps as he adds the dry ingredients together, mixing them before he adds the sugar. Scones are second nature to Owen; they were his mother’s favorite growing up. Owen’s too, and the very first thing she ever taught him how to bake.

There was once a sting he associated with making them, especially after college, when baking became this thing Owen relied on just to get himself out of bed. Because it was something to do, and something that he knew he could do well, no matter how badly his parents made him feel about himself.

The sugar helped too.

“A woman needs to know how to bake,” Owen’s mother had told him when he was much, much younger, before Owen knew what being transgender looked like, back when he just thought that he was wrong for how he felt about his body when he looked in the mirror. Despite her misogynistic reasons for wanting to teach Owen how to bake, it was fun—hovering next to his mother, watching her and how she moved so naturally in the kitchen, replicating her ritual for him. And for however long the recipe would take to bake, Owen got to have a somewhat normal relationship with her. She wouldn’t make comments about his body, or his hair, or his grades, or how he slouched, how he needed a haircut, when he used a word incorrectly.

It got to be just the two of them.

Owen’s mother would gossip about her coworkers and the other moms in the neighborhood. She never really cared that much about what Owen had to say, but that didn’t matter to him. It was the closest he really ever got to her paying attention to him.

Owen pours the buttermilk into a measuring cup, adding a bit more than Mel suggests so that they won’t come out too dry before he walks over to the back of the room, grabbing a fresh lemon from the pile of fruit stacked in a bowl.

“This recipe doesn’t call for lemon,” Mel says, leaning against the counter opposite Owen as he takes a seat on his stool.

“Oh, uh . . .” Owen’s eyes dart around, suddenly nervous. “Sorry, I just . . . uh . . . I always put lemon zest in the wet ingredients.”

“Hmm . . .” Mel seems to think for a moment. Owen does his best to read her face, wondering if she’s angry or annoyed that Owen would dare come into her class and change her recipe. “I noticed that you added more buttermilk too.”

“Right.” Owen nods, suddenly feeling like he’s a contestant on MasterChef and he’s being grilled by Gordon Ramsay. “I think you don’t have enough, I’m worried that the scones will be too dry.”

“That’s because these are meant to pair with tea, so they’re supposed to be a bit drier,” she explains.

“Yeah, I just . . . guess I’m used to doing things my way.”

Mel lets out a laugh, and Owen feels his stomach unclench, grateful that what he said was taken as a joke. Even if he didn’t exactly mean it that way. “I take it you bake often?”

“Yeah,” Owen says. “I do.”

“You’re Owen?” Mel asks, before she explains, “Yours was the only new name on the class registry.”

“That’s me.”

“You move around the kitchen like a natural.”

“Thanks . . . Chef?” he says, unsure if he needs to add the honorific. They do it on TV.

Mel’s giggle tells him that he shouldn’t. “I could tell when you used the cheese grater for the butter; usually we just have our students slice the butter with a knife or break it up with their hands.”

“I like the consistency better,” he tells her. “And it makes for a nice flake on the finished bake.”

“Good eye. I usually make them that way too, but too many passengers were shredding their fingertips apart on the grater, so the cruise line told me I had to change the steps.” Mel giggles again, her eyes drawn to the younger couple on Owen’s other side.

One of the women turns the mixer on to the highest setting right away, causing a cloud of flour, salt, and baking powder to burst in front of her and her girlfriend’s faces.

“I’ll be back to check on you in a second,” Mel says, waving at Owen before she glides over to help.

Watching his own mixture to make sure it’s not overworked, Owen scrapes the dough that climbs its way onto the sides of the bowl so that he gets everything, only stopping when the older couple next to him seems to also have trouble with their own mixer.

“You lock it like this,” Owen explains, twisting the bowl so it won’t keep spinning out of control like it has been. “And then pull this lever. You don’t want it to go for too long, or else they’ll come out stodgy. Once all the ingredients are incorporated, give it about twenty more seconds.”

“Oh, isn’t he so nice, Harold? Thank you so much!” Owen can tell it’s taking everything in the older woman not to reach up and pinch his cheeks.

Then she goes for it anyway.

“Don’t bother the boy, Ethel,” Harold tells his wife. “Let him get back to his own scones.”

“It’s no problem,” he tells them both, biting back his desire to pull away. “Really.”