Page 16 of Lessons in Lemonade

Just friends.

Again, I can feel Shelby’s eyes on us. Jack doesn’t seem to notice or to care, so dismissing the thoughts I just had, I take one from his playbook and decide I’m not going to either. Leaning over, he sticks his finger into the mashed potatoes, brings it to his mouth, and then licks it clean.

“Did he just do what I think he did?” Shelby asks.

“Sure looks like he did.” Both of us have stopped what we are doing, she’s turned to face him, and I turn to glare up at him.

“What? I wanted to taste it!” he declares innocently, licking his lips and grinning. Dark eyelashes swoop down over his eyes. From this angle, they look even longer than normal and result in him looking even prettier than before.

“Haven’t you heard of a spoon? That was gross. Everyone here is going to eat these potatoes, and now you’ve contaminated them with your dirty digits,” I scold.

“My hands aren’t dirty. See?” He holds them up, and I’m momentarily awestruck by how large they are.

“Hands. Stay. Out. Of. The. Food,” Shelby tells him.

He takes a step back and throws them up a little higher like he surrenders.

“Fine, no more finger-sticking.” His eyes sparkle a moment later as he realizes what he’s said, and he smirks at me while I shake my head.

Next thing, he picks up my iced coffee and takes a sip of it. His face scrunches up, and inwardly I relish already knowing he doesn’t like coffee. He sets the glass back down and shakes his head. “That is not good.”

Shelby laughs next to me. “Yes, it is. You’re just being a menace, so you deserved that.”

“I’m not being a menace, I just wanted to come in here and see what y’all are up to.” His eyes zero in on the completed dishes and widen just a bit.

“You know what we’re up to. Are you offering to help?” I ask him.

“Help?” He looks back at me and then around the kitchen at the mess we’ve made. He runs his hand over the back of his neck, frowning, and of course I notice how the sunlight pouring into the kitchen illuminates him. “I can help if you need me to, but I’m not sure what I would do.”

I glance at Shelby, and we both bust out laughing. His obvious discomfort is cute, but there’s no way we are actually letting him help us.

“Don’t worry, we’ve got this,” she says.

Instant relief floods his face as he looks at the two of us. “Okay, but I would have. Seriously, though, what’s up with the matchy-matchy?” He waves back and forth between us, and I look down to see what he’s talking about. Shelby and I are wearing matching Thanksgiving aprons I happened across in a boutique one day while walking through the Battery.

“Aprons are kind of our thing,” I tell him, smoothing mine down.

It started with my grandmother. Sure, I had aprons growing up, but when I went off to culinary school, my grandmother gave me hers. It’s green and white and has sort of become my good luck apron. I wear it when I’m working on a new dish, or just feeling nostalgic for her. She used to love to tell me an apron is just a cape tied on backward, and I’ve never forgotten it.

After that one, Shelby and I started collecting really cute ones from places we’d travel to, pretty ones we’d see in stores, and holiday ones. When we worked together, all of them hung on a single wrought iron coat rack we repurposed at the restaurant, and now Shelby has her own here in the winery kitchen. I point toward it and his gaze follows, spotting it in the corner, and then he looks back at me.

“Huh,” he says, dropping his eyes and staring at the fall leaves and pumpkins across my chest.

Instantly, the back of my hand smacks his stomach—his flat, hard stomach.

“Ow! What was that for?” he howls, rubbing the offended area.

“You know what. Eyes up here.” With two fingers, I point from my eyes to his.

“You’re the meanest best friend I’ve ever had.” He frowns. Then, whipping out his phone, he puts it in selfie mode and takes a picture of him and me before I can ask what he’s doing. As a parting shot, he flashes us a devilish grin, sticks his finger back in the bowl, and swirls it around before walking out the door.

“Tell me he did not just do that,” Shelby says in horror.

“I think he did.” I try to hide the grin that follows him, but I just can’t.

Ten minutes later, my phone buzzes in my back pocket with a new notification. Jack posted the photo of us in the kitchen, tagged me, and added the sweetest caption wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving, thanking all of his followers, and expressing gratitude. Then I reach the end where he says he’s also thankful for his best friend’s pumpkins, and heat radiates up my neck and across my face.

I’m going to kill him.