“You were there for me on one of the worst nights of my very charmed life. So, yes… I’m driving you to Boston.” She jerked her head to the passenger side door. “Get in. I already texted Addy that they don’t need to wait on you.”
Utterly and completely surprised, I circled her car to the passenger side. Still stunned as I opened the door, there was a square Tupperware on my seat. I lifted it and climbed in, popping open the lid.
Inside were four of the most wretched looking muffins I’d ever seen in my life. Dry crumbles surrounded them and the “frosting,” if you could call it that, was globbed on and lumpy. “Er… what are these?” Hell, I thought she had learned something these last two days baking with me.
Apparently not.
“Carrot and cranberry muffins.”
“Carrot and cranberry?” I repeated, unable to keep my face impassive and clicked my seatbelt into the buckle at my hip.
“Yeah,” she said, turning the engine over and starting the car. “It was supposed to be pumpkin and cranberry, but I didn’t have any pumpkin, so I substituted carrots.”
“Yeah, those two things aren’t exactly interchangeable.” My mouth twisted in disgust as I dipped my finger into the frosting on top. A hard chunk of unblended butter collided with the tip of my finger, and my stomach roiled.
It occurred to me that Chloe’s tasks when we baked consisted mostly of mixing and pouring the batter—but most of the ingredients and mixes were prepped already from the day before. Maybe I needed to expand her baking lessons.
“Well, go ahead. Have one,” Chloe prodded. “I know you’re hungry. You always eat early in the morning.”
“Um… sure. Yeah, thanks, Chloe.” I gingerly lifted one of the muffins out of the Tupperware and brought it to my lips. Chunks of shredded carrot spiked out from the side of the dry, crumbling wall of the muffin. Maybe they tasted better than they looked? Well, there’s only one way to find out. Here goes nothing.
I took a bite, the smallest bite known to man, and chewed slowly.
Nope. They decidedly did not taste better than they looked. Impossibly, they were worse than they looked. I couldn’t even fake a smile as Chloe glanced at me, anticipation etched in her raised brows and bright eyes. “Well? I think I’m getting really good. I mean, it’s only been two days, but I never would have tried to make muffins from scratch before!”
I bought myself an extra second to think as I chewed and forced myself to swallow the gritty bite. The texture of the ‘frosting’ felt like sand had been poured into the whipped cream cheese. “They’re… um… did you not use confectioner’s sugar?”
She shook her head, chest puffed, proud of herself. “Nope! I used that erythritol stuff you do. Your mom is on a strict sugar-free, grain-free diet and I wanted her to be able to have one after her surgery.”
“Yeah. The thing about erythritol is that at the bakery, I blend it so that it becomes like a powdered sugar so that its melting point is lower…”
She looked confused. “It doesn’t melt?”
“It incorporates better into the baked goods when it’s powdered.”
She blinked a few times, her confidence deflating. “Are they bad?”
“No,” I answered without thinking and wishing I had just kept my stupid mouth shut. She baked for me, which was so sweet. Especially since we hadn’t finished up at the truck until 11:30 last night. That meant she had spent the last hour of her evening baking when she also woke up before four in the morning.
Yep, Chloe Dyker was a saint. And I was an asshole. “They’re good. Really.”
Her scowl deepened. “I want to try one.” As she reached for the muffin in my hand, the wheel turned a little, swerving her car to the right.
“No!” I shoved the whole thing in my mouth so that she couldn’t take it from me and forced my mouth to curve into a smile as I chewed. And chewed. And chewed some more until I could finally swallow the giant, revolting thing down.
She glared at me, her gaze so sharp it could have cut right through the windshield. “Give me a muffin, Liam. Now.”
I sighed and grabbed one of the other muffins from the Tupperware, handing it to her. Driving with one hand, she took a bite. “Oh my God,” she muttered, her mouth still full. The bite barely stayed in her mouth for one second before she rolled down her window and spat it out, tossing the rest of the muffin with it. “Oh my God,” she repeated. “I don’t even think the birds will eat that! That was the most revolting thing I’ve ever had in my mouth! And that includes Pockmark Peter Wilson when I gave him that blowjob in college!” She wiped her tongue against her sleeve. “Ugh, how could you let me eat that?”
“Let you!? I tried to stop you! I ate a whole damn muffin trying to save you!”
Her gentle giggle started quietly at first, rippling through the air with only a small trembling of her shoulders. But her infectious laugh quickly grew louder and louder until we were both laughing so hard that tears streamed down our cheeks. “You ate…” she gasped for a breath between words. “You ate the entire thing! It was disgusting, but you shoved it down your gullet like a starving seagull at the beach.”
“The things I do for you, Dyker!”
But really, it was what she did for me that was so amazing—terrible muffins and all—Chloe was the real thing. She was true and good and honest.
And I was damn lucky to have her. Even if it was only as a friend.
Most of my life, my brothers and sister had been my best friends. Maybe some of my only friends. At least the ones that stood the test of time. I leaned on them consistently.
A sobering thought slammed into me as my laughter subsided. I leaned
