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It’ll be fine, Moonshine thought as she opened a bag of flour. It’s just Hardwon. It’s just Hardwon and baking cookies. You like those things, right?
“Moony,” Hardwon said as he hovered around the doorway. “You wanted to see me?”
Moonshine was standing in Beverly’s family kitchen, and everything felt unfamiliar and too smooth and clean, but she couldn’t help but smile when she saw Hardwon.
“Well, you mentioned you didn’t really know how to bake.” Moonshine finally found the cup measure, setting it down on the counter. “I wanted to show you how to make lemon cookies.”
“Moonshine, this is… thank you,” Hardwon said. As Moonshine continued to gather lemons, Hardwon tied his hair up, then carefully braided his beard into one even plait. “I’m glad you want to teach me.”
“Do you want help with that?” Moonshine asked, rolling a lemon on the counter, but Hardwon shook his head.
“No, I got it. What are you making?” Hardwon asked her.
“It’s my Meemaw’s recipe. She always rolls the lemons like this before she juices them, so I do it too.” Moonshine shrugged.
“You’re teaching me one of Meemaw’s recipes? I’m honored,” Hardwon said with a fond smile. He walked around behind her, surveying the collection of ingredients laid out on the counter. “How can I help?”
“Well, we can start by measuring the flour.” Moonshine handed him a cup measure.
“Okay.” Hardwon started scooping flour with the cup.
“Add two and a half cups,” Moonshine continued.
“Okay,” Hardwon said. He scooped two cups, then examined the bag of flour in confusion. “Um, Moonshine? What’s half a cup?”
“You just kind of fill it halfway.” Moonshine scooped the flour and started to tap some back out into the bag.
Hardwon put an arm around Moonshine’s waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. Unfortunately, with how nervous she was, she jerked the cup of flour in surprise, getting flour all over the counter, within the bowl, and on the two of them.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Hardwon,” she said, trying to brush the flour off of him and only smearing it around further with the flour on her hands. “I’m… I’m gonna clean this up,” she said. She picked up another bowl and started to scrape the flour off the counter and into the bowl, but then she remembered she was in Beverly’s house, not her stump, and it would probably embarrass Mrs. Toegold if she just threw flour out the front door.
She turned around, and around, but she couldn’t seem to find the waste bin. “Just a sec, Hardwon,” she said, ducking out of the way and going up the stairs to Bev’s room.
No matter how smart and kind Beverly was, there was something kind of humiliating about having to ask a kid how to do something. “Beverly, I’m sorry, where’s your garbage in the kitchen?”
“It’s next to the oven. Do you want me to show you?” Beverly asked.
“No, it’s okay,” Moonshine said, already feeling silly. “Thank you, young’in, but I’m alright.”
Back down the stairs, Moonshine found the wastebin that she’d managed to look past four times and dumped the flour that she’d managed to scrape off the counter into the wastebin.
“Do you think we should start over?” Hardwon said, looking sheepish leaning against the corner of the counter.
“No, this should be alright,” Moonshine said. “That was about half a cup, right?”
Moonshine read out the ingredients and walked Hardwon through the next steps of adding baking powder and salt. She gave Hardwon a wooden spoon to stir with: Mrs. Toegold’s spoon was honestly so smooth and clean that it made her feel a bit bad to use it to make cookies, but they’d have to stir it with something.
When Moonshine described adding a “pinch” of salt, Hardwon poured some into the palm of his hand and dropped it into the bowl. “Maybe a little less next time,” Moonshine said, but it seemed like the cookies would probably still turn out okay, and Hardwon seemed happy about his baking.
“Okay, now we put that aside for now,” she said, taking hold of the bowl, “and we’re going to zest the lemon. We use a grater for this.” It took her another five minutes to find the grater, but she tried not to let it get to her.
Hardwon took the grater and the lemon, preparing to drag it down the side of the grater.
“Wait.” Moonshine grabbed his wrist. “You’re going to scrape your fingers like that. Hold it like this.” She placed her hand on top of Hardwon’s holding the lemon, rotated it, and started to grate it with her hand.
“Um.” Hardwon was blushing slightly. “Could you maybe show me again?”
“Sure,” Moonshine said, smiling as she rotated the lemon to a new spot. They zested the lemon together, Moonshine pressed against Hardwon’s side.
“Now we’re gonna whisk the butter and sugar together,” she said. Moonshine grabbed another bowl out of one of the cupboards and went to get some butter from the churn. It was sitting outside. She pulled the lid off and reached in to get some butter, but she couldn’t seem to get her hand around it to pull some butter out.
This was literally just embarrassing. She’d gotten butter from the churn since she was barely up to her mother’s knee. She slammed the churn on the ground a couple times, then finally managed to pull a chunk of butter out, where it promptly slid out of her hand and landed with a soft thud on the ground.
Moonshine kind of felt like she wanted to give up on the whole cookie-making attempt. Moonshine definitely felt like she wanted to go home, lay down in her stump, and hug her mother.
“Moonshine?” She heard Hardwon’s voice above her and slowly looked up to meet his gaze. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” Moonshine took a deep breath and shoved herself to her feet.
“Moonshine…” Hardwon sighed. “I’m sorry that I’m so exhausting to cook with. I appreciate your patience, but if this is really frustrating to you, we don’t have to keep doing this.”
“Hardwon, no.” Moonshine took his hand with the one that wasn’t covered in butter. “This isn’t about you, it’s about me. I’m not going to say you could never frustrate me, but you’re still learning. I want to help you get there.”
“Then… tell me what’s wrong, Moonshine.”
Moonshine swallowed hard. “I told you that this was my Meemaw’s recipe. I wasn’t being… entirely honest. It’s not Jolene’s recipe. It’s Marabelle’s.”
“Oh,” Hardwon said quietly.
“When I was little, my Meemaw would make this recipe for lemon cookies that was always my favorite. She only made them for me a couple times. I didn’t know they were Marabelle’s at that point. But when Meemaw finally told me… I wanted to make sure I learned the recipe so I could make them for Meemaw,” Moonshine said. “But when I made them myself, they never seem to come out right. I thought, maybe if I could teach someone else…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Hardwon asked her.
“Because I didn’t wanna put all this on you. I feel bad enough about it now,” Moonshine said, undoing and then redoing the bottom of her braid.
Hardwon sat down, resting his hand on Moonshine’s thigh. “Well, I want to know, Moonshine. I want you to put these things on me. I want to know things about your family, I want to know about you. I love your family, and I love you,” Hardwon said, taking her hand in his and squeezing it.
“You’re getting all greasy,” Moonshine said, but she squeezed his hand back. “
“I didn’t get to do any baking with my mom,” Hardwon said. “I don’t know if she even enjoyed cooking. It seems silly to ask her about it now, but I can do it with you. It means a lot to me, Moonshine.”
Moonshine let her head fall against his shoulder. “Well, sure, but there’s a difference between teaching you how to bake and involving you in an attempt to replicate a hundred year old recipe.”
“You wanted to teach me how to bake, and I like baking with you. I will make these cookies as many times as it takes for us to get this right,” Hardwon said, resting his hand on her shoulder.
Moonshine turned to face him for the first time since they started. “Oh, I love you, Hardwon. I really don’t say it enough.” She pulled him into a hug. “Can I kiss you?”
“Absolutely,” Hardwon said.
Moonshine placed her hand that wasn’t greasy with butter on his cheek and ran her thumb over his bottom lip, then was about to pull him in for a kiss when he winced.
Hardwon brought a hand to his mouth. “Sorry, you got lemon juice on my mouth. There was a cut on my lip,” he said, embarrassed. “Do you still want to kiss me?”
Moonshine laughed, and a little of the tension finally left her. “I can be persuaded.”
(The lemon cookies didn’t quite come out right that time. But they finished them, and later they would try again.)