Pretend You Didn’t See That ( mason + abigail )
Mason looked up from whipping down the counter to see Abigail Winslow walking through the door. “Are you here for pie?” He asked, half teasingly as he was almost certain that she – the other piemaker of Walcott – was not there for that purpose. “Can I take this as a sign of surrender?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.Â
He whipped his hands on his apron and rested them firmly on the counter. He felt uncharacteristically calm and cool in her presence today. He didn’t know what was the cause of this bout of confidence (perhaps that award winning blackberry pie that was moments away from perfection, because it certainly wasn’t the last minute haircut he’d tried to give himself last weekend), but he decided not to question it.
He held up a figure as he turned to get the pie out of the oven, but he moved around too quickly and knocked over several coffee mugs and all he could do was watch in slow motion as they fell to the ground and smashed.Â
And just like that: confidence gone.Â
Abigail was quick to put a hand over her mouth to try and stop the laugh that bubbled out of her as soon as she watched the look of resigned horror cross over Mason’s face. It was impossible to stop, but maybe, just maybe, it had been muffled enough over the sound of ceramic shattering everywhere. “Here. Let me help. Better get your pie out before the crust burns. Though I’m sure it can’t taste any worse than it already does. Are you still using butter instead of shortening in your crust? Blasphemy, I tell you!” She said with a small giggle and a wink, draping her coat over one of the stools at the counter before going and grabbing the broom and dust pan from his closet. After all, such small accidents seemed to be the norm whenever Abbie and Mason found themselves in the same room. She’d gotten used to cleaning up his little messes. “Blackberry, right?” She continued as she dumped the offending ceramic in the waste basket and sniffed the air. “With... almond and cinnamon?” Abbie grinned at the man and shook her head. “You’re going fancy on me? I can’t believe it! You know, you won’t win anyone over with some new-fangled spin on things. It’s an old-fashioned town, Mason. Set in our ways.” Then again, Abbie couldn’t talk much herself. They’d both been battling it out for years on the pie circuit. Trying new things, new secret combinations of ingredients. (Abbie still hadn’t told him about how she used vanilla sugar in her blueberry pie. Or the touch of balsamic vinegar in her strawberry-rhubarb crumble.) Anything to try and one--up each other in a friendly game of who’s-gonna-break-first.
Abbie was betting on the pieman. The woman finally sat herself down on one of the bar stools though, steepling her fingers together as she placed her elbows upon the counter and leveled the other piemaker with a mock-serious stare. “And yet, I did not come here for pie. Nor! Did I come to surrender. For nay, I shall never surrender to the likes of you, Pendleton.” She waggled hr eyebrows slightly, hoping her very serious and not at all exaggerated tone was not lost on him. “Instead! I have tread upon this unhallowed ground for one reason and one reason only! And that is....” “....Well, honestly, I didn’t really have much of a reason.” Abbie half-smiled at the other man, laughing again. “I just hadn’t come to torture you in a good few days and I thought you were well due some anxiety in your life. Also Greta kicked me out of the diner. Told me to go home and rest. That just because it was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, didn’t mean I had to be too when we had perfectly acceptable line cooks.” The young woman rolled her eyes a little and leaned her chin on her hand.
Okay, and maybe she wasn’t too keen on stomping back to her one-bedroom apartment with only leftover diner food and wine (provided by the ever-lovely Juliet) in the fridge and Gus the cat who may or may not even be home, depending on how many critters he found the chase that day. What would she do? Read another cookbook? Re-watch a rom-com for the millionth time? Try and fail to keep herself from writing another sad e-mail to Gilbert Chilton asking him to just please dear God ask her out on a date after watching the afore-mentioned rom-coms while drinking the afore-mentioned wine and therefore making REALLY REALLY BAD DECISIONS at two in the morning on a Wednesday. ...So all in all, coming to tease her adorably awkward rival was probably the better option.
“Oh! And the other thing, I almost forgot. I came to scope out the competition for the Halloweekends Bake Off. I’m not letting you beat me in the pumpkin pie category again this year.” Abbie narrowed her eyes a little, lips curling at the corners into a small smirk. “I’m going to divine your secrets. Maybe do a little of that witchy magic everyone says is floating around, pull it out of you.” She laughed lightly and shook her head again.
Not that there was anything to the rumors of there being a witch in town.... Right?
