"What did he say we needed??" I looked at Exer, who seemed just as confused as me. "Uh.. baking powder, flour, vanilla, and eggs. We have the rest of the stuff at home." "Well, let's go then!" We walked into the store, heading to the aisles that contained each set of ingredients. "Jeez, $10 just for some eggs?? Your dad gave you money to pay for all this, right?" Exer was counting what we had, and looked up at me and smiled.
"Oh, now that I think about it, he didn't. I can pay though, I have some extra money from my last paycheck." He continued counting the rest "It should be... $29?" Wait, how much was the vanilla?" I turned to look, as we were standing next to it still, and he walked over and stood next to me.
He put his hand down at his side and it brushed against mine. I jumped, and pulled my hand up, turning to look at him. He was sitting there, deep in thought, recounting the numbers in his brain. I noticed myself staring and turned away to face back towards the neatly-stacked shelves when he finally broke the silence and walked back to the cart.
"It is $29! Finally I got something right. Let's go, Day!!!" Exer grabbed my hand, pulling me over to the cart with him as he started running down the aisle. "Exer, slow down!! You're gonna crash!" I heard him laughing and continued chasing after him. He was slowed down from the cart and I caught up to him and slid infront of the cart and held out my hands, stopping him in his place. "Finally, I caught up to you for once!"
Exer laughed, and I couldn't hide my own while we walked the rest of the way to the register and paid for our baking ingriedients. We went outside, turning the corner and leaving down the shadowed path home.
"Why did he make us go out so late to get all this stuff??" I looked at Exer, seeing his face illuminated with orange and red from the nearly-gone sun. "My dad asked me this morning, but since YOU wanted to come with me, I had to wait all day just so you could get ready." He said, shrugging his shoulders. I made an angry face, about to say something, but then I saw we were infront of Exer's house and he opened the door.
We walked in, and I set the grocery bags on the counter while Exer sat down on the couch. I leaned over the couch behind him as he pet Lucy-fur, who had climbed up onto the sofa next to him. "Are we gonna bake it tonight, or are you going to do it with your dad?" He flipped his head up, looking up at me as I looked down towards him. Flustered, I walked away over to the counter and picked up the messily-written recipe "He left a recipe, so it should be fine if we do it, right?"
He thought for a second, probably trying to imagine what his father would want him to do. "Hmmm, yeah, I'm sure it's fine. Plus, you're probably a better baker than him. Cooking? He's great at that. But baking? Last year someone called the fire department from the amount of smoke leaving the window." Exer smiled, and I laughed, picking the ingredients out of the bag and sorting them into groups on the counter.
"Alright, so first we put the salt, baking powder, flour and sugar in a bowl. Exer, do you have a measuring cup?" I turned to look at him, but saw he was just staring at me. "Uh, Exer?" He blinked, and jumped up quickly, turning away from me. "Oh- sorry, haha I'll get the measuring cup!!"
He ran over to a cupboard, opening it to reveal a measuring cup along with plenty of other baking tools. "Alright, we need three full cups of flour and an additional three quarters first. And we need two bowls for the wet and dry ingriedients." Exer grabbed the bowls and I poured out the cups of flour, dumping them into the bowl.
"Are you sure?? That looks like a lot." I didn't blame him for questioning it. The bowl was half-full with flour, and it was only the first ingriedient! "Uh.. I think so? That's what it says on the recipe your dad wrote." Exer walked over, standing right next to me, our shoulders touching. "Lemme see." He looked at it, trying to read through the messy hand writing and see the numbers.
"Hm, I guess that's right.. guess we'll see once we get everything else in." He stepped a bit to the right, making more of a space between us. I let out a silent breath, continuing to read out the next ingriedient to him. "Uh- now we need a teaspoon of baking powder and half a teaspoon of salt." Exer opened a drawer, looking for a teaspoon, but then closed it and opened a different drawer.
"I can't find a teaspoon.. is there anything else we can use?" I thought about it for a second "We could just wing it and hope for the best?" He laughed, and I smiled and grabbed a normal sized spoon to use for it.
"Alright.. does this look like a teaspoon to you??" I shoved the spoonful of baking powder towards his face, waiting for an answer. "Hmm, probably a bit less than that and you'll be good." I moved it away from his face and removed some from the spoon before adding it to the bowl of flour. I got a small bit of salt on the spoon and showed it to him, and we both agreed that it looked like it was about half of the prior amount. "Alright, now where's your sugar?"
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We finished with the dry ingriedients, mixing them together before we got the eggs, vanilla and butter. We put a cup of butter in the microwave for about a minute and prepared the rest of the ingriedients in the meantime.
"Ok, we'll just assume that this is two teaspoons.. and now we crack the eggs into it." I got the now melted butter out of the microwave as Exer cracked the eggs, and I mixed it until it was ready. It seemed more dry than it should be, but we ignored that and divided the dough into sections on the pan. We put them in the oven and then all we had to do was wait.
[THIS AMAZING DRAWING IS BY MY FRIEND HUMOROUS!! AFTER READING PLEASE FOLLOW THEM ON TIKTOK @ sweet.robot IT WOULD MAKE US BOTH HAPPY TY]
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"Wanna watch a movie while we wait? The cookies will take a while." Exer strolled over to the shelf, looking through the different movie choices that there were. I sat on the couch behind him, playing with his hair. "How about this one?" He pulled out a Christmas movie. "Yeah, that's a good one. Sure!" We sat down on the couch next to eachother, and eventually Exer dozed off to sleep. I laughed, but after a while I drifted off into sleep with him.
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"EXER!!!" I called out from the kitchen. He woke up abruptly, running to the source of the sound to find out what had happened. He walked in to see the cookies dark and burnt on the counter, and the window open to let smoke out. "We both fell asleep.." I sat there, trying to get the cookies off the pan as Exer burst out laughing. "And here I was thinking we'd be able to make something this year!"
I rolled my eyes, but eventually sat down in a chair next to him, smiling. "You put too much faith in me." He walked over to the cookies, which were now semi-scraped off the pan and had been placed in a bowl. He looked at them, questioning them, and then he pulled out one that seemed to be the most un-burnt out of all of them.
"Aha!! See? We can cook! We got one!" He sat down at the table next to me, breaking the fragile cookie in half and handing it to me. "There. Now we both get to try our masterpieces." I chuckled, and took a bite of it. They weren't horrible. The proportions of ingriedients seemed to be right, the only problem was the fact that they were burnt to the core. But other than that, they were actually pretty good.
"Not bad" I said before taking another bite. I yawned, causing Exer to laugh which sent a glare in his direction. I leaned back in my chair. "I should call my Dad and see if he can pick me up. It's too cold to walk home." Exer looked up from the bowl of cookies and smiled.
"You can stay here- if you want." Surprised, I looked up at him "Really? I wouldn't be a bother?" He smiled at me, standing up and leaning over the back of my chair. "No, of course not!! It'll be a Christmas sleepover!" I grinned, and we stood up and left to the living room, ready to sleep.
this is gonna be 2 parts (bc this is already like 1500 words..) the next part of this will be out tmr :]