Why Melody Price Hated Christmas

Chapter Three: Burnt Gingerbread Cookies

Sunday

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The doorbell chimed twice, and I didn't even have to look in the peephole to know who it was. I opened the door and instantly stepped aside to let a shivering Elliot inside. After having watched A Christmas Story along with the sequel (which was as bad if not worse), Elliot had went home, satisfied with the 'progress' he had made. And there I was, left to wonder what the hell was happening in the unvierse for this to happen to me.

"Hey, Scrooge. Do you love Christmas yet?" Elliot had adopted the nickname for me much to my annoyance. He went through the motions of taking off his blue coat and hanging it up.

I rolled my eyes and deadpanned, "Bah Humbug."

Elliot smiled that stupid smile at me, making my heart do a somersault. He took off his snow boots then handed me a plastic grocery bag that looked like it was ready to break from all the items. Glancing inside, I raised an eyebrow. "What's all this?"

As always, he grinned like he knew I was going to ask that question. Now out of his coat, I noticed he was wearing a gray v-neck long sleeve shirt and skinny jeans. Hesitantly, I looked down to his feet, and to my surprise and relief, he was sporting regular socks this time.

"Ingredients to make ginerbread cookies!" The brunette was so excited and bursting with bubbling energy that I almost found it adorable. Almost. He took the bag from me. "Will your parents mind if we use the oven?"

"Working. And I'm not eight, I can use a stove." Again, I rolled my eyes, heading for the kitchen. Elliot followed behind like a lost puppy and then it hit me. Elliot was definitely like an annoying, popular, handsome puppy.

"Sw-eet! Because there's no way in Heaven or Hell that you can celebrate Christmas without baking amd eating cookies!" The two of us rounded to the counter top, where the baseball player began unloading his cooking arsenal from the bag. On the counter there was flour, sugar, eggs, milk, ginger, cinnamon, little tubes of cookie frosting...

"Bloody hell, Elliot," I gawked at the amount of food he had bought. "Are we feeding an army?"

He snorted, looking at me in both disbelief and amazement. "What do you mean? These are all the ingredients to make cookies from scratch." When he noticed my confused expression, he backpedaled. "Wait, have you ever baked before?"

I blushed. "I used to bake those Pillsbury instant cookie-dough squares..."

He laughed, that laugh where he throws back his head and let it out. Throaty and melodious, there was no other way to describe it. Just hearing that laughed made me long to hear it again and again. It ended way too soon, but I felt his happiness glowing inside of me.

"Ah, you're a riot, Scrooge." Elliot wiped a tear from his eye, sighing contently. He then clapped his hands together in finality and gesturing to the assembly line of baking stuff. "Well since, you are a Christmas cookie virgin, we'll go slow."

I rolled my eyes in mock exasperation, but I didn't protest, because even though I didn't want to admit it, I was having a good time with Elliot Baker.

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Making cookies from scratch was much harder than I thought, and even though I might have been the worst person to teach how to make cookies, Elliot was a paitent teacher. He chuckled at me when I tried to pour flour into the measuring cup and spilled it all over my sweatshirt, he smiled and congradulated me when I succeeded at something in a genuine and not sarcastic way, and as we baked we talked about everything that wasn't Christmas, which was really nice. Our conversation ranged from the people in our English class, to our favorite Pokémon growing up (of course his was Pikachu), all in all, with cookie dough caked in my fingernails and nearly covered head to toe in flour and baking soda, it was the best I've had in a while.