Standard Cookie Making Procedure

Emily was unaccountably nervous about showing Justin how to make cookies. What if he didn't like it? What if he thought it was lame? What if he was bored out of his mind?

More importantly, why did she care so much? Was it because it was the first time they were doing something together at her apartment?

She straightened all of the colorful throw pillows on the couch at least three times and made sure the dishes in the sink made it into the dishwasher before he arrived. When the doorbell rang, even though she was expecting him, she nearly had a heart attack.

"You ready to make some cookies?" she asked with a friendly smile when she opened the door.

"Ready as I can be considering I've never baked in my life," Justin said.

"It's not that hard if you can read the instructions."

She led him into the kitchen, where the ingredients and measuring tools for the cookies were already laid out on the counter. "I'll start mixing the wet ingredients. Could you put the dry ingredients into that bowl over there? The recipe card says which ones are dry."

Justin saluted comically and scrutinized the card so fiercely Emily couldn't help but laugh. Once she finished beating the wet ingredients together she had Justin hand her the bowl of dry ingredients and slowly stirred them in until her arm hurt.

"Can you take a turn stirring? My arm is about to give out."

He blinked at her in surprise. "I don't know how."

Was he stupid? "…you literally move the spoon around in circles. It's not hard."

Justin awkwardly mashed the spoon into the dough like he was trying to churn butter and Emily was on the verge of tears from holding her laughter in. She pulled out her phone and secretly took a video to send to Sam later. She would get a kick out of it for sure. Despite Justin's awkward form, the dough still came together so Emily dusted the table with flour so the dough wouldn't stick and started rolling it out.

"Which cookie cutters do you want to use?" she asked her guest, gesturing with a flour-covered hand toward the pile of new ones she got for Christmas.

"Is this supposed to be a kid in a cowboy hat?" Justin held up a cookie cutter of a character's face from a zombie show she liked.

"Yeah. He's a character from a TV show. Keep looking. I want at least eight different types of cookies!"

On top of the kid in the cowboy hat, Justin picked a soft-serve ice cream cone, a llama, a chemistry beaker, an octopus tentacle, a tyrannosaurus rex, a video game controller, a cartoon character he didn't recognize, and what looked like an couple of odd connected rectangles but was supposed to be an FBI badge.

"Okay, you need to push the cookie cutters into the dough and shake it a little bit so it cuts all the way through. Make sure you leave enough space for the other shapes so try to keep them close together," Emily instructed.

Justin tentatively pushed down on a cookie cutter and looked to her for approval. With a smudge of flour on his glasses he looked absolutely adorable. She couldn't help but smile at him and nod that he did it right. They quickly filled the available space on the dough with cut-outs so she handed him a spatula.

"We need to move these to the cookie sheet but be careful, they might be stu—"

A cookie was stuck to the table and Justin exerted too much strength trying to pry it off with the spatula, causing the dough to rip. Part of it stayed stuck but the other part flew behind him and splatted on Emily's face.

Too stunned to speak, she could only stare as Justin's hands flew to his face and he frantically started apologizing and reached out to peel the dough off of her before stopping himself and continuing to apologize. Seeing how freaked out he was made her start to laugh and she only laughed harder as she saw how confused he looked. Clutching her stomach for support, she cracked up until she couldn't breathe.

After she calmed down she peeled the dough off her face and stuffed it in her mouth. No use wasting perfectly good cookie dough.

Justin, who had completely frozen halfway through her laugh attack, finally made a facial expression. He squinted at her. "I flipped cookie dough onto your face and you just ate it."

She shrugged, unbothered. Her brother used to eat cookie dough that fell on the floor. It's not like her face was dirty.

"Standard cookie making procedure. You wouldn't know since you're a newbie. Dough must not be wasted."

"…I'll remember that."