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I didn't mind a good fight because we always had good makeup sex. That was not easy to do with a wife who was thirty-eight weeks pregnant, ornery as hell, and constantly saying, rather angrily, "I want this baby out of my body,now."
She was miserable, and I felt like I needed to make a grand gesture to make her feel better. Now, maybe I shouldn't have listened to Thierry, who convinced me to embrace a unique French tradition, which I was pretty sure he'd made up to fuck with me because Google hadn't heard about it.
"Thierry, are you sure about this?" I asked, eyeing the array of ingredients spread out before me. "This seems...complicated."Immensely complicated and hard as fuck.
Thierry grinned, his eyes sparkling with mischief. "Absolutely, Duncan. In France, this is tradition. When a man wants to show his undying love for a woman, he bakes her acroquembouche."
I stared at the towering cone of pastry puffs in a picture he showed me, each puff delicately filled and stacked into a beautiful but seemingly impossible masterpiece.
"Acroquembouche? That's more than a little ambitious," I confessed.Fucking hell.How did one make this monstrosity?
Thierry clapped me on the back. "Exactly! The more challenging, the better. It shows your dedication. Elsa will love it."
Elsa will think I want to poison her!
I sighed and rolled up my sleeves. "Alright, let's do this."
The process was chaos and comedy. Flour flew through the air, sugar spun into burnt caramel, and more than a few pastry puffs met an untimely demise. Thierry was the worst kind of teacher, guiding me through each step with enough sarcasm that I had to restrain myself from slamming my fist into his face.
Between making the profiteroles for thecroquembouche; letting them cool, making the custard, filling them with said custard— it took all fucking day. This was not an exaggeration.
"Careful with the caramel, Duncan. It's hot!" he warned as I attempted to glue the puffs together.
"I know, motherfucker." I had learned the hard and painful way that youdidn'ttaste caramel with a finger, which now had a water-proof bandage over it.
Elsa had told me she was spending the day reading and lying in bed and wanted me gone, but as soon as I left, she began texting me.
Elsa:Where are you?
Me:Working, baby. All okay?
Elsa:I want this baby out of me.
Me:I know. You just need to be patient.
Elsa:
We had several text exchanges of a similar nature. Whenever I asked if she wanted me to come home, she told me to stay away.
Finally, thecroquembouchestood proudly on the counter, albeit lopsided and not at all as elegant as the picture.
Thierry looked at it with a satisfied smile. "Well done, Duncan. It's not perfect, but it's made with love. And that's what counts. I asked Elsa to come down; she's going to—"
As if on cue, Elsa walked into the bakery, her eyes widening at the sight of thecroquembouche. "What on earth...?"
"I made this," I said proudly, pointing to the pastry tower with my now bandaged finger, which had third-degree burned marks from the caramel-tasting-incident.
She looked at thecroquembouche, then back at me. "You made this?"
"Thierry said it was a French tradition and," I paused because she was smiling, and I loved that, "I knew he was fucking with me, so I thought I'd humor him and you."
Her expression softened. "Oh, Thierry, that was so sweet of you."
"I am full of sweetness," Thierry agreed.
"Hey, I made this fucking monstrosity." I winced as soon as I said the words because oneprofiterole moved, and the whole tower shifted a la Tower of Pisa.
Elsa laughed and put a hand on her chest. "But the proof is in the cream puff."
