Chapter 274: 274 | Let Me Cook
"You’re early."
"Aurora said seven."
"Aurora says lots of things." She turned back to the stove and adjusted the heat on the left burner. Whatever was in that pot smelled like garlic, butter, and something with real heat to it. The right pot held pasta water at a rolling boil.
A cutting board on the counter displayed diced tomatoes, fresh basil, and what looked like hand-sliced prosciutto arranged with the organizational care of someone who named their kitchen knives.
"I told her seven-thirty because I’m not serving half-cooked pasta to a guy who showed up before the sauce reduced."
"So I’m thirty minutes early to a dinner I didn’t know was happening."
"Now you’re catching on." She pulled the lollipop from her mouth, examined it, and put it back. "Aurora, did you tell him I was cooking?"
"I told him to bring chocolate."
"That’s not the same thing."
"It’s adjacent."
"Adjacent is not the same thing." The knife came down three times in quick succession against the cutting board. The onion pieces looked like they’d been cut by a machine. Each one matched the next with the kind of precision that came from someone who probably named their chef’s knives and spent an unreasonable amount of money on them.
She dumped the onion into the sauce pot with a practiced flick of her wrist and reached for something else on the counter while the wooden spoon stirred the contents of the pot on autopilot. Her movements had the efficiency of someone who’d cooked this dish enough times to do it half-asleep.
"I’m making my grandmother’s aglio e olio with prosciutto and cherry tomatoes, and this man shows up looking like he raided a fashion magazine’s winter spread without giving me a single heads-up so I could at least change out of bike shorts and my rattiest tank top."
"You look incredible in bike shorts," Aurora offered from her safe position near the fridge.
"That’s not the point and you know it."
"The jacket was your idea."
"I said he should own one. I didn’t say wear it to dinner at my best friend’s apartment while I’m standing over a stove looking like a goth who just finished hot yoga." Addison’s grip on the wooden spoon tightened as she pointed it at me over her shoulder. She still hadn’t fully turned around.
"You. Sit down somewhere. Don’t touch anything. Don’t speak to me until the pasta is done and drained. And if that box in your hand is coffee jelly from the Vault, I’m prepared to take back every bad thing I’ve said about you in the last ten seconds."
I held up the nearly empty cup. "It was coffee jelly. I ate most of it on the walk over."
The spoon froze mid-stir.
Addison turned around fully for the first time. Her violet eyes dropped to the cup in my hand, registered the dark residue of jelly cubes at the bottom and the depleted cream layer, and traveled back up to my face with an expression that contained multitudes.
"You drank my coffee jelly."
"I didn’t know it was your coffee jelly. The girl at the Vault counter talked me into it."
"Camila. Tattoo sleeve. Nice thighs."
"That’s the one."
"She upsells everyone. It’s her whole thing." Addison pulled the lollipop from her mouth and pointed it at me like a weapon. "But you drank. My coffee jelly. That Aurora specifically told you to bring because I have been talking about wanting one since Tuesday."
I looked at Aurora.
Aurora had retreated to the far side of the kitchen and was examining the ceiling with the studied innocence of someone who had absolutely failed to communicate a critical piece of information. Her green eyes were wide and her mouth was pressed into a line that suggested she was fighting to keep a laugh contained behind her teeth.
"Aurora didn’t mention that part," I said.
"Of course she didn’t." Addison bit the lollipop in half. The crack was audible over the simmering sauce. She chewed the candy with aggressive purpose, her jaw working with the energy of someone channeling homicidal thoughts into sugar consumption. "This is why I don’t let her plan things. She forgets the important details and then I end up jelly-less."
"The word is jelly-less," Aurora said from her position of safety. "Jellied means something totally different."
Addison stared at Aurora for two full seconds. Then she turned back to the stove and stirred the sauce with a violence that sent tiny splashes of red against the backsplash tile. The lollipop stick went onto the counter next to the empty one from earlier. Her collection was growing.
"I’ll buy you another one," I said.
"You’ll buy me three. One for tonight, one for the emotional damage, and one for Tuesday when I originally wanted it." She tasted the sauce from the wooden spoon, added something from a small jar that looked like crushed red pepper, and stirred again. "Now sit your ass down at the table and let me cook."
I sat.
Aurora slid into the chair next to me, close enough that her bare knee pressed against my thigh under the table. She smelled like jasmine and vanilla, her signature scent, and beneath that something warm and clean from a recent shower. Her hand found my knee and squeezed once.
"She likes you," Aurora whispered.
"She just threatened me with three coffee jellies."
"That’s how she shows affection. When she doesn’t like someone, she doesn’t threaten them. She just stops acknowledging their existence." Aurora’s thumb traced a small circle on my knee. "The threats mean she’s paying attention. The cooking means she’s invested. Addison doesn’t cook for people she doesn’t care about."
From the stove, Addison’s voice carried without her turning around. "I can hear you whispering about me and I want you both to know that I find it flattering and also that the pasta will be ready in twelve minutes and if either of you say one more word before then I will pour this sauce directly onto Monroe’s expensive jacket."
I looked at Aurora. Aurora looked at me. Her green eyes were full of something warm and conspiratorial and undeniably excited about whatever was going to happen after the pasta.
I took the last sip of my almost-empty coffee jelly and waited.
