Chapter 275: 275 | Hostage Negotiation With Noodles
Twelve minutes turned into fourteen because Addison refused to serve the pasta a single second before the spaghetti reached what she called "proper al dente" and what I called "hostage negotiation with noodles." She stood over the pot with a pair of tongs, pulling individual strands out, biting them in half, frowning at the internal texture like a forensic scientist evaluating evidence, then returning to her vigil while Aurora and I sat at the table pretending we had any say in the timeline.
When the food finally landed in front of me, I understood everything.
The aglio e olio sat in a wide shallow bowl, spaghetti glistening with olive oil and flecked with paper-thin garlic chips that had been toasted to a pale gold without a single burnt edge. Cherry tomatoes split open from the heat, their insides soft and jammy against the pasta. Ribbons of prosciutto curled through the noodles, the salt from the cured meat playing off the sweetness of the tomatoes in a way that made my mouth water before I’d even picked up a fork. Fresh basil torn by hand sat scattered across the top like confetti at a party thrown by someone with actual taste.
The smell alone could have won awards. Garlic and butter and that specific sharp warmth from the crushed red pepper she’d added, layered beneath the rich pork fat from the prosciutto that had rendered into the oil during cooking.
I took a bite.
My fork stopped moving halfway back to the bowl because my brain needed a moment to process what had just happened on my tongue. The spaghetti was perfect, firm enough to have structure but tender enough to absorb the oil and carry the garlic flavor through every strand. The prosciutto added salt and depth that made the whole dish taste more expensive than anything I’d eaten at the academy dining hall. The cherry tomatoes burst with each bite, their acid cutting through the richness of the oil and keeping the whole plate from feeling heavy.
And the garlic chips. Holy shit, the garlic chips. Crisp enough to shatter between my teeth but so thin they dissolved almost immediately, leaving behind a concentrated garlic flavor that was warm instead of sharp, mellow instead of aggressive. She’d cooked them low and slow until the sharpness burned off completely and left only the sweet, nutty core of the flavor behind.
"This is incredible," I said, and I meant it with every molecule of my being.
Addison had taken the seat across from me. She’d pulled a fresh cherry lollipop from somewhere, but it sat untouched on the table because she was eating her own pasta with the quiet satisfaction of someone who knew exactly how good the food was and didn’t need external validation to confirm it.
She got external validation anyway.
"Like, genuinely incredible. This is restaurant quality." I took another bite and the garlic hit different the second time around, deeper, more complex. "Where did you learn to cook like this?"
"My grandmother." The answer came without the usual defensive edge. Addison twirled spaghetti around her fork with the same one-handed dexterity she probably used for her scythes. "She’s from the old country. Calabrian. Every summer I’d spend two weeks at her house in Brookline and she’d make me stand at the stove until I could do it right." Something softened at the corners of her mouth that I’d never seen before. Not quite a smile. More like the memory of one. "She said any idiot can follow a recipe but only someone who gives a fuck about food can make aglio e olio properly because there’s nowhere to hide bad technique when the dish only has six ingredients."
Aurora was on her third aggressive forkful, eating with the enthusiasm of someone who’d been smelling this food cook for two hours and had finally been released from purgatory. "She makes this every time I have a bad day. Hasn’t failed once."
"Because food fixes things when words don’t." Addison said it simply, without the ironic distance she wrapped around most of her statements. She caught me staring and the softness vanished, replaced by her standard operating expression of mild hostility. "Stop looking at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like I’m interesting."
"You just made the best pasta I’ve ever eaten while listening to a band called what, Corpse Immolation?"
"Septic Cadaver, actually. Different band. Corpse Immolation broke up last year because the drummer got arrested."
"For what?"
"Tax evasion."
"Not what I expected."
"Death metal guys are terrible with finances. Common problem in the genre." She picked up her lollipop and unwrapped it with her teeth, the cherry red candy settling into the corner of her mouth where it always lived. "Eat your food before it gets cold. Cold aglio e olio is a crime against humanity and I will take it personally."
I ate. Aurora ate. Addison ate with the particular focus of someone who treated every meal as an experience worth paying attention to rather than fuel to be consumed between training sessions. The conversation drifted through topics the way good dinner conversations should, organic and unpressured. Aurora talked about her guild scouts and how the Gold-tier buff from our last session had turned her sparring demonstration into something that genuinely frightened the recruiters. Addison mentioned a training session where she’d accidentally cut through her own practice dummy and the two behind it because her scythes manifested sharper than expected.
"The instructor almost lost his shit," she said, twirling her lollipop. "He made me sign a damage waiver and then asked if I wanted to try it again on the reinforced targets. I said fuck yes."
I laughed. Not the polite kind. A real laugh that came from somewhere in my stomach that I hadn’t been using lately.
Addison’s violet eyes tracked the sound. Something shifted in her expression, so quick I almost missed it, before she covered it with a long pull of water from her glass.
"Keep cooking like this and I might not want to leave," I said.
