Thankfully the sprain wasn’t too bad, but it did slow me down for a week and this is my first walk since it happened. Still, I want to try without the cane.
“Probably not. I usually wind up working. Foreign markets and offices are open, and even if I am home, I’m just watching my emails. Sometimes Jack and I will spend it working together but since he started dating his girlfriend, he tries to get actual free time. I think he’s proposing this year.”
“When was the last time you took an actual holiday off? I mean, we’ve been together for like a month and a half now, and you work like a fucking maniac. You know, no reasonable person works every day of the year.”
“I don’t work every day of the year,” he protests. His hand goes to the small of my back when he has to crowd close because another one of those bikers keeps skirting too close to the pedestrians. My heart races, and not because of the close calls we’ve had, but because I have to fight the urge to lean into him, into the lingering smell of clean laundry and coffee. I wonder for a half a second if he’s as affected as I am, but he doesn’t seem to be, so I bury the thought deep deep under my repressed desire for something, anything, to light me up the way he does.
“I find that hard to believe. You sat in my hospital room, sending emails and taking meetings. You can’t fool me, Mr. Breckenridge,” I say with a teasing scowl.
He smiles at me. “So what do you propose?”
“Take the day off. Let me cook for you. Take the time to relax, watch some football, and drink some fancy imported beer. Put your feet up for once.”
Charlie has put so much of his energy into helping me, that I feel helpless without doing something in return for him. At the moment, my options are limited. He’s got more money than he knows what to do with, and I think it’s the little things that mean more to him than anything else. It can’t be that hard to manage a meal for two.
“You’re an awful cook,” he points out, and I realize he never removed his hand from the small of my back. His touch is barely there, ready to catch me if my ankle or knee decide they have had enough.
“It wasonegrilled cheese!” Who knew butter burned so fast? I looked at my phone for one minute, because he had texted in the middle of the day, checking in, and the next thing, my grilled cheese was blackened, the pan burned so thoroughly that I almost bought a new one to replace it.
“Case in point, Els, it was a grilled cheese. Even I was making those for myself when my mom or nanny wasn’t around.”
“Of course you had a nanny. Do you still happen to have the silver spoon that you emerged from the womb with?”
“I believe my mother has it in a nice frame beside my newborn hand and footprints. Before you ask, the frame is, of course, also silver.”
I laugh again. “Please? Let me try? And at worst, you can save the day again and order takeout or we can eat leftovers, but let me try.”
“How can I say no to that face? Of course you can try.”
I clap my hands in delight, already starting to plan the menu.
That saying about biting off more than you can chew? Yeah, well, I’m a classic case of it. I have used possibly every pan in Charlie’s kitchen trying to make mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cheddar biscuits, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pie for dessert. The main struggle, though, is not the many other things I’m making, but the tiny Cornish hens I’m terrified of burning.
My hair is swept up in a messy ponytail, half of it spilling out as I open the oven for the fifteenth time. Seeing that the hens are not burnt, I add a splash of milk and a glob of cream cheese to the mashed potatoes before stirring the stuffing.
“If you keep opening the oven door, it’s not going to cook,” Charlie tells me.
He’s not patronizing me; he’s genuinely trying to help, but I’m frazzled and in pain from hopping around the kitchen all morning. I can’t help it, I snap.
“I know that!” I immediately want to claw back my words. I want to stuff them back into the place where my anger and frustration can live.
“Do you want help?” he asks softly, rising from where he’s been sitting at the island, watching this catastrophe play out.
“No, I’m supposed to be doing something nice for you.” I turn to face him, waving the potato masher in his face. A nice thick glob flies off the tool, hitting him smack in the face.
For a second, we’re both too shocked to do anything, but he thumbs it off his face and pops it into his mouth.
“If you wanted my opinion, you just had to ask. It needs more salt.” He gives me a rare goofy smile and it immediately puts me at ease.
I can do this.
I go back to focusing, finally calming when the food is all in the gorgeous double oven. Charlie keeps the rest of his commentary to himself, beckoning me to the couch to relax and watch some of the parade. The small collection of timers sitting on the counter are taunting me, even as I try to relax.
I nearly jump out of my skin when the first one goes off and the rest follow like falling dominoes. Charlie, who had been inching closer to me, snaps back to his side of the couch. He follows me, sitting again at the island, knowing that offering help again will only get his head bitten off.
I grab a towel off the counter, not sure where I’ve haphazardly left the oven mitts over the course of the day. I pull the stuffing from the oven, careful that I’m holding both sides of the pan. Once that is set on the side, I realize the green bean casserole and the cornish hens are burning. I try to grab them both, figuring that the pans should be light enough, but the problem is not in the pans, it’s in that I haven’t opened the oven door enough. Too late to do anything about it as the back of my hand grazes the door.
It’s not a serious burn. Contact lasts only a second, but my immediate reaction sends the casserole pan and the hens out of my hands in a knee-jerk reaction. The moment seems to happen in slow motion, the pulling of my hand back toward me and the simultaneous release of the food. I can only watch in horror as the pan hits the oven door, food-side down, and the hens bounce on the floor followed by the clatter of metal on the tiles.