I juggled it back and forth before eventually tossing the inedible hunk of carbs in the sink.
Staring at my burned meatballs, charred bread, overly-cooked noodles and limp lettuce made me seriously reevaluate what I was doing with my life.
“Awesome,” I snarled at the unused colander.
“Is everything okay?” Ezra asked carefully from behind me.
A hysterical laugh bubbled out of me. No. Everything was not okay. But I didn’t even know where to start or how to explain. I mean, the evidence spoke for itself. But what was I going to do now?
I made an exasperated sound.
Ezra peered over my shoulder into the sink. “Was that for dinner?”
Dropping my head into my hands, I tried to think of a solution, some way out of this mess, but nothing came. I had zero ideas except this would be a fantastic time for a zombie apocalypse to breakout.
The worst part was now I didn’t have a best friend because I was going to have to kill Vera for even suggesting that I cook for Ezra. This was her fault. What had she been thinking?
What had I been thinking listening to her?
“I ruined it,” I admitted to my hands. “It’s totally ruined.”
He made a sound that could have been a laugh or possibly a wince. Maybe it was the sound he made before he ran away. “It can’t be that bad.”
I moved out of the way so he could look for himself. Crossing my arms over my chest, I waited for him, in all his restaurant owning glory, to determine time of death on this solid but failed effort.
He poked at the bread. “Oh,” he said. Then he moved over to the noodles. They had been soaking in the pot since I’d given up the idea of draining and serving them. “Huh.” Passing by the salad, he sniffed at it. “I don’t… I’m not sure what to say.” He reached over and flicked off the burner that had still been heating the meatballs. “Do I want to know what’s under there?”
I lifted my head and met his amused gaze. “I’m fine if we want to leave that one a mystery.”
He chuckled, surveying the messy, ruined scene once again. “Molly, I… You… What went wrong?”
My eyes widened as the full weight of my bad choices were realized. I had invited Ezra Baptiste to my apartment knowing I couldn’t cook. The man owned four of the most successful restaurants in Durham. He sometimes filled in at Bianca because he “knew his way around a kitchen.” He had probably eaten five star meals every day for the last decade of his life. At the very least, multiple times a week.
This was the man I had invited over to scare away with my cooking.
Mission accomplished.
“I-I don’t even know where to begin,” I told him. God, this was humiliating. My entire face flamed red, spreading a splotchy blush from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes. I pressed my hand to my mouth and wrapped my other arm around my waist. I needed someone to console me. Apparently, that someone was myself.
Would it be totally out of line to make him leave? It seemed like a better option than having him witness this total humiliation.
Finally, when the silence had stretched to uncomfortable and neither of us had any idea what to say to make this better, I blurted, “It’s your fault! You started kissing me and… and then this happened!”
Our gazes clashed across the small space between us and something shifted inside him, something widening and deepening and spreading wings that were bigger than my entire apartment.
He smiled, prompting me to say, “Everything was time sensitive and you… distracted me.”
“Don’t move.” He walked back to the entryway and returned with the bottle of wine he’d brought with him. “We should open this.” He looked around for a second, then asked. “Do you have a cork screw?”
Silently, I walked over and retrieved the bottle opener from a drawer. I handed it to him. He took it from me and held it up to examine it.
“This is a nice one,” he commented.
I blinked at him. Was he really moving on this quickly? We were surrounded by terrible food! And messy dishes. Wasn’t his professional integrity insulted?
“I can’t cook,” I confessed. “But I take my wine very seriously.”
He stayed focused on the task of uncorking the bottle he’d brought, but his mouth widened into a smile. “I thought it was my fault that this happened.”
Nerves hit my stomach and I felt like doubling over to stop the sensation. “It is.” I pulled two glasses down from the cupboard and set them on the countertop next to him. “But more accurately, I’m terrible in the kitchen. I can’t even do simple things like toast, or cookies, or… spaghetti.”
He lifted that so intense gaze again, searching my face and my eyes and my soul. “Then why did you offer to make dinner tonight? We could have gone anywhere. You didn’t have to stress out over this.”
I bit down hard on my lip, trying to figure out how to spin my decisions so I didn’t sound crazy. “I underestimated my propensity for disaster.”
Ezra laughed again. “I think I did too.”
“Sorry,” I whispered to him. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want—”
He cut me off before I could finish my thought. “I’m going to stop you right there. Dinner was only an excuse to see you again, Molly. You could have served goldfish and I would have pretended to love it. I’m not here because I want you to impress me with your cooking. You already impress me because of who you are. You impress me with your knack for business. You impress me with your painting, and design style and mural making. You impress me with your kindness, your sense of humor and the way you nibble on your bottom lip when you’re deciding what you want. Molly, if I wanted a chef to make me a good meal, I would have stayed at work. I’m here because I want to spend the evening with you. And no other reason.”
I suddenly found it difficult to breathe. “Oh.”
He stopped fiddling with the wine bottle and stepped over to me, pulling my hands into his. “I hope you didn’t feel pressured to cook for me. I would hate to know I’m the reason…” He paused to look around at the mess in the sink and on the stove and all over the counters. “Your kitchen exploded.”
A trembling sigh of relief moved through me. I’d wanted to scare him away with my bad cooking, but I’d ended up falling harder and faster and deeper for him. Did he even know what he’d done? Did he know how important his words were?
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” I told him honestly. Because it was true. It had been a terribly stupid idea. Not just because it hadn’t worked, but because I didn’t want to push this man away. I had great big fears when it came to him, to us. I was filled with debilitating uncertainty. I didn’t know if I trusted whatever this was between us to last. But I did know I enjoyed spending time with him. I liked the way he made me feel when we were together. And I liked the way he looked at me, and touched me and kissed me. I liked Ezra Baptiste way more than I knew what to do with.
And I wanted to see where this thing between us was going to go.