Chapter 17
Steph
I was staring blankly at my computer screen late Friday afternoon, my thoughts having drifted away from the report I'd been writing for Tank to the contents of my fridge at home. I knew I didn't have the makings for a decent meal there. In fact the sum total of food-stuffs in my apartment was half a jar of peanut butter, three muesli bars, an almost empty jar of olives, some crackers, a box of hamster crunchies, two bottles of beer and enough milk to make a coffee in the morning. I didn't even have any bread left to make my standard peanut butter and olive sandwich to tide me over, which meant I was facing a difficult decision for my evening meal:
Option 1: I could stop by the shops on the way home and pick up a couple things to make up something resembling dinner.
Option 2: I could mooch dinner from my parents.
Neither one was all that appealing. Option 1 was a lot of effort for little reward, given how unskilled I was in the kitchen. Not at all appealing, just like the food I was likely to produce. And then I'd be right back where I started with option 2 staring me down.
It wasn't that I didn't want to see my parents, or that their food would be just as bad as anything that I produced. On the contrary, my mother was an excellent cook, and had tried very hard at numerous points throughout my life to pass on her knowledge to me, but I just wasn't receptive to her teachings. No, the problem with dinner at my parent's house was that the last few times I'd spoken to my mother, she'd started hinting at wanting to set me up with some of the Nice Burg Men she'd found around town lately. If I called to let her know that I'd be over for dinner, I could pretty much guarantee that she would have a male suitor present at the table for me, even with only an hour and half notice.
So there I was, stuck between a rock and a hard place when my cell phone rang where it sat on the stack of papers beside me. I picked it up and swiped my thumb across the screen to answer it without looking, thoughts still agonising over my decision and trying to remember just how many crackers were left in the packet, as I lifted the device to my ear and greeted the caller with a distracted, "Yeah?"
"Babe."
My heart skipped a beat at the smooth baritone of that one syllable sliding through my head and blacking out any thoughts that had been there before. It had been a whole week since the last time I'd spoken to Carlos, when he'd instructed me to lock up behind him after he swept my apartment for threats and proceeded to stand in the corridor outside and have what looked like a minor existential crisis over what he'd inadvertently revealed to me. We hadn't crossed paths at work the next day, and by the following Monday, he'd flown down to the Miami office to cover there while their manager was out of commission after a burst appendix.
I was a little surprised to learn from Lester and Tank that he'd left, but placated myself by reminding myself that we were still very much separate entities, even if we were dating. He didn't report his movements to me any more than I did to him. And realistically, he was the boss. If he was needed in an emergency capacity, he didn't necessarily have time to be informing me of his comings and goings from the state. I guess I was just worried about what it all meant when I added it all up. The possible avoidance on Friday after he'd made what he clearly considered a mistake the previous night. The sudden disappearance. And the lack of direct or significant communication since.
A couple times throughout the week, I'd tried to check in and see if he was doing okay, worried that he wasn't coping with the aftermath of the scene he'd stumbled across on Thursday last week, but he hadn't picked up when I called, and the only response I'd gotten from texts was a thumbs up. Even the emails I'd sent in an official capacity had received little more than a 'Thanks.' Possibly, he was just busy managing the Miami branch and couldn't afford me or my communications any more time than that, but my gut was telling me otherwise, and that didn't bode well for my heart that was already getting way too attached for having been on only a handful of dates.
"Carlos?" I said, my voice sounding breathy as I straightened in my chair. The top half of Vince's face appeared over the cubicle divider, sending me a raised eyebrow that prompted me to review what I'd said. Ah crap! I'd once again forgotten to call him by his moniker. "Uh, I mean, Ranger. How can I help?" I said hastily, turning my whole chair away from Vince's now amused eyes as they slid back below the wall.
A sound that could almost be interpreted as a chuckle travelled down the line, but was gone before I had a chance to fully confirm its tone. "I'm just chasing that report you said you'd forward through," he said lightly.
Grimacing, I wiggled the computer mouse and used my free hand to type in my password to sign back into the computer that had apparently been inactive long enough to have gone to the screensaver while I was spacing out. When the screen came alive a moment later it was to reveal the unfinished email I'd been typing up when the thought of dinner had struck me. It had been almost forty-five minutes since I'd started composing that email. "Sorry," I groaned. "My brain must have checked out for a bit. Give me a second and I'll send it through now."
An affirmative hum buzzed in my ear, and I assumed he would leave it at that and hang up, satisfied that he'd prompted me into motion; I'd learned that Carlos wasn't especially good with phone manners. As I was starting to pull the phone away from my ear, though, his voice came again, startling me into almost dropping the device. "What's on your mind?" he asked quietly.
"Oh, nothing," I assured him. "I was just thinking about dinner."
"Babe." He sounded mildly amused now. "It's just after four o'clock, a bit early for dinner, unless you're an octogenarian."
"Yeah, but I don't have anything at home which means I need to grab something on the way home. Either fast food, which is gonna be greasy, which I'm not really in the mood for, or a frozen meal from the supermarket and the last time I got one of those I had the ru- I mean, it didn't agree with my stomach." I quickly altered the end of my sentence to avoid admitting I'd had diarrhoea to Carlos or anyone else in the office who happened to be listening. "Alternatively, I can go to my parents house for dinner. Mom always makes extra, so there's enough for unexpected visitors, but since I'm thinking about it now, I figure it's good manners to give her the advanced warning, but if I give her the advanced warning, she's likely to invite a guy to join us as well. She's determined to set me up with a nice Burg man."
"Just tell her you're seeing someone, so she doesn't need to set you up," Carlos said, like it was that simple, and I could barely contain my eyeroll. He obviously didn't know my mother.
"Because then she would expect me to bring that man to dinner," I explained on a sigh. "And when I can't produce said man, she'll assume I'm lying to her and give me the third degree. Then the matchmaking will ramp up tenfold. I don't need that kind of stress in my life, Carlos."
"Ah," he agreed, seeing the problem more fully now. He hadn't met my parents, but he'd heard enough about my mother during our now weekly dinners in his apartment to know that that is exactly the kind of response I'd get. "You could always take Lester or Bobby," he suggested.
I shook my head despite the fact that he couldn't see me. "She's already met Lester and Bobby, and while she's not exactly approving of two men being in that kind of relationship, not even she could deny the depth of the love they share. She'd know they were only there in a friend capacity."
"Well, if you want to avoid your mother, and you're already leaning towards going to the store, why not just pick up the ingredients to cook something instead of a dodgy pre-made meal?"
I bet he thought he was being reasonable with that suggestion. I bet, despite the fact that he had Ella cook most of his meals, he was an excellent cook. Probably, he could magically create a meal out of the few ingredients I had at home. He was good at anything and everything he did, so cooking was probably a breeze for him. I just snorted. "I can't cook."
"Everyone can cook, Babe," he countered.
"Not me," I said firmly. "My mother tried teaching me, but I always got it wrong. My skills extend as far as peanut butter and olive sandwiches, heating up canned soup, and, if I'm feeling fancy, grilled cheese."
An unidentified noise filled my ear, possibly a sigh, possibly something else. It was hard to tell, since Carlos didn't usually make those kinds of noises. "I'm sending you a recipe for a basic stir fry," he said, and I could hear the sound of fingers tapping at a keyboard in the background. "It's easy, and it tastes good. I'm sure you could make it."
"But-" I cut myself off when my inbox pinged with an email from Carlos. I clicked on it and read through the very quick notes he'd made that apparently equated to a recipe. There weren't even exact measurements or ingredients. He'd just written:
Chicken breast/s (diced)
Vegetables
Stir fry recipe base
Rice
And then the instructions were just as vague:
Cook the chicken
Heat the vegetables
Add the recipe base
While everything else is cooking, cook the rice.
Eat
I felt entirely overwhelmed just reading it. Where were the details? How big did the chicken need to be? What vegetables? How much rice? "What the hell is a stir fry recipe base?" I asked.
"It's a packet of ready-made sauce that you just add to the pan," he explained patiently. There was more keyboard tapping as he added, "I'm sending you a link to the one I use. It can be found in most supermarkets, but if not, they'll probably have something similar."
"Okay," I said, clicking the link when it came through. "And how do I know how much of the chicken and vegetables to use?" I asked. "How big do I cut the chicken? What vegetables do I-"
"Babe," he said, cutting me off, sounding amused again. "You're overthinking it."
"I don't think I am," I responded, shaking my head and leaning back in my chair. "I don't think you realise just how bad a cook I am. I can't even julienne a carrot properly."
"And you don't need to," Carlos said firmly. "I don't know what kind of hoity-toity food your mother was trying to get you to cook, but this is pretty much fail-proof. You get the amount of chicken that the recipe base recommends and you cut it to the size you like. You use frozen, mixed vegetables, also in the quantity that the recipe says. Doesn't matter which ones. And it doesn't really matter if you go over or under the measurements. It just means the dish will be more or less saucy than usual."
"But what about-"
That noise came again, and it was definitely a sigh this time. "Go to the store after work - leave early if you have to. Pick up a pound of diced chicken breast from the deli, a bag of frozen vegetables, the recipe base, and some microwave rice," he instructed. "And FaceTime me when you're home and ready to start cooking. We'll work through it together."
I wanted to protest more, to try to convince Carlos that this was a terrible idea. But I couldn't deny the appeal of FaceTiming with him. It had been a week since I last saw him, and I hadn't realised how much I missed seeing him around the office until I heard his voice in my ear when I answered the phone. I was still apprehensive about the prospects of actually cooking something, but Carlos's confidence in my abilities had gotten me a long way in my job so far, so why shouldn't it work wonders for my domestic abilities as well?
"Okay," I agreed quietly, a small smile attempting to lift the corners of the frown that had been growing on my face since the moment he'd suggested I just cook something. Was I actually getting a little excited about the prospects of cooking? Surely not. Surely it was just the knowledge that I'd be spending time with Carlos, even if it was from a distance. I hadn't mentioned it to Lester when we'd been talking about the reasons behind Carlos choosing to go himself rather than send someone else, but I'd been worried he was running away from me. "Thanks, Carlos."
"Anytime, Babe," he assured me. "Just make sure you forward that report before you clock out."
