"Tonight, we're making pizza. Can you give me the pizza pans from the counter?" Rick asks Zoe.
"Sure, chef," Zoe replies.
Zoe grabs the pans and heads over to where Rick is working by the kitchen island.
Rick watches as Zoe puts the pans on the butcher block and rubs his hands together, itching to get started with what they will do.
"We gotta get the flour and little egg, and then we'll roll some dough, okay?"
"Okay."
"Work your hands in there. Make sure you knead the dough enough to spread it out like a pizza."
Zoe kneads the dough and has a working pizza crust before she knows it. But once she's at this point, she doesn't know what to do. She looks to Rick to see if what she's doing is right.
"That's good. That's good, Zoe. Now, just push it out with your palms."
Once she does, the pizza crust will improve. Rick will watch as she puts all her effort into it and give her some pointers.
"Get your fingers in there, just like that. Nice and round."
Rick starts making his crust and quickly fills the pan. He then gives Zoe more information about how the crust should be made.
After about two minutes into the crust-making process, Rick picks up the dough and starts spreading it out with his hands, making it thinner. Once he's done spreading it out, he twirls it and tosses it into the air, catching it when it comes back down.
"Can I do that with mine?" Zoe asks as she sees Rick throw up dough once more.
"When you're ready, I don't see why not. It is not easy to do. I'll warn you about that." As Rick finishes his last statement, the pizza dough lands on his head while he is talking with Zoe, completely forgetting about the dough in the air. He looks like a ghost. And with that, Zoe starts giggling uncontrollably.
When she finally gets her pizza dough ready to throw in the air, she's having trouble getting it onto her hands to toss it. Rick watches as she tries to throw it; when she does, it almost lands on her. So he tells her to put it back on the table, add more flour, and tighten the dough mixture. Once she does, it's a little more manageable, and she tosses it easily. Rick puts the finishing touches on both their pizzas in the oven and then prepares his special treat.
After finishing the pizzas, he pulls them out and slices them into their traditional eight slices. He tells Zoe to get her aunt.
"Kate, we're ready!" Zoe says that she knocks on Kate's door.
When Kate opens the door, she sees Zoe standing there with a bright smile. She leaves the room, but Zoe stops and tells her to remove her shoes.
"You want me to take off my shoes?" Kate questions.
All Zoe does is nod. When Kate walks out into the hallway, Zoe says,
"Close your eyes."
Once she does, she takes her left hand and feels along the wall to know where she's going, just as Zoe takes her right to lead her to where they will eat.
"No peeking!"
"What's the secret?" Kate asks.
"You'll see," Zoe replies saying nothing.
Zoe leads Kate to the entrance of the living room and stops. She sees that Rick is preparing for their dinner and waits. Once he nods at her, she has the okay to tell Kate to open her eyes.
"Okay, Kate, you can open your eyes now."
What Kate sees before her is something out of a fairy tale. There is a sheet hanging on clotheslines to resemble a tent. It's open on two sides, and as she walks toward Rick, she notices everything laid out on the floor. It's cute, she thinks to herself.
"Wow! I guess we're not eating at the table tonight."
"We don't have one because we're on Safari."
Kate ventures to where Rick is directing her to sit down. Just as she's about to sit on the floor, she notices that there are no plates. She stops midway down to reverse course to get up and get plates.
"I'll get the plates." She says.
"Oh no, you don't. We don't need plates. Plates attract the big cats." Rick tells her.
"Well, we wouldn't want the big cats ruining our dinner, would we?" Kate says.
Rick is amazed at how quickly she goes along with the night's theme. He wouldn't tell her, but he likes her even more for what she's doing to let her niece have her wish.
Kate sits down and folds her legs in front of her. Rick takes the pizza tray and offers her a slice, which she accepts. After taking the first bite, she is pleasantly surprised by what she tastes. Now she has to know.
"Okay, who made the pizza?" She asks.
Rick points to Zoe, and Zoe raises her hand, saying,
"I did."
Kate looked at Rick, not believing what she was being told, and he just gave her a quick wink.
The night's theme quickly turns to stories about the animals that Rick has encountered. While he's never been on Safari, he has been to several zoos around the city. Kate contributes stories of when she was younger and told Zoe, who was amazed at the animals they described. Kate sees a trip to the zoo in Zoe's future.
Rick places wooden sticks in his hand like he's holding a fistful of spaghetti. He has them about two feet from where their pizza sits in the middle of their makeshift table. Kate and Zoe looked on as he released all the sticks, and they fell in a pile on top of themselves. He looked at both of them and said,
"I'm going to teach you a game that should be easy. But I'm just here to let you know I'm a pro at this game." Rick said confidently.
Kate, who could never turn down a challenge, gave him a look that said we'll see who wins. Zoe looks at him, waiting for an explanation of what to do.
Rick saves three sticks from the pile and gives Zoe and Kate one each. Then, he starts explaining how the game is played.
"Okay, this is a straightforward game. You need to take the stick I just gave you and remove one of the sticks on the pile without disturbing any other stick. If you move one while removing the stick you're trying to get out, you lose your turn and wait for another chance."
Rick takes his stick, finds a stick he wants to remove from the pile, finds the center of the stick, and flips it upward away from the stack. Kate and Zoe watch as the stick flies into their makeshift tent and bounces to the floor. Kate thinks that this is going to be easy. Zoe believes that this is going to be a challenge. But both of them are eager to start.
"Any questions?" When he is met with silence, the game begins. Zoe starts the game off. She carefully puts her stick on the end of one, almost untouched. But she doesn't see that the end of the stick she's trying to remove is connected to one alongside it. She tries to launch it upwards, but in the process, it catches the stick that sits on it, and her turn is over. Realizing that Zoe has just put her in a sticky predicament, Kate looks at the sticks closer to the bottom for a stick that might not be affected by being moved if she tries to remove one of those.
By the time the game is finished, Rick is declared the winner, as he knew he would be. Next, they play charades, and Zoe wins because no one can guess what she hints at. Shortly after that, Zoe falls asleep with her favorite stuffed animal. Rick needs to get going because it's almost 11:00 p.m. he gets up from where he was sitting. He hears Kate tell him that she needs to put Zoe to bed.
"I should really get her to bed."
Rick looks at Kate with an understanding look and then says,
"Let me."
She thanks him, and he picks up Zoe bridal style and carries her to her bedroom. Once she's tucked into bed, he heads back to clean up the kitchen. Once he arrives, he sees that Kate has almost single-handedly finished everything in the time it took him to put Zoe in her bed; he can't believe how fast this woman works.
He turns around and moves toward the makeshift tent they had set up earlier. Having finished in the kitchen, Kate follows him into the living room to help. They strike up a conversation about how Rick became a chef.
"So, where did you go to cooking school?" Kate asks.
"Oh, as a child, I sat at my grandmother's house in…"
"Oh, that's right, Miami." Kate reminds him rather cynically.
"No, actually, it was Pittsburgh. My father was a steelworker."
"But you did go to cooking school?"
"Are you kidding me? When I was growing up, cooking was for girls. Boys didn't learn how to prepare food. No, I took a different path to learn all about gastronomical delights. After graduating from high school, I bought a ticket to Italy and backpacked throughout the country. I owe my entire career to a girl named Sophia."
"Sophia?" Kate asks.
"Yes. She was my first love. She was an older woman. I was 18, and she was 20. Her father owned a little trattoria in Tuscany. She told her father we were just friends. He gave me a job in his kitchen, and I fell madly in love with food. I also loved everything Italian while I was there."
"What happened to Sophia?" Kate asks as she's becoming more invested in his history of becoming a chef.
"Her father found out what she and I were doing and fired me."
"That's too bad."
"It's not really. It opened some doors for me. I spent the next few years working for some excellent restaurants in Milan."
"So why aren't you running your own kitchen?" Kate asks, looking at him, waiting for an honest answer.
"I… don't know. I guess the right offer hasn't come along yet." Rick says as he looks at Kate, showing her a side of him he rarely shows to anyone.
She looks at him, knowing his answer is sincere, leading her to ask her next question. As she tries to word it in her head and comes up empty, she point blank asks him. She moves to the refrigerator and asks,
"What would you do if you had your wish?" Kate asks as she pulls open the refrigerator door.
"I got my wish," Rick says as he moves her out of the way of the refrigerator door and opens it. He pulls out the Tupperware he had earlier placed on the shelf. He then pulls off the lid and shows her the contents.
"I made it this morning." To which she says,
"I'm not a dessert person."
"You might not be, but you haven't tried my tiramisu."
Over the next hour, they learn more about each other while consuming Rick's tiramisu and listening to an opera he had put on his CD player. She has to admit that he does have skills. The tiramisu is to die for.
Rick discovered more about Kate than he ever imagined, and with each piece of information, he fell for her that much more.
He is amazed at how large her heart is. He had a similar experience with one of his cousins. Like Zoe, his cousin John was an only child, and his parents died in a skiing accident. The chairlift they were riding in plummeted to the Earth two hundred feet above some jagged rocks. In a tiny oversight, John lost both of his parents. The difference between Kate and Zoe is that John, who was initially taken in by his uncle Gus, was never the same because after Gus got fed up with him, he bounced around from relative to relative, never once finding a safe and secure home call his own. So, he gives Kate a lot of credit. He can only imagine what Zoe must be feeling right now.
Kate plunges her spoon back into the tray of tiramisu, and she comes up with a large spoonful. She puts it in her mouth and gets a small amount on the corner of her lips.
"Well, maybe I am a dessert person, " she says as she relishes the attack on her taste buds.
Rick puts his spoon back into the Tupperware of tiramisu. He gets up and moves to where Kate is leaning against her couch. Then he sees a little dab of tiramisu in the corner of her mouth, but he hasn't done anything about it yet.
"Did you know that tiramisu means food of the Gods in Italian?"
Kate looks at him skeptically before speaking, and when she does, she tells him,
"No, it doesn't," Kate says, and then they both laugh lightly, knowing he was teasing her.
Rick sees the corner of her mouth and decides to brush off the tiramisu that is there.
"You have a little… some cream there…" Rick says almost in a whisper. He takes his index finger and gently wipes the corner of her mouth and then puts his finger in his mouth, cleaning it off.
The second he touched the corner of her mouth, it felt like electricity surged through her body. His touch was almost something she wanted him to do again and again.
Rick looked at Kate and wanted to move cautiously but decided against it. He wanted their first kiss to be something both could enjoy, so he decided to go home.
"I should go," Rick tells her.
He leans toward her and puts his arm around her shoulders. When he stops, she doesn't know why until he speaks again.
"You're leaning on my scarf."
Kate thought for sure that he was going to kiss her. She would have welcomed it, but maybe it's better if he didn't.
"Oh, right. Yeah." She says as she leans forward to let him take his scarf from behind her back.
"Sorry."
Rick puts his coat on as he walks into the kitchen, stops the CD player, unplugs it, and grabs his pizza pans. And as he's walking out to the front door, he says,
"Good night, Kate."
She watches as her front door closes. Tonight, she thought, was a good start for them. She walks over to the front door, locks the locks, turns out the lights, and thinks of him through her bedtime routine.