Forbidden

68. The Failure of Domestication

The following week and a half Max and Olivia were still pretty much inseparable.  They spent every night together either at Olivia's apartment or Max's. With the exception of a couple of days where Max had to go to the UK to film a Honda commercial, they didn't spend a single day apart and yet they weren't tired of each other. 

They had gone karting to this reserved place an hour away from Monaco, Max kicked her ass but that was to be expected. While Max trained every morning Olivia ran, they had made a little routine for themselves. They would go out to restaurants or to Max's yacht in the afternoons. Max tried to teach Olivia how to cook and then gave up after her first couple of solo attempts. He just knew he wasn't gonna be able to lie his entire life about liking her cooking so he was honest about it. 

Olivia's first attempt at cooking a grilled steak with garlic salad, for some reason was the worst steak Max had ever tried. Even though he saw Olivia cooking it so he wasn't really sure what she had done wrong. He tried to be supportive though.

"It's fantastic" said Max as he smiled at her and tried to swallow tiny pieces of steak like a pill in order not to taste it. 

"Really?" asked Olivia excited with a bright smile.

"Really love, thanks for cooking dinner" he said. It didn't help that Olivia would cover absolutely everything she ate in spicy salsa. Eggs, steak, tacos, chicken, quesadillas, popcorn, fruit, everything. So the taste didn't really matter to her. 

However that backfired for Max because after that Olivia kept insisting on cooking for him and Max had to think of reasons for her not to. So he had taken her out to a lot of restaurants the last few days. Until one day he couldn't escape any longer, Olivia had started cooking some sort of chicken with salad while he was showering. Max sat down on the table, fearful for his stomach. He tried a bite of the sliced chicken breast in front of him, at least it doesn't look pink, thought Max as he picked it up with his fork.  However, this was even worst than the steak. Max couldn't keep this up. 

"How is it?" said Olivia as she showered her chicken in a spicy green sauce she had brought from Mexico. She had lots of them stored in the fridge. 

Max tried to swallow and put the fork down, then he reached out for Olivia's hand and she held his hand with a soft smile on her face. 

"Olivia, why are you trying to poison me?" he said as he tried to suppress the laugh inside of him, this food was so terrible it almost seemed comical. 

Olivia's smile slowly disappeared "What do you mean?".

"I love you, and you have many talents, but cooking is not one of them. This chicken is the worst chicken I've ever had in my life" he said as sweetly as he could manage.

 She let go of his hand and cut a piece of chicken with her fork and ate it, after a moment of thinking she said "It tastes fine!" a little indignantly. 

"Yeah because you cover the entire thing on that green stuff" a chuckle escaped Max. 

"Wait, but didn't you like the steak I made?" she asked confused. 

"It was horrible love, please don't ever cook for me anything ever again" said Max seriously as he looked directly into her eyes "I'm glad this chicken is dead so they cannot know how terrible they taste".

Olivia's concerned look left her face and instead she was completely unamused as Max tried to hold in a laugh. She grabbed a piece of chicken from Max's plate and threw it at him in retaliation for his critique. It landed perfectly in the middle of his face and Olivia couldn't help but start laughing as the chicken stuck on his face for a moment before falling down.