Capturing the Moment

Chapter 8

Conner

They aren't five bites into dinner yet, but I don't care. I hurry to the stove and turn the exhaust fan on high to drown out any protests from Ryan. Then I get to work. 

After I throw on an apron, I move quick, getting out a sauté pan and double-checking the recipe before peeling and slicing bananas.

"Conner?" Ryan says, then Sidney. But I'm probably imagining it. Too much fan noise to be sure, what a shame!

For a second though, I swear I hear something else. Low voices maybe? Laughter? If I didn't know better - if I hadn't known Ryan my whole life - I'd swear it sounds like flirting to me. That can't possibly be true.

So I focus on the task at hand. I'm a bananas foster machine. Chopping so frantically I'm surprised I don't lose a finger. 

It doesn't take long to get a good sauce going. I cook the butter, sugar and spices until everything's thick and bubbly.  Adding in the bananas, I let it cook down a little more. 

Then I turn off the heat, pour in the red cooking wine and take my saute pan into the trivet on the table for my big reveal.

It isn't until I get there that I realize how horrible it looks. My bananas foster isn't that beautiful caramel color it is supposed to be. Thanks to the red wine, it looks like prehistoric sludge. Gross. 

It doesn't help that the bananas are gooey and overcooked.

It's a real horror how - a hot pan of goo. Fantastic.

No dessert on earth should ever look like this. This horrendous. I don't even have any ice cream to serve it with like I'm supposed to. Everyone is just going to get a nice dollop of banana flavored nightmares. 

Why did I make this?

Sidney and Ryan just sort of stare at it.

"Oh," she says, trying to hide her dismay, "You made dessert..."

"Bananas foster," I say.

Because, let's be honest, there's no way they're going to figure that on their own.

"Oh," she says again.

Ryan doesn't utter a word.

That's cool, I still have one flaming trick left up my sleeve. One last cha ice to break through that mood of his.

I pull out the wand lighter from my apron pocket.  They do not look happy or pleased. Ryan hops up, like he wants to physically stop this from happening. Which means I have to work fast. 

I flick the lighter and hold it to the sauce, but it won't catch. So I hold the flame closer. I wave ir around. Do everything I can think, but nothing happens.

"Did you use enough rum?" Sidney asks.

"We didn't have any... so I substituted red wine. Does that not light the same?"

Sidney pulls out her phone like she's going to google it, and I keep trying my lighter. My attempts getting more and more frantic.

"Conner," Ryan moves slowly toward me like I'm a ticking bomb, "maybe you should put the lighter down."

But I can't. I'm a man possessed. This flaming dessert is going to work -- even if it kills me.

And then something finally catches fire, but it's not my dessert.

It's my oven mitt. 

I shriek, ready to run. Like an idiot who wants to make the fire attached to his hand ten times worse.