Taking a Bite from the Big Apple (Complete)

32

Cheryl scurried off and Toni walked into the kitchen, taking another couple of deep breaths to prepare herself for her task.

She’d decided early in the New Year that she wanted to try and cook her girlfriend dinner for her birthday and had been spending the two and a half weeks since figuring out what she could cook, searching the internet for easy recipes. Cooking was something that neither she nor her grandmother had ever been any good at, and living in such close proximity to whatever type of cuisine they could want, neither had ever bothered to learn, but Cheryl had cooked on a number of occasions and Toni wanted to repay the favour, as best she could anyway, so had decided to cook pasta, figuring as long as she kept to the instructions, it would be hard to mess up.

She opened the refrigerator and took out the store-bought pesto sauce, figuring she would go about this new skill slowly, that attempting to actually make the sauce would have disaster written all over it; a pack of grape vine tomatoes and a container that had mini-mozzarella balls in it, all specially bought during the week and put them on the countertop. She turned the stove on and oven and placed a saucepan with water on it, bringing it to the boil and opened a pack of linguine, taking half the contents and putting them in the water.

“Shit. Salt,” she muttered to herself as soon as she put the pasta in, “Supposed to put salt in.”

Deciding to forgo the salt in case it caused some kind of horrible reaction, she stirred the pasta once with a fork and bent down to rummage in the cupboards for some focaccia bread she knew was in there, eventually locating it. She put it in the oven to warm and straightened up, her eyes widening in panic when she saw a white foam bubbling out of the saucepan.

“Oh for fuck sake,” she exclaimed, taking it off the heat, “It’s fucking pasta, I can’t even do fucking pasta?!”

“Whoa, I feel like I should back away quietly and run for my life.”

Toni spun around at the sound of her girlfriend’s voice and sighed.

“I was trying to cook you dinner. Epic failure.”

Cheryl’s eyes lit up and she walked into the kitchen from where she was leaning against the dining table.

“Baby, that’s so sweet.”

“Yea, doubtful. I can’t even do the basics.”

The redhead looked at the pasta and put it back on the heat, turning it down slightly.

“Heat was just up too high. And here,” she grabbed some olive oil from the side and swirled it around on top, “That’ll stop it bubbling over. The oil stops-”

“Oxygen from going in,” Toni finished, “I remember from Bio. Tests for rusting and stuff.”

“Exactly.”

“I really wanted to be able to make something for you.”

Cheryl wrapped her arms around her girlfriend’s midsection from behind and rested her head on her shoulder.

“Why don’t we make it together? You did most of the stuff already anyway.”

“I forgot the salt,” Toni mumbled.

“Not important. I don’t like it al dente anyway.”

“Why are you so nice to me?”

“’Cause you let me see your boobs whenever I want,” Cheryl answered, deadpan, “And ‘cause I’m hopelessly in love with you.”

Toni was about to echo a similar sentiment when she smelt something.

“For fucks sake! The fucking bread!” she said and freed herself from the embrace to bend down, taking the bread from the oven burning herself in the process, “Ow! This is ridiculous, anyone can do this and I just, I just…”