How The Cookie Crumbles (12 page)

Chloë laughed. “Yeah, she’s got a date with Chuck.”

“Who’s Chuck?” Now he looked less certain.

“Chuck Hughes.” I replied, as if that required no further explanation. At their blank faces, I added, “He’s an amazing cook, cute too. He owns these über-cool restaurants in Montreal, Garde-Manger and Le Bremner. Plus he has a show on the Food Network.”

Now the light was starting to come on. “Wait,” Jake said, “You don’t want to go out with us because you’re staying home to watch a stupid cooking show? That is so lame.”

“It’s not just any cooking show, it’s the best cooking show on the Food Network! I love it, it’s my favourite.”

“Can’t you just record it, and watch it later?” suggested Tolly helpfully, as if girls would be unfamiliar with this technological miracle.

“No PVR here,” I told him. “We have to watch things live, old school. It’s on at 7:30, so I could go out afterwards. You could all watch Chuck’s Day Off too.”

All the guys groaned. I have noticed that lots of people like to eat, but they also like to think that food miraculously appears without any effort at all.

“Seriously, people who watch cooking shows never cook,” said Tolly, obviously irritated that he had to wait around while I watched my show.

“That’s so untrue.” I loved the Food Network and I cooked all the time.

Jake decided to jump on this as well. “Really? Well, Frankie, you talk a good game.”

“Meaning?” I challenged him.

“Well, you talk about gourmet food all the time, but who knows if you can actually cook.”

Had he seen the Classico jar in the kitchen? That was not my fault! “You would know if you had picked up your cupcakes.”

“Cup-caaakes?” he teased me. I started blushing in spite of myself, remembering what I had said to him. Jake continued, “Anyway, cupcakes aren’t really gourmet cooking.”

“Frank’s a great cook,” Chloë piped up.

“We have only your word on that,” Jake drawled. “I’d like to taste Frankie’s cooking for myself, and see how gourmet she really is.”

“Okay, I’ll cook up whatever Chuck does tonight. Unless it’s super-expensive.” Sometimes Chuck went pretty high-end, lobster was his favourite food. I already knew from The Keg that Jake was a big eater. Who knew how much Tolly and Andrew could eat.

“No excuses, we’ll all chip in for the food.” Jake reached for his wallet and pulled out a twenty and the other guys followed suit. “And stop bugging Frankie, we can use this time for a little pre-party.”

Negotiations followed on going to the Beer Store. That was another thing I found weird about Ontario, there was an actual store with the words “The Beer Store” on it where you bought beer, instead of just going to the pub or the liquor store.

Jake asked me what I wanted to drink, as if I would drink when I had to figure out how to make a dinner party from the TV clues. Yet I still found myself holding a beer in one hand once the show started, in the other hand I had my trusty notebook.

This episode of the show was about inviting some local cops to dinner. It actually turned out to be one of the more complicated dinners I had ever seen Chuck cook, but I thought I could handle it.

The menu was: Peach and Blue Cheese Salad, Portuguese Chicken with Chorizo and Clams, Doughnut Extravaganza.

The guys kept making sarcastic remarks during the show, so I had to shush them. Jake was sitting on the couch next to me. I let out a little sigh as Chuck chopped the shallots.

“What is it?” he asked curiously.

“He’s so good with his knife,” I replied admiringly. Then they all started to laugh at me, I guess it was a little suggestive.

“You find guys that cook hot?” he wondered.

“I find guys that are really good at things, hot,” I replied without taking my eyes from the screen. Chuck was definitely hot, he was cute, a great chef and funny. He had tattoos of all his favourite foods. If I lived in Montreal, I would have killed to be a waitress at his restaurant.

At the commercial I turned to find Jake looking at me thoughtfully.

“What is it?” I wondered.

“Just trying to figure you out,” he replied.

“Good luck with that.”

“Well, if you like guys that are good at things, wait until you see me play mini-golf.”

A mini-golf pro would not be a turn-on. But I had bigger things to worry about. There were appliances that I needed to find and ingredients I needed to source to make this complex dinner. I didn’t know where to go in Kingston to find the ethnic foods on my list. I tapped a pen on my notebook, and frowned.

“Do you guys know where I should go to get chorizo sausage, Portuguese buns, and prosciutto?”

Jake nodded, “I know where you can go, and I’ll take you there. It’s a drive.”

He looked over my to-do list, and surprisingly he offered up that his mom had a deep fryer and a food processor and he would ask if I could borrow them. Sometimes he was so nice, he made me think I had underestimated him. He was a lot more appealing when he wasn’t hitting on me.

Jake

Andrew wanted to drop in on Chloë, which I personally thought was a bad idea. I knew from living with two older sisters that chicks don’t like it when you just drop in, they like to be all fixed up and ready with everything all perfect. And Frankie could be scary at the best of times, so I would hate to see what she would be like if we surprised her in her lair. When she opened the screen door, I heard Tolly swear softly and I agreed, Frankie looked extra hot. She was wearing a little red top and tiny jean shorts, with high sandals, and she was showing a ton of bare skin and a lot of cleavage. I knew all too well that her tits were phenomenal. And her toenails were the same red as her top. Was it perverted to notice that she had cute toes? I took a deep breath and tried to remember that we were buddies, just buddies. For now, anyway.

Frankie was surprisingly friendly and invited us in and brought out some cookies. Their house was pretty crazy, for starters it looked nothing like any student house I had ever seen; it was all fixed up, with furniture, paintings, drapes, and a ton of cushions. It looked like a real home, except kind of girly. There was even a gigantic cat sitting in one of the chairs that nobody seemed to want to disturb.

I felt at home there, sitting beside Frankie on the couch. She was all excited about some dumb cooking show, and when she leaned forward to watch it, I noticed that her back was bare and her top was just held together by knots at the neck and waist, which was kind of tempting. She smelled good, like girl sweat and something sweet. It was like she was two people: at work she was this little general who was all organized and business-like, but at home she was more relaxed and nice.

I maybe goaded her into cooking a big dinner for us. We decided on Tuesday, when Frankie had the day off and could prepare everything. She seemed pretty keen to do this, so I offered to drive her around town and help her get everything she needed. I wasn’t doing anything else since everyone else had jobs or school during the day, and I didn’t mind helping out. Plus, I wanted to make sure she got the good kind of chorizo sausage.

We ended up not playing mini-golf, but instead staying at their place and playing board games. One game, you had to act out all these cards before they dropped down into the timer, and Frankie got all mad at me for not guessing “pogo stick”. I actually got it right away, but I wanted to watch her bouncing up and down. The whole night was fun in a goofy, high school way. It was stupid but I kinda liked doing stuff like this. Since I left home at 15 to play junior, I felt like I missed some of the regular shit everyone else got to do. Not that I’d give up my L.A. lifestyle, but once in a while it was nice to kick back and feel totally normal. I still wanted to nail Frankie, but we actually got along pretty well and I liked hanging out with her. Pretty sure that ‘friends’ didn’t give you boners all the time though.

When we got in the car afterwards, Tolly paused before putting the key in the ignition. “She’s hot,” he said, “I can see why you’re so into her.”

“Yeah!” Andrew and I said at the same time.

17. What’s Cooking

We had set up the big dinner party for Tuesday night, when I was off all day. I worked Sunday night and Monday day and night, but I managed to get some prep done. Jake had been really nice about helping out, and he dropped his mom’s food processor by on Sunday and then stayed for lunch. He told me he couldn’t bring over the deep fryer because it was already full of oil, but I figured I could substitute a wok and risk grease burns.

Jake had offered to come over on Tuesday and help out, he was going to drive me somewhere special to get the sausage and Portuguese buns. He showed up early, and I was just starting the doughnuts, so I gave him a coffee and a bran muffin and he sat down in the kitchen to watch Frankie’s Day Off. It seemed like we were hanging out a lot lately. I realized he really wasn’t into the buddy stuff, but I suspected that he went out on a lot of dates so I wasn’t really worried. He didn’t bring them all to The Keg, but between what his buddies hinted and what Chloë guessed, I figured that he was a busy boy.

I deep-fried the doughnuts, which was both exciting and hot. Literally hot, since our brick house seemed designed to keep heat in. I was wearing a full apron to protect myself from splattering grease. Sensing the tension, Jake stayed on the other side of the kitchen and watched me, occasionally offering unhelpful suggestions like “Watch out!” and “Careful!”

I finished all the doughnuts and they were laid them out on baking sheets covered with paper towels. Jake looked closely at them.

“How come there are no holes?” he wondered.

“These are filled doughnuts.” I explained. Jake seemed to be strangely interested in the whole cooking process.

Once I had finished the hot oil cooking, I pulled out the three new pastry bags and the fillings that I had made earlier: dark chocolate and salted caramel ganache, raspberry mango, and lemon cream. I carefully filled each pastry bag, and Jake dipped a finger into the chocolate sauce to taste it.

“Bad boy!” I told him, smacking his wrist. “You better wash your hands, because you’re helping with the next stage.”

“What do I have to do?” He sounded nervous.

“Fill the doughnuts, like this.” I picked up a doughnut, inserted the metal tip of the pastry bag into the side and squeezed filling in until a little ran out. I did the chocolate ones, and handed Jake the lemon filling. If he made a mess it would be less noticeable, but this wasn’t exactly rocket science. As I watched, he carefully held the doughnut and stuck his tongue out as he concentrated adding on the filling. Then he smiled and proudly put his filled doughnut on the plate.

“Good job,” I told him. “Now only 94 left.”

He sighed and got to work.

After I had motored through about six, I suddenly realized that this whole process was pretty sexual. Here I was inserting a pointy tip into a soft doughnut and shooting it full of cream. I bit my lip in an effort not to laugh and when I glanced sideways at Jake I found him looking at me with a smirk on his face.

“Y’know, this is reminding me of something,” Jake said, and then he gave his pastry bag a firm squeeze for emphasis. The filling came squirting out with a rude noise, and I started to laugh. Soon, we were both laughing so hard we had to put down everything, finally my sides started to ache and I had to have a few sips of water to calm down.

“You see,” I gasped, “cooking is a lot of fun.”

“Cooking with you is fun, it’s kinda hot.” Jake said, and he moved closer to me, so close that I could feel his body heat in an already steaming kitchen. Then he smiled down at me and ran a finger down my upper arm.

Jake

When I got to Frankie’s place, she already had millions of doughnuts cut out and rising on trays. I could hardly get out of bed before 10, but it looked like Frankie had been up for hours already. She looked like something out of a 50’s movie, wearing a combination dress/shorts thing and an apron. Really, she wasn’t like anyone I had ever met before.

Anyway, we ended up filling these doughnuts and then laughing about how much like sex it was. Frankie had this great hearty laugh, and she seemed to be completely relaxed and enjoying herself. I felt like I wanted to make her laugh more and more. It was a feeling I hadn’t had for ages: a real connection. I moved towards her, but when I brushed some flour off her arm, she jumped a mile and started talking super-fast. Man, she was so nervous around anything sexual, there’s no way she could be a virgin, was there? Naw, Chloë had mentioned an ex-boyfriend.