Love Signals: An opposites-attract, forced proximity, only one bed, revenge romantic comedy (Love St

17. Confusing Food Analogies

Hudson

This.This is what’s missing from life in Malibu. A big, noisy family cooking together and having fun. Allie’s right—they are nuts, they argue about everything, but they also love each other fiercely. You can just feel it. I know I’m not a part of it, and yet somehow they’re making me feel like I belong.

Well, everyone except Allie’s dad, Enzo, who’s acting like I’m some sort of predator, here to corrupt his youngest daughter. The truth is, I’d corrupt the hell out of her if she wanted me to. Gladly, and with fervor, over and over again. The rest of the family, however, seems to take me at my word that I’m here to help. Which I am. But also…

Allie’s grandma taught me how to use the pasta maker, and together we’ve made enough fettuccine to feed the neighborhood. The entire dining room table is covered with noodles that will sit there for a few hours to dry before supper. Her nonno made good on his offer of a sandwich. In fact, he made them for the entire family, and wow, are they tasty—spicy mortadella, melted provolone cheese, tomato, and mayo on a sourdough roll. He starts by making piles of the meat and cheese, then fries them up to brown the meat and melt the cheese. Then he adds them to the roll, cuts them in half, then fries the whole thing. My nutritionist would be horrified because there must be a thousand calories in each one, but honestly, it’s worth every second I’m going to have to spend in the gym.

We’ve just finished cleaning up from lunch when Enzo announces it’s time for him to make the sauce. “Everybody clear out except Mr. Finch, who’s going to help me.”

The room goes so quiet, you could hear a noodle drop. Allie’s mom’s jaw drops. “You’re going to show him how to make your red sauce?”

He cracks his knuckles. “He’s our honored guest.”

Huh, based on the look on his face, I’m not sure he actually means that. I stand, watching as aprons are hung on a hook on the wall, and the rest of the family disperses. Enzo gathers the ingredients and places them on the island, then gets out a big knife, a wooden spoon, and … is that … a razor blade? Yup, it is. I’m starting to think coming here was a bad idea after all.

“Have a seat.” He gestures to a stool that’s tucked under the island. I do what he said, then watch as he pulls apart a garlic bulb. “Do you know how to make a red sauce?”

“I know how to open a jar,” I answer with a grin.

Okay, that joke didn’t land. He’s glaring again.

“No, not from scratch.”

“From scratch is the only way to make it,” he says. “The secret to a good red sauce is to slice the garlic so thin it melts into the olive oil and disappears.”

I watch as he peels each clove, then starts to slice them with the razor blade.

“Oh hey, they did this in that movie Goodfellas,” I remark.

Enzo looks at me like I’ve sprouted horns. “I didn’t learn to cook from the TV.”

“No, I’m sure you didn’t.” All right, Hudson, dial back the jokes. Enzo’s not your audience.

The world’s most uncomfortable silence follows while he painstakingly slices each clove until there’s a big pile of them on the cutting board, each one paper-thin. Enzo picks up the big knife and a red onion. Chopping it in half with a loud, decisive slap, he says, “So, why are you really here, Mr. Finch?”

“I wanted to pay Allie back for helping me out the other day.”

He pauses for a second and looks over his glasses at me. “The real reason.”

I was lonely and bored. And I’m insanely attracted to her. “That’s it. Honestly.”

He stares me down while I meet his gaze, then he turns his attention back to the onion. “A good red sauce needs a lot of time to simmer on the stove. Slowly. Low heat for several hours. Time is the key ingredient because it’s the only thing that allows all the flavors to come through.”

In other words, don’t try to sleep with my daughter for a few years. “That makes sense.”

“Of course, you have to start with the right ingredients because without that, it doesn’t matter how many hours on the stove you give it, it’ll taste like garbage.”

“I feel like I should be taking notes,” I answer.

He gives me the over-the-glasses glare again. “You should, because cooking is life. What you do in the kitchen teaches you how to live. Take my wife and me—we had the right ingredients to make a good marriage. We’re both from the same place, so we share the same beliefs about the world and how to raise a family. This is very important for a happy life.”

In other words, Allie and I don’t have the right ingredients to make a happy life. Even though marriage is the very last thing on my mind, somehow having her dad suggest I’m not good enough brings out the defiant streak in me. “Well, one could also say that having differences could keep things interesting.”

“No, you don’t want interesting,” he says, waggling one finger at me. “Interesting means arguments you never solve. You want harmony, which only comes from growing up with the same values, and values come from one’s culture.”

“Sure, but we’re all Americans here, right? Isn’t that enough?”

He shakes his head. “No, not at all. America is big pot of too many possibilities. People throwing anything they want into the pot. This is why there are so many divorces. People like you thinking a good sauce can be made with the wrong ingredients.”

People like me? Yeesh. “I’ve never even tried to make a sauce, so…”

“Why not? You’re getting a little old to let the sauce simmer properly.”

Okay, I’m getting a little confused with all this sauce and marriage talk. And also, he’s calling me old? This guy is two pointy ears and some green makeup away from being Yoda. “I guess I’ve never found compatible ingredients or just one compatible ingredient?”

“Or maybe you’re not the right ingredient. Maybe you’re pepper, sprinkling a little here and a little there in every dish, instead of being like the tomato paste that only goes in one thing—a red sauce.”

Okay, so he’s got me there. I have done my fair share of sprinkling myself a little here and a little there. But I can’t exactly tell him that, now can I? “To be honest, I’m not sure what I am, but I don’t think it’s pepper.” Glancing at the items on the counter, I say, “Maybe I’m more like … the ground meat?”

“You don’t know? A man has to know these things before he can make a sauce,” he says, gesturing at me with the massive knife he’s holding. “If you don’t know, you could hurt someone very badly.”

Seriously, does he think I’m intimidated by this?

Okay, maybe I’m a little intimidated, but it’s a really big freaking knife.

“My Allegra’s been hurt before by a hot pepper. Lando. She thought he was the one, but it turns out, he was the one to break her heart,” Enzo says, chopping the onion so hard his forehead starts to glisten. “He had her totally fooled into thinking he was tomato paste. He was in her program at university so they had a lot in common. He was even Italian, so he managed to fool Allegra’s mother and the rest of the family. Not me, mind you. A father can always tell pepper when he sees it. In this case, he was using her to get ahead at school while he was sprinkling pepper all around town, if you get my drift.”

Pretty sure I can follow his train of thought, even if it does seem like it’s only on the track half the time. “That’s awful.”

“It was awful. He broke her heart. Snapped it in half. Stole all her research and dumped her. She’s never been the same. She used to have this light in her eyes and when he did that to her, it went out,” he says, shaking his head. “Do you know what that does to a father? To see the light in his child’s eyes go out?”

“I can imagine.”

“No, you can’t. It kills you,” he says, tapping his fist against his heart. “It makes you want to kill, so when another man shows up with a case of wine and a big smile, it makes you worry. Is he the kind of guy who wants to sprinkle himself all over every woman he meets? Does he turn up the heat so fast, he burns people? Am I going to have another man out there I want to kill? It’s a problem for a father.”

Well, this is just great. I came over to help out a little and have a nice day and now I’m being quasi-threatened. “Look, sir, I have no intention of breaking your daughter’s heart. Our relationship is purely professional. Well, I’d like to think we’re becoming friends, but that’s it. I’m only here for a few weeks, and then I’m leaving. I’d never dream of breaking her heart.”

“I hope not.”

“I won’t.”

He glares at me. “You better not.”

Oh Jesus, are we going to do this all day? “I’m not going to.”

“Okay then,” he says. “Because I’ve been waiting for years to see that light back in her eyes, and my heart won’t feel right until it’s there.”

Allie’s mom, Maria, walks into the kitchen just as I say, “Got it. And I promise not to sprinkle any pepper while I’m in town.”

She makes a loud tsking sound and rolls her eyes. “Seriously, Enzo?” She turns to me. “Don’t listen to a word this one says. If ever there was a man who used to sprinkle pepper all over town, it was this guy. I was the one who turned him into tomato paste.”

“Hey! What are you doing?” Enzo says to his wife. “You can’t tell him that. I’m making a point here.”

“I’ll tell you what you’re doing. You’re making this nice young man—who came over to our house to help—feel uncomfortable for no good reason. Come on, if he was pepper, he would’ve tried something when Allie spent the night at the hospital with him.”

That’s not strictly true, on account of me being incapacitated at the time, but I appreciate her faith in me. I open my mouth to agree with her, but Enzo beats me to the punch. “He might be pepper! You don’t know.”

She points a finger at him. “A mother knows.”

“Well, so does a father!”

“No, you think every man is pepper when it comes to Allegra.”

“That’s because at the heart of every man is pepper.”

He’s not wrong. The last thing I’m going to do is agree with the man, but he’s definitely not wrong. I sit back and watch the two of them go head-to-head about pepper and tomato paste and Allegra, and the entire time, I’m only thinking one thing. I would like to kill that Lando guy myself. Which is insane, but true. There’s just something about the thought of the light in her eyes going out that gets to me.

And then it hits me—I need to protect her from me, because I’d very much like to sprinkle some pepper her way, and that’s the last thing she needs right now. Because in five weeks, I’m going to disappear from her life forever.