Chapter 16 #2
I look different. Not in any obvious way—my pink-streaked hair is still pooling around my shoulders, my face is makeup-free like always. But there’s something in my eyes, something softer and more open than usual.
I look like someone who’s letting herself hope.
The drive to River’s house feels both too long and too short. My hands are slightly sweaty on the steering wheel, and my heart is doing this weird stuttering thing it’s been doing since last night.
I’m going to see River. River, who I kissed. River, who kissed me back like I was something he treasured. River, who held me while I cried and didn’t run away when I showed him all my broken pieces.
I pull into his driveway and kill the engine, taking a deep breath before I get out of the car. The late afternoon sun is warm on my shoulders as I walk to his front door, and I’m acutely aware of the way my pulse is racing.
This is ridiculous. It’s just River. Just cooking. Just like every other day this week. Except it’s not like every other day, because everything changed last night.
I ring the doorbell, and my stomach does a full aerobic routine. The door opens, and River is standing there in jeans and a blue t-shirt that fits him way too well. His hair is slightly messy and when he sees me, his whole face lights up with this smile that makes my knees weak.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice is warm and a little rough around the edges.
“Hey.” I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, suddenly shy. “Ready to challenge me with another mystery ingredient?”
His smile grows wider. “Always. Come in.”
I follow him inside, and he leads me straight to the kitchen. “Wait here,” he says, heading toward the pantry with that same mischievous energy he had yesterday.
I lean against the counter, my heart still doing its weird racing thing. This is fine. Everything is fine. We’re just two people who happened to kiss last night and are now continuing our professional arrangement where he pays me to cook dinner.
Totally normal. Nothing complicated about this at all.
River emerges from the pantry holding a jar. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
He presents the jar with a flourish. It’s tahini—sesame seed paste, smooth and creamy.
I take the jar, turning it over in my hands. “Tahini. Interesting.”
“Too easy?” River’s eyebrows furrow with concern. “I can get something else if—”
“No, it’s perfect.” I’m already thinking, my mind racing through possibilities. “Tahini is versatile. I can go savory or sweet with it. This is a great challenge.”
Relief crosses his face. “Good. I was worried it might be too straightforward after the lavender.”
“It’s not about how exotic the ingredient is,” I say, setting the jar on the counter. “It’s about learning to think creatively with what I have. And tahini has so many applications. This is going to be fun.”
River’s smile is so genuine, so pleased, that I have to look away before I do something stupid like kiss him again in the middle of his kitchen in broad daylight.
“All right.” He starts backing toward the hallway. “I’ll let you work. I’m on a self-imposed deadline with some of the footage, so I really need to focus for a while.”
“Go.” I make a shooing motion. “I’ve got this.”
He pauses in the doorway, and for a moment we just look at each other. There’s something in his expression—something soft and warm and maybe a little uncertain—that makes it hard for me to breathe.
“Kiera,” he says quietly. “About last night—”
“We can talk later,” I say quickly, because I’m not ready for this conversation yet. Not when I’m still trying to figure out what I’m feeling. “Go edit. Let me cook.”
He nods slowly, then disappears down the hallway. I hear the door to his editing room close, and I’m alone in the kitchen with a jar of tahini and about a million thoughts racing through my head.
I pull out my phone and start researching. Tahini is a staple in Middle Eastern cuisine, but it’s also incredibly versatile. It can be a main ingredient or a supporting player. The key is balancing its rich, nutty flavor with other elements so it doesn’t become overwhelming.
An idea starts forming. River has approximately seventeen different types of pasta in his cupboards—I’ve seen them. The man clearly loves pasta. So why not make a creamy tahini pasta?
I open his fridge and pantry, taking inventory. Cherry tomatoes. Fresh garlic. He has basil, parsley, and thyme. Lemons. Olive oil. And a billion choices of pasta, of course. I choose a linguine because the long strands will hold the sauce well.
For dessert... I smile to myself. Tahini brownies. Rich, fudgy chocolate brownies with swirls of tahini running through them. It’ll be unexpected, showing River that I can think outside the box.
I get to work, pulling out ingredients and lining them up on the counter. The pasta goes into a pot of salted boiling water. While that cooks, I’ll prep everything else.
I reach up to grab the flour from the top shelf—I’ll need it for dusting the brownie pan—and my finger catches the edge of the bag.
Time slows down.
The five-pound bag of flour tips forward, tumbles off the shelf, and explodes on the counter in a massive white cloud that billows up into my face.
“Oh, come on!” I sputter, waving my hands frantically, which only makes it worse. Flour puffs into the air, settling on every surface within a six-foot radius. The counter. The floor. My hair. My clothes.
I look down at myself. I’m completely covered in white powder, like I’ve been attacked by a very aggressive ghost.
Okay. Fine. This is fine. I can clean this up. It’s just flour.
I grab a dish towel and start wiping down the counter, trying to corral the flour into something manageable. But the towel just smears it around, creating this weird paste-like substance that’s somehow worse than the powder.
I abandon the towel and reach for paper towels instead. Better. Much better. I’m making actual progress now, gathering up handfuls of flour and dumping them into the trash.
That’s when I hear the sizzle.
I spin around just in time to see the pasta water boiling over, cascading down the sides of the pot and onto the stovetop with an angry hiss. Steam fills the air, and the water is spreading across the burner, pooling around the other pots I haven’t moved yet.
“No, no, no!” I lunge for the pot, turn down the heat, and grab it by the handle to move it off the burner.
Except I forget that the handle is metal. And has been sitting over the hot burner.
“Ow!” I drop the pot back onto the stove, shaking out my hand. The movement sends more pasta water sloshing over the side, sizzling and hissing.
I grab a potholder this time—like a smart person should have done in the first place—and successfully move the pot to a different burner. Crisis averted. Sort of.
I turn back to assess the damage. There’s flour everywhere, water all over the stovetop, and I’m pretty sure I have pasta water on my shoes now too. I check my hand. It hurts a little but it’s not a bad burn.
This is fine. Everything is fine. I can still salvage this.
I reach for the jar of tahini, planning to start on the sauce while I clean up the flour situation. But my hands are apparently coated in a thin layer of flour-paste from the counter, and the jar slips right through my fingers.
I watch in horror as it tumbles through the air, hits the edge of the counter, and tips over. The lid pops off, and thick, beige tahini starts oozing out onto the counter, mixing with flour to create this bizarre, gloppy mess. I grab it and set it upright before any more spills.
I just stand there for a second, staring at the disaster zone that is River’s pristine kitchen. This is it. This is how I die. Suffocated by my own incompetence in a cloud of flour and tahini.
“Hey, I heard a crash, is everything—” River appears in the kitchen doorway and stops dead. His eyes go wide as he takes in the scene. “Oh. Wow.”
“Don’t,” I warn, holding up one flour-covered hand. “Don’t say anything.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.” But his lips are twitching, fighting a smile.
“You’re smiling.”
“Am not.”
“You’re absolutely smiling.” I gesture at the chaos around me. “This is a disaster. A complete and total disaster, and you’re standing there smiling about it.”
“I’m not smiling about the disaster.” He moves into the kitchen, carefully stepping around the flour on the floor. “I’m smiling because you have flour in your hair. Like, a lot of flour. You look like you aged forty years in the last five minutes.”
I reach up and touch my hair. “This is not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
“It’s not.”
“Kiera.” He’s directly in front of me now, and he reaches out to brush some flour off my shoulder. “It’s definitely a little funny.”
I want to argue, but then I catch sight of my reflection in the window. I look absolutely ridiculous. Like I lost a fight with a bag of flour and then rolled around in hot water for good measure.
A laugh bubbles up before I can stop it. Just a small one at first, but then it grows, and suddenly I’m laughing so hard I have to lean against the counter. Which is a mistake because now I have more flour on my jeans.
River starts laughing too, and the sound fills the kitchen—warm and genuine and completely at odds with the disaster surrounding us.
“Okay,” I say, wiping tears from my eyes and probably smearing flour across my face in the process. “Maybe it’s a little funny.”
“Here, let me help.” River grabs a clean dish towel and starts wiping up the counter.
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” He’s already scooping up handfuls of the powdery mess. “Besides, this is partly my fault. I’m the one who put the flour on the top shelf where it could fall.”
“I’m the one who knocked it over.”
“Semantics.” He dumps a load of flour-tahini paste into the trash. “We’re in this together.”
I grab another towel and start working on the stovetop, soaking up the pasta water. We work in silence for a minute, both focused on damage control.