9. Ember
Ember
“The secret to happiness is simple:
eat well, be loud often, and never admit you were wrong.”
— Ancient Goat Wisdom
The organic heirloom tomatoes I bought at the market forty miles away are currently staring up at me from the rusted laminate counter like small, red accusations. Beside them, a box of penne and a jar of single-estate olive oil sit in a pool of gray afternoon light.
I am determined. I am focused.
I have wet my curls down until they are somewhat submissive, pinning them back with a pair of clips, and I’ve applied a fresh, aggressive coat of my matte red lipstick.
Today is a restructuring day.
Today, I do not fail.
I am going to cook a flawlessly balanced, premium Italian dinner for my hot, grumpy fireman neighbor and his tiny daughter, and I am going to prove that I am a functional adult who can handle a kitchen without a culinary emergency response team.
Or at minimum, an adult who can produce one meal without requiring intervention from the fire department.
I turn toward the oven.
The appliance in question is a vintage, avocado-green monster that looks like it was installed right around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It has three chrome dials that are missing half their numbers, and the digital clock on the display panel is just a dead, black void.
“Okay,” I whisper, setting my jaw. “I can do this. I’m smart. I’m capable.”
I grip the heavy dial marked OVEN TEMP, push it in until it lets out a metallic click, and turn it to what I assume is three hundred and fifty degrees.
A low, hollow whoosh echoes from the bottom of the appliance, followed by a heavy, chemical smell of sulfur and ancient gas that fills the small kitchen.
I wait.
I stand there for a full ten minutes, holding a box of wooden matches like a defensive weapon, watching the small glass window.
Nothing happens.
The internal temperature of the metal box remains exactly the same as the ambient temperature of the room—chilly, damp, and slightly depressing.
I turn the dial harder, twisting it past the resistance point. The knob lets out a sharp, plastic snap and comes off completely in my hand, leaving a bare, rusted metal post spinning uselessly in the socket.
Deep inside the belly of the green monster, a sudden, violent BANG rattles the sheet metal. A tiny cloud of black soot puffs out from the rear burner, drifting through the air and settling directly onto my freshly washed t-shirt, my face, and my tomatoes.
I stand frozen, holding the broken plastic knob in my palm.
The silence in the kitchen is deafening.
Outside, through the cracked window, I can hear Kevin the goat letting out a loud, mocking bleat from the pasture, as if he personally orchestrated the mechanical failure.
A hot, prickly wave of pressure begins to build right behind my eyes. I swallow hard, but the lump in my throat feels like a piece of dry drywall.
I don’t want to cry.
I don’t cry.
Crying is terrible and it ruins my makeup.
But I am so incredibly embarrassed, and I am so deeply pissed off.
I wanted to give something back to him. I wanted to show Brooks that I am not just a walking liability, or a headache, or a city cliché who needs to be rescued every twenty-four hours by the local civil services.
I wanted to be a good neighbor.
Brooks keeps showing up for me over and over again without making me feel incompetent about it.
Which somehow makes me want to prove myself even more.
I don’t want to be the disaster next door forever.
I don’t want him looking at me with that mixture of concern and exhaustion every time I pick up a tool.
Instead, I am covered in carbon debris, my kitchen smells like a chemical weapon testing site, and I have effectively broken a knob off a machine older than my parents.
I pull my phone out of my pocket with a shaky, uncoordinated hand. The screen is smudged with soot. I open the text thread with Brooks.
Me: Hey. Terrible news. I think I need to cancel dinner tonight. I’m so sorry to disappoint Sophie.
I hit send, drop the phone onto the floorboards between my boots, and slide my back down against the base cabinet. I sink down onto the kitchen floor, my knees pulling up to my chest, burying my face in my forearms.
I just sit there, letting the quiet, pathetic frustration simmer in the dark.
An hour later, the kitchen has grown cold, the orange afternoon light fading into a dull, bruised gray as the sun starts to dip behind the ridge.
A heavy knock rattles the front door.
I flinch, my heart doing a sudden, uncalled-for leap against my ribs.
“Emmy?” Brooks’s voice calls out, echoing through the empty corridor. “You in here?”
“Emmy, are you okay?” Sophie’s high-pitched voice pipes up right behind him. “It smells like old matches out here!”
I squeeze my eyes shut, letting my head drop back against the cabinet with a low groan.
“In the kitchen,” I call out. “Please don’t look at me. I am depressed.”
Brooks steps through the doorway first.
He’s wearing a dark navy flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing the heavy corded muscle and the dark grease stains still faint under his skin.
His eyes scan the room, tracking from the soot-stained tomatoes to the broken green knob on the counter, and finally down to where I’m slumped on the floor like a discarded rag doll.
Sophie is right behind him, her purple glittery boots clicking against the wood, her green dinosaur sweater fully charged for the evening.
She stops, her mouth dropping open as she looks at my face. “Why are you on the floor, donut lady? Are we playing a game?”
“It’s a game called total defeat, Sophie,” I mutter, rubbing my temples. “The rules are very simple: you buy forty dollars worth of premium pasta and then the universe laughs at you.”
Brooks doesn’t laugh. He walks straight past the counter, his massive frame making the small kitchen feel even smaller, and stops right in front of the green stove.
He bends down, his knees popping softly, and examines the rusted metal post where the dial used to live. He reaches out, his thumb testing the resistance of the valve, and lets out a long, slow whistle.
“The thermocouple is completely shot,” he says, turning his head to look down at me over his shoulder. “If you had managed to spark a match in here after turning this post, you wouldn’t have just canceled dinner—you would have blown the back wall of the house straight into my pasture.”
“Great,” I say, letting out a weak, hollow laugh as I lean my head against the cabinet. “Fantastic. So my design instincts are flawless, but my mechanical intuition is a literal public safety hazard. Good to know.”
“You know,” I sigh, staring at the ceiling, “that phrase keeps coming up around me lately and honestly I’m starting to take it personally.”
Brooks straightens up, stepping away from the stove.
He looks down at me for a long moment, his eyes tracking the dark circles under my eyes, the faint redness from my frustration, and the smudge of soot on my white shirt.
He reaches down, offering me his hand. The palm is calloused, the skin warm as his fingers close securely around mine. He doesn’t pull me up hard; he just holds his hand steady, letting me use his weight to lift myself off the floorboards.
“Come on,” he says quietly. “Grab the tomatoes and the pasta. We’re going to my house.”
I blink, my hand still lingering in his for a half-second too long before I pull it back to adjust my overalls. “Your house? Brooks, I can’t just invade your domestic sanctuary. I look like I survived an industrial boiler explosion. My hair is a disaster and I have soot on my collar.”
“You look fine,” he grunts, though his eyes linger on my red lips for a fraction of a second before he reaches down and grabs the grocery bags from the counter. “Soph, go run across the lawn to the house. Get your dinosaur book ready. We’re cooking over there.”
“Yay!” Sophie shouts, already sprinting out the front door toward the house.
Brooks watches her tear across the stretch of grass between our properties with the exhausted resignation of a man who has accepted that speed limits are merely theoretical to five-year-olds.
“You know,” I say, stepping off my porch beside him, “most people would probably hesitate before inviting the woman who nearly detonated her own kitchen into another enclosed cooking environment.”
“You already blew up your stove,” Brooks says dryly, carrying the grocery bags down the porch steps. “The odds of you causing a second explosion this week are lower.”
“That feels deeply unsupported by science.”
He grunts, which I’m beginning to understand is basically his version of flirting.
We walk side by side through the tall grass between the houses, the evening air cool against my soot-streaked skin. The distance isn’t far, but it’s enough that the soft golden light glowing from his kitchen windows feels strangely intimate against the darkening pasture beyond it.
I glance over at him as we walk. “Just so we’re clear, if Sophie asks, I absolutely know how to operate a stove. This was an isolated systems failure.”
“The stove knob snapped off in your hand, Emmy.”
“Mechanical betrayal.”
“You filled the kitchen with gas.”
“Allegedly.”
Brooks exhales a quiet laugh through his nose, shaking his head once as he opens the side screen door and gestures me inside.
Brooks’s kitchen is exactly what I expected: clean, terrifyingly organized, and smelling faintly of cedar and coffee. There are no peeling layers of wallpaper here, no ancient green monsters waiting to combust.
It’s a functional, safe world.
“Alright, Chief,” I say, stepping up to his modern, stainless-steel stove.
I turn around, leaning my hips against the counter, crossing my arms over my denim overalls.
“You’ve successfully kidnapped the city girl.
What’s the protocol? Do I get to touch the buttons, or am I strictly on observation duty? ”