AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Breakfast in 30, on the boat.
Liem
Just moi or family excursion?
oop they’re already gone
Bring whichever car they left. Drive safely.
I hear you, on the wayyyyy. *coffee emoji*
Not wanting to distract my brother with more texts while he was driving, I put my phone face down on the counter, my mouth preemptively watering with hope that the coffee emoji meant he was picking some up on the way. I put on my old apron Mom had snuck in here at some point and threw a dish towel over my shoulder.
Opting against music, I threw open the back windows and the front deck door, inviting in the sounds and smells of the marina. Then I got to work slicing and seasoning some green tomatoes, falling into the muscle memory of the routine. I put the tomatoes aside and started filling the bowls I’d already laid out, cracking one egg, then another with my right hand into a bowl, then pouring panko crumbs, cornmeal, and flour into the other three.
It wasn’t some sort of giant mental breakthrough for me to cook breakfast. I still enjoyed cooking, and I’d kept myself fed since the accident, even going as far as to cook for my family several times after months of intense trauma therapy. I wasn’t one of those twenty-nine-year-olds who could survive on Taco Bell and ramen.
And I knew those people existed. I worked with some of them.
The problem was that I had no desire to stumble upon any potential triggers by cooking in anything resembling a professional kitchen, especially with other people around. The boat’s little kitchenette with its half-sized oven and two burners was about as far away from that as could be.
It also helped that there was a brand-new fire extinguisher mounted and within reach, which wasn’t the only new thing I’d noticed when I moved into the boat. There’d also been a purple stun gun on the kitchen counter with a hand-written note beside it in Mom’s neat cursive that read:
Take this with you as a reminder for the boys at the docks.
I beat the eggs in the first bowl, added a splash of milk, and then beat them some more, smiling as I imagined Malachi or Billy’s reaction if I whipped out the little purple weapon at the first sign of a curse word.
Egg mixture beaten into submission, I pulled a bunch of fresh parsley from the fridge and rinsed and chopped it for garnish before mincing a tiny poblano pepper and adding it to a bowl of nearly complete pancake batter.
I surveyed the counters before washing my hands and wiping my forehead. Space was getting tight, but I had a plan, and I was going to see it through.
If Bree could handle working in a casino, including all the ridiculous people it entailed—assuming the sampling I experienced yesterday was a good indicator about the rest of her… colleagues—I could handle frying in some cast irons. If she could handle her grandmother—someone who, from just the two encounters I’d had with her, seemed more prone to censure than encouragement—with that much grace, I could keep my head in this little kitchen.
I got out more eggs and separated the yolks from the whites, dumping the yolks into the blender and the whites into yet another bowl. I whipped the egg whites into stiff peaks before folding them into the pancake batter.
Cast irons hot and ready, I made quick work of frying the pancakes and green tomatoes.
When the grease popped, my heart froze for only a moment before I adjusted the temperatures, eyes flicking to the fire extinguisher twice before getting back to it. I moved to the blender to make the sauce, feeling a rush of victory when it turned out creamy and blessedly unbroken. Anticipating Liem’s voracious appetite, I got out four eggs and started cracking them into the hot pan, wishing I had room to poach instead. I cracked the first egg on the counter and into the pan and quickly moved on to the second. But just as I raised my hand to deploy it into the pan, a strangled sound cut through the noises of the kitchen and the marina.
I jolted and whipped my body around, gaze zeroing in on the open doorway, my grip on the egg having gone slack enough that it sailed across the kitchen floor, landing with a splat a couple of feet in front of a pair of sparkly black shoes.
My gaze met Bree’s alarmed one for the length of a heartbeat before we both, as if in slow motion, looked down at the broken egg on the floor.
20
BREE
At some point—I wasn’t sure when exactly—my hands had crept up to my neck in a vain attempt to soothe the burning of my skin.
I’d worked in kitchens on and off for years, and not once had I been so affected by such a display of competency. The burning intensified to a raging inferno when the grand finale of the porn show that was Vinh Lott cooking—and cleaning—with the confidence of a seasoned chef ended with him cracking an egg one-handed.
I broke right along with that shell. So thoroughly that some sort of horrible noise clawed its way up my throat and out of my mouth before I could stop it.
Vinh turned, the egg flew, and I wanted nothing more than to throw myself overboard.
If only my legs would move.
Liem paid me no mind, slithering around me as he tossed a wave at his brother and took his carrier of coffees out onto the boat’s front deck, leaving me standing frozen in the doorway with my internal crisis-management-mode malfunctioning.
