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“Ciorba de burta is tripe soup. It’s an old Romanian hangover cure.”
I made a gagging noise.
He smirked at me. “What? You don’t think a serving of cow stomach like in the old country would do you some good?”
I made a face and muttered, “Hard pass.”
He laughed again, the sound setting my belly to fluttering in the best of ways.
“Alcohol plays a big part in Romanian culture. We like to drink, thus we need a cure that really works. But you’re a neophyte, both in drinking and hangover cures, so I’ll spare you. This time. But when I bring you home to my mother and grandmother, I assure you that you will lick the plate of any dish they set down in front of you.”
The image he’d conjured up in my head, tripe soup aside, sounded wonderful. The self-assurance and pride in his mother and grandmother touched me. One thing undeniable about Nicu was his love of family. I saw the way he picked up the phone whenever his twin called, no matter the time of day or night. He picked up, even if it was only to say he’d speak to her later. No one did that nowadays. Hell, people barely talked on the phone, period.
Nicu got up and pulled out veggies and eggs from the fridge. After peeling off the skin of the tomatoes and dicing them, along with a green pepper, he tossed them into a pan to simmer. Then he did something I’d never seen before. One by one, he cracked the eggs directly into the tomato-pepper concoction. With a wooden spatula, he rapidly beat them in as he asked me to cut slices from a country-style bread inside a breadbox.
“If either of them gives it to me, then maybe I’ll try it. You, I don’t trust that much,” I said with a sniff.
He gave me a third laugh, and another swarm of butterflies exploded in my abdomen.
Three in a row.
Wow, just wow.I needed to get drunk and stay over more often. Normally, I’d pull away from such a thought, but in this cozy kitchen, drinking tasty coffee made by a gorgeous guy cooking me breakfast without his shirt on, I was ready to relive this scenario time and time again.
“Bunica made some yesterday. It’s made with polenta as well as flour. Romanians are big into using polenta in their cooking and baking. You’ll love it,” he declared confidently.
For some reason, I didn’t doubt it. The man hadn’t been joking when he said he knew how to cook.
It was official; I was impressed.
I had grown up eating meals prepared by private chefs. We ate bread bought from French bakeries on Madison Avenue, near the apartment where I lived before my father was caught. But outside of visiting Cat, I had never eaten homemade food prepared by a family member. Mother would’ve been appalled by the very notion of ruining her manicure to knead pasty flour dough to bake bread. The very idea was preposterous. Perhaps because it reminded me of visiting Cat’s home in Queens, I loved the smells wafting through the kitchen as he prepared our meal.
My stomach grumbled.
“Hungry, I see,” he remarked.
Touched by the intimacy of having this strong, virile man whipping up a meal for me, I decided he’d earned the chance for me to open up and share with him.
“This reminds me of vacations from school when Cat would bring me to her home, and we would be greeted by the scent of cooking and baking when we walked into her house. Mother didn’t do holidays in cold, wintery New York, but I had to stay and visit my father up in Otisville, so I spent most winter holidays with Cat and her family.”
“Cat’s is a very traditional Romanian household, for sure,” was his only comment.
“Her grandmother always made that Romanian sweetbread with walnuts for our homecoming. What is it called? Kazanac?”
“Cozonac,” he said as he indicated for me to put the slices of bread in a toaster oven.
“Yes, that’s it. Co-zo-nac,” I repeated carefully.
He shot me a brilliant grin that made my knees go weak.
“Nice accent,” he complimented. “I’ll make a Romanian out of you yet. So you’ve been around the Popescus quite a bit, then?”
His tone was deceptively calm, but I knew better. He wouldn’t blatantly probe into my life, but I could feel his curiosity like it was a living, breathing thing. I didn’t think I was imagining that my friendship with Cristo wasn’t far from his mind.
Cristo and I were buddies. Being a few years older than Cat and I, he was the first real man I flirted with. While our relationship was comfortable, sometimes even demonstrative because the Popescus were affectionate with one another, we were only friends. Of course, Nicu didn’t know that, and I knew there was no love lost between them. If my newfound jealousy was anything to go by, I could only imagine what a man like Nicu felt, knowing I’d spent a lot of time in Cat’s home.
But I wasn’t about to open that can of worms when things were so easy between us, so I blabbered, “Yup, Cat’s my best friend. More than that actually. She’s like a sister to me. After all, she saved me.” I swallowed hard, my gaze fixated on the slices of bread turning crispy in the toaster oven.
His eyes shot to me.
