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“How old are you, anyways?” I ask.
His brows pull together but his eyes stay focused on the pile in front of him. I watch large hands gently fold the dough over and over, until the powdery pile soon turns smooth and amber yellow. “Fifteen—sixteen this spring,” he finally says. “And you?”
“Same. You’re really tall.” I turn to rest my hip on the counter, letting him fully take the lead on cooking. I swipe a handful of cheese from the ramekin, wishing I had eaten more for breakfast than a glass of juice.
“You’re tall,” he says, putting the dough aside and digging through the pots and pans before pulling one out. He tosses a pat of butter in, turning up the heat so it sizzles. He pushes the container of heavy cream and another measuring cup in front of me, gesturing for me to pour.
“Principal Skinner said that Home Ec isn’t only cooking. That we sew and stuff, too. Do you do that?” I measure out a few cups of cream and pour it into the bowl as Emmett starts cracking the eggs.
He pours the yolks into my bowl of cream and grabs a whisk, mixing gently but swiftly as he tilts his head to the front of the room where our instructor is standing. I follow his gaze, once again taking in her knit, cropped vest.
“You’re looking right at it. Last semester, she had us all make matching vests.”
My mouth drops open. “No. You’re not serious! That . . . that’s what we sew? Did she make you wear them?”
He gives a real laugh, one that’s loud enough to make the heads of Natalie and her minions turn and scowl at me.
“I’m messing with you. We made these aprons,” he says, lifting the hem of the one he’s wearing. “And last month, we all had to pick out a pattern for a stuffed animal. I made a pathetic looking panda that my dog tore apart as soon as I brought it home.”
“Aww, poor panda.”
“It had a good run.”
“I can’t imagine I’d be any better at sewing than I am at cooking. You’d run circles around me. If this was the 1950’s, and you were my husband, I’d be the world’s worst housewife, considering I can barely crack a freaking egg.”
The instructor claps three times to garner our attention and calls out, “Okay, class, focus. Now that your ingredients are prepped and your cream hot, slowly, and I sayslowly, mix one third of your hot cream with your egg yolks.”
Emmett grabs a potholder from the drawer and wraps it around the handle of the pan before turning to me. “Ready?”
“We don't have to cook the eggs first?”
“Nope,” he says, pouring slowly. “The notecard says the hot cream cooks the eggs somehow without scrambling them.”
I lean over, my cheek hovering closely to his broad bicep. So close, the soft fuzz of his shirt tickles my face. He doesn’t seem to mind, continuing to pour the cream without lurching away from me.
“Here, keep stirring this,” he says, handing me the spoon. “Stir slowly, make sure it doesn’t scramble. I’m going to get the pasta in the boiling water.”
“I can do that. I can stir,” I tell him, taking the spoon from his hand and letting our fingers brush once again.
I keep stirring as I watch him work around the station, truly comfortable in the kitchen. I notice his ass as he leans over—I’m sure every girl around here does the same. He somehow seems oblivious to female attention. Or maybe he’s the classic playboy who, at the ripe age of fifteen, has already run through this crowd of girls, and that’s why he’s being so nice to me. New girl, always naive. Fresh meat.
He drops the noodles in the water, eyes flicking up to mine once he senses my stare. He smiles, and I shake the negative thoughts out of my head that the only person to ever be nice to me on the first day of school might have alternative motives.
“How does it look?” he asks.
It takes me a minute to realize he’s referring to the alfredo sauce I should have been watching and not about his ass.
“Good,” I squeak, before looking down for the first time in a few minutes and seeing the mixture in front of me. “Oh wait . . .” I trail off. “That doesn't look right. Does that mean it’s done?”
He leans over, reaching between us to shut off the burner and places a heavy hand on my back, fingers curling right between my shoulder blades.
“Um . . . it was done about . . . two minutes before it looked like that.”
“Why is it lumpy?”
“Curdled.”
I take the spoon out of the pot and set it in an empty bowl, embarrassment setting in that I literally couldn’t stir something and focus at the same time.
