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“Me too.”
She brightens. “You want some?”
“If you’re cooking.”
I loathe cooking. I try to do it at least twice a week so I can make sure my dad’s eating something that doesn’t come out of a box, but more often than not, I fuck it up. And then it’s an hour wasted on something that both of us can barely choke down.
Theo moves around the kitchen with easy grace, like she already knows her way around the place better than I do. I noticed the same thing when she was making the clams and the papaya salad—Theo is practically a ballerina when she’s cooking. All her anxiety melts away, and she could almost be dancing.
She cracks the eggs one-handed into the bowl, neatly tossing the shells into the trash, and then she whips them up with a whisk, the yellow liquid whirling up to the edge of the bowl without splashing a single drop.
She throws a generous pat of butter into the pan and waits for it to sizzle before pouring in the eggs. I watch while she pushes them into peaks, removing the pan from the heat while the eggs are still wet.
“Kind of…gooey, aren’t they?” I say apprehensively.
Theo laughs. “Everybody overcooks their eggs. I take them off the heat to add the cheese.”
She sprinkles the top of the scrambled eggs with a generous portion of grated cheese, as well as salt and pepper.
“Now watch…,” she says.
She flips over the entire pile so the cheese is on the bottom, then sets it back on the heat to melt.
“The eggs will finish cooking,” she explains. “But the cheese will keep them from burning.”
Right on time, our toast pops.
Theo snatches the slices out of the toaster and slathers on more butter.
“Here you go…” With a neat little flick of the pan, she flips a portion of eggs so the melted cheese is back on top, the eggs sailing through the air to land on my plate right next to the toast.
When Theo’s cooking…she’s kind of fucking cool. It’s a whole other level of confidence.
I dig into the eggs and toast.
“Holy shit…” I say, mouth stuffed full. “This is incredible!”
Theo laughs. “It’s just scrambled eggs.”
“Yeah, but these are the best eggs I’ve ever tasted. How’d you get them so buttery?”
She snorts. “I think it was all the butter I used.”
“And how are they so fluffy?” I’ve demolished the whole pile in four bites.
Theo is pink cheeked and pleased. I’m learning to differentiate between her many blushes—when she’s upset, her whole face goes red and her eyes get watery, but when she’s happy or only a little embarrassed, the color stays in her cheeks.
“Scrambled eggs were the first thing I learned to make,” she says. “I used to cook them for my mom when she worked the night shift.”
“What night shift?”
“She was a nurse,” Theo clarifies.
“Oh yeah? Where is she now?”
I’m expecting her to say Boca or wherever nurses go to retire. But I should have read the slight sag in her shoulders and the drop in her voice.
Too late, I realize my mistake.
