AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Dive in,” he said with a smile.
She took the lid off her bin and started pulling ingredients from it. “I made the pasta last night so it would be a quick demo.” She set the plastic container of it on the counter. “So first, I’ll get the water set to boil.”
She pulled a pot from beneath the counter and started filling it with water. She glanced at Marco, who simply stared back at her.
“How would you make the pasta?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s easy,” she said. “Semolina flour is my favorite, a little course sea salt, a couple of eggs, and some olive oil. Really good olive oil.” She grinned at him and set the pot on the stove. She lit the flame on the burner and stepped back over to the counter.
“Now, my family owns a dairy farm down in the Coastal Bend of Texas, and we know cheese, milk, and butter. All of these are products from that farm. You can’t get fresher.” She laid out the sharp cheddar, the parmesan—“for some added saltiness”—and the Monterey jack she liked to use in a good, comforting mac and cheese.
“I’m going to melt some butter.” She dropped a couple of tablespoons into the pan on the stove, noting the sizzle. The fire was too high, and she quickly turned it down. “Then we’ll whisk together some cream cheese, cream, milk, and regular all-purpose flour.” She did that, slopping it over the side of the bowl as she tried to mix the harder cream cheese into the softer ingredients.
Embarrassment squirreled through her, but she just wiped up the mess with her towel and kept going. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to talk through every step, and she needed to focus, so she fell silent as she chopped an onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, and measured out a dash of tabasco. She put it all in the butter and got the onion working.
“That’ll sweat for a few minutes,” she said, realizing she’d put the garlic in too soon.It’s fine, she told herself, though she’d made this recipe at least ten times in the past five days, and she’d never made that mistake before.
“I’m going to strain that so we don’t have large chunks of onion,” she said, glancing at Marco, who was busy typing on his phone.Dear Lord, she prayed.Is he making notes about me?
She forged on, whisking the onions through the hot butter. They had color on them, and horror struck her right in the back of the throat. She turned the flame down even more, saying, “Wow, this cooks hot,” with a little laugh.
She hadn’t dropped her pasta yet, nor had she measured her cheese. She tried to quell the panic rising through her, but her hands shook as she turned to reach for the pasta so she could get it going. With the rate that burner was cooking the onions, the sauce would be done in mere moments.
“This goes in here.” She opened the plastic container and turned it over to put the homemade pasta into the water. “I made the pasta last night, like I said. Then I formed it into these cute little shells with a press.” It had taken forever too, and she hoped Marco would know and understand how labor-intensive pasta-making was.
Of course he would; he was an Italian chef who owned an Italian restaurant.
“Then in here goes the milk mixture.” Clarissa very nearly tripped over her heels on the way back to the stove with the huge bowl of cream and flour, and it hissed and sent a huge puff of white smoke up into the air when she poured it in.
She tossed the bowl to the back of the stovetop, the steel clattering against the metal grates in a way that set her teeth vibrating. But she needed to be stirring, and now.
Her heart beat out of control in her chest, and tears pressed behind her eyes. Nothing was going right, and there was no way she was going to get this job. Marco had said nothing for so long, and Clarissa didn’t dare look at him as she whisked and whisked, the pan still way too hot for cream and milk.
“Then the cheese,” she said anyway, because she’d come this far. She hurried to grab the cheeses she’d brought, forgetting completely that she usually strained the mixture before adding the cheeses to get the onions out.
In the dairy went, and when she remembered, she froze.
Everything in the kitchen froze, and she sniffled as life roared back to full speed. She turned off the burner, sure it was scorching the bottom of her sauce. Her pasta was floating, and she quickly removed it with a slotted spoon, putting it straight into the cheese sauce.
“Then we mix it all up,” she said as cheerfully as she could. She finally got the pan off the burner and took it to the counter. She located some serving bowls along the far wall and started toward them.
“This is fine,” Marco said, and she spun back to him. Her heel caught on the rubber mat in front of the sink, and her knee buckled. Down she went, and Clarissa couldn’t stifle the cry of pain or humiliation—or both—as it flew from her mouth.
“Are you okay?” Marco had abandoned his phone at some point during the disastrous demo, and he arrived in front of her quickly.
“I’m fine,” she said, using his hand to get to her feet. “Really.” She released him, the hot heat of horror and embarrassment enough to make her want to flee. “You don’t want me to plate it?”
“No, I like to taste straight from the pot.” He smiled at her, but Clarissa knew she wasn’t getting this job.
The onions weren’t cooked down enough. They weren’t even diced properly. She was using them only for flavor. She’d cooked the garlic too long, and the cream had probably been burnt.
She almost knocked the fork right out of Marco’s hand once he’d speared a few shells. He put them in his mouth, his eyes closing a moment later. She wasn’t sure if that was in bliss, because everything tasted so wonderfully amazing, or so he wouldn’t show her how disgusting this pot of macaroni and cheese was.
“Thank you,” he said, not going for a second bite. That wasn’t encouraging, and Clarissa couldn’t wait to get out of there. “It’s a little simple, don’t you think?” he asked, nailing the final dagger into her heart.
“It’s my grandmother’s recipe,” she said. “She usually adds some spicy brown mustard.” She took the condiment bottle out of her bin. “But I forgot.” She started putting everything back into the bin, not caring where it landed. That was such a difference from this morning, when she’d packed and then repacked the ingredients into the bin.
“Thank you,” she said, fitting the lid on and lifting the bin. She wanted to pick up the pot of mac and cheese and throw it in the trashcan—which was what Marco would do anyway—but she didn’t.
She kept her head high as she marched out of The Hot Italian, and she texted Cherry to find out where the car was. Her sister had given her a key that morning, and Clarissa managed to find the vehicle and put her bin in the back seat. Then she got behind the wheel and started the car so the air conditioning would start to blow.
Then she broke down and sobbed.
