Dishing Up Love

We enter the open concept kitchen with a big island in the center that’s lined with barstools along one side. I set the bag and Instant Pot next to the two bags Erin brought in and vaguely notice as Carlos moves to the far corner of the room with his camera on his shoulder.

“So, what now?” Erin asks, glancing between the grocery bags and me.

“Normally, this is when most women would go into panic mode and go change their clothes and put on as much makeup as humanly possible while the crew gets everything set up for the kitchen scenes,” I tell her, and I watch as her nose scrunches adorably.

“I always thought that looked funny while watching the show. One minute, they look like normal people who just went grocery shopping, and the next, it’s as if they’re cooking dinner dressed for a night out on the town,” she admits, and I chuckle.

“Yeah, and that’s just what actually aired. We’ve had women come down dressed in straight-up ball gowns, because they thought they needed to put on the nicest thing they had in their closet. Luckily, we got them to change before we started shooting again.”

She looks up at me with curiosity. “Do you think I should go change?” She brushes back a strand of her long hair that’s fallen over her shoulder in her ponytail.

I immediately shake my head. “And miss replaying one of my favorite episodes of Schitt’s Creek in my head every time I look at your shirt for the remainder of the evening? I think not.”

Her eyes light up as if I just told her she won a million dollars. “David Rose is my spirit animal,” she breathes.

“I love David, but Moira’s accent and vocabulary give me life,” I confess with a grin.

“Such an underrated show. Like, I wish everyone in the world watched it so they could experience how amazing it is, but at the same time, I kind of love that it’s just got a cult following. Like… it’s our dirty little secret.”

She giggles, and it’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard. I can only imagine how great her full-on belly laugh would sound, laughing out loud while watching the riches-to-rags family figure out simple tasks like how to “fold in the cheese.”

“I would have a field day shrinking them if they were real people. The way they grew as people from the first season to the last, oh my God. It was a beautiful thing. At first, you thought there was no hope for them. They were… spoiled and selfish human beings with absolutely no relationship between the parents and their two grown children. But then losing all their money and being forced to live in adjoining rooms in a rundown motel in a town Johnny bought David as a joke because of its name—Schitt’s Creek—it was such a pleasure to watch their fish-out-of-water story. Pure genius.”

I’m nodding the entire time she’s speaking, watching the passionate expressions play across her beautiful face. And when she’s done speaking, I latch on to something she said. “You’d enjoy ‘shrinking’ them?”

Her head bobs once. “I’m a psychologist. It’s kinda my thang.”

My eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

She smirks and props a hand on her hip. “What? Don’t I look like a highly respected doctor of the mind?” She gestures to her messy hair then her leggings.

I almost swallow my tongue trying to reel in my shocked look. “No, no, no… it’s not tha—”

“No, no, no, I don’t? Wow, Curtis. Way to make a gal want to go throw on one of the ball gowns she has just lying around….”

Before I realize what they’re doing, my hands are cradling her delicate jawline, tilting her head back so she looks up into my eyes as I bring our bodies almost as close as they were when she ran into me at the store. “I’m sorry. I made the poor, sexist, chauvinistic judgment that a woman as incredibly stunning as you wouldn’t choose a job as difficult and consuming as what I imagine a psychologist to be. I would think it’d take extremely hard work and dedication to become a highly respected doctor of the mind, as you so eloquently put it, which in my experience, women near your beauty tend to avoid or choose an easier route in life, like a profession that utilizes the way they look, not how great their minds are.”

Her eyes dilated not even halfway through my little apology, and the weight of her head in my palms grew heavier as she melted against me. My lips twitch as she whispers, “I was just fucking with you,” but she doesn’t move away, seeming hypnotized. “And you’ve been in California too long if that’s what you believe beautiful women do.”

I say only loud enough for her to hear, “If there wasn’t a Virgin Islander with a camera standing fifteen feet away who loves nothing more than to make gag reels and give me shit for things that happen while recording the show, I’d kiss you like you’ve never been kissed before.”