I open the cupboard and pull out two plates and get us set up at the bar. And then I go to my room and go about making a list.
When I come back out with the list, he drains the noodles and then tosses them into the pan with the vegetables and chicken and adds another glug of hot sauce.
I raise my eyebrows at him.
Truthfully, I make food non-spicy and then I draw a teeny tiny happy face of sriracha into my dish of hoisin sauce and then stir it all really well before I eat any. Sometimes that’s even got too much of a bite for my delicate palate. This is the extent of my taste for spicy food. The hot sauce is a necessity, but it’s a teeny tiny amount that I am very careful about, otherwise whatever I’ve put it on will be deemed inedible.
He’s put almost a quarter of the large bottle into the pan and it’s gonna burn going down.
He’s used my groceries and ruined my dinner and I allowed him to ruin it by not speaking up about not liking it spicy.
Damn it, Carly.
He sets the plates on the bar and it looks phenomenal. The whole set-up? It would be phenomenal. A hot guy cooking. A hot guy cooking, while bare-chested with all those muscles on display.
I shouldn’t be standing here at the bar looking at food he cooked. My food. My food that won’t even be edible because it has almost a quarter bottle of hot sauce in it when I can barely handle a half a teaspoon of hot sauce.
He sits down, inviting. “Dig in.” He’s inviting me to eat my food that he’s stolen, cooked, and ruined.
I sit, jaw tight, shoulders tight, ready to spit poison darts, but starving and stubbornly ready to prove a point.
He twirls noodles around the fork and waits. I’m beside him, looking at him.
He’s waiting. Waiting for me to taste it first. Shit. I don’t wanna eat this. I feel my eyes watering from just the vapors of this stuff.
We’re both procrastinating, it seems.
He jerks his chin up. The noodles would normally be a brownish color from the teriyaki sauce. They’re pink.
I jerk my chin up in return and eye his forkful of noodles.
His eyes gleam with mischief and it’s decided that he’s taking the first bite.
Damn. Does that mean he wins this round? I take a small bite, too, at almost the exact same time. Very small. We chew in silence.
I feel the burn, as it crawls up into my sinuses, as it snakes down my throat. The heat is making my eyes water. The tang is strong. All I can taste is hot. Not any of the other spices or sauces he used.
I try for nonchalance when I reach for my wine, everything in my mouth tingling, and not in a nice way.
He reaches for
his and before the glass is at my lips, I can’t… I’m coughing, choking, sputtering. My nonchalance is a big fat fail. My wine is spilling out of my glass I’m shaking so hard with the coughing.
And he starts, too.
And then after a solid twenty or so seconds of both of us coughing and me waving both hands on either side of my face, as if fanning my face will cool it, he starts to laugh. And I start to laugh. While we’re both choking.
We’re laughing and choking at the same time when I run for the fridge, for the milk, and drink straight out of the carton.
It’s helping.
I pull it away from my lips and gasp for breath, but he grabs it out of my hand and he’s chugging the milk back, too. His mouth being where my mouth just was? I feel a twinge of something odd.
He resumes laughing as the milk gets put down on the counter. He’s wiping his milk mustache off with the back of his hand. I’m breathing hard, still feeling the tingle in my mouth.
“Well, I royally fucked that up, didn’t I?” He laughs. “I like it hot, but not that hot.”
I laugh, too, still breathing hard, and he gives me a soft look and then wipes my upper lip with the ridge of his thumb.