Staring at the large bowl of gooey mush in front of him, a seldom-experienced sensation swirled through Mason’s torso, one that he could only attribute to a lack of confidence.
He wasn’t a cook. He knew how to make three dinners—favorite meals his mom had made time and again when he was growing up. He’d learned to make them by hanging out in the kitchen, helping out and watching in eager anticipation of the meal that was coming, rather than having learned the real basics of cooking.
His mother was a fantastic cook and made everything from memory. She owned a single cookbook, a General Foods Kitchens Cookbook from the 1950s that his late grandmother had passed along to her at one point or another. It sat on the far end of the counter, propped up by an antique ceramic rooster, although he’d never seen her use it. She also kept a small recipe tin with old family recipes on tattered and food-stained recipe cards. She almost never needed to reference those either.
His mom was the real thing. She made things from scratch and added pinches and dashes rather than measured spoonfuls into her recipes. Like Georges, she was an artist, with food her medium.
So why Mason had believed her when she’d told him that it would be easy to make a vegetarian meat loaf instead of the traditional one he’d learned to replicate, he didn’t know. The bowl of slop in front of him didn’t look like it could ever turn into a tasty meat loaf.
He’d been committed to making Tess dinner after learning she was a vegetarian, even though it meant stepping out of his comfort zone. Sometime before leaving for college, he’d become pretty damn efficient at cooking his favorite meals: pot roast, meat loaf, and fried catfish.
His mom knew his skills in the kitchen better than anyone, and he trusted her to tell him if he was getting in over his head. Yesterday, when he’d called to check in, he’d attempted to ask her advice as casually as possible so as not to start her asking a hundred questions about Tess that he couldn’t or didn’t want to answer. True to form, she’d jumped at the opportunity to help. She’d been trying to eat healthier since his father had been diagnosed with exorbitantly high cholesterol levels and, as she put it, had been learning to use “the Google” for healthier meal ideas and to learn a new heart-healthy way to cook.
This morning, Mason had awakened to an emailed recipe that she’d thrown together for his dad last night. Mason wasn’t sure if it was because his mom didn’t know how to copy a link or because she’d modified it with a few helpful directions of her own, but she’d typed it into the email.
At the bottom, she’d written that she hadn’t told his dad it was vegetarian until after he’d finished eating and after he’d commented that he wouldn’t mind having it again. This made Mason chuckle every time he read it. His dad was a fourth-generation farmer and about as set in his ways as anyone Mason had ever met. Eating vegetarian wasn’t something that would settle easily with him.
Mason’s family owned six hundred acres in one of Iowa’s most fertile valleys. More than one commercial farm had tried to buy his dad out over the years. He was getting older and claimed it was getting harder and harder to make a profit every year. Still, his dad refused to give up land that had been in the family for so long. Close to fifteen years ago, he’d sold off a couple hundred acres to make ends meet. If it killed him, his dad was fond of saying, he wouldn’t chop away any more.
Mason was making enough now to support his parents as long as they needed it, but as of yet, his dad had refused to take a penny from him.
Staring at the bowl of unappetizing goo in front of him, Mason reminded himself that stubbornness ran in his veins, and of his personal commitment to acknowledge it when he was in over his head.
Pulling out his phone, Mason placed a much-needed call. “Hey, what’re you doing, sleeping?”
It was four o’clock, but Georges sounded like it was the middle of the night.
“I may have dozed. Your timing remains impeccable.”
“I’m going to pretend I don’t hear the sarcasm in that forced French accent of yours. Can you get out of that lounge chair and hobble over for a second? I need your help.”
Chuckling at having goaded his friend into releasing a string of French curses his way, Mason hung up. He was still rereading his mom’s directions in case he’d missed something when he heard Georges at the door, pressing the electronic code to let himself in, something he hadn’t done with Tess, which should have served as a clue to Mason that he’d had company.
“In the kitchen,” he yelled when the door pushed open. An off-leash Millie burst into the loft, barking up a storm as she raced in circles.
“My help comes with a price. She should have a potty trip soon, and I’m not moving well today.”
Mason glanced over at his friend. “You okay?”
Georges waved a hand in the air as he shuffled into the kitchen using his cane for support. “Tell me what ‘okay’ is, and I’ll give you an answer. I’m alive, and I am going to recover. That’s all I know. So, what is the emergency?”
“Tess is coming over. I’m cooking dinner, but I don’t think it’s turning out right.”
“Because I can see the tension in your face, I’m going to hold my tongue until your disaster is righted. Which of your three dinners are you making?”
“The meat loaf, sort of. She’s a vegetarian. My mom emailed me a recipe, but it’s nothing like what I usually make.”
Georges scanned the messy countertop. Cleaning was Mason’s least favorite part of cooking, and he typically tackled it after dinner. Tonight, he needed to get this finished so he could clean up the mess before heading out to pick up Tess.
“You bought a food processor?” Georges’s gaze landed on the packaging from the processor adding to the mess of dishes on the counter. “You could’ve borrowed mine.”
“It was a gift a few Christmases ago. I just haven’t had a use for it until today.”
“So, why is it you called me over?”
“It’s this.” Mason jiggled the bowl of slop he was supposed to pour into the meat-loaf pan.
“It looks like pig slop.”
“Tell me about it.”
Georges lifted the recipe Mason had printed out and, after holding it up and out for a better look without his glasses, surveyed the counter once more. “How many lentils did you use?”
“A cup, like it says.”
“Cooked or dry?”
“Cooked.”
“That’s your problem. It’s the comma’s fault. It should be a cup of lentils, cooked, not a cup of cooked lentils.”
Mason lifted the lid from the saucepan that still sat on the stove. There were plenty of lentils left over. “I wasn’t sure how many dry lentils would make a cup of cooked lentils, so I measured a dry cup first, then cooked them according to the directions on the bag.”
“Well, there you have it. Drain and mash those, and your veggie loaf will thicken up fine.” Georges pointed toward the barstools on the other side of the counter. “Bring me one of those, and I’ll sit awhile and watch you cook your vegetables.”
Mason wasn’t entirely sure that lentils were considered vegetables, but Georges didn’t look like he was feeling well enough to argue. Once he was resting on the stool, Millie made her way into the kitchen and plopped on the cool floors, panting contentedly.
“Two years I’ve known you, and I’ve not seen this side of you. She is a cute girl; I’ll give you that. But tell me the truth. If she knew who you are, would you still be cooking for her?”
Mason could feel the touch of a scowl forming on his face as he transferred the drained lentils into a mixing bowl to mash them. “I like that I’m not a sensation to her. I like that when she looks at me, she sees me.”
“Are you forgetting that the baseball player who played well enough this season to have been in the running for MVP is also you?”
Mason released a slow, controlled breath. “I know it is—I know I am—but it’s been my experience of late that people don’t see both the guy and the baseball player anymore.”
Georges picked up a slice of mushroom that lay abandoned on the counter and pressed it between his thumb and forefinger. After most of it fell back to the counter, mashed and abandoned, Georges ran his thumb along the gray-brown smear it left behind on his forefinger. Mason knew his friend well enough to know that a part of him was lost in the color of it. Georges lived in colors.
“How long are you going to wait to tell her, young man?”
“A week, maybe. I don’t know.”
“I suspect if you sleep with her before you tell her, you’ll lose her.”
“I’m not… I wouldn’t. Hell, I promised myself I won’t even kiss her until I tell her.”
Georges gave him a sharp look, one unkempt brow knotting into a peak and creating a wave of deep creases across his forehead. “It’s quite serious, then, isn’t it?”
Mason wasn’t sure what to say, which he figured was most likely answer enough.
* * *
As the first few billows of steam began to fill up the small, confining bathroom, Tess frowned at her reflection. Her belly was brewing with lingering nausea from bathing the cat, and her cheeks were bright red from the bike ride home. Not only was it chilly, but she’d pushed herself so she’d have more time in the shower, hoping to wash off the lingering skunk odor.
She couldn’t remember sparing more than a glance at her naked body since before she left for Europe. She’d always been on the thin side. Even in college when her friends were stressing over the freshman fifteen, she hadn’t gained more than a pound or two. As a kid, annual physicals had left her mom determined to put more weight on her in the coming year.
Skinny and weak—scrawny—was how she’d imagined herself most of her life.
For the first time, it hit home what her time in Europe had done for her self-image. There, she’d eaten and worked and laughed and played and not given her body a single thought. She’d not worried about being weak or skinny or inadequate.
Most likely, she’d always be envious of curvy, vivacious women, but for the first time, the woman staring back at her in the mirror didn’t feel less than.
Maybe it was the often-strenuous backpacking or the bike riding since coming home. Maybe it was because she’d figured out how to let a lot of the crap go that had been weighing her down. Whatever the case, the twenty-six-year-old staring back at her in the rapidly fogging mirror wasn’t embarrassed about her body. She was toned in places she’d never been before, like her thighs and triceps, and maybe her boobs weren’t anything to post about on Instagram, but they fit her body and that was enough.
Remembering how small Nonna’s hot-water tank was, Tess snatched up the bottle of freshly made de-skunking mix she’d brought home from the shelter. As she crossed over to the shower, she stepped on her dirty jeans that were discarded on the floor.
“Ouch!”
Her left heel had landed squarely on the buckeye she’d found in Mason’s hoodie the other day. She hadn’t quite decided if it was because her grandma had told her buckeyes brought good luck when carried with you, or if it was because it had belonged to Mason, or both, but she’d been dropping the shiny thing into her pocket each morning since. During rare moments of quiet introspection, she’d slip her hand around its smooth, irregular surface and appreciate the hopeful peace that moved over her.
Not wanting to lose it in the laundry, she pulled it from the pocket and left it on the crowded counter near the sink, then hopped in the shower. If the buckeye was bringing her luck, hopefully the shampoo would work wonders and keep her from smelling like skunk tonight.
She was mostly worried about the smell clinging to her hair, and she wanted a full ten minutes to let it soak.
Knowing she’d run out of hot water well before the required ten-minute soak was up, Tess shut off the water after lathering on the shampoo, twisted her hair up in a foamy knot, and wrapped her torso in a towel. Shoving the heavy vinyl shower curtain out of the way, she sat on the edge of the tub, counting out the available minutes till Mason was due to be here.
For your date.
Her stomach flipped. You’re hunting for a stray dog, Tess. This is not exactly a date.
Maybe that was true, but he was also making her dinner. Tess had only had a guy cook dinner for her once. That had been in college, and he’d used a microwave and an electric skillet to heat up packaged food in his dorm after they’d been dating for a month. Still, she’d been pretty swept away by how romantic it seemed at the time.
But she wasn’t in college anymore. She was an adult. And she was incredibly attracted to the guy who was making her dinner.
She ran her palm along her shin, testing for stubble. What was she doing? She would most likely still smell like skunk after doing her best to get rid of it. There was no way she’d let Mason get close enough to determine that she reeked.
She held out another few minutes until she was so chilled she was starting to shiver all over, then started the shower again. With any luck, Mason would be a few minutes late. To get herself put together, she was going to need every minute she could get.