One

Maggie stood over the remains of what had once been two salmon filets. The filets, looking more like used firewood, now sat there mocking her. A light layer of smoke filled the kitchen and living area, but the smell of burnt salmon would take a lot longer to dissipate. She looked over the directions again, still puzzled on exactly what happened. Temperature set at 375 degrees, check. Place in a shallow baking dish, check. The timer set to thirty minutes, check.

“So, where did I go wrong?” she asked the empty apartment. And then she saw it. The oven was set to broil, not bake. Fuck me!

Glancing at the clock, she saw that she still had time to salvage dinner. The salad was perfect; she’d added some grilled chicken strips to it. They still had the wine, breadsticks, and dessert she had purchased in addition to the take-and-bake salmon dish. Everything would be fine. Maggie shivered as she reached into the freezer for a chicken breast to defrost in the microwave.

As she placed the breadsticks on the table, Chad, her boyfriend, walked in through the front door. Maggie smiled, rushing to greet him and tell him the great news. “Guess what happened today? Just guess!”

“You burned dinner again. It’s hardly a momentous occasion.”

With an internal sigh, she pressed on, “No, not that. Well, I did accidentally burn dinner, but that’s not what I was going to say. I got the promotion!”

“Great. I assume a raise comes with this promotion?” At her nod, he continued. “Excellent. So you’ll be able to afford this apartment on your own.” His tone was bitter as he left the living room and headed down the hall toward their bedroom.

“What do you mean ‘on my own?’” She waited for a reply that didn’t come. The beeping of the microwave had her returning to the kitchen to finish preparing dinner.

Maggie looked up from whisking the honey Dijon dressing. Chad stood on the other side of the pass-through with two suitcases beside him. An uneasy feeling set in her stomach. Her heart raced as she looked up from the luggage and back to Chad. With a thousand thoughts flying through her head, she settled on the most obvious question.

“Where are you going?”

“Your incompetence far exceeds the threshold of what I deem tolerable, therefore I have no other recourse but to dissolve this domestic partnership immediately. I will return this weekend to collect the rest of my belongings.”

Maggie was stunned silent. He’s breaking up with me? Because of dinner? As anger began to take over her, his words replayed in her mind. She was just finding her voice when he interrupted her thoughts.

“Good God, woman! Are you so obtuse that you cannot understand I’m leaving you?”

“Why? Because I burned dinner?”

“No, not for this dinner. For all of them, and for every other menial task that you cannot seem to grasp. I do have something here that may be helpful to the next man to come along.” Chad reached into the inner pocket of this jacket, then handed her a sheet of paper.

Maggie unfolded the paper, her hand shaking a bit as she read it.

Six-week course. Learn the basics.

“Cooking lessons? You’re giving me cooking lessons? How kind of you to provide a breakup gift. I’m sorry I don’t have anything for you.”

“Yes, well, it was supposed to be your birthday gift. I, however, can no longer tolerate your inadequacies, so I’m giving it to you now. Perhaps now you’ll be good at something besides fellatio.”

“It’s easy when you’re dealing with a gherkin,” Maggie spat out bitterly, shooting visual daggers at his groin area, then down to his large feet. That was one old wives’ tale that didn’t hold water when it came to Chad.

Maggie’s anger slowly reached its boiling point. What the hell had she ever seen in this guy? How could she have wasted the past year on him? Was she that lonely? She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. It didn’t help. His words kept replaying in her head. She remembered every time he had put her down. Why had she allowed the emotional abuse to last so long? She should have left him months ago.

Opening her eyes, she looked at the baking dish containing the salmon briquets. Before she knew it, the dish was flying across the room. “Get out, you pompous little-dick motherfucker!”

The rage she was feeling caused her body to shake. Her vision blurred from the hot angry tears filling her eyes. She heard the door slam shut, marking the end of what she now knew was nothing but a toxic relationship.

Maggie wasn’t sure how long she stood at the counter, but it was dark when she finally moved away. The anger she had felt hours before had left her body numb. Her eyes burned and itched from the tears she had shed. Returning to the forgotten chicken, she set out to clean up the mess and reevaluate her life.

Over the next few days, Maggie went about her life as normal. There were no more tears. She changed the locks, then booked a hotel room at the local casino for the weekend. Let him try to get his stuff with her twenty miles away and his keys no longer working.

Oh, she’d let him come get his belongings eventually. What she would not let him do was control her life anymore. She would tell him when he could come over, not the other way around.

Maggie looked forward to the cooking lessons; if she learned to cook, it would be a form of revenge. Chad might have been a pretentious prick, but he did have one thing correct: she was a disaster in the kitchen. If the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, as the saying went, then she’d best learn to cook.