Page 17

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Skylar

“What are we doing here?”

Cassius doesn’t look annoyed as the automatic grocery store doors open for us. He takes my hand and pulls me to his side when a couple nearly knocks into me. I smile and lean up on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Ever the hero.

“I thought we could have a date,” I say, taking the initiative and tugging him in the direction we need to go.

He raises a curious eyebrow. “A date? At a grocery store?”

I nod happily. “You know my past boyfriends haven’t…” I nibble on my bottom lip. Even though I’ve come to acknowledge that they were all raging assholes, it still fills me with embarrassment to admit it. But this is Cassius, so I sigh and continue. “Well, let’s just say that when Mr. Right comes along, I want us to be able to do fun things.”

“Like go to the grocery store,” he repeats slowly. He’d never look at me as if I was losing my mind, but I can tell he’s confused.

I giggle and drag him to the elevator. “We’re taking a cooking class!”

One amazing thing about living in Florida is this particular chain of grocery stores. They’re elite. Like puts every other store to shame. Not only are these places so clean you could eat off the floor, but they offer a ton of extras. This location happens to have two stories. The bottom one is where people can shop, but the top has space for events. I even subscribe to their newsletter, which is how I managed to snag the last two spots for their monthly cooking class.

Cassius nods as we enter the elevator. “Cool.”

I practically fawn over him. Maybe Ricky or someone else would have told me this was a ridiculous idea, but Cassius always goes with the flow. He’s down for anything, so easy, and it makes being around him almost effortless.

Still holding hands, we step off the elevator and follow the signs to the class. It’s being held in this fancy-looking kitchen with rows of tables all set up and ready. The person leading the class greets us and hands us two aprons emblazoned with the grocery chain name. She tells us to sit wherever we want, and since we’re cutting it close, we take the last row all the way in the back.

“I think this is going to be really fun,” I tell Cassius as I look at all the ingredients that have been laid out for us. “The email said that we’d be making crème br?lée.”

He smiles fondly and pecks the top of my head. “Sounds great, sunshine.”

“I think I can learn a lot of skills.” I continue as the instructor starts preparing for the class. “Maybe I could even cook for you some time?”

He snorts, but not in the sort of disdainful way I’m used to from others. “Unlikely.”

“Hey,” I tease, narrowing my eyes as I slap his arm. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I love you, but you can’t cook for shit,” he explains, then gives me an appeasing wink. “Just let me do the cooking.”

I would be offended were he not the most amazing cook on the planet. Cassius can make anything . Sometimes, we even make it a game. We’ll purposefully avoid shopping so that he’s forced to figure out what to do with the sad remains of our fridge. Somehow, everything he makes tastes like liquid gold, and I’m a bit envious of it. Not just that, but he cooks every night. Even if he’s not hungry, there’s still a plate full of food on our table, ready for me when I come home for work.

I pout. “But how is that fair?”

He shrugs. “I like cooking for you. You letting me do that makes me happy. Deal?”

Well, it’s hard to argue with that logic. Even so, I try to, but the instructor’s voice cuts me off.

“Welcome, everyone!” she cheers, clapping her hands as she takes her position in front of the class. “I’m so happy y’all could join us today! We’ll be learning how to make a very popular French dessert. Now, it may seem like a challenge at first, but together, we’ll make something wonderful. Who’s ready to start?”

I whoop into the air to show my enthusiasm. It earns a few snickers from the old ladies next to us, and I feel a bit embarrassed after the fact. But one glance at Cassius, who’s positively beaming with amusement, makes that fade.

“We love enthusiasm,” the instructor says, her smile so genuine as she picks up the first ingredient. “Now, let’s begin.”

The first thing we do is sort through our ingredients: large eggs, white sugar, vanilla extract, heavy cream, and brown sugar. It looks simple enough, probably just mixing everything together, until she tells us we need to separate the yolks from the white.

“Um…” I mumble, staring at the egg in my hand in panic.

Cassius doesn’t laugh at my petrified look. Instead, he places his hands over mine as he kisses the side of my head. “Here, let me show you. You want to crack the egg but not let any of it fall. Then you kinda want to just tip it side to side until it’s separated.”

Guiding my hands, we do as he says, and my eyes widen when the yolk comes free. We gently drop it into a different bowl and discard the rest.

“Your turn,” he tells me, letting go of my hands, and I almost whine at the loss of his heat.

I chew on the inside of my cheek and shake my head. “I don’t think I can do it on my own.”

“Of course, you can,” he says with a reassuring grin. “Just try it.”

I suck in a deep breath and nod. I can do this. Cassius just made it look like the easiest thing on the planet. Granted, everything comes easy to him, but if he can do it, so can I. I stick my tongue out in concentration as I try to mimic the movement he showed me, and I let out a little cheer when the yolk separates perfectly.

“See,” he insists, rubbing the back of my neck with his large hand. “I knew it.”

I beam with pride as we go through the rest of the eggs that need to be prepared. We follow her instructions to the T, preheating our individual ovens and combining all the ingredients into one bowl. We bring the heavy cream to a simmer in a saucepan and wait a few minutes for the next step.

“Okay,” the instructor says. “Next, we’re going to gradually whisk the hot cream into the egg yolk mixture. But make sure to do a little at a time to prevent the mixture from scrambling.”

As I go to do as she says, a hand on my wrist stops me. I blink up at Cass and cock my head. “What?”

“If you do it like that, sunshine, you’re going to put too much in at once. Can I show you?”

I nod. He takes my hands once again and demonstrates how I should do it, guiding my other hand to start whisking. “Like this.”

While I follow his instructions, he goes to prepare his own mixture. I purse my lips, not in displeasure, but in curiosity. “Cassy?”

“Yeah?”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

It never occurred to me to ask him. I guess I just assumed he came out of the womb a master chef, but now I’m not so sure. He’s not only creative in the kitchen, but he’s proven to be technically sound. I feel like that kind of thing has to be taught.

He blushes as he whisks his mixture. “It’s really not a lot of stuff.”

“But it is,” I insist. “Did you, like, watch videos or something? Reality television? Someone must have shown you all of this.”

“I—” He bites his tongue and shakes his head. “It’s embarrassing.”

I gasp. Cassius is never embarrassed. I don’t think he even knows the meaning of that word. Why would anyone so composed and cool ever be embarrassed. “Cassy…”

“Okay, okay,” he says at my tone, ducking his head, his long hair falling over his face as he avoids my gaze. “I might have taken a cooking class when we first moved to Miami.”

My eyes widen. “You took a cooking class?”

“Or maybe seven cooking classes?”

“Cass!”

“I just…” He finally looks up at me and gives me a small shrug. “I just wanted to be able to take care of you. We didn’t eat right growing up, so…”

My heart swells. More than it usually does around him. That’s so… That’s so sweet. “Why did you never say anything about it?”

He snorts. “Because it wasn’t a big deal. Still isn’t.”

“Cassius!” I argue. “It’s a huge deal— Oh, shit!”

In my frazzled and overwhelmed state, I raised my hands to emphasize my point, but ended up taking the mixture-covered whisk with me. That ended up splattering curdling egg yolk and cream all over his black band shirt.

When Cassius stares at me, slack-jawed, I shrug. “Oops?”

“Oops,” he mimics, dragging one finger down his chest, collecting the mushy mixture, before turning on me. “I’ll show you oops.”

The scream I let out is horror-level loud as he flicks the mixture onto my face. That turns into a giggle, however, and I take some of mine and flick some into his hair. In a matter of seconds, we’re like two children going back and forth, seeing how dirty we can get the other.

“Excuse me!”

Both of us stop and snap our heads up. The instructor stands right in front of our station, and she is not pleased. Neither are the old ladies beside us who cast us judgmental looks. I shrink into myself at their stares. I open my mouth to apologize because I was so stupid. Always stupid. I humiliated myself and Cassius and?—

“We’re just having some fun,” Cassius says smoothly, not a hint of shame on his face as he regards the instructor. “Testing out the mixture.”

“You can’t start food fights in class, young man,” she says, wagging her finger. “Do I have to ask you to leave?”

To this, he shrugs. “If you want.”

He and the instructor lock themselves in a battle of wills, which is a big mistake, because Cassius never loses. After a few seconds, the instructor backs down and huffs. “Fine. But no more shenanigans.”

“Sounds good to me,” he says smoothly, then wraps a protective arm around my waist. “I’m excited to see how these turn out.”

Once again, the instructor huffs before continuing to monitor the other students’ progress. Still a little shaken, I take a step away and bow my head. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“For…I don’t know.”

Tears well in my eyes as I stare at my egg-covered shoes.

Stupid.

Worthless.

Always causing trouble.

“Hey,” he whispers, a strong hand grasping my chin to tip my head up. Blue eyes filled with intention lock on mine, and he leans in to brush his lips against the corner of my mouth. “Don’t apologize when you’ve done nothing wrong.”

“But we?—”

“I don’t give a fuck,” he rasps against my cheek. “Tell me we just got a little ahead of ourselves, but we didn’t do anything wrong.”

“We…” I lick my lips as he stares. The words take a second to come out, mostly because my head is so loud, but when they do, I smile. “We just got a little ahead of ourselves, but we didn’t do anything wrong.”

The weird thing is, I believe it. I didn’t before. I never do. But Cassius has the power to make me see things in a different light. He doesn’t think I’m a burden or taking up too much space. He protects me from other’s opinions of me. He’s at my side, no matter what. Without him, the dark thoughts win, but he’s a pro at fighting them off for me.

“Exactly,” he says, landing one solid kiss on my lips before pulling back. “Now, let’s finish making these so we can have some dessert after dinner.”

“Chicken and broccoli?” I tease.

He nods. “You’re damn straight.”

I throw my head back with a laugh and can’t help but snuggle into his side. It makes it harder to follow the instructions with me plastered against him, but he doesn’t complain. He simply throws an arm around my waist and does everything one-handed.

Our crème br?lée ends up horrible, as predicted. Turns out, when you waste half of it on your clothes, there isn’t enough left to actually make it set. I don’t know, that’s just what Cassius said, but it doesn’t stop him from beaming with pride when he tries mine.

Or when he says that we’ll just have to do better next time.

Unfortunately, we have to cut our day a bit short because he has to go to work early. He drives the soccer mom van home while I look into other classes we can take together. When we’re at the apartment and he’s getting ready to leave, I pout and tell him I’ll miss him. He kisses me soundly by the door, reminding me that my dinner is in the fridge and just needs to be heated up.

Later that night, when I’m bored and missing him, I take the sparkly notebook out to add another entry.

MUST BE OKAY WITH MY MESSES.