Page 18 of Love Below Zero

18

CHEMISTRY LESSONS

JAMES

@opbelowzero

Happy Birthday Joanna!

Our astronauts are making chocolate cake this week to celebrate. Stay tuned for the full video!

Sticky note stuck to Eli’s workstation:

No food allowed at the computers! Seriously, do you know how hard it is to clean melted Red Vines out of a motherboard? HOW did it even get there??

“No.”

“Please?” Joanna looks at me with her big blue eyes, her lower lip sticking out in a slight pout.

“No.”

“Pretty please with cherries on top?”

I glare at her. “Dressing up the ‘please’ isn’t going to convince me to change my mind.”

Joanna drops the puppy dog act, narrowing her eyes at me. We are nearing the end of our fifth week in the dome, and the boredom is clearly getting to her.

“It’s my birthday,” she points out. “And Becky said she’ll do it if you do it.”

I sigh, running a hand through my hair. While things have somewhat defrosted between Rebecca and I since our chess evening, she’s still keeping her distance. Every morning I slip a note with a fact about space under her door. She hasn’t said anything about my attempt to win her over with science facts, but she hasn’t asked me to stop either, so I keep going. She also hasn’t returned the book I gave her, which I take as a positive sign.

Joanna is trying to convince me to film a video for her birthday celebration. She wants Rebecca and me to bake her a cake on camera. I’m not camera-shy, but I don’t want to force my presence onto Rebecca.

“Damn it, Joanna, I’m an astronomer, not a baker,” I tell her, and she scoffs.

“You can follow instructions, right, Bones?” She waves a recipe card in front of my face. “People want updates of what we’re doing in here. Plus, this is the first real food we’ve gotten in a month. It’s a double celebration.”

She has a point there. I find myself also looking forward to her birthday, because we’re making tacos and cake. Real food, not the pre-packaged food we’ve been eating so far.

“Come on, Eli and Frances agreed to let me film them making the tacos. Let me live out my director dreams!”

“You have a different dream every week,” I point out. Even though she has dome maintenance work to take care of and she’s working on enhancements for her leg, she still finds the time to cycle through various hobbies. Last week it was crochet. I honestly don’t want to know how she got the yarn and needles. She made a series of small green Martians, and they littered the dome. Either she moves them during the night, or they have become sentient. I’m not sure which is worse, considering the vaguely threatening aura these tiny crochet creatures have.

“And this week it’s filming. Please?” She slides the recipe card at me across the dining table and I glance at it. The recipe seems straightforward, and she’s right; baking is a matter of following instructions.

“Rebecca said she’ll do it?”

Joanna nods, her blond hair bobbing up and down with her. “She did.”

“Alright, fine,” I concede. Joanna’s face breaks out into a huge grin and she fist pumps the air. “But I’m taking your shower time today.”

Her fist pump halts in mid-air.

Sure, we aren’t getting particularly filthy in this enclosed space, but a hot shower does wonders for the mood.

Joanna is back to pouting at me.

“I’m not going on camera with unwashed hair,” I say.

“I guess that’s fair,” she sighs. “The shower is all yours. But only three extra minutes! I promised Becky I would give her five.”

“It’s a deal.”

I shouldn’t have said yes to Joanna’s request.

We are all gathered in the kitchen. Eli and Frances sit on the office chairs, arguing about who makes the best meatballs: Italy or Louisiana. They are filming the taco-making after us, but gathered to watch. Rebecca and I are behind a makeshift kitchen counter. We cleared one of the workstations earlier today and carried it into the kitchen to double as an island. Joanna set up some lights and tidied the space to make it look more presentable. She’s standing behind the camera, checking the framing.

“Stand a little closer together,” she instructs, and Rebecca and I shift slightly. She smells sweet, like vanilla and chocolate. Her brown hair glistens under the lights, and I marvel at what she was able to accomplish with five extra minutes of shower time. Not that I’m thinking about her in the shower.

I was doing a lot of not thinking about her these days.

“Perfect,” Joanna says before giving us a thumbs-up. “You can start baking whenever you’re ready. Just pretend I’m not here.”

I can feel the heat from Rebecca’s body against mine, and for a brief moment I don’t know what to do with myself. If I fidget, my shoulder brushes against hers, sending tiny sparks down my arm. Does she feel it too, or is this completely one-sided? I have no frame of reference for unrequited feelings, but I can’t say that I’m enjoying the experience.

In an effort to put some distance between us, I reach for the recipe card. My hands itch to tug on my hair or push my glasses up my nose, but I left the glasses upstairs and I need to be presentable for this video.

“Alright, let’s do this.” It’s like flipping a switch. Even though I haven’t made a YouTube video in a while, it’s muscle memory. I plaster on a smile that I hope looks natural before launching into an introduction.

“Today we’re making chocolate cake for our crewmate Joanna’s birthday.” Joanna flips the camera toward her and waves before turning it back on us.

“It should be easy,” Rebecca says, pulling the recipe card out of my hand. “But here on Mars we don’t have fresh ingredients like eggs or milk, so we’re making a powdered cake. Which I’m really excited about, since it’s also gluten-free.”

“We should start with the dry ingredients,” I say. We already pulled everything out that we’ll need and arranged it on the counter. I grab the mixing bowl and measuring cups.

“Right. First thing we need is one and one-fourth cups of powdered eggs.” She pulls a face as she hands me the powdered eggs. “It’s like the Goodwill version of eggs.”

I chuckle as I measure out exactly the amount we need before putting it in the bowl. “Yes, I can’t say that I’m a fan of powdered eggs.”

“It just feels wrong.” She shivers comically. “But that’s the kind of sacrifices astronauts will have to make if they want to travel to another planet.”

She hands me the powdered sugar. “Next we’ll need one cup of powdered sugar, which if you ask me is not enough to cover the eggy-ness.”

“But that’s what the recipe calls for,” I point out. “And it’s important to follow the recipe when baking.”

I can tell she wants to roll her eyes at me, but she’s keeping it civil for the camera. She turns on the induction burner, setting a pot of water on top.

“I’m more of a measure-ingredients-with-your-heart kind of person,” she says sweetly .

“And I am more of a rule follower,” I shoot back. She glares at me before returning to her own fake camera smile.

“Don’t I know it,” she mutters under her breath. She makes a show of sticking a thermometer into the water, checking the temperature. “Is it warm enough, Doctor Reid?”

Oh boy, we are back to her calling me Doctor Reid in that sarcastic tone of hers. I have to remind myself to behave, that I shouldn’t be taking the bait.

She reaches over me to pour the warm water into our mixture, her breasts brushing against my arm. My brain freezes and cycles through various emergency procedures before settling on mild panic. My mouth is dry as powdered eggs as I try to keep my focus on what we are doing. Rebecca is still too close to me, mischief in her eyes.

Focus, James.

I start whisking our mixture together, keeping my gaze on the eggy goo.

“Are you alright, Doctor?” she asks, low enough for the others not to hear. I almost drop the bowl. That doctor was not sarcasm, it was almost ... sexy. I haven’t watched a lot of porn, but her tone is the same one I imagine a naughty nurse would use as she tries to distract a doctor operating on a patient. The doctor would be bare chested and ripped, of course, and he would valiantly resist her efforts until she unbuttoned her nurse’s outfit, and then all logic, and their clothes, would fly out the window.

Now all I can think about is Rebecca in a nurse’s outfit, calling me doctor in that sultry tone of hers.

Lord have mercy on me.

I’ve heard of bi-panic, but is demi-panic a thing?

I’ve been quiet for too long, so I clear my throat. “I’m fine.” That definitely did not come out squeaky at all. “What’s next?”

Rebecca smirks, but moves away from me to check the recipe. “We need one cup of sifted powdered milk.” She grabs the milk and the sieve, measuring out what I would consider to be a cup and a half. Before I can stop her though, she dumps it in the sieve and starts to sift it into the mixture. “God, this smells like egg. And not in a good way.”

She hands me the sieve and I continue with the powdered milk as she ducks down, searching through one of the cupboards.

“This should help,” she proclaims, holding out a bottle of vanilla essence.

“The recipe—” I start, but she has already unscrewed the cap and is pouring a generous amount of vanilla into the mixture.

“Sometimes you have to take a few chances.” She leans over me again to get a good look at the abomination we are making.

“Now it smells like a really bad Bed Bath & Beyond candle.” I sniff.

Rebecca laughs, and my cheeks warm. I want to make her laugh again just so I can bask in the warmth of it, but I also want her to stop adding random things to the cake. I thrust the bowl and whisk at her, taking the recipe card. “You mix. I’ll add.”

This time she does roll her eyes at me, but she obliges, scooping some of the goo up and letting it plop back into the bowl. The sound makes me want to crawl out of my skin. She whisks it again, the goo making disturbing goo-like noises .

Under her breath she mumbles, “Now that’s what good pussy sounds like.”

I choke on my own spit.

Joanna laughs out loud, clearly having heard Rebecca. “You can’t quote Vines like that out of context,” she wheezes, almost bent in half with laughter. “You almost gave James a heart attack.”

What the hell is a vine?

My brain is still processing that the word pussy came out of Rebecca’s mouth. It caught me off guard, and once again I’m missing some vital information. Why does Joanna find it funny?

Rebecca must have seen the confused expression on my face, because she lays a hand on my arm.

“It’s a quote from a viral short form video. I’ll show it to you later.”

An unnamed emotion crawls its way up my throat. No one has ever offered to explain the joke to me. It feels like an olive branch from her side, and I can’t help but give her a small smile.

“You can cut that out, right?” Rebecca asks Joanna as we return to the task at hand.

“I’ll think about it.” She grins.

“Okay, this mixture is about to become sentient.” Rebecca puts the bowl down, wiping at her forehead and smearing some of the goo there. I reach out, gently wiping the goo away. She stills at my touch, eyes boring into mine. The kitchen suddenly feels too small for us, heat climbing up my cheeks. I need to check the dome’s temperature settings after this, maybe something broke again. I wipe my hand on a nearby dish towel, turning back to the camera .

“What’s next?” Rebecca asks, as if the whole goo-wiping thing never happened.

“A pinch of salt. Though a more accurate measurement would be 1/16th of a teaspoon, or 0.3 grams.” I’m already reaching for the scale, but Rebecca is content to just throw salt in without a care in the world. I hate those arbitrary measurements. A pinch of this or a dash of that. Give me actual numbers, people.

“Of course you know what the real measurement for a pinch is.”

“I know plenty of things.”

She looks like she wants to say more, but opts for pressing her lips together instead.

“And now for my favourite step, the cocoa.” She holds up the tin of cocoa, and I can already tell she’ll be measuring this with her heart as well.

“Let’s actually use the measuring cups for this. We don’t want the cake to be too dry.” I hold out the cups for her, and she reluctantly takes them.

“But we want it to be very chocolatey,” she protests as she scoops out a heap of cocoa. It’s way too much.

“That’s not how cocoa works,” I point out, taking her hand in mine and dumping some of the cocoa back in the tin. Her eyes flash with irritation as she tugs away.

“The world won’t end if there’s a little more chocolate in the cake.”

It really isn’t that serious, but her flagrant disregard for measurement is getting under my skin. Recipes have measurements for a reason. It’s to ensure the cake comes out edible. Different ingredients interact with each other, and if there is too much of one thing, it can become overpowering.

“Surely I don’t have to explain to you how recipes work?” That came out more condescending than I intended it to.

“Contrary to your beliefs, I can read,” she says coolly, dipping the measuring cup back into the cocoa tin. She’s about to dump it in the mixture, but my fight or flight kicks in and I grab the bowl, pulling it away.

The cocoa lands with a light plop on the counter.

If I thought she was angry at me before, I was wrong.

She looks up at me, her eyes filled with murder. Is that what she looks like when she writes my death scenes? Maybe now I’ve finally pushed her far enough to act out those scenes.

“James, put the bowl down.” Her voice is ice, and I am both extremely afraid and a little turned on at that.

I clutch the goo to my chest, shaking my head. “Only if you measure out the correct amount of cocoa.”

I can’t believe we’re fighting over cocoa. I’m sure this is not what Joanna had in mind, but when I look over at her, she motions for me to keep going. The situation is spiralling out of my control, and fast.

Rebecca thumps the cocoa tin on the counter, scooping up the fallen clump and dumping it unceremoniously back in the tin.

“Why don’t you give me the goo, and then you can measure the cocoa?” she asks, eyebrows raised. It’s like we entered a hostage negotiation scenario, and I’m not sure who’s winning.

“Put down the measuring cups first,” I say.

She glares at me, but tosses the cups on the counter, holding up her hands. “Satisfied?”

A thrill races up my spine. I like it when she follows my instructions.

I inch closer to the counter, still hugging the bowl to my chest.

“Is this really necessary?” she sighs, crossing her arms over her chest.

Probably not. “Yes.”

I hold out the bowl for her to take, and I can tell she’s contemplating upending the thing over my head. She doesn’t though. She just places the bowl on the counter, still glaring at me as I measure out the exact amount of cocoa we need. The counter is a mess, and I’m itching to clean everything up, but if I get distracted now, Rebecca will just take over. We can clean when the cake is in the oven.

Once the appropriate amount of cocoa is in the bowl, I start mixing. Rebecca has other plans.

“Sneak attack!” she yells, tossing a handful of cocoa toward the bowl. It misses though, quite spectacularly, and lands mostly on my shirt and in my face. I blink at her, stunned. She blinks back, equally stunned that the cocoa went wide. She clamps a hand over her mouth, laughter bubbling up.

“You are insufferable, you know that?” I snap at her, and then in the most childish fashion, I grab some of the leftover cacao and toss it at her.

She splutters, grabbing the dish towel to wipe her face before tossing it down on the induction plate.

“You’re the one who turned baking into a chemistry final!” she huffs, throwing another handful of dust at me. I set the bowl down, stalking toward her.

“It’s a science. An exact science. Not that you would know anything about that.” It’s a low blow, but I’m angry and overstimulated. The lights in the kitchen are too bright, the room too warm. The smell of the goo and the cocoa dust on my face is too much for me to handle. I desperately want to wash my hands, change my clothes, peel off my skin.

“Oh, right. Not all of us can be master bakers, Doctor Reid,” she snaps, her fists clenched at her sides.

“I agree. It takes skill and dedication and a certain willingness to follow instructions,” I seethe.

“Maybe you need to learn how to let go every once in a while!”

I open my mouth to say something clever, but stop short when Rebecca gasps. The dish towel she dropped on the induction plate is on fire. The goo must be more flammable than we thought, because the towel bursts to life, flames shooting in every direction. I don’t think—I just grab Rebecca by the waist, pulling her down and covering her body with my own. I’m vaguely aware of the others scrambling for the fire extinguisher, and soon a soft spray of CO2 settles over us.

“Are you two alright?” Frances asks.

“Fine!” I answer as I pull back slightly, checking Rebecca for injuries. I cup her face gently, but her gaze is far away.

“Darling, are you okay?” I ask softly.

She snaps out of wherever she was, focusing on me. She pushes away from me with a snarl, getting to her feet.

“Sorry about this, Frances. It got out of hand.”

I get to my feet as well, surveying the damage. A fine layer of CO2 from the fire extinguisher covers the kitchen. Joanna looks like she’s having a blast, and Eli is inspecting the ingredients. We must have forgotten to turn off the induction plate.

“Well, at least we can tell the ESA that this powdered milk is highly flammable,” he says. He reaches over, taking Rebecca by the arm and guiding her out of the kitchen. I don’t want him touching her, but I clench my jaw and say nothing.

Frances surveys the scene, her keen eyes flipping between Rebecca and I.

“You two head upstairs and get changed, then report back for cleaning duty. Eli and I will finish the cake.”

Eli drops Rebecca’s arm and I gesture for her to head up the stairs. She brushes past without even looking at me. Eli shrugs at me before returning to the kitchen, and I follow Rebecca with a pit in my stomach.

I’ve definitely made things worse.