Page 25 of The Lineman

I had no time to deal with this because something was burning.

Deeply.

Aggressively.

I turned back to the stove, my heart dropping straight into my stomach.

The sauce I had so confidently attempted—a “classic reduction,” according to the YouTube chef I had blindly trusted—was now a bubbling, charred monstrosity, filling the kitchen with smoke and regret.

“Oh, my God.”

I lunged for the pan, grabbed it off the burner, and immediately dropped it back down with a yelp because apparently, pans get hot when you put them on fire.

Great.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

I was five minutes away from serving Elliot a meal of broken dreams and carbon.

I had been so confident.

I had envisioned a cozy, intimate dinner, where Elliot would walk in, inhale the delicious scents of my perfectly cooked meal, and think,Damn, Mike Albert is not only intelligent and devastatingly handsome but also a gifted chef. What a catch.

I had set the table. Lit some casual, non-romantic candles. Poured myself a glass of wine because, in my mind, real chefs drank wine while cooking.

Then, the cooking began.

Mistake One: Attempting a meal with more than three ingredients.

Mistake Two: Believing that just because I had watched one Gordon Ramsay video, I was now a qualified chef.

Mistake Three: Everything else.

I grabbed a potholder this time (learning from my mistakes!) and yanked the ruined pan off the stove, glaring at it as if sheer hatred would reverse the charring.

Homer, sensing chaos, finally dropped the onion and trotted over, tail wagging.

“Oh, sure, now you listen,” I muttered, stepping over him to assess the rest of the meal.

The garlic bread in the oven?

Fuck me. I had garlic bread in the oven, didn’t I?

It was burned beyond recognition.

The pasta?

Overcooked to the point of mush. Who pulverizes boxed pasta? How was that even possible?

The chicken?

Still raw in the center, because of course it was.

Somewhere out there, Gordon was shaking his head and calling me a donut.

I was a disaster.

I glanced at the clock. Elliot would be here in ten minutes. There was nothing edible except the wine—and wine wasn’t an eating thing. Of that, I was fairly certain.

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