Okay, the pasta was in the pot now and the chicken was cooking and starting to look like it was going to actually be edible. Lee was using his phone to set a timer for the pasta, and it seemed like they actually had a pretty decent handle on things.

Lee spoke and Tarin looked over his shoulder at her and laughed, ”Love you too, and I did read the recipe, I just didn’t memorize it.” he said, and it was true. Tarin definitely had an idea about what came next, he just wanted to make sure he didn’t make any more medium-high mistakes.

After that, he stood for a few moments, still looking back and forth between the chicken and the pasta. It seemed like there should have been something else to do.

”I just figured it’d be a good thing to hear everything again so that we’re both on the same page and know what to do.” he said idly to Lee. Along with being convinced that everything was going to go wrong, she seemed worried about the fact.

”You really don’t like to cook, do you?” He added, wondering if this had been a good idea after all.

Ok, that was a bit of a relief. Tarin had read the recipe before they had started on this little ‘adventure’. That was definitely good to know, but maybe after this Lee would insist on reading the recipe the next time before they started to cook.

She was already picking up Tarin’s phone again to read out the next directions when Tarin spoke again.

But the last thing Tarin said, the question he asked her, caused Lee’s hand with the phone to drop back down to rest on the counter as she frowned at the food cooking on the stove. ”Me and cooking have never really gotten along,” she said thoughtfully after a few moments.

”When I was younger, I often had to make choices between having money for rent, coffee, or food, and food was the bottom of that list,” Lee continued, still staring at the food rather than looking up at Tarin. ”And even when I had more money, I wasn’t as good at judging how long my energy would last me. So if I did come home to make then eat something that took more than a few minutes to make, I’d have to go get more energy, and then often couldn’t sleep.”

Lee took a minute to answer, and the longer it took the more Tarin had a feeling it was going to be one of those difficult things.

The chicken looked like it was pretty much done, so Tarin moved it off the burner and turned so he could better listen to Lee as she spoke.

The story she told reminded him a lot of his trip to New York, the first week he’d been there, and the initial period of time after everything had fallen apart with the group. Tarin could distinctly remember having to stretch pocket change and trying to find the most filling thing at the market for the least amount of money.

It got even more complicated for Lee though, on top of all of that she’d had her energy to manage. Cooking had always been high stakes. It really made sense that it would be stressful for her.

”Say the word and we can throw the whole mess in the trash and order something. . Tarin said. ”The cooking wasn’t the point of the whole thing anyway, it was just something silly to do together.” he wasn’t disappointed when he said it, wasn’t upset, just sincere.

More than anything, he wanted Lee to be happy, if this wasn’t fun and happy, they didn’t need to be doing it.

Lee could see out of the corner of her eye that Tarin had turned toward her as she spoke. But Lee didn’t turn her head to look at Tarin until she had finished speaking and she was waiting to hear or see what his response was.

And hearing his response, Lee could only smile up at him for a moment. Then she stepped closer to him, wrapping her arms around his neck as she stretched up to kiss him.

”Thank you, Tarin,” she said softly once she had pulled back just enough to speak as she looked up at him.

A moment later, the timer on Tarin’s phone went off and Lee noticeably jumped at the sudden noise.

”Hopefully that means the pasta is finished?” Lee said hopefully even as she shook her head at herself for being startled.

But as she moved to get the pot of pasta, Lee frowned. Then she held up a finger. ”Wait. I know we have one of those…water… drainer pots with holes.” She then crouched down and started digging through one of the bottom cupboards.

As Lee finally turned Tarin had to wonder why she was always so worried about how he was going to react when she was uncomfortable or didn’t like something?

They were bound to do things and try things that one or both of them didn’t like…it was just what happened when you decided to be with someone. You found happy medians and managed to give and take until each of you was happy.

Lee smiled at his response though, then she was stretching up and kissing him and Tarin was the one who wanted to toss the whole meal in the trash as he wrapped his arms around her. It would take at least a while for anything they ordered to get there and time was definitely a good thing.

His phone timer went off though and Lee jumped and then they weren’t kissing anymore and there was pasta that needed to be drained and Lee was trying to find the, ”Strainer…” he said helpfully, then turned with a small sigh to turn off the heat on the pasta and grab the other pan they’d gotten out for the sauce. If he remembered right, butter and the garlic were the first steps, but he’d need a reminder of the details.

A strainer. That made so much sense for a name. Lee had used it a few times in the 6 years that they had lived here, but she hadn’t ever called it anything.

A couple moments later, Lee was successful, and she pulled the strainer out and stood up to look at Tarin again. ”Did you want to strain the pasta and I’ll actually read the next directions and not get distracted?” Lee asked as she held the strainer out.

Once Tarin had the strainer in hand, Lee grabbed Tarin’s phone off the counter and stepped out of the way.

”Alright. So. This says to melt the butter over medium-high heat,” Lee read out from the phone. ”Once it’s melted, add the garlic and cook it for 30 seconds or until ‘fragrant’. But doesn’t garlic already smell?”

Lee shook her head. Why couldn’t the instructions make sense? ”Then we pour in the cream, and have to stir constantly so it doesn’t burn, but still have the temperature that high. Once it is boiling, then we turn it down to medium heat and add the parmesan cheese, salt and pepper.”

”Yep.” Tarin said, taking the strainer from Lee as she offered it and turning to put it in the sink.

This part was easy enough and Tarin grabbed the pasta pot and poured the hot contents into the strainer, pleased to see that the noodles looked flexible as they flopped out of the pot. Some of them were stuck together, and some of them were stuck to the pot…but a vast majority made it where they were supposed to go.

Another win.

Deciding they could sit there for a minute and drain, Tarin turned back and put the pasta pot on the stove while Lee read the sauce instructions. He’d been right about the butter and garlic. ”Yeah, I have no idea what that means either…it has a time though right?” as long as there was a time it didn’t matter if they knew what fragrant meant.

Grabbing the necessary ingredients and setting them next to the stove, Tarin turned the burner back on somewhere between where it had started for the chicken and where it had ended up. Medium high.

Into the pan went the butter. Now they just had to wait for it to melt. ”Only a few more steps…” Tarin said, smiling over at Lee.

Tarin didn’t have a clue what ‘until fragrant’ meant either. If there were secret code things like this for cooking, how was anyone supposed to learn how to do it?

”Yeah, it says for 30 seconds,” Lee confirmed as she watched Tarin gather the ingredients closer to him. And, while things had…not gone well to start with what with the chicken burning to the pan. But things had been going better since then.

Maybe this whole cooking thing wasn’t so bad afterall, Lee thought. When Tarin was there with her.

Was she more apprehensive about the two of them making chicken alfredo than she had been facing down a drug cartel? More nervous than subduing and getting rid of the spirit of an angry serial killer? Yes…Yes she was. And Lee realized that that did not make sense rationally, but that was how she felt.

”Only a few more steps…”

Lee smiled back at Tarin even as her mind pointed out that that meant there were still a few more steps where everything could turn into a disaster.

”Maybe this will actually turn out well,” Lee said instead, trying to be optimistic about this whole thing.

”Thirty seconds it is.” Tarin said as the butter continued to melt in the pan. It didn’t seem to be burning, so that had to be a good thing, right?

Lee actually sounded a little positive at this point. Tarin grinned over at her, bound and determined that it was going to work now. It felt important that this work out. Things had been far more serious around this idea than he had intended and Tarin really just wanted a win.

In went the garlic now and while Tarin hadn’t had Lee set the timer he didn’t think that measuring fragrance was an exact science anyway. The garlic did start to smell more after a point and that was probably exactly what it was supposed to do. So while everything was just bubbling merrily along, Tarin looked over at Lee.

”We’re supposed to stir constantly after we add the cream, so can you pour it in? I’ll do the stirring part?” he said, ready to do what needed to be done.

Lee was very tempted to actually set a timer for 30 seconds, to make sure that they weren’t keeping the butter and garlic in there cooking on their own for too long.

But then Tarin turned and grinned at her. Lee couldn’t help but smile back at him, and became distracted enough that she didn’t get the timer set up. Next thing Lee knew, Tarin was dumping the garlic into the pan.

At that point, Lee thought a timer would be pointless. If it was a precise enough thing that they needed to time 30 seconds, the time it would take to get the timer started were too many. So to distract herself from the disaster that was bound to happen because they cooked the garlic in the butter for either too little time or too much time, Lee turned back to the phone to read the next directions.

”Once the cream is in, we constantly stir until it boils,” Lee repeated. ”Then we turn it down to medium heat and mix in the cheese, salt, and pepper. After that, we remove from the heat and mix in the pasta until the sauce ‘begins to thicken’.” That wasn’t vague, was it?

Tarin wanted her to pour the cream into the pot? That…actually, that was probably a better idea than counting on her to stop the sauce from burning. ”Ok,” Lee said quietly as she set the phone down on the counter and moved closer, grabbing the cream on the way. Lee then started pouring the cream into the pot, not slowly, but nowhere near fast enough that it would splash out.

Tarin nodded as Lee explained the next steps. He’d remembered them pretty well, but hearing Lee explain it again definitely helped reassure him that they were doing the right thing.

Lee also didn’t seem to mind Tarin’s suggestion that she pour the cream while he did the stirring. Medium-high was still dangerous territory.

Lee took the cream then and started to pour it into the pan and when it sizzled, Tarin worried for a minute that everything was going wrong, but Lee continued to pour the liquid and the sizzling stopped as the pan filled more.

Tarin kept stirring the liquid in the pan as instructed and for a while nothing happened…it all just kind of sloshed around as he stirred and tried not to spill anything onto the stovetop where it would burn.

Slowly, bubbles started to form, then faster as the liquid started to heat up.

”Okay…medium now…” Tarin said, reaching with his free hand to turn the burner down so he didn’t have to stop stirring.

”Cheese now?” Tarin said with another smile in Lee’s direction, confidence building as things continued to go right.

Lee got the cream poured into the pot and then just kind of stood there watching as Tarin stirred it. This was really rather nerve wracking, waiting for something to boil, but for it not to burn at the same time.

Tarin was doing a good job of the constant stirring as far as Lee could tell, though. There was no smoke (and even the burned chicken hadn’t caused smoke), the cream in the pot was starting to bubble, and…nothing seemed to be going wrong.

They were so close to actually being done at this point that Lee even started to think that the food, the meal that they were making was going to turn out good.

The bubbles in the cream started to come faster and faster. The next thing that Lee knew, Tarin was turning the stove down to medium and asking for the cheese. With a smile on his face.

And while Lee was feeling more optimistic, she also knew that this was the last step and it could still go horribly wrong. Still, Lee grabbed the parmesan and started to put it in the pot, bit by bit, as Tarin continued to stir.

Was it starting to melt? That was what it was supposed to do, right? ”Let me know when you think we’re ready to add the pasta,” Lee said as she stepped closer to the sink where the strainer with the pasta was still sitting.

Nothing looked clumpy, nothing smelled bad, and as Lee started adding the cheese and it started melting into the cream mixture Tarin had to think that this was going to work.

Yep, the cheese kept melting and suddenly they had something that absolutely resembled an Alfredo sauce.

The recipe said to remove from heat once the cheese was melted in, so Tarin scooted the chicken over and then pushed the pot with the sauce back so it wasn’t on the burner anymore.

Lee had said to let her know when they were ready for the pasta and Tarin quickly added some salt and pepper to the sauce before he said, “Ready when you are.” he said, moving out of the way so when Lee brought the pasta over she had an unobstructed path to the stove.

They were on the last step. The last thing to really do before this was food that they could eat. The last step, which wasn’t even really cooking, it was just mixing things together at this point. They could do this. They had done it so far.

She could do this.

Lifting the strainer full of pasta out of the sink, Lee made her way toward the stove and very careful not to splash the cheesy cream, she dumped the pasta into the pot.

Then Lee started mixing it all together. That was difficult at first, as the pasta was stuck to itself in a big clump. But slowly, as she moved it around and stirred, the noodles started separating as the cheesy cream started to coat them.

Was it a sauce? That was yet to be determined, but it did look edible.

”I think,” Lee said after a couple moments, her voice a little hesitant. ”We might be done?”

It didn’t take all that long for Lee to lift the pasta out of the sink and move it over to the pot with the Alfredo sauce. Because that’s what it was. They had definitely made actual Alfredo sauce. Tarin was probably more excited than he should have been about the fact.

Things were a little bit dicey when Lee dumped the pasta in with the sauce because the pasta had kind of stuck together, but she was patient and she stirred everything together and slowly the noodles started to separate and everything just started to look saucy.

Lee spoke and Tarin nodded, ”I’m pretty sure we are done.”

That said, Tarin grinned and held up his hand for a high five, ”Good work chef.” he said.