Page 37 of Flake It Til You Make It

There was snow on the ground—the first significant snowfall of the year—when Taylor knocked on the Jolly Java door. Worriedthat maybe Rocco wouldn’t hear him, in the back kitchen, he pulled out his phone and sent a text, too.

But before it even sent, Rocco was there, opening the door, shivering, even though he wore a beautiful burnt amber sweater and jeans, looking totally cozy and also like he’d just stepped off a runway in Paris.

“Hey,” Rocco said, “just on time.”

“That’s me. Prompt.”God, I am so bad at this still.

But Rocco laughed, like he was actually charming. “Come on, let’s go to the back. I’d ask if you want a coffee, but you’re a heathen who doesn’t drink it.”

“Someday maybe you’ll have to attempt a conversion,” Taylor suggested, even though he couldn’t imagine changing his mind. But his suggestion made Rocco smile brighter, and that was all he cared about.

Rocco pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen and Taylor followed behind him. He stopped, taking in the rigidly organized system Rocco had spread across the long stainless steel counter.

“Lasagna isn’t just a dish, it’s a way of life,” Rocco teased, gesturing towards the different stations. “You can make it without a plan, but then it’s just chaos.”

“What can I do to help?” He set down his bag of lettuce and already-chopped veggies onto the smaller counter next to the bank of very professional ovens he was fairly sure hadn’t been here before Rocco had purchased Jolly Java.

“I’m just doing assembly, then we bake it,” Rocco said. “You can keep me company.”

“I meant tohelp,” Taylor said, feeling bad that Rocco had made all these different parts. And there were a lot of parts. There was a white sauce, speckled with something green and herbaceous; mountains of shredded cheese,notfrom a bag; and three sheet pans full of what looked like roasted vegetables. Right next to where Rocco situated himself was a stack of pasta sheets, not the box kind that Taylor would normally assume anyone would use, and an enormous tinfoil pan.

“You’re definitely gonna help,” Rocco promised.

He watched as Rocco pulled on a pair of gloves and picked up the pasta sheets, carefully layering them into the pan.

“What kind of lasagna is this? It’s not the normal kind, that’s for sure,” Taylor said.

Rocco shot him a teasing look full of heat. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to terrify anyone with goat cheese again. It’s just a roasted vegetable lasagna, and for those who missed their pumpkin spice, I threw some butternut squash in.”

“Ah, well, it looks and smells amazing,” Taylor said.

Rocco shrugged. “You haven’t even started smelling it yet.”

He moved onto the big batch of white sauce, ladling it onto the pasta sheets with an expert motion, like he’d done this hundreds of times before.

“You said your parents own a restaurant?”

“Yeah,” Rocco said. “It’s a great place, tucked away down a side street in San Francisco. I miss it, sometimes—we were always open for Thanksgiving, and we’d serve a version of this—but I’m glad I went out on my own. I didn’t want to only work on the line for the next twenty years. That’s not my idea of fun.”

“So you’ve done this before.”

Rocco laughed. “Hundreds of times. You’re not a good Italian boy if you can’t make a killer lasagna.”

“Well, I can’t wait to taste it. I definitely don’t make a killer lasagna, but I can eat one.”

“No?”

Taylor winced. “Uh, I buy the frozen ones, at the store?”

Rocco laughed. “No coffee and Stouffer’s lasagna. You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?”

He’d sprinkled the first layer of vegetables and cheese and was now repeating the motion with the pasta sheets.

Maybe, Taylor reasoned, it was better for himnotto help, not when Rocco was so completely capable.

“Really, I’m not,” Taylor said, chuckling. “But anytime you want to come over and bake me a lasagna, areallasagna, I’m not gonna complain. I’ll even pay you in wine.” He didn’t knowgood wine himself, but he remembered, because he couldn’t forget, what Rocco had liked during the wine tasting.

“Sounds like a good deal to me. Good food. Good wine. Good company.”

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