Page 26 of Rat Park
“No, it’s fine. I can make a salad,” Dominic said, realizing just too late that he’d played right into her hands. He rolled his eyes at her grin but didn’t take the offer back.
Slowly, it became another cornerstone on which to build his week. Thursdays he volunteered, Mondays it was dinner at the Romeros’.
He didn’t admit, even to himself, how much he liked it.
It wasn’t long before Dominic started to arrive early every Monday to help Esteban cook. He learnt how to make the perfectbéchamelsauce—it was a lot easier than he expected—and how to cook the perfect over-easy egg—a lot harder than he anticipated. He had his favourite knife which would always be out and waiting for him when he arrived. He learnt the difference between chopping and dicing and slicing and whyFahrenheit was idiotic and Celsius was a much easier way to keep track of things.
Flor would do his homework at the kitchen table, cheeks red from the heat of the burners sometimes.
“How come you cook with Dad but not me?” Flor asked him one time. Dominic raised his eyebrows.
“You cook?”
“I bake! Who do you think makes all your sweets?”
How could Dominic forget? It was still the part of the meal he looked forward to the most.
“I don’t want to ruin it,” Dominic said truthfully. Flor frowned.
“How would you ruin it? You’ve never ruined a meal.”
Dominic shrugged. “Cooking is different from baking. Baking is more…precise.”
“So?”
“So—”
“Please?” Flor whined. Dominic sighed.
“All right.”
“Yay! We’ll make cookies.”
“The chocolate ones with nuts?”
“Duh,” Flor said, smiling. Dominic couldn’t help but smile back.
Dominic made sure to follow all of Flor’s instructions carefully. He was sure he had fucked up when he rolled up his sleeves and started kneading the chocolate chips and nuts in. Flor had stared at his hands for an awkwardly long time before Dominic stopped.
“Am I doing it wrong?” Dominic asked. Flor’s eyes flicked up to Dominic’s face quickly before he turned away fully, busying himself with something on the other end of the counter.
“Yep! Yep, yeah, you’re looking—I mean, notlooking, you’redoinggood. Uh. Yeah. I was just—Jesus, is this oven too hot or something? I think the dough is ready, let me put some paper on the tray,” Flor babbled. Dominic frowned slightly but let Flor be—the kid could be a little strange sometimes.
It became a bit of a ritual, baking together once a month. They made pancakes one time just for the hell of it, and Flor blurted out an invitation to his seventeenth birthday party.
“Uh…I don’t think that’s a great idea,” Dominic replied. Flor frowned like he always did when he didn’t immediately get his way.
“Why not?”
Because I’m twenty-five and not going to crash a party filled with sixteen-and seventeen-year-olds?“I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“But—”
“Flor,” Dominic cut him off; this was not a fight he was prepared to lose.
“Fine,” Flor said moodily, and they made the rest of the pancakes in silence.
Dominic felt bad even though he knew he’d made the right choice. He baked Florian a cake for the Monday dinner closest to his birthday. It was pure chocolate, and although it didn’t turn out nearly as well as Flor’s would have, it was at least edible. It made Flor’s eyes light up when he was presented with it, too.
