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Gina voiced the idea almost as a joke, on the ride home from the airport. EJ had mentioned that Ashlyn was going out with Big Red, so it was going to be just the two of them at dinner tonight.
“Maybe we could cook risotto at home!” she said.
And, again, it was mostly as a joke. She was fine with getting takeout or even eating cereal. But EJ’s enthusiastic face made it clear to her that he hadn’t intended her proposal as a joke, but as an actual proposal. So much that he had encouraged her to look up a good recipe online while he kept on driving.
“Wait, are you serious?” she asked. “I know nothing about cooking and neither do you!”
She saw a grin light up his face. “That’s why it’s gonna be so much fun” he replies.
They had spent the next ten minutes bantering about what recipe they should choose – Gina didn’t want to do anything too fancy, since they’re both very much beginners at the whole cooking thing, while EJ wanted to go all out. In the end, they were already at the grocery store when they settled for shrimp and zucchini risotto. They got everything they needed and got back in the car.
And that’s how Gina finds herself in the Caswell’s kitchen, wearing Ashlyn’s mom’s apron over her Duke sweatshirt and white pants and casting a puzzled gaze at EJ, who’s watching a video tutorial in Italian to make shrimp and zucchini risotto.
“It’s pointless to ask, but do you understand one single word of what the guy is saying?” she asks, leaning back on the counter and crossing her arms.
“I get risotto and riso. I think riso means rice. But we don’t need to understand, we just need to look at what he’s doing” he replies.
“Why aren’t we watching a video tutorial in English?”
“Because we want a true recipe from an actual Italian to make the perfect risotto.”
“Fair enough” Gina says, even if she would very much prefer to have some clear direction in a language she can actually understand.
She waits for EJ to finish watching the video and, in the meantime, she quite enjoys watching his face become more and more confused as the chef on his phone screen proceeds to melodramatically stir-fry his delicious-looking risotto – something she’s quite sure EJ is going to want to do but she will categorically forbid him to do.
“Okay, chef” she says as the video stops playing and EJ sets down his phone. “Where do we start?”
He lightly scratches the back of his head. “The guy starts by making the broth. I conveniently bought a carton of premade broth” he says picking up said carton from their grocery bag.
She smiles. “Nice. Then we need to prep the shrimps and the zucchini, I guess?”
EJ nods. “You take the shrimps and I take the broth and the zucchini?” he asks, already making a move towards the paper bag where the vegetables are.
“Hell, no” Gina talks back and, with a sprint, she takes the bag before he can even reach it. “I’m not touching the shrimps, chef. I don’t want my fingers to stink for the rest of the night” she says.
Still holding the bag in one hand, she reaches out to grab a cutting board and a knife from one of the kitchen drawers.
“Well, me neither!” he replies.
She turns to him and gives him a knowing look. “But you’re the one who insisted on the shrimps, so now you take care of it” she says, wanting to sound serious but unable to hold back a few giggles.
EJ bites his lip to conceal a smile as he lightly shakes his head and takes the plastic box with the shelled shrimps out of the grocery bag.
They both start getting to work, Gina washing and dicing the zucchini and EJ pouring the broth in a pot and turning on the stove first, then dumping the shrimps in a warmed-up pan.
“See? Didn’t need to touch it” he points out. Then he massages a point on his arm when some splashes of hot oil hit him when he poured the shrimps in the pan. “I only boiled my arm, but that’s okay” he jokes.
Gina smirks. She turns on the faucet and wets one of her hands with some water, then splashes some in EJ’s direction. “Better now?” she asks, a grin still lighting up her face.
He presses his lips together and closes his eyes, taking a deep breath but still smiling. “Don’t start, Porter. ‘Cause if you start, I have to continue and I really don’t feel like destroying uncle Dennis and aunt Debbie’s kitchen” he warns her, taking a tea towel and wiping some of the water splashes off his arms and face.
Gina bursts out laughing and raises her arms in surrender. “Okay, I won’t” she agrees.
The two continue to look after the broth and the shrimps, then take the shrimps out of the pan and quickly stir-fry the zucchini. They debate on why they’re stir-frying the ingredients separately but in the same pan and, most importantly, they wonder why they aren’t cooking the rice yet, but they ultimately decide to trust the Italian chef on EJ’s video tutorial, because he certainly knows more than they do.
“Okay, now for the tricky part: we’re supposed to… toast the rice?” EJ says, but it sounds more like a question.
He’s intensely staring at his phone screen, trying to understand what they need to do. Gina decides to take the initiative: she grabs the rice – they’ve measured it beforehand but had trouble with this too: how many cups are 160 grams of rice? Why did EJ demand that they followed an Italian recipe when they have and entirely different measurement system? – and dumps it in the pan. Then stirs it for a while.
“I have no idea what I’m doing, Eej” she confesses after a few seconds.
He laughs. “I say it’s good. Let’s pour the broth” he suggests. He comes up next to her at the stove, grabs a couple of ladles of broth and puts them in the pan with the rice, then adds the zucchini.
“I guess now we let it cook?” Gina suggests.
It takes almost half and hour for the rice to cook up completely. With the stove on, Ashlyn’s kitchen becomes really hot, so Gina has to take off her Duke sweatshirt, remaining in the tank top she was wearing underneath it. They chat quite a lot about Gina’s plans with her mom in Louisiana and EJ’s week of housesitting with Ashlyn. At some point they end up singing Gaston for no reason at all while they set up the table, with Gina singing the part of LeFou and EJ dangerously improvising the juggling with three eggs he took from the fridge, with the risk of not going through with the resolution of not destroying the Caswell’s kitchen.
After a good thirty minutes, they add the shrimps and a drizzle of olive oil. EJ stirs the dish one last time and takes a spoonful of risotto to taste it; then he takes another and hands it to Gina, keeping a hand underneath it to keep the grains of rice from falling on the floor.
“This better be good, because it’s way too late to get takeout now and I’m starving” she laughs, then she tastes the risotto: it’s perfect.
“I proudly present your dinner!” EJ exclaims with a smile, quoting Be Our Guest.
EJ sits on the couch with a loud thump. “Well, I had no idea I could actually cook” he exclaims.
Gina literally throws herself on the couch, her head lying next to the boy’s legs and her own legs dangling from the armrest.
“I don’t think I’ve ever eaten this much!” she says, holding her hands on her belly. Something definitely went wrong with the measuring because they cooked way too much rice, but the dish turned out so good that they ate it all.
“That was actually the best thing I’ve ever eaten” EJ points out. “For real.”
“I know, right? And, aside from the part where we had no idea what we were doing with the whole ‘toasting the rice’ thing, it wasn’t even that hard!” Gina agrees. “And it was real fun cooking together” she adds, a smile making its way through her face.
From the way that she’s lying, she can’t see EJ’s face, but she’s sure he’s smiling too.
“Yeah, it felt good. Almost like…” he says, then he stops. For a second Gina wonders what he was about to say, but after taking a deep breath EJ decided to go on with his sentence. “Almost like a date night?” he says, and again, it sounds more like a question.
It takes Gina a hot minute to wrap her head around what EJ just said, a hot minute during which she remains completely still and silent. She was waiting for a sign, a small thing like the granola bar (whose wrapper was still, by the way, stuffed into Gina’s pocket, because she thought it represented a memory worth keeping). But this... This is more like a whole board saying ‘guy who likes you’ with a giant glowing arrow pointing at EJ.
“I mean, if… if you’re okay about… thinking of it that way” the boy quickly adds, stuttering a little bit. “Because if you don’t, it’s no big deal.”
Gina turns her head and upper body around so that she can see him. He’s nervously scratching the back of his head while staring down at her. She gives him a comforting smile.
“No, no” she responds. “Date night sounds perfect” she reassures him. She sees the worrying look disappearing from his face, replaces by a warm smile.
He nods. “Okay” he whispers. Then he grabs the remote from the coffee table. “Wanna watch a movie to end the night?” he asks.
Gina nods in agreement. EJ turns on the tv and starts surfing through the channels, searching for something to watch.
“Also, I promise I’m taking you on an actual date where we don’t have to cook our own food, but we only eat” he adds, taking his eyes off the tv screen for a moment to set them back on the girl.
She grins. “I’m counting on it” she answers.
Gina climbs up a little on the couch, so that she can now rest her head on EJ’s legs rather than on the couch. She smiles as she grips his knee with her hand – in the same way she does with her pillow when she sleeps – and feels his finger lightly caressing her braids.
The day started off with her stranded at the airport and finished with an accidental date with EJ Caswell. Who would have thought?