Chapter 10: The Cooking Channel

Abigail’s POV

Elle balanced two mugs of coffee and a few cookies on a plate and set them on the coffee table in front of me. I had been petting Duchess on her spot where she sprawled over the back of the couch awaiting Elle’s return. I studied the tiny white hairs that peppered Duchess’s black fur and counted each individually. It kept the panicked jitters away temporarily.

Elle sat on the couch beside me, and our knees were almost touching, but not quite. I wanted to close that inch gap that seemed to stretch for miles.

She leaned over to pet Duchess.

“Elle, wait –” I reached my hand to stop hers, but I couldn’t react fast enough. She reached her index finger to Duchess’s black nose to let her sniff it. Duchess was the cranky princess of all the cats, and she didn’t like her perfect, black hair ruffled by strangers. She even only tolerated Momma.

Duchess sniffed her finger for a few seconds, then slowly blinked and bowed her head slightly. Elle petted her on the forehead by scratching her with the tips of her finger.

“Keep your hands only on the top of her head and ears for now,” I warned Elle. “She can be a grump. I don’t want her to swipe at you.”

“Abby, you gotta stop worrying about me,” she giggled. “I appreciate you looking out for me, though.”

How could I make her giggle again?

Elle settled back into the couch. I tapped my fingers on my knee, just under where my skirt fell. I wish I chose a different outfit. Wearing a skirt made me lock my knees together and sit like I was in a church pew. I wanted to relax, but Elle’s lavender scent mixing with the hot coffee was like pheromones.

“Hey,” I had an idea to interrupt the silence. “How about I turn something on?”

“Sure!” Elle was sitting with one leg folded over the other and leaning so far back into the couch she could almost use Duchess as a pillow.

I hadn’t thought my plan very far ahead because I wasn’t sure what to watch. A romance movie seemed much too forward. I thought the cooking shows I liked were boring, but she stopped me when I flipped through the cooking channel.

“Wait, hang on!” She held up her hand. “Keep this on!”

I stopped. The cooking channel was playing my favorite cooking competition, Battle of the Chefs. The head chef was screaming at some other chef guy who didn’t look much older than me about how he needed to listen to "a head chef that has several five-star restaurants.”

“This show is so ridiculous!” Elle laughed.

“Oh, yeah definitely.” I lied. I liked it. Reality TV was mindless, true, but sometimes fun. I just liked watching anything on the cooking channel from baking shows that took place in a sweet grandmother’s kitchen to reality TV dramas where fake fights lead to plates being thrown around the kitchen.

“No, no,” Elle corrected herself. I don’t think I was good at lying to her. “What I mean is it’s so ridiculous that I love it.”

“Hey, me too,” I said. “I watch the cooking channel all the time.”

“Sweet, me too,” she said. “I think this is a new episode! Turn it up!”

She got settled in for the next hour of drama by leaning parallel to my ninety-degree angle posture. She dangled her feet off the side of the couch, rested her cheek onto her elbow, and leaned over. Her hair now dangled right next to my thigh on the couch, and I could almost feel it brush my leg.

Every time the angry head chef on TV called one of the others a “soggy donut” or a “stale end piece of white bread” when they ruined a dish, Elle’s laughter grew louder and louder. With each laugh, my posture relaxed and the muscles in my shoulders released their tension. We took breaks from laughing to break cookies in half and split them. Every time Elle got up, she got comfortable once again in her leaning spot. I swore each time she nudged just an inch closer.

Right before the elimination round, the show cut to a commercial.

“D*mmit!” Elle said.

“Boooo!” I joined in her heckling.

“Who do you think it’ll be?” Elle said.

“Probably that one tall guy: the one who can’t stop picking fights with everyone else,” I replied.

“Yeah, probably,” She nodded her head, and her hair followed her head bobs and lightly brushed my leg.

I kept my cool, for now. “Yeah,” I said, “Like, hey buddy, if your food looks worse than a can of cat food then you should probably learn to shut up!”

Elle laughed again, and this time she snorted. I was successful!

She glanced over at the TV, and the annoying commercials with too many sounds and too many words kept rolling.

A commercial for some summer romance movie I could not care less about came on. I always saw ads for it when I was trying to watch videos or scrolling through recipe pages online. It was a movie where a tall man with brown hair and too much hair gel dramatically kissed a blonde woman in the rain. They cut between lines of dialogue like “I need to see you” and “I miss you” and “I’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy!” That was followed by a lot of jumps between dramatic close-ups on a woman’s face, followed by dramatic close-ups on the man.

“Slow down with the editing, I’m gonna get carsick,” Elle said to the TV.

I laughed, and I covered my mouth from laughing too loud.

“These movies are always stupid.”

“And not fun-but-stupid either,” I said.

“Yeah,” Elle chuckled. “The guys in these movies never know how to treat a lady.”

“What –” I paused to swallow, my throat dry. “What do you mean?” I asked. I tapped both my knees with my fingers.

“They make love be about big gestures.” She still wouldn’t look directly at me. Her confident voice went softer. “I think having a genuine connection with someone is what matters. You can find it when you don’t expect it.”

“That’s so true,” was all I dared to reply.

Elle freed herself from the zombification of the TV commercials droning on. She leaned her head back to look up at me from her position below. She was almost in my lap, but still using her arm to support the weight of her head. I wished she would lay on me and share her warmth with me.

“You have pretty eyes, Abby.” She said.

I was certain she could hear my heart beating in my chest from the inside, desperate to leap free. My cool blue eyes stared back into her warm, deep brown ones that yearned to hear more from me.

“Elle –” I started.

I had no idea what to say. It didn’t matter though because I heard tires rolling over pavement outside the living room.

Momma!” I shouted.

“What?” Elle leaped out of her leaning position so fast that it scared Duchess from the back of the couch.

“Elle, my Momma is home!”

“So?” Elle glared out the window.

“Elle, do you trust me?” I held her arm and pulled her to look at me. I missed staring into her eyes to study all the reflections those deep, beautiful pools carried. Her eyes were shifting and unable to rest now.

“Yes, okay, Abby.” She said.

“Then when Momma walks in that door in any second, you have to follow my lead!”

Elle nodded. I took my hand off her arm.