“Oh, it’s clean. Want to smell?” He steps close, and I have to hold up a hand. Fine, so he does smell really good. But the stain is still hideous.
“I was wearing this shirt when I cut my arm one day,” he says. “Got blood all over the front. It brings back bad memories. Thought it would be perfect for tonight.”
He gives me a dimpled smile.
I raise an eyebrow—and my chin. I gesture to the plain black tee I’m wearing over a pair of white capris. “You see this shirt?” I ask. “I was wearing this the day I got notified of my National Merit Scholarship.”
“How special,” he says drily. “You sure you want to risk it getting dirty?”
“Oh, I’ve won an award with pretty much everything I own.”
His eyes spark with laughter. “Your humility is—”
“Endearing?”
“Not the word I was looking for.”
“Because you pick terrible adjectives.” I wave him onward. “It’s just through here.” I pull aside a curtain and reveal a room that’s been outfitted into a full commercial kitchen complete with stainless steel appliances and two cooktops.
“How did you know about this?” Anthony asks.
“My mom’s brought me and Ethan here for other classes. The Mystery of Marinades was especially fascinating.”
He groans as the instructor heads our way in an apron with the store’s logo. She’s a pretty woman with silvery hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a waistline that says she enjoys eating as much as cooking. “I’m Rita. Welcome.” She points to two elderly women with puffy white hair and wide smiles. “This is Dot and Barb.”
“Mai and Anthony,” I say, making the introductions.
“We’re glad to have you,” Rita says. “It’s just going to be the four of you tonight, and you’re in for a treat. We’ll be spending the next hour exploring the chemistry of sugar and the chemical reactions at each stage of heat. Doesn’t that sound marvelous?”
Anthony groans again.
I elbow him in the ribs.
“We’ll also be baking cookies and using our sugar experiment to create a crème brûlée topping.”
“Now we’re talking,” Anthony says.
Barb smiles at me. “A reluctant participant?” She’s got a hint of southern in her voice.
“I’m expanding his world,” I say.
Dot laughs, her face creasing into a thousand wrinkles. “The things a boy will do for a pretty girl.”
“Oh.” I shake my head. “It’s not like that.”
Anthony leans forward and winks at the ladies. “It’s exactly like that.”
They laugh, and I turn pink. Even Rita is smiling at Anthony now.
“You hold on to that one, honey,” Barb says.
“Yes,” Anthony agrees with a teasing note. “Hold on to me.”
I elbow him again while they break out into full-on laughter. He turns everything into a joke. I remind myself why this would be annoying if we were really together. But it’s hard not to laugh along with the others.
“All right,” Rita says, still smiling. “We’d better get started.” She leads us all to a sink to wash our hands, and then we gather around the cooktop. She’s got a heavy pot on a burner and tips it to show us the sugar already in the pot. “We’re going to start with these lovely clean, white granular crystals, and we’re going to end up with a brown, bubbly substance that looks and tastes nothing like what we’re starting with. How?” she asks and then answers her own question. “Chemistry.”
She turns on the heat. “It must have seemed like magic to the first people who applied heat to sugar, but that’s the joy of chemistry. It explains the process in a logical way.”
“I kind of like the magic,” Anthony says.
Rita stirs more sugar into the bowl. “But once you understand the chemistry behind something, you can repeat the process as often as you want. You’re able to control it. Isn’t that better than magic?”
I meet his eyes, waiting for his response to that.
“You can control chemistry?”
I know he means this. Us.
“If you take the time to analyze,” Rita says. “Study.”
His eyes slide to my mouth. Goose bumps spring up along my forearms. “Not that kind of study,” I hiss.
Rita takes the sugar through each phase of heat, and we watch the chemical changes until it begins to caramelize. When it’s brown and bubbly, she shows us the results. “That’s what you’re looking for. Caramelization happens at what temperature?”
I raise my hand. “Three hundred twenty degrees.”
“Excellent, Mai. You’ll all want to remember because you’re about to create your own caramelized sugar for a topping on cookies.”
Anthony perks up at the mention of cookies.
Rita points to the two stations already set up. “For the sake of time, the dough has already been mixed. Lay your cookies out on the baking sheet, and while they’re in the oven, you’ll caramelize sugar to pour over the top.”
Dot and Barb move to one side of the kitchen, and I lead Anthony to the station at the other side.
He reaches into the bowl of cold dough and grabs out a finger full. “Anthony!”
“What?” He sucks in the dough and smacks his lips. “I washed my hands.”
“There’s raw egg in there.”
“So?”
“It’s full of bacteria.”
“I’ll take the risk.”
“Of course you will.”
“Are we fighting over cookie dough?” A mischievous smile appears. He takes his finger and deliberately sticks it back in the dough.
“Anthony!” I smack his arm. “That time your finger wasn’t clean.”
“Mmm,” he says, swallowing. “So what? Everyone double dips.”
“I don’t.”
“You put your cheesy fingers back into the bag when you eat Cheetos.”
“I don’t lick them in between!”
He rolls his eyes. “You’ve kissed me, Mai. Multiple times. If I have germs, you’ve already gotten them.”
“That’s not the point. You aren’t respecting the process.”