[Spirit of Lust 2] Chapters 268 & 269. (Patreon)

Chapter 268: Cooking (Part 1)

I kept telling Sarah I could just take the bus home and she kept telling me that she would drive me home. I stopped fighting when her mom asked her if she could stop by the supermarket on the way to buy a few things. Sarah shot me a sneaky victory smirk. And well, if she had to make that stop, then I was going to take the opportunity to do some shopping as well.

I had made up my mind already, so there was no point in waiting. Mrs. West wrote down the recipe for me, so I was gonna try making her stir-fry at home for lunch. It SOUNDED easy, but my cooking experience was… lacking. I hope that whatever I made at least turned out edible.

At the supermarket, as Sarah and I were doing our shopping, she took the opportunity to tease me more. “Good with kids, learning how to cook… Are you planning to be a househusband, Oliver?”

“Sure, sure. I’ll leave work to you and the others and I’ll stay at home,” I answered. I was pleased to see it turned the tables on her because she blushed madly and didn’t say more. I was getting a little better at that.

She dropped me at my house and we risked it with a goodbye kiss since mom’s car wasn’t outside, but dammit, after last night I would’ve risked it even if it was. I felt like I’d gotten close to Sarah yet again, like we understood one another more and reaffirmed once more that we seriously wanted each other. It felt great.

We said goodbye and I went into my house. The sound of the door served as an alert, and Cake ran to be the first to greet me back. I kneeled down to pet her, and she purred and practically rubbed herself against my hand like, well, like the needy cat she was.

“She cried all damn night,” Isabelle told me as she came down the stairs, rubbing her eyes. “You’re not allowed to spend the night out again.”

I winced. “Sorry…”

“She was going to and from your room and the front door,” Isabelle continued. “Seriously, what kind of magic did you use on her? I’m kinda jealous.”

“If you had fed her when she was only a month old, she’d be attached to you too, but you left that to me.” I didn’t say that with any bitterness. I was simply stating a fact. And really, I understood why Isabelle was jealous. Having a cat be so attached to you that it misses you when you’re gone is pretty flattering.

“You started doing it before I even asked, remember?” Did I? I think I did, yeah. “Anyway. So… How was it meeting Sarah’s family?”

I tensed up and looked around. “...Mom’s not here, right?”

“She went out to buy some things.”

I sighed in relief. “They were really nice. Her parents are super kind and her siblings are fun.”

“Did you get lucky?” she asked. Her smirk told me she was aiming to make me uncomfortable, but as I said before, I was getting better at turning things around on people.

I smirked back at her. “Hm? Do you really want me to answer that question?”

Isabelle’s smile fell. She blinked, blushed and turned away.

{He totally did! And with her parents in the house!? What the hell!? Is this really Oliver!?}

It was my turn to blink. I felt a bout of dizziness from the sudden and very unexpected mind reading. I didn’t normally got to read thoughts that weren’t my girlfriends’. I sometimes knew what Thomas was thinking in general terms, but had never read his mind. With Isabelle, however, I was able to read her thoughts clearly, even if it happened very, very rarely.

Was there a trigger? A condition? A pattern? If there was, I was too dumb to notice it.

As I was thinking, Cake began to dig into the plastic bag of my groceries. I had to give her a little scolding and push her away, but it had already drawn Isabelle’s attention again.

“Hey, what’s that?”

“I’ll… ask mom if it’s okay if I cook lunch for us today.”

Isabelle’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re learning how to cook? Why?”

“...Mrs. West kinda convinced me to give it a try. The food she made last night was really good. Besides… We have the time to make dinner ourselves, yet we still leave it to mom to buy us take out even though she’s tired from working all day.”

“...” Isabelle pursed her lips and looked down at the floor. I could see the realization setting in the same way it had for me the day before.

I went to the kitchen, left my bag of groceries on the table and texted mom, asking her if it was okay if i tried making lunch. She said yes. Now… the pressure was on. I had to make it edible or force mom and Isabelle to eat trash.

…

Stop it, Oliver. Stop thinking like that. Just… one thing at a time. I had Mrs. West recipe, and it did sound easy to follow. I had about an hour until lunch time, so I began immediately.

I gathered all my ingredients on the table, and maybe because of the stirring of the plastic bag or perhaps due to the unusual shapes, Cake jumped on it to see what I was doing.

“You. Out,” I told her, grabbing her and setting her on the floor again. I went to wash my hands and cleaned the counter with a damp dishcloth. I was going to start peeling the carrots when Isabelle came in.

“Say… Do you mind if I help?”

“You’ve never cooked either,” I told her.

“So you can learn, but I can’t?”

I smiled. “Want to peel the carrots or chop the onions?”

Isabelle winced. “Carrots.”

I shouldn’t have given her the choice. I hated chopping onions for the longest time.

************

Chapter 269: Cooking (Part 2)

After a couple more attempts to get on the table, Cake settled for watching from a chair, eyes going from Isabelle to me and back to her as we moved around the kitchen. We were… unorganized, to put it mildly.

We only got a bowl when we realized we needed one, same with the cutting board. I almost forgot to wash the broccoli, too. On top of that, this was nowhere near as easy as Mrs. West had put it. Chopping onions took me like 20 minutes and my eyes itched like crazy from it. Isabelle took like 10 minutes peeling and chopping two carrots, and they weren’t well peeled and they were cut in huge chunks. I didn’t fare any better with the beef. The slices I cut were all of different thickness and they were almost shredded instead of sliced. The bell pepper and the green onions were the only things that looked… alright.

We didn’t have a rice cooker, so Isabelle made it in a pot watching a tutorial video while I cooked the meat and the vegetables. Mrs. West’s recipe said to add the beef to the wok first for three to four minutes before adding the vegetables. I was afraid the meat wouldn’t cook properly, so I left it a little more. Then when I added the vegetables and the soy sauce , I noticed some of the broccoli was beginning to burn. Scared, it put out the fire. The result? Overcooked, very chewy meat and nearly raw, burned vegetables.

Isabelle didn’t fare any better either. She made the mistake of cooking the rice in a pot with a lid that had a small hole to let out the steam. She also forgot to add salt. The end product was unsalted, edible but hard rice.

Despite that all, mom cleaned her plate.

“Whyyyyy?” Isabelle asked her. “This is a complete screw up!” She was on the verge of tearing up.

I couldn’t say a word. This was one of those cases where the scenario my anxiety made up became reality. Mom had to eat our disgusting lunch out of pity.

She wiped her mouth with a napkin and chuckled. “Yes, it was pretty bad. What are you making tomorrow? I don’t mind if you want to give this another shot.”

This frustrating feeling was oddly familiar. I remembered it from when I first started playing guitar, from the times my fingers wouldn’t play the notes I knew I had to play.

Isabelle and I wolfed down our plates as penance and without a single complaint. Mom said she’d wash the dishes, so when we were done, Isabelle dragged me to my room.

We spent the next two hours watching cooking tutorials about how to cut things, how to peel, how to use a wok or a pan, how to cook rice…

The next day we tried it again, and it was… better. Far better. Not great, but also not the worst. Isabelle used too little water for the rice this time and I still couldn’t completely get down the cooking time for the different vegetables, leaving some more cooked than others, but it was well seasoned and edible. We all cleaned our plates again, though I still felt bad that mom had to eat it.

“S-Should we… stop?” Isabelle asked mom. Her lip quivered as she looked down at her knees. “We suck at this.”

“Stop if you want,” Mom answered, crossing her arms “You don’t need to answer this, but why did you get the urge to cook? Was it on a whim? Because you thought it’d be fun? Or was it something else? Is this all the resolve you had?”

“No,” I answered, clenching my own knees. “I want to keep trying”

Isabelle violently shook her head from side to side to shake away her own insecurities. “Me too. We’ll make dinner tomorrow.”

Mom smiled. “And I’ll eat it. Still, do make sure you continue improving or we’ll all be having upset stomachs very soon.”

After lunch, Isabelle followed me into my room and dropped face first on my bed while I sat down on my computer.

“I really thought we’d get it right this time…” she said, her voice muffled by the pillow.

“We fixed what we did wrong yesterday, but we made new mistakes.” I sighed. It was still frustrating.

“...I expected it to be easier.”

“...Me too. A little easier, at least.” I smiled. “But we got it better this time, didn't we? Imagine how good we’ll be at it next year if we keep this up.”

Isabelle lifted herself up from my bed. “N-Next year?”

“Yeah. That’s how you get better at things, isn’t it? You keep practicing and slowly get better at it. When I started at the gym, I was bench pressing 70 kilos. Now I’m at 100. And you didn’t learn to edit videos in a day, right?”

Isabelle swallowed. “I guess not. You… You had this mentality from the start, huh? You were ready to put in a year’s worth of work.”

“You weren’t?”

“...No,” she admitted with a hanging head. “Like I said, I thought it’d be easier. But now?” She raised her head and looked at me with determined eyes. “By this time next year we’ll be making gourmet dishes! I swear!”

“We could make one tomorrow, but it wouldn’t be any good,” I told her.

“Ugh, you know what I mean!”

I chuckled. “Yeah. And hey, we all win with this, don’t we? If we learn to cook, we always get to eat what we like.”

Isabelle’s eyes brightened along with her smile. “Oh yeah! Ah, but I don’t want to get fat!”

I nodded. “We need to watch out for that, too. I need to keep a good diet or I’ll be wasting my time at the gym.”

“You used to love hamburgers as a kid. Are those still your favorite food?”

“Mmm… On Thursday I would’ve said yes, but I still can’t get Mrs. West’s cooking out of my head.”

“You really hit it well with your in-laws, huh?”

“Shut up. You’d get it if you tried it. And how about you? Are chicken nuggets still your favorite?”

“You know, I’ll say yes for now, but I think salmon is starting to grow on me a lot.”

“Salmon? You used to hate it.”

“Yeah, but we had it the other day and I was really good. Maybe my tastes are changing as I mature.”

“Hm? I don’t see you maturing much.”

Isabelle brushed it off, waving her hand. “You’re too busy looking at boobies to see my growth. I made $270 in the last two weeks editing compilation videos for some tubers, you know? I’m getting my name out there.”

I whistled in surprise and amazement. “Very nice. And what are you going to use that money on?”

Isabelle flinched and looked away. “I’ll save it for… something.”

“A gift for a boyfriend?” I teased.

She scoffed. “I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m tired of dumb boys.”

I don’t know why hearing that was a relief. “If you get another one, introduce me to him. I’ll give him a scare so that he doesn’t hurt you.”

Isabelle bursted out laughing. “You? Scare him? Oliver, you have the muscles, but you don’t a smidge of that ‘threatening older brother’ aura at all. Everyone knows you wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

It was my turn to scoff. “I’ll have you know that guys taller than me have run away from me. Though I agree with you, so I have no idea why they did. But even so, if someone really hurt you…”

Isabelle smiled fondly. “Alright. I’ll keep that in mind. If a guy ever gets pushy with me I’ll send my brother after him.”

We shared a soft, comfortable laugh. This felt like it used to. We had started to fix our relationship, but for the first time, I think we had recovered a small part of how we used to be as kids.