I'm A Mess || l.c

12- Cooking Up A Storm

A phone call from James was all it took to get my heart racing. I picked it up on the fourth ring so that I didn't seem too eager and placed the phone next to my ear, hoping to hear the sound of his voice and fall in love all over again.

"Hello?" I answered, a wide smile already making its way on my lips.

"Hey Lauren," he answered. "What's up?"

"Nothing, just missing you," I laughed as I played with a loose string on my shorts.

"That's cute. I'm missing you too. Hey, I heard there's some cooking competition tomorrow for teenagers. Can you cook?" Cooking competition? I did like cooking, but I wasn't sure if I was good enough at it to win a competition.

"I can cook, but I don't know if I can cook well," I replied. "Can you?"

"Nah, I'm hopeless at cooking. I want to go, though. It seems fun." It did seem fun and I wanted to hang out with him as well.

"Let's go then. I'm sure it'll be fun," I shrugged. Why not? The worst we could do was burn down the kitchen, but hopefully things wouldn't result in that.

James and I talked a little more after that and then hung up. I put my phone on my bedside table and went downstairs to see Kath reading a book. Her eyes scanned over the words she saw and she looked as if she was deep into the book, not wanting to be disturbed. Although it was creepy, I had to admit that I enjoyed watching people read. In a way, when people read, it made them look younger; more ambitious, curious and so in depth into the words imprinted on a page. I didn't want to disturb her, but I was also desperate to find out if my cooking skills were good enough.

"Kath? If I cook something for you, would you eat it and honestly tell me if it's good or not? There's a cooking competition tomorrow and I'm going with... um, a friend," I mumbled the last bit, feeling slightly awkward as I realised that none of my sisters except for Dani knew about James. Kath's eyes moved away from the book and landed on my own.

"Of course, hun! Besides, I'm hungry anyway," Kath shrugged as she put away her book and stood up.

"I should probably watch you cook just in case you make some small errors with anything so that I can tell you what to do correctly. Is that okay?" I nodded and smiled, wanting to get started with the cooking straight away. The problem was, I didn't know what to cook. I racked my brains as I made my way towards the kitchen and decided to just randomly open up to a page in Kath's cookbook and follow which ever recipe was on it. I put on an apron and didn't need to worry about tying my hair up as that was already done. I grabbed the cookbook, took a deep breath and began flipping through the pages. I stopped abruptly at around a third of the way through the cookbook and opened it up fully to see what I was going to cook. Chicken Parmigiana.

I could do this; I knew I could. I loved chicken after all.

*

"No, you're doing this wrong! It's supposed to be like this! Watch me." By now, I had almost lost it. I thought I was alright at cooking but according to Kath, I was doing basically everything wrong. This had gone up to the point where my eyes had started blurring with tears and I was on the verge of giving up. How could I mess up something like this so badly?

"Kath, I can't do this anymore. I'm not good enough," I gave up and slammed the spatula that I was previously holding onto the bench top.

"No, honey, don't ever say that! You are always good enough. Just because you didn't do quite as well today, doesn't mean you aren't going to do well tomorrow. Besides, you've never even cooked chicken parmigiana before so this is all new to you. Hopefully tomorrow you'll get to cook something that you have had experience with before. Sweetie, believe me, you've got the potential to do anything you want." I smiled, but I didn't let it reach my eyes. Kath's words used to brighten up my day but now, they were just a wasted breath of air. There was really no denying that I was hopeless at cooking.

I needed time to myself to think. I took off my apron, hung it on the rack and walked towards the stairs, feeling my sister's eyes burn the back of me.

"Lauren," Katherine said, gently trying to stop me from walking away. She couldn't, even if she tried as hard as she could.

"I'm sorry, but I'm just going to go read something and forget that any of this even happened," I mumbled.

Kath seemed to have heard as she said, "Please don't forget the tips I taught you. They would be very useful for you in the competition tomorrow!"

I bit my lip and closed my eyes, wishing that this terrible day could just end already. As I entered my room, I grabbed The Fault In Our Stars from my bookshelf and decided to get engrossed in a whirlwind of emotions and light-hearted humour.

After eight chapters of reading, a new text message alert popped up on my phone, distracting me from the story. I glanced at my phone, hoping that it wasn't anyone important so that I could get back to reading, but as soon as I saw James's name, I stopped thinking about the book all at once.

James: Hey, we're still good for tomorrow yeah?

Me: Yup :) can't wait x I found out I'm hopeless at cooking today though

James: Oh damn haha, nah I'm sure you're good. We'll do great, okay?

Me: Okay.

James: Hmm, okay haha

Me: Okay.

James: What?

I laughed to myself as I went to type in another "Okay". The Fault In Our Stars was really getting into my head.

Me: Okay.

James: What's going on? I'm confused

Me: I'm reading The Fault In Our Stars

James: Aahhh, of course you are. So I'm Augustus and you're Hazel?

I gasped as I hurriedly typed in an "OMG". I couldn't believe he knew the characters in the book. He probably had sisters.

Me: OMG! How do you know the characters and everything?

James: I had to go see it with my sisters so I'm pretty familiar with the whole tfios thing :I

I was right about the sister thing. Knowing that James probably didn't want to talk about TFIOS with me, I decided to change the subject to something a little less girly.

Me: Have you ever cooked anything before?

I waited a while for an answer but after ten minutes I realised he had most likely gotten off his phone and started doing something more productive. As I sighed, I went back to The Fault In Our Stars where I was up to the bit where Hazel went back to the Literal Heart of Jesus the day before leaving for Amsterdam.

*

James: Yeah, I once tried to bake a cake for my mum's birthday haha. Emphasis on "tried"

Well, he tried at least.