Heart Of Gold

Climax

Flames licked at the edges of the old frying pan Jake was using to cook salmon.

Within seconds, the tender pink fillets were charred beyond recognition. The smell promptly permeated the room and Will, hearing Jake's violent cursing, cracked open the bathroom door from where he sat on the toilet.

"What the hell are you doing, trying to burn the place down?" he laughed. "Aren't you supposed to be cooking her dinner, not making charcoal?"

"Oh, shut it," Jake shook his head. "I've never seen you try cooking salmon - it's harder than it looks."

"Sure it is," Will nodded. "Nothing at all to do with the fact that you have absolutely no clue what you're doing."

"I bought a cookbook!" Jake protested, grabbing the thin, spiral-bound book and chucking it at Will. "Now what am I going to do?" he said, panicking slightly. "Rose will be here in an hour and I have to have something for dinner."

"Order take-out and put it in a different bowl," Will suggested. "There's a Chinese place down by the movie theatre. Maybe she'll think you're all exotic. I mean, who even knows how to cook Chinese?"

Jake shook his head and mussed his hair. "I told her I would cook dinner so I need to find something to cook." He ran to the fridge and rummaged through the shelves.

Cold cuts, a jug of milk, orange juice and assorted sandwich fixings scattered the shelves. There was a cardboard container of eggs and a hunk of cheese, and a loaf of bread sitting on the counter.

"You do make pretty good omelets," Will suggested from the bathroom. "Can't go wrong with breakfast for dinner."

"Well, at least I won't burn that or give her food poisoning," Jake brightened. "Do we have a bottle of wine or anything lying around?"

"Yeah right. There might be some beer leftover from last night but that's about it."

"Hmm." Jake mulled the idea over in his mind. It was a fairly nice evening - cool but not cold. With a bonfire and a blanket, breakfast for dinner could be kind of romantic - minus the skunked beer. He decided to make a quick run up to the liquor store in town to pick up a bottle of wine.

Jake rattled open all the windows in the cabin before he left. With any luck, the smell of burned fish should air out before Rose arrived.

Once over the bridge, it was only a couple of minutes to the liquor store. Jake ran in, grabbed a bottle of red wine and ran out. He made it back across the bridge and down the winding road to home with twenty minutes to spare.

The stars were just beginning to twinkle in the sky, their reflections sparkling across the lake as it lapped at the shore. Jake opened the cabin's front door and sniffed tentatively - the fishy odour was nearly gone.

He turned the radio on and started dicing up the vegetables he could find in the fridge - red pepper, broccoli, yellow pepper, mushroom and tomato. Jake pondered over the onion in the crisper for about five minutes before deciding against adding it.

Each diced vegetable sat artfully arranged in small mounds on the cutting board when the puttering of an old car engine alerted him to Rose's arrival. He ran to the bedroom, grabbed his favourite forest green polo from the foot of the bed and pulled it on.

Hastily chomping down on a mint, with just enough time to put Neil Young's Heart of Gold on through his phone, Jake ran to greet Rose at the door.

She stood up from the driver's seat with a shy smile, her auburn hair shining in the moonlight. The navy cardigan she wore over a white eyelet camisole made her blue eyes stand out against her fair skin.