Find all the parts of this story here.
Chapter 5: Firsts
Part 1: Sophie
Even though she was convinced it wouldn’t turn out, Sophie forced herself to attempt a pasta and tuna casserole recipe she found on the internet in order to stave off the madness of waiting for Sam to call. Tuna, macaroni noodles, cheddar, and a weird can of creamy soup she picked up tonight – what could go wrong?
Apparently, everything. She didn’t have a means of shredding the cheese, so she chopped it as small as she could with a dull paring knife. The recipe didn’t specify to cook the noodles, so she didn’t. It also didn’t say whether she needed to thin the “condensed” soup, so she did.
45 minutes after putting what amounted to a weird bowl of sloshy stuff in the oven, her smoke alarm was going off, and she opened the oven to a homogeneous glob of food with burnt bits of still-hard noodle sticking out the top.
How in the world could food be still wet and yet burn?
Sophie shut off the oven in frustration and started flapping a towel near the smoke detector to try to get it to stop chirping. She opened all the windows to the 45-degree April night air. And of course, in the middle of hopping around with a towel, her phone rang.
“Hello?” she managed to speak, somewhat breathlessly, while trying to maintain towel movement.
“Sophie, it’s Sam,” he greeted.
“Hi!” she squeaked, but she had paused long enough that the smoke alarm started beeping again. “Ugh!” she groaned in exasperation.
“Are you all right?” Sam’s concern was obvious. “Should I call Ryan?”
“Huh?” Sophie’s brain couldn’t follow while she was trying once again to silence the thing.
“The fire department, Sophie. Is your apartment on fire?”
“No! No, just my pathetic attempt at cooking,” she grumbled. “Hang on.” She dropped her phone on the counter and resumed rapid towel movements long enough to silence the alarm again. Then she climbed awkwardly onto the counter and dismantled the alarm from its batteries, dropping the whole thing onto the floor as she climbed down.
“I’m so sorry,” she apologized the moment she picked up the phone.
“No worries if you’re sure you’re okay?” He sounded doubtful. She huffed.
“I’m good.” Embarrassed and hungry, but unharmed.
“You sure? Ryan’s on shift tonight. I can get him there in less than 5 minutes.”
“Oh my goodness, no! Please. Just a smoking tuna casserole.”
“I feel like that should be a famous dish at a fancy restaurant. Smoking Tuna Casserole. You could make a fortune,” Sam teased.
“Not with this… glump,” Sophie grumbled.
Sam laughed out loud. “I have never heard of a ‘glump’, but I can actually envision it. Yuck.”
“Yuck, indeed,” Sophie agreed.
“Well, I’m on patrol so I can’t fix your dinner problem tonight. But what’s your calendar look like tomorrow? I’m off.”
“Thursday? Wide open.”
“How about I introduce you to The Barnyard? They make the best burgers in New Albany. And believe me, between Ryan, my dad, and I, we have tried every cheeseburger in the county.”
“I trust you. And that sounds delightful,” Sophie replied.
“Excellent. Can I pick you up at 6?”
“That works for me.” Butterflies accelerated from fluttering to Daytona-500-speed in her stomach. She was going on a date! Tomorrow! With Sam Harrison!
“I’m looking forward to it. I’ll see you tomorrow, Sophie Lane,” Sam signed off with a smile in his voice. Sophie said goodbye, then dropped her phone on the counter and did a happy dance around her tiny kitchen.
She wanted to tell someone, but who could she text? Amy would be excited, but ask her ten million questions and be overly nosy. Her mother would analyze her outfit far more than Sophie cared to do, leaving her more nervous than excited. She hadn’t made deep friendships in high school or college or her new job.
Dad. What 23-year-old wanted to call her dad about a first date? But maybe it was okay to not be normal. Sophie grabbed her phone and put it on speaker while she started cleaning up her kitchen mess.
“Sweetie-pie! How’s my girl?” Dad’s cheerful voice never failed to boost her spirits.
“Bad and good,” she summarized.
Dad laughed. “Well, let’s get the bad out first so we can camp on the good. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing terrible. I just tried to cook and have a burned lump of goo. It’s gross. My smoke alarms went off.”
“Ouch. I’m sorry, sweetie-pie. I know that was never your strong suit, but I’m proud of you for trying.”
“Thanks, Dad. I was trying to take my mind of waiting for Sam to call.”
“Is this the good?”
“Yeah. He, um, asked me out,” she half-whispered, feeling suddenly nervous.
“Hey, that’s great! You’ve spoken highly of him in your emails. Where’s he taking you?”
Sophie spent 10 minutes talking about Sam and their date. At the end of the call, she was pleasantly surprised to find her kitchen almost back to normal, too.
Could she turn the clock ahead 24 hours? That would be marvelous…