Twelve minutes turned into fourteen because Addison refused to serve the pasta a single second before the spaghetti reached what she called "proper al dente" and what I called "hostage negotiation with noodles." She stood over the pot with a pair of tongs, pulling individual strands out, biting them in half, frowning at the internal texture like a forensic scientist evaluating evidence, then returning to her vigil while Aurora and I sat at the table pretending we had any say in the tiline.
When the food finally landed in front of , I understood everything.
The aglio e olio sat in a wide shallow bowl, spaghetti glistening with olive oil and flecked with paper-thin garlic chips that had been toasted to a pale gold without a single burnt edge. Cherry tomatoes split open from the heat, their insides soft and jammy against the pasta. Ribbons of prosciutto curled through the noodles, the salt from the cured at playing off the sweetness of the tomatoes in a way that made my mouth water before I’d even picked up a fork. Fresh basil torn by hand sat scattered across the top like confetti at a party thrown by soone with actual taste.
The sll alone could have won awards. Garlic and butter and that specific sharp warmth from the crushed red pepper she’d added, layered beneath the rich pork fat from the prosciutto that had rendered into the oil during cooking.
I took a bite.
My fork stopped moving halfway back to the bowl because my brain needed a mont to process what had just happened on my tongue. The spaghetti was perfect, firm enough to have structure but tender enough to absorb the oil and carry the garlic flavor through every strand. The prosciutto added salt and depth that made the whole dish taste more expensive than anything I’d eaten at the academy dining hall. The cherry tomatoes burst with each bite, their acid cutting through the richness of the oil and keeping the whole plate from feeling heavy.
And the garlic chips. Holy shit, the garlic chips. Crisp enough to shatter between my teeth but so thin they dissolved almost imdiately, leaving behind a concentrated garlic flavor that was warm instead of sharp, llow instead of aggressive. She’d cooked them low and slow until the sharpness burned off completely and left only the sweet, nutty core of the flavor behind.
"This is incredible," I said, and I ant it with every molecule of my being.
Addison had taken the seat across from . She’d pulled a fresh cherry lollipop from sowhere, but it sat untouched on the table because she was eating her own pasta with the quiet satisfaction of soone who knew exactly how good the food was and didn’t need external validation to confirm it.
She got external validation anyway.
"Like, genuinely incredible. This is restaurant quality." I took another bite and the garlic hit different the second ti around, deeper, more complex. "Where did you learn to cook like this?"
"My grandmother." The answer ca without the usual defensive edge. Addison twirled spaghetti around her fork with the sa one-handed dexterity she probably used for her scythes. "She’s from the old country. Calabrian. Every sumr I’d spend two weeks at her house in Brookline and she’d make stand at the stove until I could do it right." Sothing softened at the corners of her mouth that I’d never seen before. Not quite a smile. More like the mory of one. "She said any idiot can follow a recipe but only soone who gives a fuck about food can make aglio e olio properly because there’s nowhere to hide bad technique when the dish only has six ingredients."
Aurora was on her third aggressive forkful, eating with the enthusiasm of soone who’d been slling this food cook for two hours and had finally been released from purgatory. "She makes this every ti I have a bad day. Hasn’t failed once."
"Because food fixes things when words don’t." Addison said it simply, without the ironic distance she wrapped around most of her statents. She caught staring and the softness vanished, replaced by her standard operating expression of mild hostility. "Stop looking at like that."
"Like what?"
"Like I’m interesting."
"You just made the best pasta I’ve ever eaten while listening to a band called what, Corpse Immolation?"
"Septic Cadaver, actually. Different band. Corpse Immolation broke up last year because the drumr got arrested."
"For what?"
"Tax evasion."
"Not what I expected."
"Death tal guys are terrible with finances. Common problem in the genre." She picked up her lollipop and unwrapped it with her teeth, the cherry red candy settling into the corner of her mouth where it always lived. "Eat your food before it gets cold. Cold aglio e olio is a cri against humanity and I will take it personally."
I ate. Aurora ate. Addison ate with the particular focus of soone who treated every al as an experience worth paying attention to rather than fuel to be consud between training sessions. The conversation drifted through topics the way good dinner conversations should, organic and unpressured. Aurora talked about her guild scouts and how the Gold-tier buff from our last session had turned her sparring demonstration into sothing that genuinely frightened the recruiters. Addison ntioned a training session where she’d accidentally cut through her own practice dummy and the two behind it because her scythes manifested sharper than expected.
"The instructor almost lost his shit," she said, twirling her lollipop. "He made sign a damage waiver and then asked if I wanted to try it again on the reinforced targets. I said fuck yes."
I laughed. Not the polite kind. A real laugh that ca from sowhere in my stomach that I hadn’t been using lately.
Addison’s violet eyes tracked the sound. Sothing shifted in her expression, so quick I almost missed it, before she covered it with a long pull of water from her glass.
"Keep cooking like this and I might not want to leave," I said.
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