Which was smoking.
"Mac—"
"I see it!"
He grabbed the pan, burned his hand on the handle, swore, dropped the pan, and watched in horror as tomato sauce splattered across his stove, the counter, and somehow the ceiling.
There was a long moment of silence.
"So," Rachel said carefully. "Pizza?"
Mac looked at the destruction he'd wrought on his kitchen. Sauce everywhere. Pasta plain and sad in the colander. His hand throbbing.
He started laughing.
He couldn't help it. The whole thing was so absurd. He'd wanted to impress Rachel with a home-cooked meal, and instead he'd created a crime scene that would require industrial cleaning supplies.
Rachel started laughing too, helpless giggles that made her bend over, clutching her stomach.
"I tried," Mac managed between laughs. "I really tried."
"You destroyed your kitchen in ten minutes. That's almost impressive."
"Almost?"
"Okay, fully impressive. I didn't know it was possible to get sauce on the ceiling."
Mac looked up at the red splatter. "Neither did I, honestly."
Rachel pulled out her phone. "Tony's Pizza? They deliver."
"Tony's is perfect."
While Rachel ordered pizza, Mac attempted to clean up the worst of the damage. Puck had retreated to the bedroom, apparently done with the chaos.
Rachel finished the order and joined Mac in the kitchen, grabbing paper towels. "Pizza will be here in thirty minutes. Let's make this kitchen slightly less like a murder scene before it arrives."
They cleaned together, Rachel laughing every time she found a new spot where sauce had somehow landed. Mac's shoulder. The cabinet handles. Inside the sink, which shouldn't have been physically possible.
"You have a gift," Rachel said, wiping sauce off a cabinet. "A terrible, destructive gift."
"I'm never cooking again."
"That's probably for the best."
When the kitchen was mostly clean, they'd agreed the ceiling could wait, they collapsed onto Mac's couch. Puck immediately claimed Rachel's lap.
"So," Rachel said, stroking Puck’s fur, "this is your apartment."
"This is it. Sorry it's not fancy. Hockey in Vermont doesn't exactly pay NHL salaries."
"It's nice. It's very... you." Rachel looked around at the hockey photos on the walls, the mismatched furniture, the stack of library books on the coffee table. "Wait, are those all checked out in your name?"
"Maybe."
"Mac, you have seventeen books here."
"I like reading remember?"
