”But you could ask,” she repeats my words, adding an extra edge of sarcasm to her tone.

”You know what? I didn’t want to cook at all, it was solely your idea! So don’t act like–”

”Shit, Bette!” she cuts me off, her eyes widen at something she sees over my shoulder.

I turn around quickly only to see the frying pan billowing a cloud of smoke like a tiny volcano.

”SHIT, TINA!” I shriek and race to the stove.

I snatch a towel and begin madly waving it over a steaming pan. The shriek of the fire alarm echoes across the penthouse in a series of beeping shockwaves, increasing my already high level of panic. Tina switches off the stove, yelling something I can’t hear due to the alarm noise. Without further ado I grab the pan by the handle and rush to the sink before dumping the pan into it with all the contents. Turning on the faucet, I jump backwards as the water hits the bottom of the pan in a brutal sizzle, sending up a new eruption of smoke.

Staying completely still, I assess the scene before me.

What the sincere fuck just happened? How in the world the first and probably the last omelette of my life just got so miserably burned? Oh my God, I have no idea. This makes me so sad. I tried so hard to make my first omelette. Big Sigh.

I turn to find Tina finally shutting up the smoke detector, ripping the battery out. I watch her puff her cheeks and let out a frustrated breath. She then slaps her palm against her forehead and starts to laugh.

At first I just stare at her with a frown, for I don’t understand what is so amusing about something as terrible as just happened in my kitchen. But gradually I feel myself getting infected by her laughter and actually begin to find the whole situation ironic and kind of surreal.

”Why…the heck…did you…increase the heat to high?” Tina asks between fits of laughter.

”I thought it would…I thought…” the sentence comes out in short, hysterical gasps, because I’m laughing so hard I can barely form one.

It feels like being back in grade school when the teacher would threaten you to stop laughing and that only makes you laugh even more. That’s the kind of laughter we’re both experiencing right now, literal gut wrenching, tears-in-the-eyes, hold-on-to-something-solid laughter. In fact, we both are having a grip of something for support, Tina has the counter, I have the fridge, but not for long as I drop to the floor when my knees start to buckle under me.