As Long As You Love Me

A couple days later, Nick and I were sitting on the couch at his Streeterville condo watching Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I laid my head against his chest during the middle of movie. He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me closer to him. I could smell his Abercrombie & Fitch A&F Woods cologne. He knew it was my favorite. I looked back at the T.V., my eyes started to droop as they slowly closed.

My eyes quickly opened as I heard the sounds from the T.V. changed. I shifted in my position noticing that Nick was still holding onto me. "You okay?" Nick asked me looking away from the television. I rubbed my eyes, "Yeah, I guess. What happened?" He looked me in the eyes. "You like passed out during the middle of the movie. I continued to watch it but then I opted to watch something else." He kissed the top of my head, "Everything is fine." he said as he continued to channel surf. I took his free hand and laced it with my left hand.

"I wish I was able to head back to Minny with you tomorrow. But instead I'm stuck here with this stupid project that I haven't even started yet." I said playing with his fingers against mine.
"You haven't started a project? It doesn’t sound like you."

"I know. It's this huge project that makes up part of our restaurant. I'm suppose to make a menu and menu design but I can't do the design if I don't know what I'm serving yet."

"Why don't you do that pasta dish you made for EPHS fundraiser? It was the one with a lot of cheese that I had to cut back on cuz it was the middle of the season." I sat up and grabbed my phone and opened the notes section and typed it down.

"Continue."

"Wasn't there that steak dish you made for the team? Uh wasn't there that other pasta dish you made for the parent meeting? What about your cook-off dishes."

I continued to type them down into my phone. I quickly leaped off the couch and gave Nick a quick kiss. "Leddy, I love you. Now I have put this all together. I'm sorry that this is your last day here before pre-season but I have to work on this." He got up. "No worries, I'll be back a week before training camp. Mom wants to make sure I'm okay here by myself, but now she won't have to worry." he said taking a hold of my waist. "Dork." "Your Dork." He kissed me and lead me to his door. "I'll call you before my flight leaves." He gave me another quick peck on the lips. "Okay. Love you." I said walking out of his condo. "Love you too."
I raced to my car and rushed back to my condo. This was perfect. My inspiration for my menu was all the dishes I made back at Eden Prairie.



I shot up at the sound of my alarm clock. I wiped the dried drool stuff off my face and glanced at the clock. I had 30 minutes to get to class. I raced to the bathroom to take a quick 10 minute shower. With only 20 minutes left, I quickly changed, grabbed my menu project and rushed out the door praying that there wasn't any traffic. I hopped onto Lake Shore Drive in a matter of minutes driving up to traffic. I looked at the clock. Damn it. I have 15 minutes left and the traffic was horrible. I screamed a bunch of profanities throughout my car. Luckily I had my windows up. I've never been late to a class and now I felt really bad. I spent so much time procrastinating that I overslept. I glared at the clock as it hit 8:52. Approximately 8 minutes left till class started. I took out my phone and found one missed call and one new voicemail message from Nick. I dialed my voicemail number seeing that I wasn't going anywhere for a while.

Hey Sam. It's Nick. I just wanted to say that I just got to the airport and I'm headed on the plane to Minny. I had a feeling that you wouldn't pick up with your big project due today and whatnot. But I thought I'd give you a heads up on everything and I wanted to say that I'll miss you. Funny enough that we reunited in Chicago and that I had the best last couple days we've had together. Hopefully you'll still be Sam with my new hotshot schedule. I miss you and I love you. I wish you were able to come back home with me. Don't worry, if I see your mom around, I'll tell her that I saw you. He chuckled. So I guess that's it. And I'm in the plane and have to get off. I'll call you when I land. I love you.

To play this message again…

I ended the call. That's one of the things I loved about Nick. He wasn't big on the romance stuff that it made him seem a little awkward at times. My mom and I liked to saw that Nick's a awkward romantic. I loved every minute of it. I was suddenly snapped back into reality when a car horn beeped from behind. I noticed traffic was moving again. I looked at the clock and sighed. Whatever I was already late in the first place.

I got to my classroom to see the class cooking some items off of their menu.
"Samantha your late." Chef Linguini said pointing a spatula at me. I squirmed a little. "I know and I'm sorry." I took out my menu project and handed it in. He looked down at it and looked back up to me. "Meet me after class to talk about this. Now the class is preparing one dish off of their menu. Now go!" he said clapping his hands.
I rushed to my station and started to prep for my version of spinach Tortelli. "Sam. Where were you?" Jenna, one my closest friends in this class, asked. I poured the hard pasta into the big boiling bowl of water. "I accidentally overslept and with my bad luck continuing, it was traffic on LSD." She 'oh'ed and continued to work on her dish.

When my Tortelli. was ready, I took it out of the oven. I let it cool down for a couple of minutes while I grabbed a plate to serve it on. I took the pasta and plated it smack dab in the middle. I took some extra tomato sauce I had left over and drizzled some of it over the Tortelli. . I wiped off any smudges on the plate and took the plate to the judges table.
Chef Linguini examined each and every dish. "I will have your results posted later on the bulletin board. Class dismissed." We all went back to our stations and tidied up a little bit before walking out of the room. Unfortunately, Linguini wanted to talk to me. So I took my bag and walked back to the teaching area. I sat at my desk area in front of the room and waited for Linguini. I tapped on the desk until he walked back in standing right in front of his desk.
"I'm sorry I was late to class today Chef. I overslept and ended up getting caught up in traffic."
"Call me Gio and don't worry, I'm not upset about you being tardy." I gave him a confused look. "Look, you're one of my top students and I know that you've always loved to cook. I can see it in your eyes. You have this passion for it. You practically live for it."

He walked closer to my desk and tucked a hair behind my ear. He leaned close to me. "Plus your also a beautiful girl with an amazing talent for cooking." He whispered into my ear.

"What are trying to say?"

He started to nibble on my ear, making his way down to my neck. I started to enjoy the pleasure until I realized what was going on. I pushed him away from me.

"What are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" He took a step forward.

I stepped back a little. "B-b-but your married."

"Elizabeta and I are having some complications. Besides she's out of the country for the next few months." he took another step closer to me.

"What does that have to do with me?" I asked.

"A lot of things. You're more beautiful than the Tuscany sunset." He leaned forward to kiss me. Stunned and shocked, I pulled him away from me. I grabbed my bag and headed for the door.

"If you don't come back here, I'll be forced to give you an F resulting in not graduating. Plus I know many restaurant owners and food critics. I can simply tell them not to hire you or badly critic your food." I turned around to see no sign of stuttering whatsoever. He smirked and I slowly walked back towards him. "Questa è la mia ragazza." He kissed the top of my forehead. {That's my girl.}

I walked back to my car with tears rolling down my eyes. I couldn't believe it. My teacher was blackmailing me because his stupid marriage is a wreck. I continued to cry for a half-hour. I had no other choice but to give in. It's either that or my chances of become a professional chef go down the drain. It's horrendous. Gio made me promise not to tell anyone. What am I going to do? What about Nick? I can't tell Nick or Taylor anything. I feel like I'm going to dishonor my entire family just by doing this fling with my teacher. Tears continued to fall. I turned on my car and attempted to drive back home to the condo.