Simmer Down

episodes from season four of 24. When the timer went off, I pulled the tart out of the oven and admired its golden color. The smell was so yummy that I couldn’t resist pulling a small chunk of hazelnut goo off the top. I mean, I had to test it before serving, right?
    Something was horribly wrong.
    I bit down and practically cracked a tooth. Why were these hazelnuts so hard? Instead of a lovely, tender bite, I had just chomped down on what felt like bits of rock. I stared at my beautiful hazelnut tart in disbelief. What a complete idiot I was! No wonder the hazelnuts had looked so big!
    I had not removed the shells.
    I had chopped up and baked goddamn shells.
    My ridiculous error was clearly Hannah’s fault. If I hadn’t been so busy figuring out how to get rid of that fool, I’d never have made such a stupid mistake. I threw the tart into the garbage.
    What if I had gone ahead and proudly served the shell tart to Josh and my family? I’d have been mortified. Thank God I was alone and could simply make a new one.
    At least I had enough hazelnuts... if not enough common sense.

SEVEN

    JOSH picked me up that night, and we spent the ten-minute drive to my parents’ house in Newton trying to catch up. I confessed everything about the Hannah fiasco except the unflattering details about vegetable warfare.
    “I’m sorry you had to deal with her. She really wasn’t this bad when I was with her. I’m not even sure what I saw in her, but I guess sometimes you just end up in relationships and don’t even know how you got there.” We rode up a hill on Commonwealth Avenue and drove past the deserted Boston College campus and into Newton. “Thank you for taking care of her, Chloe. I really appreciate that. I won’t forget my cell phone again, I promise.” Josh winked at me.
    Adrianna and Owen, together with Heather and Ben and their kids, Walker and Lucy, were already at my parents’ Spanish-style house at the top of Farlow Road. “Whose car is that?” I pointed to a beat-up blue Chevy parked behind Adrianna’s car.
    “Snacker is here!” Josh’s face lit up. Snacker’s real name was Jason, but like most of Josh’s friends, he’d acquired a nickname that obliterated the need for an actual real name. Josh’s new sous chef, Snacker, had been visiting his family in Colorado for Christmas, so he had a lot of catching up to do in Simmer’s kitchen to get ready for the opening, which was only two days away. Snacker and Josh had gone to culinary school together, and Snacker had spent the past few years traveling from chef job to chef job all over the country. He’d been in Florida, Atlanta, Saint Thomas, Hawaii, and Seattle, among other places, and Josh had convinced him to come to Simmer and settle down for a while. Somehow, Josh and Stein were going to squeeze Snacker into their little apartment in Jamaica Plain.
    “I can’t believe he showed up!” Josh said excitedly. “He called the restaurant this morning and said he might not make it to the city by tonight. I told him where we’d be, though, in case he made it.”
    I’d never met Snacker and was happy finally to meet one of Josh’s best friends. We walked into the living room and were hit by the smell of fir. My parents (well, more specifically, my mother) had done their usual excessive holiday decorations. Once again this year, my mother had somehow managed to cram three Christmas trees into the house, each absolutely covered in tiny white pearl lights. Curly willow that she’d grown in their big garden last summer had been dried out, and the stems were wrapped in thin red ribbon and arranged in silver vases throughout the house. Garlands with ornaments were draped across every available space, and candles were nestled in nooks throughout the room. No matter how overdone, the house always looked magical at the holidays, especially because the need to make room for Christmas decorations forced my mother to remove her vile little crafts projects from the walls. She suffered from some terrible affliction that caused her to knit, crochet, glue gun, and weave weird-looking materials into weirder-looking crafts projects that were prominently displayed on the walls of the otherwise lovely house. I was particularly relieved to see that her hand-painted birdhouses had been hidden away.
    Everyone was gathered by the fireplace in the living room.
    “There’s my friend Josh!” A dark-haired guy in his late twenties rose from his chair and threw his arms