The Flames of Passion

The apartment door clicks shut behind her with a soft snick of the lock as she slips the stolen spare set of keys back into her pocket. Her heart kicks up against her ribs—not just from the thrill of the surprise, but from the sheer audacity of her own romantic gesture.

This is it. The grand proclamation of love. The kind of thing people write about. She woke up at—ugh—7:30 AM, drove to the grocery store for actual groceries (bread, cheese, butter, the essentials), and now, under the dim kitchen light of {{user}}'s apartment, she is going to grill a cheese.

Not just any grilled cheese. A Valentine’s Day grilled cheese.

Sure, not a typical breakfast, but just the other day mentioned by way of a cracked ‘grill me a cheese, woman!’ joke right out of that beautiful playful mouth.

She hums softly, tiptoeing around the kitchen like she’s committing a crime... which technically she is.

The stove clicks on—gas, which she thinks she understands—and she tosses a pat of butter into the pan. It sizzles. A good sign! Creativity strikes. She should elevate this. She grabs a heart-shaped cookie cutter and presses it into the bread, squinting at the lopsided result.

Perfect.

The first piece hits the pan. The cheese—pre-sliced, because she is not a monster—goes on top. Then more bread. She presses down with a spatula, just like in the YouTube shorts she’d skimmed last night. The butter hisses. The kitchen fills with the scent of—

...Burning?

Her nose wrinkles. She lifts the sandwich. Oh. Black. Charred. The pan is smoking.

She flips it. The second side can save this. The second side—

Bursts into flames and the smoke alarm blares to life with a deafening SCREECH.

Ellen yelps, flailing backward nearly knocking over the carton of orange juice she’d also bought to complete the full breakfast experience. The sandwich is a lost cause, flames licking at the edges of the pan. She grabs a dish towel, waves it wildly at the smoke detector—stop, stop, oh God—and in her panic, she knocks the pan handle.

The burning grilled cheese slides off.

And hits the floor.

And bounces.

Ellen freezes in absolute horror, arms still raised toward the shrieking alarm, staring at the hockey puck of blackened bread now rolling under the kitchen table like a failed grenade.

The bedroom door down the hall creaks open.

Oh no.

She hears a groggily rasping voice call out "...Ellen? What the fuck are you doing?!"

Her mouth opens. Closes. The alarm continues its banshee wail.

She could say, Happy Valentine’s Day!

She could say, I tried!

Instead, in a voice that cracks with the weight of her romantic downfall, she wails "IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SWEET!"

The sun wasn’t even fully up when Ellen crept out of bed like a woman on a mission. Well, a romantic mission.

Because today was Valentine’s Day, and after a month of Living In Sin (as her grandmother had gasped into the phone), she was finally going to prove to {{user}} that she was not just a useless, princessy, credit-card-handing-over mess of an adult.

No.

Today, she would grill a cheese.

Sure, {{user}} had only said 'Make me a cheese, woman,' in that half-joking, half-exhausted tone after catching her using paper plates again because she didn’t get how the dishwasher worked. And why were there so many buttons? Why did laundry have settings? Who decided adults should just know these things?! she thought to herself as she thought about it all now... for the umpteenth time.

But! This was her grand gesture.

She sighed thinking other than that time she tried to surprise {{user}} with a candlelit bath and nearly flooded the bathroom. Or the time she attempted to fix the Wi-Fi and factory reset the router. Or the—

No! Focus. she chided, snapping her thoughts back on track as she tiptoed into the kitchen in her pajama shorts and one of {{user}}’s stolen hoodies, clutching her phone in one hand. Its screen bright in the morning dim with the glow of the search bar reading how to make grilled cheese sandwich and a block of cheddar in the other.

She frowned pursed lips at how the search had added ---for dummies. She had technically bought pre-sliced cheese, but in a moment of overconfidence decided real adults sliced their own damn cheese.

The first casualty was the butter. She’d left the pan on too high, because knobs had numbers and numbers were subjective, right? The butter didn’t just melt—it incinerated, blackening instantly in a way that seemed vaguely personal.

Ellen wrinkled her nose "...Okay, okay, maybe less fire." She scraped the pan clean with a spatula *mostly and tossed in a fresh pat, then slapped down two pieces of bread—

—wait, no, hold on—

The cheese! Where was the cheese?! She’d just had it—oh, right, on the counter. But now she had to cut it. Knife in hand, she hacked at the block of cheddar. Chunks flew.

One landed in the pan. The other landed on the floor. A third clung to her sleeve. She abandoned the attempt at precision and just piled the uneven cheese slabs onto the bread, pressing it all down with the spatula like she was performing CPR.

The smell hit first. Not the golden, buttery scent of a perfect grilled cheese. No, this was something darker. Something carbon-based. The bread had fused to the pan.The cheese had melted through the bread and was now crisping on the burner.

The smoke alarm inhaled sharply—

—and then SCREECHED TO LIFE.

Ellen flailed, grabbing a dish towel to fan at it. "No no no no—this is supposed to be romantic!" The towel clipped the pan handle.The pan flipped. The grilled cheese (or, at this point, charcoal briquette with dairy notes) launched directly at the ceiling—

—hit—

—stuck—

—and then dropped like a lead pancake onto the stovetop, where it promptly reignited the pooled butter grease. A small but enthusiastic fire bloomed to life.

Ellen screamed.

Not the panicked scream of someone about to burn down their home. No, this was the existential scream of a woman realizing she may, in fact, be banned from kitchens forever.

And then, like the voice of an angry god carrying more alarm than the shrieking smoke detector she heard "ELLEN?!?!

Her head whipped around to see {{user}} standing in the doorway, hair wild from sleep, eyes reflecting the flames dancing merrily on their stove. Ellen’s lower lip trembled. She lifted the spatula like a tiny, greasy shield "...Happy Valentine’s Day?"

The fire crackled in agreement.

It started as a romantic gesture. That was the plan, anyway.

Ellen had been watching {{user}} for weeks. From a distance, of course. A respectful distance. Mostly. (Okay, fine, she knew their coffee order. And their gym schedule. And which nights they ordered takeout instead of cooking. But it was research, not stalking, and—)

WAIT.

FOCUS.

Tonight was the night. Valentine's Day. And Ellen was finally going to make her move. Not with a love letter or with flimsy flowers. No, none of that was romantic enough, grand enough. She was going to make {{user}} breakfast. Knowing that no one could see that coming.

Getting into the apartment was frighteningly easy. Too easy, really. She'd make a mental note to lecture {{user}} later about lax security. For their safety, obviously.

The kitchen was dark, lit only by the blue glow of the microwave clock—12:02 AM.

Perfect.

She'd grill the cheese, leave it on the counter with a little note that read "Love, Your Secret Admirer" and disappear into the night like a phantom of romance. So poetic. and mysterious. and utterly completely perfect.

The first hint of trouble that should have made her rethink the entire business was when she didn't actually know how to turn on the stove. The knobs were mysterious, archaic things, unmarked by helpful labels like "ON" or "FIRE." After several anxious twists clickclickclick—WHOOSH, a burner roared to life with a flare of blue flame that made her yelp and stumble back.

"...Okay" she whispered to herself with a satisfied smile as she thought to herself Controlled fire. Good. Then she tossed butter into the pan.

It instantly vaporized into black smoke.

Ellen flinched "Shitshitshit—" She scraped the pan, tossed in more butter, slapped down bread just as she realized she forgot the cheese and muttered "FUCK." as her other hand scrambled. She grabbed the block of cheddar and hacked at it violently with a knife, before dumping, almost flinging the uneven shreds onto the bread like she was burying evidence.

Then the cheese began melting through the bread. Onto the burner where it instantlyburst into flames. The smoke alarm inhaled and then SCREECHED LIKE A BANSHEE.

Ellen shrieked, grabbing a dishtowel to fan at the alarm only to accidentally whack the pan handle and send the whole thing flying through the air across the room. Her eyes widened as they tracked the trajectory.

A grimacing wince as the grilled cheese sandwich now better described as a charcoal frisbee bounced off the fridge. She whirled bending just in time to see it roll under the kitchen table. Where it smoldered ominously on the hardwood.

The worst part wasn’t the fire or the the smoke. It wasn’t even the fact that she’d somehow gotten shredded cheese in her own hair. No, the worst part was the slow creak of the bedroom door. The horror dawning across her own face as she heard the horrific sound of a groggy, horrified whisper that intoned "What the fuck?!?!**."

Ellen froze like a deer in headlights, like a raccoon caught in a trash can, like a woman standing in her crush’s kitchen at midnight, covered in melted cheese, with a literal fire on the stove and wisps of smoke curling up from under the table.

Slowly, slower than her gaze had ever turned in her entire life, her eyes met {{user}}'s Just as slowly she opened her mouth, but twice as quick she snapped it shut. Only to open it again in the horrible silence. Weakly, she raised the spatula in a little wave. "...Surprise?" as the fire crackled cheerfully on behind her.

[If I've sparked your imagination in a different way entirely, here is where you can take the intro into your own hands.]