“I wish you could see what I saw when I watched you on that show.”

She covers her face with both hands, groaning. “I can’t believe you watched that.”

I pull her hands down by her wrists. “How could I not watch. I’d watch it again right now.” The whisper of an idea murmurs in my head. “What would you make right now? If you could make anything. Like the most comforting food you can think of.”

“For Camilla?”

“For yourself.”

“Poutine, I guess.” She says it like poo-tin. Her lips pouting the word. “It’s best to eat it at this time of year, when it’s freezing out and the chips are piping hot and you and your friends are all huddled together to keep warm before you take the Metro home.”

“Make some for me,” I say. I pull out my phone, looking for the best spot in the kitchen to set up the camera.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re going to cook something you love, on camera.”

Sophie laughs until I hit play on my phone and start recording her by propping it up against a flower vase.

“I thought we were going to have sex.”

I kiss her, probably out of frame but that’s okay. This part is just for me anyway. “I will. After you cook.”

“I don’t even know if I have all the ingredients.” She’s snarky and frowning but that doesn’t stop her from opening drawers and pulling out pots and pans. And of course, she does have the ingredients; like any good French Canadian there are cheese curds in her fridge. “My mom brought me some,” she mumbles when I laugh. And without much prompting at all she starts to wash potatoes.

“Not because you told me to,” she says, scrubbing at the root vegetable with a hard bristled brush. “Because I’m hungry.”

She pours me a glass of water and pushes me onto a kitchen stool with a growl and the tease of a kiss but no actual contact. The she rolls up her sleeves and puts her hair up, like she would in our kitchen, and gets to work. Sophie has an almost industrial-sized deep fryer that she muscles up from the depths of a cupboard, refusing my offer of help. Soon, the kitchen is filled with the smell of deep-fried potatoes and gravy made from actual animal protein because she also has three kinds of stock in her fridge.

I consider myself a skilled cook but poutine from scratch would take me, at minimum, an hour, and yet within thirty-seven minutes Sophie presents the most elevated dish of French-Canadian street food I’ve ever seen. She sprinkles rosemary and Maldon salt on top.

“You wouldn’t get it with any garnish on the street, but I think it adds to the flavor.” She hands me a fork. I hand it back to her.

“You first.” My phone’s battery is almost dead, but I frame her in the shot just for this bite. “How is it?” I ask.