Page 58 of Bailey

He laughed right out loud at his own joke, and Bailey found herself giggling quietly too. He was a wonder of a human being, and she watched and listened as he continued to detail how he’d bought already-pounded and flattened chicken breasts, which he also seasoned on both sides before he put a dollop of his broccoli-cream-cheese mixture in the middle of it.

“Then you just want to fold it in half,” he said. “We’re going to stitch this together with a couple of toothpicks. Now, if you’re cooking over high heat, these should be wood, and they shouldn’t catch on fire too easily. Plus, we’re not putting them directly into a flame.” He chuckled and placed one chicken breast in the sizzling-hot pan. It started to crackle and come to life, and he laid the other one in, and then stood up.

He moved toward the camera and took it off the tripod. “And you want to leave it,” he said. “You’re not going to touch it. You don’t need to jiggle it, you don’t need to flip it, you’re just going to leave it. When it has a nice brown crust, it’ll come off by itself. And what we’re going to do to kind of keep it flat and make sure that it doesn’t do something we don’t want, we’re going to put a brick on it. Now, I didn’t bring bricks just for this.”

He turned the camera around. “But you’ll find plenty of rocks out in nature. I’ve already selected a couple, and yes, I wiped them down with a paper towel first. As you’ve probably seen with chefs far better than me, they just put this right on top of the chicken and let it cook.”

He did that for both chicken breasts, and then he turned toward Bailey. “With the chicken pounded this thin,” he said. “It should only take a few minutes.”

“You’re great on camera,” she said. “Are you still filming?”

“Yeah, but I’ll edit all this out.” Bailey could tell because he spoke in a slightly different voice when he wasn’t recording for the video. “I just brought watermelon to go with the chicken,” he said. “Because there’s nothing fussy about camp food.”

“Watermelon is my favorite fruit,” she said.

Reeves grinned over to her. “Well, I’m glad I got that right.” He pulled it out of the cooler. Again, this was pre-sliced and plastic-wrapped watermelon from the grocery store. Bailey certainly wasn’t going to complain, and she didn’t think any of his viewers would either.

He put the camera back on the tripod and put on one leather glove so he could pluck the rock off the top of the chicken. Then he turned it, and he grinned down at it. “Oh, yeah,” he said, really dragging out both words. “Can you see that? Wait, let me get you a little closer.”

He jumped up again, grabbed his camera, and took it right over the pan. “See how nice and brown that is? This is the kind of crust you want to have, and look, only a tiny little bit of our filling has come out.” He picked up the package of watermelon from where he’d left it on top of the cooler. “And this afternoon, I just have some watermelon pre-sliced and ready to go, but I did bring the Tajín seasoning.”

It took him a moment to find it, and then he whipped up the bottle and held it in front of the camera. Bailey could just see him stitching the clips together, as she’d watched plenty of his previous videos and knew how they went.

“Some of you might eat salt on your watermelon, and some like it straight up, but I love this. I discovered it in Alaska when a friend of mine had just returned from a hiking expedition in Hawaii, and he’d tasted this seasoning they put on pineapple there. We tried it on all kinds of fruits, and it’s pretty good on watermelon.”

He ripped the plastic wrap back, took out a slice, and sprinkled the Tajín seasoning on it. Then he took a big bite as juice ran down his chin. Bailey giggled, and she sat near enough to the camera for it to record that sound.

Reeves grinned and wiped his face with a paper towel. “And oh-ho, if you heard that sound, you may realize that my girlfriend is here with me. I told you she was coming, but she still doesn’t want to be on camera.” He glanced over at her, and Bailey grinned at him with everything inside her.

“Maybe after I impress her with my camp cooking and Tajín seasoning, I’ll be able to introduce you to her.”

He put the camera on the closer tripod, the one he’d used when he’d built the fire, and checked the chicken. “This is looking done,” he said. “But it’s chicken, so you’ve got to make sure you cook it all the way. I have my handy-dandy travel meat thermometer, and let me just check the temperature here….”

Reeves stuck the thermometer into the folded part of the chicken breast. “You want that to go into the biggest part of the meat, because that’s going to be where it needs to be cooked all the way, and sometimes I’ll even stand it up on the end like this.” He used his bare fingers to put the chicken up on the folded side where it was the thickest.

“But we’re up to one hundred and sixty-eight,” he said. “And the minimum is one-sixty-five, so this is going to be great.” He removed the whole pan of chicken from the fire and put it right on the lid of the cooler.

“Since my girlfriend came, I brought real plates,” he said, and he quickly plated up the chicken, a slice of watermelon, and turned toward the camera. “Let’s eat.”

He held there for a moment, and then everything broke. Bailey knew he would cut the video there. Sure enough, he stood and brought the plate he’d just shown to the camera to her.

“Here you go, wildflower,” he said in the more subdued, husky voice Bailey was used to.

“It was really great,” she said.

“At home, I make a sauce to go with this chicken,” he said as he returned to the cooler and plated up his food before coming to sit beside her. “But it felt like too much work out here.”

She beamed over to him. “That just means you’ll have to make it for me again someday.”

Reeves smiled at her, his eyes bright and dancing with what Bailey could only describe as desire. “Thanks for coming, Bay,” he said. “I hope this was fun.”

“Are you kidding?” she asked. “This was incredible.”

Reeves leaned over the arm of his camp chair, and Bailey met him halfway for a sweet and yet hot kiss that told her she’d get up at any hour and hike any mountain to be in a meadow just like this with Reeves, eating stuffed brick chicken and watermelon with a seasoning she’d never tasted. She kissed him for as long as he wanted to, and then he ducked his head and cleared his throat.

“Do you think your parents will like me?” he asked.

“Definitely,” Bailey said. “Plus, they’ve already met you, remember?”