Dahlia signed up for a six-week cooking class. She mostly wanted to learn how to make bread. She was tired of it turning out like a brick every time. On the first night, the instructor assigned partners by pulling names from a bowl. Dahlia was paired with a stranger named Arjun.
达莉亚报名参加了一个为期六周的烹饪班。她主要是想学做面包。她受够了面包每次做出来都像砖头一样硬。第一天晚上，老师从一个碗里抽名字来分配搭档。达莉亚和一个叫阿尔琼的陌生人分到了一起。
Their first dish, a simple tomato soup, went badly. Arjun added the cream too early. It curdled into something neither of them wanted to serve the instructor. They laughed about it more than they worried about their grade. They scraped the ruined pot into the bin together.
他们做的第一道菜是一份简单的番茄汤，结果很糟糕。阿尔琼奶油放得太早了。它凝成了一团，他们俩谁也不想端给老师。比起担心成绩，他们笑得更厉害。他们一起把那锅毁掉的汤倒进了垃圾桶。
The instructor, to Dahlia's surprise, kept pairing them for the rest of the course. She insisted it was random, even though the same two names seemed to come up every single week. By week three, Dahlia had stopped minding the coincidence. She had actually started looking forward to it.
出乎达莉亚的意料，老师在课程剩下的时间里一直把他们俩分在一起。她坚持说这是随机的，尽管每个星期出现的总是同样那两个名字。到第三周，达莉亚已经不再介意这种巧合了。她其实已经开始期待它。
Their dishes improved steadily. The soufflé that collapsed in week two became a nearly perfect one by week five. Their final bread was made together on the last night. It rose exactly the way Dahlia had always wanted hers to.
他们做的菜在稳步进步。第二周塌掉的舒芙蕾，到第五周已经变得近乎完美。他们的最后一份面包是在最后一个晚上一起做的。它发起来的样子，正是达莉亚一直希望自己做的面包该有的样子。
"We should keep cooking together after this ends," Arjun said, wiping flour from his hands. The class packed up around them. "Not for a grade. Just because the food's actually good when we don't panic."
“这门课结束以后，我们应该继续一起做饭，”阿尔琼一边擦掉手上的面粉，一边说。教室里的其他人正在收拾东西。“不是为了成绩。只是因为我们不慌的时候，做出来的东西真的很好吃。”
Dahlia agreed, a little faster than she'd meant to. She admitted she still had the instructor's tomato soup recipe folded in her bag. It was the one they had ruined together in week one. If they made it again properly, she said, it would almost feel like finishing what they'd started.
达莉亚答应了，比她原本想的还要快一点。她承认，她的包里还折着老师给的那份番茄汤食谱。就是他们第一周一起做砸的那份。她说，如果他们把它好好再做一遍，就几乎像是把他们开始的事情做完了。
They exchanged numbers outside the cooking school. The last few students said their goodbyes around them under a streetlight. Dahlia and Arjun agreed on a date the following Saturday, to try the soup again.
他们在烹饪学校外面互相交换了电话号码。最后几个学生在路灯下围在他们周围道别。达莉亚和阿尔琼约好了下个星期六，再试一次那份汤。
