Page 35
But he wasn’t done. “It’s different than what I do in that you’re approaching the food and the restaurants from another angle, but ultimately, it’s all the same, isn’t it? We love food. We want people to go out and eat the food that we love.” He slid his glasses back on, blinked owlishly in my direction, then set his hands on the table, the right one resting only a few inches from my own. I could practically feel the heat of his skin radiating onto mine. As if attracted to it, my hand, also on the table, drifted closer to his. Now I could definitely feel the heat. “Only you built your operation up from scratch, which is even more impressive than me, because I jumped in with a ready-made audience. Your hustle is amazing.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, which forced the angle of my face away from his eyes. Which I definitely didn’t do on purpose. Definitely not because I couldn’t handle the admiration in his eyes and what it might make me do. “Oh. Thanks.”
And you know, I’d just loosed some truth, and even though it was just about wine, it had made me feel lighter in the best possible way. He’d just admitted something true, too, bared a little piece of his soul. Maybe I could do that as well. “One of the reasons—really, the main reason—that I played that trick on you at the Central Park Food Festival was because I was jealous of you,” I admitted, staring at the table as my cheeks heated up. “That should actually be present tense. I am jealous of you. I love what I do, but I want the clout and the prestige that you have. Sure, my followers value my opinions, but the food world as a whole doesn’t, not really. You have a name behind you. I just have my name.”
The silence that fell after the last word left my lips somehow felt different than the silence that had fallen between us before. More comfortable. More open. Like I could say anything into it, and it wouldn’t come back to bite me.
And, like that feeling had given permission to my body to be just as honest, my hand reached out and covered his on the table. His hand beneath mine was warm, large enough where mine didn’t cover nearly all of it, his skin soft and his bones hard ridges that tensed at the touch of my skin.
What are you doing? I thought furiously at it. My lips opened to say sorry, and I went to pull my hand away, but before I could do either of those things, his hand flipped over, our palms meeting as he threaded his fingers through mine.
It was like when I was a freshman in high school and held a boy’s hand for the very first time. The touch of his skin on mine made me tingle all the way up my arm, and the way he squeezed my hand, reassuringly but also firmly, as if to say, this is the way I’d squeeze around your nipple or cup your ass to press you up against me.
I had to get out of here, or I’d be squeezing way more than his hand. And that would be a disaster for both our careers. I cleared my throat and yanked my hand away. “So,” I said brightly even as his eyes dimmed. Should I tell him I hadn’t pulled away so abruptly because he was gross or something? No, then I’d just get into that storm of apologies again and make things weird. “I’m starving.”
Twenty minutes later, we were at Shake Shack, surrounded by bright lights, white furniture, and a cheerful combination of drunk college students and working people grabbing a bite at the end of the day. The smell of fried food was salty and crunchy, somehow, in the air. We ordered our food, paying separately, and then I staked out a table while Bennett waited with the buzzer for our order to be ready.
Alone at the table, after wiping some crumbs off with a napkin, I had a moment to think about how I should handle tonight’s debacle on my social media. I’d already posted that stupid live video, after all. In the future, I’d better wait to post anything like that until I was done and certain of success. I could just delete it and pretend it never happened. Or post an update tomorrow looking cheery and confessing that I’d had a little too much wine and forgotten to take pictures, but the burgers were incredible. It might make me look relatable, but still an expert in my field. Or I could ask one of my brothers if they had any good burger photos they wouldn’t mind me swiping and claiming as my own.
But then Bennett approached with our ShackBurgers and cheese fries on a red plastic tray, and I remembered what it had felt like in his apartment to tell the truth about the wine. To not stress about it.
I held up a finger as he went to grab his burger. “One sec.”
He sighed dramatically as I smiled into my camera. Not my big fake smile. A smaller smile, one that was a little abashed. “Hey, folks. So . . . I am indeed about to eat some of the best burgers and fries of my life.” I quickly switched the camera and panned over the tray, wishing my viewers could smell it, then turned it back to my face with a smile. “Let’s just say that I might be a little out of practice when it comes to cooking. I’d love any tips on cooking accounts to follow to get back up to speed! In any case . . . I’m hungry.”
I gave them an embarrassed little wave, then shut it off. Time to dive in. I teased the palate with a couple of fries first, their crispiness just barely starting to wilt under the thick, creamy layer of cheese. And then the burger. I moaned as my teeth sank through the soft bun, the crunchy fried portobello mushroom oozing with cheese filling, the meaty burger itself.
Because of the food, and definitely not because of the way Bennett and I laughed at ourselves as we ate it—definitely solely due to the food—it was one of the best meals of my life.
12
Marcus woke me up the next morning with his laughter. Which I suppose is preferable to being woken up by screaming or crying, but still much less preferable to not being woken up at all.
I cracked a bleary eye in the direction of my phone. Which said eight forty-four.
Shit.
I shot upright, rubbing my cheeks. I hadn’t gotten to bed until late last night because of our Shake Shack dinner and a subway ride home that had lasted an extra half hour thanks to a sick passenger in the train ahead. (Bennett had tried to call me an Uber, but I’d lied, saying that I’d get my own downstairs. Ubers from Manhattan to where I lived in Brooklyn cost a fortune—I didn’t want him paying for that for me.) I must have forgotten to set my alarm. Now I was going to be late to work unless I really hustled.
I ran out to the bathroom past Marcus—still chortling—to brush my teeth and wash my face. No time for a shower. Ran back past him—what was the man laughing at for this long?—to throw on the first dress I found, then whipped it off and pulled on another one after I remembered the reason the first one had been hanging in front had been to remind me to do an extra-intensive cleaning because of a salad dressing stain I couldn’t get off.
A hair tie pulling my hair into a high bun—lopsided, I’d redo it in the office—and I was ready to go. I grabbed my satchel, shoving a new library book in as I walked out into the living room, and finally had a moment to ask Marcus, “What’s so funny?”
“You,” he responded, and I realized he was holding his phone up to his face.
“You mean my videos from last night?” On my subway ride home, during the delay, I’d gone on and done a little live Q&A. It had been a lot of ignoring the people asking me my bra size or what color panties I was wearing and a lot of describing the disaster of the night’s cooking, my journey from being a pretty good cook in college to a current mess. I’d gotten a lot of great tips, too. Now doubt seized me, made me nervous. “Was it that bad?”
He lowered his phone. “No, it’s great,” he said, and it took me a moment to realize he was being sincere, not sarcastic. My shoulders relaxed. “You came off really funny and authentic. I’m not the only one who loved it.”
“Really?” Tight schedule be damned, I pulled out my own phone and quickly scrolled through the top comments. Marcus was right. They were overwhelmingly positive, full of encouragement and sympathy and stories about how they, too, had overcooked the pork chops until they were dry and tough, or accidentally served their vegetarian sister-in-law beef stew. I smiled. “Wow.”
“There’s only one thing that’s unfortunate,” Marcus said, sighing dramatically. I braced myself for the one troll who had ruined everything or how I hadn’t noticed the glob of cheese sauce clinging to my chin. But he said, “I wish I had something to share, too, but I’ve never made a single cooking mistake.”
It was my turn to laugh my way out of the apartment.
• • •
The first thing I did when I got to work was not to lay out Mr. Decker’s papers or check his messages. The first thing I did was email Bennett.
