No one would believe she made her entire living by putting words together. Did any of the words she’d just said make sense in that order? She had no idea.
“OH.” His shoulders relaxed, and he grinned at her. “Well, thank God for that, because I think this whole thing,” he mimicked her gesture with his fork, “is great, too. And to be honest with you, between work and everything going on with my family, I don’t have the energy for anything even approaching a relationship. So if you’re cool with keeping this casual, so am I.”
She let out a deep sigh and picked up a piece of bacon with her fingers.
“Excellent.” She bit into the bacon, and the salty sweetness of the bacon and syrup combined exploded in her mouth. What a great morning.
He stood up, walked around the counter to get the rest of the bacon, and tossed a strip onto her plate.
“I promise we can hang out and eat pancakes and drink rosé and I won’t propose to you on a JumboTron.”
She clinked her coffee mug against his. Oh thank God. They wanted the exact same thing. This was perfect.
“That sounds pretty ideal.”
Chapter Thirteen
. . . . . . .
Carlos was just driving out of the grocery store parking lot a week and a half later when Drew called. It had been a brutal day at work, so he’d decided to cook something elaborate for dinner to help himself relax.
“Hey, man, what’s up?”
“Hey!” Drew’s voice boomed through the speakers in his car. “How’s the assistant director doing on this fine Wednesday?”
Drew had been the whole reason he’d even applied for the job in the first place. He hadn’t actually seen the opening, but Drew—all the way up in Berkeley now—had and had emailed it to him immediately. Carlos had jumped at the opportunity to move back to the Eastside, but he hadn’t been sure if they were looking for someone with his background for the job. When he got it, Drew maintained that he’d known he would all along.
“I’m still alive; that’s the best thing I can say after today at work.”
“Ahh, one of those days, huh?”
Carlos sighed.
“One of the worst kinds of days. You know the kind.”
“Well, maybe this will make it better: you around this weekend to hang out with your best friend and his fiancée?”
Carlos downshifted as the light changed.
“Oh, you mean Jake and Melissa? Yeah, I’m probably going to see them this weekend, why do you ask?”
“I ask because you can go fuck yourself, that’s why I ask,” Drew said, and both of them cracked up.
“Okay, but seriously, you and Alexa are coming to town? You need a place to stay? You know I live on the Eastside now, right? I don’t know if you know how to get to this side of town.”
“You are such an asshole. Yes, I know you live on the Eastside now. But we don’t need a place to stay. Alexa’s got to go down there with her boss for a conference, so I’m tagging along.”
“Awesome. Everything was so crazy at the engagement party I barely got to talk to you.” He hadn’t seen Drew since Christmas-time and Alexa since before that. “I’ll get to congratulate you two in person.”
“And we’ll get to see the new house, I hope?” Drew asked.
“Of course, but I haven’t put in the basketball hoop yet.”
“And meet whatshername?”
He never should have told Drew he was sleeping with Nik; he knew he’d get the wrong idea. But Drew had texted him the day after they’d first slept together and had asked if he’d seen her again, and it was impossible to not say he’d seen a hell of a lot of her the night before.
“Her name is Nik. I can check to see if she’s free, but I told you, this thing with her is very casual.”
It was a frequent casual thing—they’d only started sleeping together three weeks ago, and they’d already seen each other six times. But after Nik had been the one to bring up that she didn’t want a relationship, he wasn’t worried about how often they saw each other anymore.
How had he gotten so lucky? It was so rare for him to find women who didn’t want a relationship, especially women who were interesting and funny. Not to mention hot. Thank God Nik had dropped into his life.
“Yeah, yeah, you told me. But, you know, check to see if she’s free Saturday night. We’ll even come to your precious Eastside.”
He thought Drew and Alexa would both like her a lot, though. Alexa had always laughed at his jokes, so she’d like Nik’s sense of humor.
“All it takes to get you to the Eastside is for you to move to the other end of the state.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll text you our flight info and details, okay?”
Carlos pulled into his driveway and grabbed the groceries from the back seat.
“Sounds good.”
“Hey, how’s Jessie?”
Carlos had just checked in with her before leaving work. He knew she was getting sick of him checking in on her every day, but that didn’t mean he was going to stop doing it.
“Going stir-crazy, but otherwise hanging in there.”
“Okay, I gotta go. Go make your risotto or enchiladas or whatever.”
Carlos laughed as he set his groceries down in the kitchen and took the risotto rice out of the bag. It was good to have friends who knew you better than you knew yourself.
He turned on the basketball game to keep him company while he cooked. One of the only things he’d made the time and effort for after moving into this house was to put his TV on a pivot, so he could watch it in the kitchen while he cooked, and then turn it so he could watch it from the couch while he ate. The ideal set up, really.
He chopped an onion, sliced the fresh mushrooms and soaked the dried ones, and peeled the asparagus. The rote movements gave him the feeling of zen that this kind of cooking always did for him. He couldn’t think about the stuff that had happened at work that day or worry about what would happen tomorrow when he was busy carefully dicing an onion so that all of the pieces were the exact same size. Just as he turned the heat on underneath his big sauté pan, he heard his phone buzz and grabbed it out of his pocket. Nik.
I just finished a huge story and I’m starving, want to get dinner?
He texted her back without stopping to think.
I’m in the middle of making dinner. Want to come over? How do you feel about mushrooms?
Holy shit, what was he thinking? He never invited women over to his place; it was kind of a thing of his. After a few way too fast relationships in his mid-twenties, he’d learned to keep the women he was dating away from his space. If women came to your place, they always wanted to change things to how they liked them, probably in preparation to move in all too soon.
I feel great about mushrooms. What’s your address? I’ll leave here in about fifteen minutes. Does that work?
Okay, but wait. This was Nik. She’d made it very clear to him that this was a rebound for her, just quite not in those words. And unlike a few of the conversations he’d instigated with women about keeping a relationship casual where they’d said that was fine with them but had made it clear shortly afterward that that was absolutely not fine with them, he knew that Nik hadn’t been bullshitting him.
4242 Sequoia Street. See you soon.
Plus, Nik was fun to cook for. She’d gone crazy over those pancakes he’d made her. And it seemed like they’d both had busy days. Some stress release with her in his big bed sounded like an excellent way to end this day.
* * *
• • •
As Nik walked up the front steps of Carlos’s little gray cottage, she suddenly felt shy about basically inviting herself over to his house. Had he really wanted her to come over, or did he just ask because she’d texted him out of the blue and he didn’t know what else to do? She wished she’d called him inst
ead, even though the two of them never talked on the phone—it was always easier to tell from a voice how someone really felt than from a text message. Well, it was too late now. He opened the bright red front door before she reached it.
“Hey.” Okay, he looked normal. “Come on in.”
The house was as masculine and put together as Carlos always was. The living room had a big fat leather couch, a huge TV on one wall, and a fireplace against the other. She dropped her stuff by the door and followed him into the big open kitchen that looked like something out of the Williams Sonoma catalog.
He moved back to the pan on the stove and started stirring. He was wearing a soft blue cotton T-shirt, the gray pants that he’d clearly worn to work, and patterned socks that made her hold back a smile.
“This kitchen is incredible. You told me you were a good cook, but I didn’t know you were, like, copper-pots-hanging-from-the-ceiling good.”
He glanced up at the pots and shrugged. Was that a blush she saw? He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“The copper pots were definitely an extravagance. To be fair, the first one was a housewarming gift from Angie. But when I bought a house with a beautiful rack to hang pots, what was I supposed to do?”
She thought about her collection of high heels that she almost never wore but kept buying because of the built-in shoe shelves in her walk-in closet that displayed them so beautifully. She nodded.
“Obviously you had to buy pots to fill it; I get it.”
He handed her a glass of wine.
She took a sip of the wine as she looked around the kitchen and big open living room. She liked it. Even without anything but the TV on the wall, it felt like a home.
“I didn’t even ask what you wanted to drink. Sorry, I didn’t have any rosé,” he winked at her, “but that should go well with dinner.”
Wait. This seemed way too cozy, didn’t it? His nice little house, his big warm kitchen, Carlos at the stove, stirring together things that smelled delicious . . . maybe Courtney had a point after all.
No. They’d talked about this, remember? Carlos had looked very relieved when she’d said she wasn’t in the place for a relationship. This wasn’t that, this was just one friend making dinner for another friend. She and her friends did this all the time. This time, she and her friend would just happen to have sex afterward, that’s all.
“I wouldn’t dare to question you on wine. You told me to always trust you with food and drink recommendations, and I took that to heart.”
She took another sip of wine and tried to let herself relax. She’d spent days wrestling with a big story that she still didn’t know if she was good enough to write. While she’d had moments of thinking she’d nailed it, the rest of the time she worried it was a complete failure.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Yeah. I’ve just been holed up in my apartment for the past three days finishing that story, and now that it’s done, I feel like I’m coming out of a coma.” She took her sweater off and tossed it on a stool. “It’s great to relax here with some wine and have you cooking a delicious-smelling dinner for me.” He looked back down at the food with a smile. Was he blushing? Maybe.
“Thanks for inviting me to share your dinner, by the way. What are we having?”
He looked back up at her.
“Risotto. I hope you like it.”
Wow, he wasn’t kidding about being able to cook.
“I don’t know anyone who knows how to make risotto. I’m pretty sure I’ve only had it in a restaurant.”
He laughed as his big wooden spoon made rhythmic circles in the pan.
“Oh, I love making it.” He poured some liquid from the smaller pot on the stove into the big one and stirred some more. “It’s funny; I don’t even really like eating it that much. I mean, I like it, but I would never choose to order it in a restaurant. But I love to make it.”
She took another sip of her wine and looked around at his kitchen. He had four bowls lined up next to him, two with mushrooms in them, one with bacon, one with cheese. And then there were the two pots on the stove. But most amazingly, other than a cutting board with a knife sitting on top of it, there were no dirty dishes anywhere. The rest of the kitchen looked spotless.
“It seems like a lot of work for a Wednesday night,” she said.
He nodded.
“It is—that’s why I love it. When I’ve had a really long or difficult day, it relaxes me to cook. It gives me a break in the day to concentrate on something else. And risotto is especially great, because after you do a whole bunch of chopping, then you just have to stand there, preferably with a glass of wine, and slowly stir the rice until it’s just right. Every so often, you add some liquid, and you stir some more. You can’t rush it; you can’t turn up the heat or add the liquid all at once to make it go faster. It’s ready when it’s ready. And so you just stand there and keep stirring, and everything settles down by the time the food is ready.”
She’d never heard anyone be so eloquent about risotto before.
“Wow. I feel more relaxed just hearing you talk about making it.”
He looked up and met her eyes, and she could feel his smile all the way down to her toes.
“What a nice compliment from the person who wrote that heartbreaking story about foster children in the Times Sunday magazine.”
Now it was her turn to blush and look away. She didn’t expect him to have read that story. She couldn’t remember the last guy she’d dated who had read any of her work. Well, Justin had, but only ever to tell her how bad it was.
“Oh, you read that? I didn’t . . .” She looked up at him and smiled back. “Thank you. I was proud of that story.”
He poured more liquid in the risotto and kept stirring.
“Good. You should be. It was excellent. It’s such a hard topic—I know from dealing with it with my patients who are foster kids—and you handled it so thoughtfully.”
She sipped her wine so he wouldn’t be able to see the sudden tears in her eyes. She cleared her throat.
“Thanks for saying that. It means a lot. I was feeling pretty down about my work today, so it was really good timing to hear that.”
He reached out and touched her shoulder.
“I can’t believe that someone as good as you ever feels down about your writing, but I’m happy I could help you realize how amazing you are.”
She laughed. If he only knew.
“I think all writers feel down about their work sometimes . . . or most of the time. At least, I hope they do and I’m not the weird one here.” She swallowed and looked down into her glass. “But also, I had an ex who was pretty insulting about my writing, and despite everything I’ve accomplished since then, sometimes it’s still hard to get him out of my head.”
Good Lord, a few sips of wine on a hard day and she started spilling everything.
Carlos touched her hair, then her cheek.
“Well, he was obviously an asshole who doesn’t know anything about good writing or good people, and I’m glad for more than one reason that he’s an ex.”
She smiled at him.
“Me too.” God, was she ever glad. “It feels stupid to still dwell on something a jerk said years ago, but for some reason I remember some of the negative stuff people have said about my writing like it’s imprinted on the inside of my eyelids, and it’s much harder to remember—or believe—the compliments.”
He poured more wine into her glass.
“Well, now that you’ve told me that, I’ll just have to repeat my compliments a few times, maybe in different words so they’ll stick. Hey, Nik, I really loved that piece you wrote, especially how you managed to make it hopeful while acknowledging the pain.”
Oh shit, now he really was going to make her cry.
“I wasn’t fishing for a compli
ment there, but thank you.”
Why was she so emotional tonight?
It was probably just because she was about to get her period and was feeling sensitive about everything. Plus, even though she couldn’t remember the last time a guy she dated had given her a compliment on her writing, her friends did all the time.
See? She and Carlos were friends. They had actually been friends first, pretty much from the moment he’d pushed that cameraman out of the way at the stadium. They’d gotten to know each other pretty well before they started sleeping together and had had some pretty deep conversations about their lives long before they’d even thought about getting naked.
How refreshing, to actually be friends with a guy you were sleeping with.
“Um, can I help with anything?” she asked.
He shook his head and poured more liquid into the pan.
“Nope. But it’s going to be about twenty more minutes until dinner is ready; do you want a snack?”
Oh thank God. After his wonderful speech about how you couldn’t rush risotto, she’d felt like she couldn’t mention that she could eat a horse right now. Maybe two.
“Sure,” she said. “What do you have?”
He handed her his wooden spoon.
“Here, stir this.”
She stood barefoot on the warm tile floor of the kitchen and tried to mimic the way she’d seen him stir the risotto. She heard him behind her open a door, then she heard plastic crinkle. After a minute or so, he came up behind her and took the spoon from her. She leaned back against his body and felt his warmth surround her.
“Here. I only gave us enough to stave off hunger, but not enough to spoil our dinners.” He set a bowl down on the counter next to the stove. When she looked in the bowl, she started laughing.
“Are those Flamin’ Hot Cheetos?”
He grinned.
“They are indeed. The best snack food ever invented, and I will hear no argument.”
The Proposal Page 16