Skinny Bitch in Love

by Kim Barnouin

  Huh. “That’s really great,” I said, noticing that he smelled great, too. Like the ocean and clean. He also had a handsome profile. Strong, straight nose. Excellent chin.

  “So Jesse knows you’re here?” I asked as we sat down close to the stage. Under the dark blue curtain across the stage, I could see lots of little feet moving around.

  He nodded. “His mum can’t take off from work, especially since she works so far from here, so I go to all the school events she can’t attend. Make sure he’s represented, you know?”

  Man, that was nice.

  “You might make me want to become a better person,” I whispered, because the audience was quieting down.

  He smiled, his eyes on mine. He took my hand and held it for a second, then began clapping as a woman in a really long skirt walked onto the stage.

  The principal. She made her introductions, there was more clapping, and then the curtain parted to reveal a bunch of kids of wildly varying heights, some looking like munchkins and others like teenagers, sitting with their instruments.

  “Which one is Jesse?”

  “See the kid in the second row with the floppy blond hair and tuba next to the redheaded girl?”

  “Aww, the tuba is bigger than he is.”

  They weren’t half bad, which I expounded on to Alexander, who smiled and squeezed my hand again.

  I liked this guy. Thank you, universe. I wouldn’t even remember Zach Jeffries’s last name in a couple of hours. Or the way that kiss of his shot straight from my toes to every part of my body. One little kiss did all that. But by four, maybe five o’clock when Alexander would have to head to Fresh for work, I should be completely over that kiss.

  Forty-five minutes later, after a standing ovation, we headed backstage. I could see Jesse in a crowd of kids being hugged by proud, beaming parents, craning his neck in all directions to look for Alexander. When Jesse spied him, he broke out into a smile that melted even my cynical heart.

  “You came!” Jesse said, pushing past the crowd to get to Alexander.

  The two did some fist-bump hug combination, and then Alexander pulled a small wrapped gift out of his back pocket and handed it to the kid.

  “What’s this?” Jesse asked excitedly.

  “Open it,” Zach said.

  Jessie ripped off the wrapping paper to reveal an iTunes gift card. “Awesome!”

  “It’s for classical music with tubas,” Alexander said. “Not Ne-Yo.”

  “Gotcha,” Jesse said with a sly smile. He waved Alexander close and whispered something in his ear, then shouted, “Thanks again,” before disappearing into the sea of kids lining up to head back to their classes.

  “What did he whisper?” I asked.

  “Hot babe,” Alexander said, then laughed. “He has crushes on two girls at the moment. And, apparently, now you.”

  I smiled. “I had a great time. You’re one nice guy.”

  “So everyone says.” He mock-rolled his eyes. “White Blossom for late lunch?”

  “I can’t show my face in there,” I said as we made our way back outside. “I asked about a job at White Blossom after I got fired and they told me they don’t take Emil’s sloppy seconds.”

  “Finch said that?”

  I nodded. Finch was one of the best vegan chefs in L.A. And clearly a big dickhead.

  “I’ll never eat there again,” he said. “Wanker.”

  I laughed. “You curse, too? You might just be perfect for me.”

  He flashed me a dimpled smile and took my hand. And held it all the way to the Pier, where we decided on Indian from his favorite truck.

  We sat on a bench and ate and talked and people watched. He told me about growing up in a rural town an hour from London, with three brothers and one sister. How all the brothers looked so alike that even his mother sometimes called them by the wrong name. He’d been accepted to cooking school in New York, then got into veganism, and ended up in L.A. to train with Peter Farkoff, one of the best vegan chefs in the country. Alexander had figured at least one of his siblings would follow him to America, but only his cool grandmother did after she was widowed and needed to shake up her life. She lived in a retirement condo and did yoga on the beach every morning.

  “Fresh is one of her favorite restaurants and she’s not even vegan,” he said. “Do you hate that I work there?”

  “Eh, I’ll get over it.” I ripped off a piece of garlic naan. “So Emil didn’t keep anyone at Fresh? Everyone’s new?”

  “He only kept the support—waitstaff and dishwashers. He fired James, the one who waited on the critic, but then hired him back.”

  “Where’s Rain these days?”

  “Looking, I hear,” he said. “Word got around she sabotaged you.”

  “That’s good.”

  As we finished up our samosas and chana saag and naan, he told me about his two dogs, a German shepherd named Brit and a crazy Jack Russell named Lizzie. He asked if I wanted to take the dogs for a walk, which I did, so we headed to his place, which turned out to be a tiny house with a surprisingly big backyard (a must for the dogs, he said). I got the German shepherd, who was better behaved than the Jack Russell, and we went to a dog run in a park nearby. The minute the dogs were off leash, I was reminded of early mornings just like this with Ben and his yellow Lab, but the memory popped out of my head in seconds instead of slow-burning with the usual sensation of someone sticking a fork in my chest.

  Because you like this guy.

  We traded funny—and not funny—stories about the kitchen, about tyrannical executive chefs and bosses who made us better cooks. About our signature dishes and favorite foods. (Alexander was crazy about portobello mushrooms, which luckily weren’t ruined for me for all time.) Then it was time to get back to his house so he could let the dogs in and grab his chef whites. I was surprised by how much I didn’t want to say good-bye.

  On his tiny front porch, he took both my hands and smiled at me, then leaned down and kissed me.

  I expected a mini parade. Tubas clanging, even.

  But damn. Nothing.

  Nothing.

  It was as if my brother, Kale, were pecking me on the cheek, and Alexander was going full-out on the lips. He pulled back and looked at me, his smile so sweet and full of “I’m so into you” that I felt really bad.

  I forced myself to put my sister’s voice in my head, telling me to give him a chance, that despite her fiancé looking like Elmer Fudd, she now thought he was incredibly hot, but it took until the third date for her to see it. Feel it.

  And Alexander Orr was no Elmer Fudd.

  Hadn’t I learned that lesson with my first boyfriend from way back in high school? Dylan Frick, who I never noticed until we were paired as partners on Dissect the Murdered Frog Day in freshman science, refused, as I had, to touch the little knife. Fade-into-the-woodwork, quiet Dylan stood up and gave a short speech that had me jumping up to clap. We were both sent to the principal’s office and we became a couple during the march down the long gray hall to Mrs. Perlmutter’s office. That romance lasted two years until Dylan’s family moved across the country. After that, though, I fell for guys who were both gorgeous (to me, at least) and incredibly cool. The last love of my life broke my heart. I wouldn’t mind not going there again.

  If Elmer Fudd could win over my no-one-is-good-enough sister on the third date, I could at least give the very cute, very sweet Alexander Orr till the second.

  In my kitchen that night, my Skinny Bitch Cooking School students and I stood at the counter working on ratatouille. I was showing them how to blanch tomatoes when Eva asked if the “cute Brit” ever called.

  Which got me thinking that Zach Jeffries sure hadn’t. Not even a fake apology. All day I had expected at least a text—something, anything. At least I hadn’t blown money on ingredients.

  “They went out yesterday,” Sara said, chopping a tomato. “And—”

  “Chop more coarsely,” I said, hip bumping her with a look that said “Shut it.�
� “Like this.” I took her knife and demonstrated for everyone.

  Sara totally ignored me. “He took her to his teen mentee’s band concert at his middle school. Can you see Clementine making small talk with the moms?”

  “I can, actually,” Duncan said. “Clementine is a teacher, after all.”

  “Thank you, Duncan,” I said, shooting Sara another “shut it” look. It was okay if the three of them talked about their personal business, but mine was off-limits.

  “But then he kissed her,” Sara went on, “and she said it was like kissing Kale. As in, her brother, not the vegetable.”

  “And moving along to the eggplant,” I said, slapping it down on the counter. “We need to cut it into cubes.”

  Eva set down her knife and took a sip of her wine. “A blah kiss makes him a keeper, Clem. When you’re in love, they rip your heart right out of your chest. From now on, I’m only interested in men who do nothing for me. Someone to see a movie with. Dinner. A decent shag, as your British chef would say. But all the bullshit and heartache that goes along with falling in love? No, thank you.”

  “Talk about giving up,” Sara said.

  “Not giving up,” Eva said. “Growing up. A real relationship ain’t gonna be about lust anyway.”

  Sara went back to cubing. “Well I think you can have both. Who’s with me?” She was forever trying to find out if Duncan had a girlfriend. Or boyfriend.

  He started slicing the onion on his cutting board a little too forcefully. “I thought I had both with—I can’t even say her name.”

  Past tense. “Oh, we have those, too. The Exes Who Won’t Be Named. We know all about those.”

  “I just call my ex Fucker,” Eva said. “That solves the problem.”

  Sara burst out laughing, then put her hand over her mouth at the sight of Duncan’s miserable expression.

  “I don’t think of my ex-girlfriend that way,” he said. “She was perfect. Is perfect.”

  “So what happened?” Sara asked.

  He put down his knife and took a gulp of the wine I’d poured everyone at the start of class. “She just dumped me out of nowhere. One minute we’re talking about moving in together, and the next day, she says it’s over, and her toothbrush is gone and she won’t answer my calls or texts or explain why.”

  “Let me guess,” Eva said with a kind of snort. “You cheated on her.”

  “I didn’t. I’ve never cheated on anyone.”

  I believed him, actually.

  “You must have done something,” Eva said. “Told her a dress made her look fat? Called her a bitch? Forgot her birthday?”

  He shook his head. “None of the above.”

  “What’s so amazing about her, anyway?” Sara asked.

  “To be honest, I didn’t realize she was so amazing until she broke up with me. She was a bit rough around the edges, so I tried to introduce her to a more cultured life. Such as reading better books. You should have seen the trash she spent good money on. I reminded her she could get great free books from the library, and she acted like I was judging her.”

  “Duncan, you kind of were,” Sara said.

  Not kind of, even.

  “And I might have suggested she go back to school instead of ‘figuring herself out,’ ” he added. “She’s going to figure herself out from tending bar? Come on.”

  “Yet because she left you, you suddenly don’t care about any of that?” Eva asked with another snort.

  He sighed and took another sip of his wine. “Sometimes you just don’t realize what you had until it’s gone. Clichéd, but oh, so true.”

  “Let me guess,” Eva said. “She’s hot.”

  “Well, she is beautiful.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and showed us a photo.

  She was beautiful. A little edgier looking than I’d expect from Duncan Ridley, librarian. She had very straight brown hair and there was a little tattoo peeking out from the bottom of her cropped T-shirt.

  “So she dumped you because you were trying to change her?” Sara asked.

  He shook his head. “She always told me she appreciated all the stuff I was introducing her to. But then she just up and dumped me. No reason given. She just kept saying it was her, not me.”

  Something told me it was him.

  “How do you get someone back when you don’t know what you did wrong?” he asked. “I keep calling and texting, asking what I did, if she met someone else, and she just won’t respond. She sent one text that said It’s over, sorry. That’s it.”

  “She sounds cold,” Eva said. “No offense. Cold and dumb.”

  Duncan glanced at the photo on his phone, his expression truly sad. He put the phone back in his pocket. “She’s not, though—either. That’s why it doesn’t make sense.”

  “You could go see her,” Sara said. “Insist she talk to you. You can’t just disappear on someone. Not allowed. She owes you an explanation.”

  “I’ve tried that. She doesn’t open the door. Pretends she’s not there.”

  “You could write her a letter,” Sara said. “On paper.”

  I glanced at the time. We had to get back to cooking if everything was going to be ready in time to give us a chance to scarf it down.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Duncan said.

  Sara beamed at him. “Just call me the relationship guru. No experience required.”

  This time Eva snorted extra loud.

  “You don’t need experience at relationships to be compassionate and smart,” Duncan said.

  There was no arguing with that, so we got back to the ratatouille, slicing peppers, onions, and zucchini, ripping parsley and basil. Despite the endless talking and over-sharing, if you asked me, we managed to create an amazing sauce that was simmering on the stove while we began sautéing the vegetables. While the ratatouille cooked, we worked on a salad.

  As Sara set the table, I drifted over to the living room window and stared at the dead steer sign. Zach was probably in bed with the blonde or kissing some other idiot who’d fallen for his “tell me your life story” crap. Had the girlfriend not practically broken his doorbell, Zach and I just might have ended our little cooking lesson in his bed. I’d think we were starting something, and he’d just be screwing another woman, no big whoop.

  “You know, the more I think about this relationship BS,” Eva mused, stirring the vinaigrette, “the more I realize I’m totally right. Now I know what I’ve been doing wrong on Love dot com. I’m clicking on profiles of men whom I’m attracted to. I should click on the ones I’m not attracted to.”

  “That is giving up,” Sara said. “You can’t do that.”

  “I’m thirty-four and about to be divorced,” Eva said. “I want a family. Two kids. Maybe four. I don’t have time to get my heart smashed. I need to find a good guy.”

  “Wait—four kids?” Sara repeated. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Okay, one,” Eva said. “But I want the whole fucking thing. A husband. A kid. Family game night. PTA. I thought I was heading there, and it all came crashing down on my head.”

  “You know what I think?” I asked, coming back to the kitchen and placing the salad bowl on the table. “You can only do what feels right at the time. Anything else is bullshit.”

  “To no bullshit,” Duncan said, holding up his glass.

  We clinked and sat down to warm ratatouille. I was about to take a bite when the buzzer on the intercom rang.

  “Yeah?” I gave up the business-name mouthful.

  “Flowers. Delivery for Clementine Cooper.”

  “Oooh, one kiss and flowers,” Sara said. “Score one for the cute vegan chef. The guy has class.”

  I opened the door and a man jogged up with a huge, wrapped bouquet and a small package wrapped in white paper with a red bow. “Sign here.”

  I signed and took the bouquet and package inside.

  Sara and Eva crowded around me. “Open the flowers first,” Sara said.

  I unwrapped two dozen red roses in a
vase, baby’s breath all around. Beautiful.

  “Whoa. You definitely have to give the dude a second chance, Clem,” Duncan said.

  “Looks like I do,” I said, pulling the little envelope from its clip and tearing it open to read the card.

  Clementine, my life is complicated right now, but I’m not sorry about the kiss. Sometimes being confused is what makes you figure out what you really want. Truce? Better yet—another chance?

  —Zach

  Crap. That was unexpected.

  “It’s from Zach, not Alexander,” I told them.

  Sara grabbed the card and read it aloud. So much for privacy. “Holy shit, Clem.”

  “Now she has two hot guys after her?” Eva asked with a frown.

  “What’s in the package?” Sara asked, poking at the bow.

  I tore it open. A block of extra-firm tofu.

  “That’s romantic,” Eva said with her now-trademark snort. “Not.”

  “For a guy like Zach Jeffries, it probably is,” Duncan pointed out.

  “Totally,” Sara agreed.

  It was for me, too, but I wasn’t going to tell them that.

  “So who’s the better kisser?” Eva asked. “The meat-eating millionaire or the do-good, plant-based Brit?”

  “One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was never to kiss and tell,” I evaded, taking the card back from Sara and reading it again.

  Okay, Jeffries. Fine. Truce.

  I wasn’t sure about “another chance” though.

  After midnight, when I was finally in bed, I texted Zach a thank-you for the flowers and tofu—and a Truce accepted, conditionally.

  In minutes he texted back. Can we schedule a do-over? I owe you an explanation. Please? P.S. The blackened stir-fry was so good I ate it all, so you’ll just need to make the mushroom burger. Thursday evening?

  I waited an hour. Then texted See you at seven.

  Immediately, he texted back Good.

  Chapter 7

  Once again, in my chef’s jacket and white skinny jeans, I rang Zach’s doorbell at exactly seven o’clock. And once again, the sight of him when he opened the door had me speechless. The combination of his tanned face; those intense blue eyes; strong, straight nose; the high cheekbones, that damned cleft, and his thick, silky dark hair that looked like he’d just run a hand through it was male perfection. Throw in the dark gray T-shirt, jeans, and the adorable beagle at his knee, and, yeah, he had his truce. With conditions.