Page 6 of You Had Me at Chocolate

He smiled, his crow’s feet deepening. “That sounds nice.”

As a fancy professional chef who’d run a New York restaurant that had been booked out six months in advance, Clem wouldn’t have expected him to agree. Surely, they’d have to be some kind of culinary sacrilege?

She shrugged. “They were an acquired taste.”

“I mean the family camping trips.”

The wistfulness in Jude’s voice jogged her memories. She’d forgotten until this moment how Jude’s parents’ unhappy relationship had dominated his childhood. How he’d looked forward to camp every summer for a chance to escape the household tension. Sure, he’d put on a brave face, acted the clown, but, because they’d been inseparable at camp, she’d seen him in all his unguarded moments, too.

And then after that fateful camp where they’d rather ridiculously sworn each other their troth, his parents had divorced and he’d stopped coming. They’d written—well, mostly she’d written—but it hadn’t been the same.

She sighed. “What’s going on with you, Jude?”

“Nothing.” He shrugged then shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I’ve just had a lot of time to think while I’ve been in Africa and I came across this pack of origami paper at JFK on my way to Khartoum, and it reminded me of your obsession with paper cranes after we took that origami lesson at camp. So, I bought it. And I searched on YouTube for videos on how to fold a paper crane.”

“You didn’t remember?” It had been one of the many activities they’d done together during their first ever camp.

“I remember not really being enthused during that particular activity.”

His understatement surprised a laugh out of Clem. But she’d loved it and had taken to folding paper cranes all the time. She’d folded one every night before bed during that camp and all the subsequent ones and would hand it to him the next morning because it had seemed appropriate given his father’s obsession with cranes and it had made him smile.

“I started to do it all the time then in my down times.”

Clem was curious about his time in Africa and if they’d been meeting under much more normal circumstances, she’d have pumped him for information but nothing about tonight was normal.

“And I’d think about you whenever I was doing it. How nice and kind you always were. How you always seemed to know when I needed to talk and when I didn’t want to. How you always looked out for the younger kids and how you liked to keep lists and always had goals. How organized and sensible and practical you always were. How you’d always been the perfect friend.”

Organized. Sensible. Practical.

Sweet baby Jesus. Clem almost rolled her eyes at the insipid compliments. What woman ever tired of hearing man talk about her like that?

But his eyes—green, pale as peridots—were sincere and imploring, clearly wanting her to understand so she nodded and said, “Thank you,” with as little stiffness as possible.

“I also thought about how fast I’d been living. How I was trying to be everything to everyone. Trying to prove that I could make it. Prioritizing stuff over people. Needing all the newest gadgets from a stick blender that could practically read your mind to the latest sports car. Being seen at all the right places all while striving to stay one step ahead of the restaurant competition, which is cutthroat, let me tell you. Burning the candle at both ends.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“It was. I was running on empty. I just didn’t realize it until everything imploded.”

“Yes. I saw the video.”

The footage, taken by a diner at the restaurant, had gone viral. Jude had been caught on camera ranting at a customer who had been rude to one of the waitstaff—that part hadn’t, however, made it onto the video! The guy had clearly deserved to be put in his place but when he’d told Jude to mind his own business it had escalated. Jude, his patience clearly hanging on by a thread, had given him a shove in the chest when he’d stood and loomed threateningly. Then the customer had taken a swing so Jude had returned fire.

Except the customer turned out to be some minor European royalty. With bodyguards.

A melee ensued during which the police got involved and Jude was arrested. The charges were dropped the next day but then a few days later, a wannabe Instagram influencer seeing a shot at her fifteen minutes of fame, posted a video of her and two friends doing lines of coke in the restaurant restroom. Because of the previous incident the post had also gone viral.

Within a week, he’d sold Hey Jude to a friend of his who owned two other Manhattan restaurants and he’d dropped out. Disappeared. To Africa.

“When my year was suddenly up last week, I started to worry about going back to the rat race, getting back on that treadmill. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t know what else to do either. Except I had all these paper cranes and this gut urge to see you and our birthdays were looming and I remembered our pact and everything just fell into place.”

Clem frowned. What the hell did that mean? “What do you mean, everything fell in place?”

He walked forward and Clem didn’t stop him as he covered the distance between them. Reaching out his hands, he took hers, holding them between their bodies like they were already standing at the end of a flower strewn aisle, the origami crane squashed in her left hand.

“You’re who I need in my life. What I need. To start anew. I can’t go back to what I had—I don’t want to. I need to surround myself with people who represent what I want going forward. Not fast lane, not celebrity. The quiet life. I’ve been thinking about that little inn in the countryside I always wanted but which somehow got lost in flashier goals along the way. And I need a woman by my side who is dedicated and diligent and goal driven. Who’s hard working and focused, who can help me with my dreams.”

A tiny spot of cold made itself known in the center of Clem’s stomach. Like an ice cube shoved into her belly button. It spread freezing tentacles down to her toes and out to her fingertips and burrowing deep into her chest, chilling everything in its path.

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