Page 63 of On the Beat

“I thought the hoodie was just a cryptic message,” he says with a scoff. “Of course, Poppy has a life outside me and my perception of her. She has a life far bigger than I dreamed, apparently.”

I’m not sure what to say in response. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

His head snaps up from staring down at the plate of food in front of him. “Nothing. Just… I guess I always saw her as just my little sister. I never took her or her job seriously, and I guess I’m paying the price for it now.”

I frown at the sound of his last remark. “What price are you paying?”

Ryder rubs the nape of his neck. “It’s long and complicated. Maybe I’ll tell you the whole story one day, but for now…”

I lift up my hands in nonthreatening surrender. “Of course. Got it. If you ever want to talk though… I’m here. Okay?”

The corner of his mouth tugs up. “Got it, chef.”

“I thought you were the chef?”

“Yes, I humbly apprenticed at my mother’s feet. I had asthma and a lot of other health problems growing up and sometimes I’d stay home from school, so my mom taught me all her best recipes,” he explains.

“But you were a lifeguard in high school,” I say with a frown.

“I got over my asthma, mostly by my brother and father throwing me into the pool, river, and other bodies of water that we happened to be close to at any given time.” He finishes his eggs and rice and starts on the fruit, spearing a chunk of pineapple. “Exposure therapy.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how exposure therapy is supposed to go,” I say, though I recall his words to me about his brother daring him to go into the river and abandoning him when he hit his head. “Also, yes or no? Do you want to come cook with me?”

“Okay, but you’ll be my sous chef.”

“Doesn’t that just mean doing prep work and slicing onions because you don’t want me to see you cry?” I tease him.

“I only shed tears around onions. And they’re tears of joy,” he deadpans.

“What are your mom’s best recipes that she taught you?”

“I can make a mean tuna casserole, a pretty good Thanksgiving turkey, stuffing, cornbread…” he ticks the food items off his fingers.

“So if you’re invited for Thanksgiving, you’ll be able to single-handedly make all the dishes? That’s very helpful of you. I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”

“Funny, I could’ve sworn it was because I—“

“Whatever you’re about to say, please refrain from saying it until I leave the room, bro.” Paulo enters the kitchen holding a travel mug and making a beeline for the coffeepot. Dark circles shadow his eyes; he’s been working late hours as a doctor recently. Though his birthday party, which Ryder and I are planning, is happening tonight. We both jumped through hoops to ensure that he takes the day off. “As happy as I am to hear that you and my cousin are getting along, I’d prefer to hear any details of that… well, never.”

I give the tiniest smile, accompanied by what I hope is the faintest blush. “It’s fake.”

“Yes, and I’ll believe it when you wipe that look off your face. The whole ‘stupidly in love’ look.”

I’m almost fifty-seven percent sure that whatever love Ryder may feel for me is acting. At the very least, if he feels anything for me now, well, it will end soon enough, dissipating amongst the pressures of our diametric Hollywood careers. Me, working my celebrity journalist job. Him, being a big star. He’ll forget about me. After all, maybe people fall in love more easily when they’re travelling together. But they could just as easily fall out of love when they crash-land back into reality, hitting the ground and shattering their hopes of a future together. Yet while we have this time together, I want to pretend it will last.

“Stupidly in love?” I repeat, pressing a hand to my chest. I’ve never heard that term applied to me before, probably because I’ve never really been in stupid, crazy love. What I had with my first boyfriend was… well, mostly obligation. We were good on paper, perfect in our families’ eyes, and supposed to be. Not meant to be. “That’s an insult and I demand you take it back right now. At least use the wordpassionatelyorcrazilyortruly, madly, deeply—“

“If you quote another One Direction song, I’m going to end you and Gloria.” Paulo points at me and at an invisible figure in the kitchen as though our cousin is standing right there.

I grin. Analyn is mostly responsible for getting me into One Direction again when we were younger, but Gloria has reignited my enjoyment of their music. “Okay. Anything for you, my second-favourite cousin.”

Paulo rolls his eyes, shaking his head as he walks out of the kitchen again. “Second-favourite.”

* * *

I am notRyder’s sous-chef. Mostly because Tita Evangeline has made the two of us into her sous chefs and by sous chefs I just mean little kitchen assistants. The moment we stepped foot into her kitchen, she’s made both of us chop up various vegetables, learn the perfect way to measure rice for putting it in the rice cooker (with your finger, because apparently, you’renotsupposed to just eyeball it?), and run around the cavernous pantry gathering different ingredients. I’ve never seen so many chilis–even in my mother’s kitchen.

It’s been a hot, sticky, and out-of-breath kind of morning, what with the warmth of the stove combining with the heat. We’re outside in the “dirty kitchen,” where most of the cooking is done, compared to the “clean kitchen” for doing less grubby, hectic, and labour-intensive tasks.

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