Page 58 of The Seven Year Slip

“I wasn’tcomplaining—”

“I’ll withdraw myself from the bidding,” I interrupted. “I should have in the first place when I realized who you were. That was my fault. Juliette can take my place, she’s a lovely publicist and she’ll—”

“No, it’s okay.” With a sigh, he rubbed the side of his neck. The shouts of the front of the kitchen carried down the hall like an echo through a cave. The murmur from the house was loud, the clinking of utensils on tableware, the laughter of friends. Quieter, he muttered, “I thoughtyouwouldn’t want to work withme.”

My eyes widened. I looked back at him. “What?”

“That’s what I thought. I thought you were just playing nice in the conference room. You weren’t exactly friendly in there. You had that look in your eyes. You know, the...” And he made a pinching motion with his hands toward his eyebrows. Did he mean my...? “That one! That’s the one.”

Mortification crawled over me. “I thoughtyoudidn’t want to seeme!”You haven’t for seven years. You didn’t even come looking.I stepped back and pulled my fingers through my hair. “Oh my god.”

“I’m sorry,” he agreed, though he looked like he wanted to say something else. “I really did love Drew’s energy. She seems like she’d be great to work with.”

“Sheis,” I insisted. “So you’ll reconsider?”

“I... will have to talk to my agent,” he replied, and scrubbed the side of his neck again—before he realized what he was doing and quickly stopped. Put his hands by his sides.

At least that was better than where we were before. “Fine,” I replied shortly.

“All right.”

His sous chef poked her head into the back area. She didn’t seem surprised at all to find us there. “Chef, stop flirting—we need you in here!”

“Yes, Chef,” he replied, and started for the front of the kitchen, but turned back to me and whispered, “I don’t like it when we fight, Lemon,” and left me in the hall, the sound of his nickname for me like a piece of candy at the end of dinner, sweet and perfect, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe—maybe—I was in over my head.

24

An Unwanted Gift

And that was howDrew found herself floating on cloud nine Friday afternoon. She pulled every cookbook Strauss & Adder had off the shelves like she was a bookworm in a bookstore where everything was free, while Fiona and I sent her YouTube tutorial links and made a list of Netflix cooking shows to binge every waking hour this weekend. The apartment didn’t send me back again to him, but maybe it was for the best as I slowly spiraled into a panic about how to hold a knife.

“We might burn down the entire restaurant,” Drew said happily, waltzing her way over to Fiona and me at the table in the kitchen. “But at least we’re still in the running!”

Fiona was snacking on half of the granola bar that was supposed to go into my parfait. She nibbled at it. “For someone who can’t cook, you’re certainly going to give it the old college try, babe.”

“Absolutely, babe,” Drew replied, dumping the stack of books down on the edge of the table, and slid into a seat. “I’m going to burn the fuck out of some tortellini. I don’t know how you did it,Clementine, but you’re a miracle worker. As always. The agent said that she jumped the gun before consulting James Ashton.”

Fiona added, “What did you do to get him to reconsider?”

I shrugged, stirring up my yogurt. “Nothing, really.” Besides trespass into a kitchen and manhandle a prospective client. “I just asked him why, and he changed his mind.”

Mostly.

From the mail room, Jerry—our mail guy, a tall man who made the absolute best dump cakes for holidays—rolled out a cart, whistling a Lizzo song. “Mornin’, ladies,” he greeted, and reached for a package to hand to me. “For you.”

“Oh?” I took it and turned the package over to read the name. My world narrowed to a pinprick.

Jerry turned to Drew. “I heard you’re in the next round with that chef guy! Congrats!”

They high-fived. “Thanks! I’m going to crash and burn!” she replied happily, and he laughed and rolled his cart on. She took the first book off the pile—Salt, Fat, Acid, Heatby Samin Nosrat—and began to read.

“I guess we won’t be finishing the baby’s nursery this weekend,” Fiona said wryly, and Drew gave her a dejected look. “What? You still haven’t hung up the wallpaper I bought.”

“Babe, I know less about hanging wallpaper than I do about cooking.”

“There are fewer ways to screw up wallpaper,” she replied matter-of-factly.

Drew glared, and Fiona smiled, and that was their marriage in a nutshell. I set down the package quickly, turning the address side down. “I love doing wallpaper. I can help?”

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