Page 8 of Whisking It All

If he couldn’t make himself stop thinking about Tessa, maybe he could at least shift his thoughts to another, equally unobtainable woman. He picked up two overlarge beets in one hand and snapped a photo of the round vegetables cradled in his palm, firing off a message with the photo attached. It only took a second for his phone to ding in response.

WhiskyBusiness: You know what they say about men with big hands.

Jamie smiled to himself as he typed out his reply, glancing up from his phone every few seconds to make sure he didn’t walk into a wall as he made his way out of the restaurant. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it sooner—if anyone could help him shake the restless anxiety of being ghosted by the best sex of his life, it was Whisky.

DiceDiceBaby: They would be correct.

WhiskyBusiness: Please tell me you’re doing something more creative than a beet salad.

DiceDiceBaby: Give me a little credit.

WhiskyBusiness: Then what’re you making, hot shot?

DiceDiceBaby: Gnocchi, sage brown butter, walnuts, and scallops.

WhiskyBusiness: I’ll allow it.

DiceDiceBaby: What would you make?

He swung into the driver’s seat of his car and waited for her reply. He and WhiskyBusiness had met in an online chat forum for their favorite show, Brilliant British Bakes, six months ago. What had started as a heated debate about judge Peter London’s choice for the season’s frontrunner had turned into months of near constant messaging. Eventually the forum’s moderator had encouraged them to move their conversation into a private message thread. They’d been messaging each other daily ever since.

He didn’t know much about WhiskyBusiness—not her real name or what she looked like, or even where she lived, aside from knowing she was in the United States. She was a chef, like him, though she favored desserts, and he suspected she was younger than him, given her pop culture references.

A few months back when he realized that messaging with her was the highlight of his day, he’d asked her to divulge more details, offered to send her a picture of himself, to fly somewhere to meet her. After all, he was a master of long-distance relationships. Wherever she was, he’d make it work. She’d turned him down, insisting it was better if they kept things online and anonymous. Just friends. He couldn’t say he agreed. Then again, Jamie had never been good at keeping things casual.

His date the night before was the latest in a string of bad blind dates he’d gone on over the last few months. Ever since word got out that he was single again, it seemed every elderly woman in Aster Bay was desperate to set him up with their granddaughter or niece or cousin’s daughter’s friend. For a while, he’d held out hope that Whisky would come around and agree to meet, to bring their online connection into real life, but if she hadn’t changed her mind by now, it was time to admit that she wasn’t ever going to. Agreeing to the blind dates was meant to be a first step in letting go of the dream of ever taking his connection with Whisky off the internet, but each date had been worse than the last.

Though if he hadn’t gone on that awful date, he never would have met Tessa…

He couldn’t help the sprout of guilt growing in his gut at texting with Whisky like he hadn’t spent the night before in bed with another woman, but Tessa was gone and Whisky had no interest in taking their relationship to the next level, so he had nothing to feel guilty about. Hell, he didn’t even know Whisky’s name.

WhiskyBusiness: Beet cake with a bourbon custard and vanilla bean ice cream.

DiceDiceBaby: Well, shit, where do I get some of that?

WhiskyBusiness: Sending you the recipe now.

A moment later, his phone chimed with a link to one of her recipe cards. Whisky had tons of these digital recipe cards, each one a scan of a handwritten recipe—mostly just a list of ingredients, temperatures, and times with very little of the method. It had taken him a while to figure out her shorthand, but by now he had his own folder of the digital cards, each one another piece of her story that she was willing to share with him. He collected them the way teenagers collected mementos of their high school crushes: a molten lava cake recipe instead of a movie ticket stub, the ratios for her sangria granita instead of a note passed in pre-calculus.

For a moment he wondered what Tessa would make with the beets, what she’d think of Whisky’s cake idea…

Another chime.

He closed the recipe and opened the message, barking out a surprised laugh at the image that filled his screen. A feminine hand was wrapped suggestively around a half-shucked corn cob, husk and silk peeled back to reveal the bright yellow and white kernels. It was the first glimpse of her skin he’d gotten, and his eyes fixated on the olive undertones, the tiny white line of a scar at the base of her thumb.

DiceDiceBaby: I see I’m not the only one with impressive produce.

WhiskyBusiness: *wink emoji*

Jamie glanced at the clock. If he didn’t get going, he was going to be late and his friends would never let him live it down. They already teased him mercilessly about his friendship with Whisky.

DiceDiceBaby: You around later?

WhiskyBusiness: Sure thing. Rewatch season 2?

DiceDiceBaby: Definitely.

∞∞∞

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