14. Winnifred
I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect when coming to Crew’s house for our first mutual cooking sessions. It certainly wasn’t thousand dollar knife sets, stainless steel pots and pans everywhere, and an oven preheated to 350 degrees just for me.
The kitchen in my apartment was gorgeous. Granite countertops, high quality oak wood cabinets with golden handles, an enormous ‘farmhouse’ sink with a matching gold faucet that poured out like the water came straight from water boy instead of Philadelphia’s street. But, with all my fancy aesthetic kitchen comes dollar store utensils that require replacing every two months. My bowls were my last roommates and my knives were so dull that I struggled to even cut into flattened pastry dough.
Crew’s kitchen in itself wasn’t anything spectacular. Your standard middle class space with white cabinets and coffee ring stained butcher block counter tops. His floors were a cheap linoleum tile design that I would assume were once white. None of it was exactly standing out as the best kitchen ever, but then he pulled out his supplies and it just kept coming.
Japanese knives I’d only seen on TV, stainless steel pans that I knew were over a hundred dollar a piece, a dark green and gold kitchen aid mixer with fifteen different attachments laid out beside it.
Heaven. This was a bakers heaven.
Crew and I spent all morning yesterday arguing in his truck about whose house would be the house in our training sessions before finally settling that we’d split the time fifty/fifty. His house was first.
“Holy shit, you have Caraway?”
I was rifling through his drawers and pulling things out like a meddlesome kid in a no-touch museum but I just couldn’t help it. Crew Wells was fancy.
“Yeah, got it a year ago. Would you get out of there and start working?”
He had already chopped two onions and was getting ready to roast a garlic head while my not-so-sneaky hands were digging in the cabinet to the left of his fridge. Built in Lazy Susans and perfectly organized storage. For such chaotic man he was so…
“You’re luxurious. I mean, I knew you had money, didn’t know it was this kind of money though. You can’t even be pissed at me for taking your business when you own stuff like this.”
He set down his CUTCO knife on the wooden cutting board with a scowl. “I’m not rich I just don’t spend all my money on beakers or science experiments or witches cauldrons or whatever stuff you do when you’re not in your truck.”
I frowned. “My cauldron was half off for prime day though.”
“Would you please just start working? We don’t have time to mess around.”
I set the fancy can opener on the counter and turned to face him. “We have almost an entire month, would you relax?”
Crews hands gripped the counter with white knuckles and clenched teeth. “Winnifred Meadows you are in my kitchen and you are going to do what I say.”
My cheeks burned hot and my stomach twisted in a little knot. Oh my gosh, did I just find him a little sexy? Since when was Crew all demanding and forceful and…was he taller in here?
My eyes squinted at him and he scowled back at me whilst picking up his knife and dicing an onion into perfect squares without even glancing down. Hot.
“Quit looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” I countered, still looking at him.
“Like you did that first day.”
My lips quirked up a bit. I wondered if that day haunted him like it did me.
“Maybe don’t be so bossy then.”
“You have a messed up sense of humor.”
And attraction apparently. Being in this space, his space, watching him maneuver around the prep area with such authority and confidence. I think it was working on me. No, I knew it was for a fact.
Crew rolled up his sleeve one more time and adjusted his hands to the perfect position to dice and my mouth drooped down a little. The veins in his arms popped out to wave hello. Meanwhile, I was close to drooling on his floor. This man has never had a girlfriend. How had he never had a girlfriend?
“Are you going to get started or watch?”
Staring at his forearms, I slowly pulled one of the nearby barstools to me.
“I think watch.” Was I whispering?
“Suit yourself, but our time is limited though and I have things to do after this.”
No, he didn’t. I knew because I saw his Alexa reminder on the counter said an upcoming episode of Only Murders In The Building was tonight and apparently he couldn’t miss it- judging by the fifty exclamation marks beside it.
My elbows propped up on the counter as I watched him dice and chop the mountain of veggies beside him, unphased. He tossed half of them into a separate bowl and reached for some kind of unlabeled sauce in a clear, squeezable container. Homemade, I would assume. Crew tilted the bottle over the bowl and swirled it on the edges, stopping to squint with a head tilt, then did it again with two more swirls.
“What was that?” I pointed to the half full bottle.
“What was what?”
“That.”
“It’s a jalapeno lime sauce with cilantro-”
“No, how much was that?”
Crew looked down to the bottle on his counter and back to the contents in his stainless steel mixing bowl. “I dunno,” he shrugged one shoulder. “Three swirls?”
“Swirls?” I choked out. “How do you know that’s enough? Or not too much?”
He looked from the bowl to me. “I just know.”
“But how?”
“I dunno. Same way you know how much MiraLAX to sprinkle in your enemies pastries before they start to accuse you.”
A huff of air blew from my nose.
Crew looked between me and the bowl once more. This tiny glint of what almost looked like guilt flashed in his eyes before he muttered low, “Come here, you can see it better.”
I followed his instructions and saddled up next to him, watching as the lime green sauce was stirred between the mix of veggies. Crew dipped two fingers in and brought them to his mouth, and sucked them dry right next to me. Heat flooded my entire body and this felt like the kind of thing I wasn’t meant to be seeing.
This was never going to work. Not if he kept seducing me in this kitchen. I was on a mission here. I had to focus on the goal: getting home. And this finger licking good business was getting out of control.
Crew cleared his throat. “Needs more onions. You can dice one right?”
I nodded. “I use onion in my meat loaf.”
“What…do you mean?”
“Never mind.” I reached for the cutting board next to him and yellow onion to dice together. My fingers glide carefully over the wooden block where his knives rested, my sage green nails dance across each handle with ease. A warrior picking its weapon for battle.
I settled on a butcher knife before diving into the onion. I’d always heard chefs get used to cutting onions over time but it had never really happened for me. Every single time my eyes watered and every time I wrongfully assumed they wouldn’t, resulting in me touching my eyes, which made them water even more until it was a vicious cycle of me crying in my kitchen. But Crew next to me doesn’t have so much as a drop forming. He’s calculated…focused. He looked exactly as I imagined I had when I was in my own element. In my truck with eighties music on shuffle, pink bowls and spatulas and cream cheese danishes and doughnuts forming over time.
When my onion was diced I slid the tray to him and smiled a little. He looked down at me with genuine fear.
“This isn’t another sugar/salt thing is it?”
“I only did that because the mustache was absolutely ridiculous and I needed you to know it.”
“I think I knew it when I glued it on.” He scrunched his nose a tad. “I still feel it.”
A small snort left my nose and I turned to the area.
“So, this is how we do it? I do my part, you do yours?”
Crew nodded. “Makes the most sense.”
“Do you think we should at least explain what the other one is doing?”
“I’m not convinced you won’t take what you learn and run out on your own again.”
“I wouldn’t cheat.”
He rolled his eyes in this way that was so obvious he didn’t believe me and it honestly pissed me off.
“This again, seriously? It seems to be all you care about. Fake mustaches and recipe stealing is totally fine when it’s your turn though, right?”
“Because I was just making something inspired by you.”
“Still cheating, isn’t it?”
“No, I’m not you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Crew’s hands slammed into the cutting board in front of him and his voice cut, sharp and thick through the tension in the air. “It means I don’t flirt and hand out my number to perfect strangers while I’m engaged.”
My movements froze, everything around me standing still. Memories and pictures came flashing to my forefront in big bold letter. You’re not enough. And then as far as the engaged part… “I’m sorry, what?”
“You heard me loud and clear.”
“Apparently, I didn’t. You think I cheated on my ex-fiancé?”
“I don’t think you did, I know you did.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You gave me your number, flirted with me, and made me feel like I had a real chance. I felt like all of it was actually going to happen and when I went to text you that night I couldn’t think of what to say so I thought I would look you up and just try to find some common ground.”
My chest tightened because I already knew where this was going. And reaching it, explaining it, felt like the knot in my stomach was growing tighter and tighter, strings popping and systems failing.
“You were engaged, Winnie.” Crews voice was strained, raspy and broken like saying it out loud physically hurt him. Like I had physically hurt him. “Engaged to a man in a cowboy hat when you said you liked city boys and I’m sorry I made you my mortal enemy because of it but damn it, you made me feel like…I had a chance. Like I wasn’t the extra or the side person or someone in passing. And when I saw you holding up a giant ring,” he sucked in a breath and his thumb twiddled the knife handle. “it hurt. And I hated you for it.”
The day he parked next to me for the first time…the way he dismissed me like I was of no value. How he continued to find every excuse to get under my skin for years to come. All of it added up and yet somehow the final number was still wrong.
“Crew… I wasn’t engaged then.”
“No, I know what I saw.”
“I know what you saw too, I…” I sighed, trying so hard to piece every bit of this together. “Marshall and I were done for over a year when you and I met.”
“Then why was he still on there? Why did you look so perfectly happy holding up that ring?”
My face felt hot and this room felt small and all these memories and realizations were floating around in my all too busy head. Grief over my past self who’d completely lost herself along the way. Regret for the last five years’ worth of fights between me and the man beside me that could’ve been solved in a simple conversation. Relief…that I can now know why he hated me. That I knew it wasn’t just a one-time casual thing for him either. Knowing this was my fault, this entire situation, rested on my shoulders and the weight was overbearing.
“I…It’s embarrassing, Crew. It’s a long story and, I don’t know, hard to explain. But I promise you, I have never and would never cheat on someone. Poison someone, possible. Arson maybe too. But I take every relationship extremely seriously and the thought that you assumed I didn’t…I get it. I mean, I get why you were so pissed that first day I pulled into the parking lot.”
“Tell it then.”
“What?”
He set his knife down, facing away from me, and crossed those long arms over his chest. Leaning against his counters left his height to go down a couple inches, but he was still towering over me.
“The story. Tell it. Tell me, if you honestly want me to believe you you’ll have to say it all.”
My chest expanded and lowered rapidly. Saying it out loud…letting it all out…
“I don’t know if you’ll get it.”
“Try me.” His eyes were a challenge. Pushing, testing, trying hard to see a lie behind my eyes and I knew somehow if I didn’t tell him it was going to make our partnership even more strained. And if I did tell him, every horrible piece of it, the flood gates would open. Everything I refused to allow myself to remember would come rushing in and taking over my every reason.
Still, it felt like I had all of this pressure building behind my eyes. A geyser with a cork popped in it, ready to blow any minute. And the thought of releasing it…sounded better than any trip home or any five thousand dollar reward.
“The family I grew up with, the town I was in,” I paused and collected my ever growing thoughts. “Everyone knew everyone. And everything. I kind of hated it when I was in high school. If I even so much as bought UTI medication at our pharmacy it was spread around town like wildfire. The whole place just made me angry. Everyone acted like I was so predictable, so easy and simple and I dunno…two dimensional. ‘That’s just Winnie’ or ‘Oh, you know Winnie.’ I wanted to prove them wrong, everyone wrong. So, I started dating a guy from one town over. Someone they expected least. Someone who was tolerable enough for me to actually love him over time, but also someone that my family would never truly see me with.”
I glanced up to see if Crew was following, his eyes didn’t showcase much- they were focused over my shoulder but still he nodded for me to keep going.
“So, we dated. For years and when the time came he asked if I wanted to move here with him for some kind of dentist thing, I thought this is it. No one would ever suspect this. I thought I would find something new and special about myself in a bigger, more crowded city where no one cared if I bought UTI medicine on a Thursday or that I was eating out for the fifth time this week. I told Marshall that I would come if we were engaged. So he rushed to get a ring that day and that was that. My entire family warned me not to. My nana especially. They dug into the fact that I belonged there and that he was awful for me. I just thought they didn’t know me, didn’t know him. I thought we would move out here and make a name for ourselves.”
One of us did. One of us got a billboard and a new exciting life and the other one was left with empty dreams, empty wallet, and a vastly empty apartment.
“But then I got here and I got lost. I wanted to go to pharmacy school like I thought about in high school, but the time came and went and I just didn’t. Marshall liked me at home more. I always liked baking when I was younger. I picked it back up again and I learned baking is kind of like science and that they go hand in hand so I baked…a lot. I was home all the time so I just would sit in the kitchen for hours and when he got home he seemed so excited I thought maybe I was meant to just be a wife? Maybe this was all I was good for now.”
Crew let out a low grumble, confirmation he was listening enough for me to continue.
“I left everything behind me for him. I cut off family members one by one. I never made friends here, how could I? I didn’t work and I stayed in the kitchen all day listening to various podcasts and TV dramas. I just became nothing but his wife. And I waited and waited One day I walked in on him and someone else and I think it solidified it all to me. How much I can’t handle the city…the noises, the lights. It hit how badly I missed home. How I wanted to visit so bad but then I knew if I did, if I left, it would be admitting they were all right. Everyone who predicted everything there was right about me and my lack of purpose and I would have to crawl home with my tail tucked between my leg so I just…didn’t tell them. For a while. I kept the pictures up and just deleted all social media apps, not bothering to post or change anything. I just wanted it to look like to my family that I was too busy for such things. I kept it for so long, until like a year ago really when my nana kept pestering why I never talked about him anymore. I think she always knew, really.”
Crew took a moment. We both did.
I hadn’t meant to spill out that much. The plan, or lack thereof, was to simply say yes I was once engaged but we were separated. I didn’t change my status and when we met it was still like that even months and months had passed. But, like most things with Crew, my mind kind of took the backseat. And everything around me settled into nothingness. And truth be told, it felt incredible to say it to anyone who wasn’t Lottie.
“So, you actually weren’t engaged? You’re serious?”
I nodded.
He muttered the smallest, “Oh…” and we sat next to each other in almost complete silence, beyond the occasional car horn or steady traffic far off from his windows.
I sniffed a little and sat down in the barstool I pulled up earlier, my back hunched and shoulders slumped over.
When the silence between us got to be too much I said, “You can apologize now for being a dick.”
He cackled, loud and proud, vibrating all the way to my toes. It made me smile too. The corners of my lips unzipped slightly, tugging on the ends to match his halfway smirk.
His arms tightened around his chest. “Well, when you put it like that I don’t want to.”
Our eyes met, soft and slow. A trace of understanding between them. Between both of us. Knowing we were both in the wrong on this, and blaming just me or just him for us never simply communicating was going to be incredibly difficult now. Even if I’d started the whole thing, looking at Crew, I saw the guilt in his eyes too. Over lost time and wasted argumentized breaths. We’d both screwed this whole thing up.
Looking at him with the same gaze as before was going to be impossible. Labeling Crew as a reckless, bull-in-a-China-shop kind of man felt wrong now, knowing every bit of this was on me as it was him.
He turned from me, back to his cutting board. And I turned back to my bowl, playing this game of pretend as if I could do anything but let my mind run its course right now. My hands were useless, my fingers circling the rim of the bowl, shaking flour and sugar like there was anything worthwhile inside of it.
“Can we try again?” I whispered, as if my body felt treacherous just letting it out.
Crews consistent chopping paused, his movements frozen in time. “Try again?”
“Yeah, like hit a reset button or…something.”
“You threatened to feed MiraLAX to pigeons and lead them to my truck last week.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes. For someone who can’t remember a recipe he sure could remember everything I’d done wrong in my life.
“Yes, but that was before. And I only said that because you brought up the laxatives first. If we’re going to get passed this you have to wipe the slate clean.”
Crew looked over his shoulder at me and for the first time in the last five years the half smile he wore wasn’t off, wasn’t a ruse for something else he was planning behind my back, wasn’t warning of danger signs and wasn’t giving me a headache knowing there was about to be an entire battle in our shared parking lot.
It was genuine. Real. Raw, and a little wobbly, but it was the realest part of him I’d seen in person for me. I’d witnessed this smile, this soft, doughy side of him at a distance with his siblings, when he was cooking, when he was serving customers and sweaty but so grateful.
But I’d never seen it directed at me. And even if it was the smallest glimpse, the tiniest little smirk, I knew it was all for me. And I was going to keep it.
“Alright, Winnie. We can hit the reset button.”