Chapter Fourteen West #2
Cammie looks at the sign, then back to me with a cute scowl. “Adding this to my list of grievances with that archaic website.”
“I’m sure Tony will appreciate that,” I tease. I peer around the kitchen to find everyone else too busy chatting with their own partners and starting their pizzas to pay attention to us before I continue. “So, what, now we…pretend we’re together?”
“Was that not clear from my gentle caress?” she demands in a serious whisper, then breaks into a quiet chuckle at my unimpressed look. “Okay, I panicked and just went for it, but I’ll do better from now on. It’s probably easiest to be a fake couple for tonight, for the sake of blending in?”
Her voice goes up at the end, making it sound more like she’s gauging how I feel than expressing a firm opinion. I’m no more confident when I answer, “It can’t be all that different than how we act as friends, right?”
“Right, of course,” Cam agrees quickly, nodding a little too vigorously to look natural about it. “Just act natural, act like ourselves, like friends, nice and normal.”
It quickly becomes clear that Cam and I have different definitions of nice and normal.
“Hey, babe, do you want a turn with the dough?” she asks in a sugary-sweet voice that isn’t even her own, making cartoonishly wide doe eyes that are beginning to scare me.
“Sure…darling,” I try.
It’s all I can do to follow her lead, try to match her lovesick energy so no one thinks there’s trouble in paradise or that I’m not as into her as she is into me. The latter possibility is laughable.
“Beautiful, West, yes,” Tony enthuses as he passes by our station while I’m kneading the dough. “Now that is a man who’s good with his hands,” he jokes with a pointed look to Cammie.
She giggles, the sound reminiscent of a Tickle Me Elmo I had as a toddler whose sound box started glitching. The resulting demonic laughter it released led me to sleep in Pops and Dad’s room for a week.
Between the wood-fired pizza oven and my rising panic from the pressure of pretending to be hopelessly in love with my friend, while secretly, possibly inching toward those feelings for real, I am sweating profusely by the time we add the finishing touches to our unbaked pizzas.
I am holding the tub with shreds of a fresh mozzarella ball that I tore off by hand, weighing where to place another couple pieces on my margherita pie, when Cammie suddenly presses up against me, her front to my side.
I flinch so hard, I drop the tub, sending mozzarella spilling out to cover the whole round of dough and sauce.
“Mmm, lots of cheese,” she says with a flirtatious lilt that the words do not call for, followed by a casual kiss dropped on my shoulder. “Looks so good, babe.”
It’s not a good performance. But if they gave out “Tried Way Harder Than the Role Required” Oscars, Cam would be a contender.
She’s at least got my heart—and every other part of my body, save for my brain—convinced.
Every one of my systems is on high alert, blaring SHE KISSED US alarms while the single rational brain cell I have left slams down a bunch of buttons with labels like FAKE and ONLY OUR SHIRTSLEEVE.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” I manage to grit out between clenched teeth. “Can never have too much dairy.”
It’s a lie that my stomach will be refuting later, if I’m able to chill out enough to eat any of this.
My unease isn’t entirely because of my fake girlfriend’s real PDA, either.
It’s also from what I see happening with Tony, one of my fears about this whole dad hunt endeavor playing out in real time.
Cammie is dazzled by the chef. He’s charming, sure, with his dimpled smile and endearing mix of dry Australian wit and ridiculous dad humor.
Every time he comes by our station, her smile brightens, her posture straightens, all the deep-down parts of her that so sincerely want to be loved and noticed bursting at her seams.
This is feeling increasingly like the worst idea. Like something I should have protected her from somehow, as if I even have that power. But I see the determination in her eyes, telling me this isn’t over until she has her answers—even if they’re not the answers she wants.
All I can do now is knead some dough, crush some tomatoes, and wait, ready to stop Tony Campbell-Costa from breaking her heart in whatever way I can.
“All right, all right, all right, Camilla and Weston,” Tony says in what I think is meant to be a Matthew McConaughey impression. We’re the only Americans in class tonight, with two British couples and one from Switzerland.
Cammie and I carry our pizzas by the edges of the squares of parchment paper on which they sit over to where Tony stands holding a pizza peel. Beyond the brick opening of the oven is what looks like the fires of hell.
“Who’s up first?” he asks.
I don’t even get the chance to think about it before Cam eagerly steps forward.
“I’ll go!”
She trades her pizza for the peel in Tony’s hands and holds it up while he helps transfer her creation from the parchment paper to the flat, floured square of metal.
“Now remember,” he tells her, reiterating the instructions he gave us all for pizza oven best practices before we each get our turns. “You have to just go for it. Don’t hesitate, but also know your strength. Don’t overshoot it or your pizza’s going into the flames.”
Cam nods eagerly and wastes no time stepping up to the oven that verges on too tall for her to comfortably use, then jabs the pizza peel forward like a fencer on the attack.
The pizza slides perfectly into the “sweet spot” Tony described, where it’ll get cooked all the way through but not charbroiled.
Unlike the pizza I’m used to in the States, these take less than a minute to bake in the heat of the brick oven.
And Tony, I guess realizing that he can’t fully teach us his craft in the course of one evening, takes charge of turning the pizzas once they’re placed to ensure they cook evenly, then helps extract them with the peel.
When he judges that Cam’s is ready, he slides the big paddle into the oven with ease and pulls out the most perfectly brown, bubbly, cheese-covered, garlic-scented pizza perfection that I’ve ever seen.
“Absolutely brilliant,” Tony proclaims, studying the result of Cam’s efforts.
She beams like she’s never received a kinder compliment. Then it’s my turn. Cammie sticks by to watch and offer moral support—or so I think, until she teases, “Don’t know how you’re supposed to follow that up, but good luck, I guess.”
I scoff, pausing with my pizza on the peel, ready to slide in the oven. “Camilla Lovett, are you trash-talking my culinary masterpiece?”
“I would never, dearest,” she replies with a devious grin, more of the real Cammie in her voice than Girlfriend Barbie.
When I look to Tony, expecting a reminder of proper pizza peel handling, he seems distracted, his eyes narrowed and unfocused in Cammie’s direction.
When he feels my gaze on him, he gives me a nod that I realize is the only signal I’ll get, so I try not to overthink it as I slide my pizza into the fiery cavern.
Just when I bring the peel back out, Tony gasps. My head jerks his way, and I practically see a light bulb glowing over his head as he points to Cammie.
“Camilla Lovett? I knew there was something familiar about you!” he says, more than a little awestruck. His eyes are wide and shocked as he wipes a hand over his mouth. “You’re Alex’s daughter.”
The three of us remain there, frozen and unsure what to say or do next.
Until a puff of dark smoke curls out of the oven, and then another, and we realize, one by one, that my pizza is up in flames.