Chapter Thirty-Five
Dani
“I’m sorry, you’re out.”
The camera panned away from Heidi Klum’s solemnly sculpted face to the designer who had just been eliminated. She nodded her acceptance as the other designer left the runway, looking more shocked than she did. The designer who’d been sent home had been crushing it for weeks and was a favorite to win the whole season, but this week she’d choked, and like Heidi always said, in fashion, one week you’re in, and the next, you’re out.
The show cut to the back room where the rest of the contestants waited, and the eliminated designer walked in to say her tearful goodbyes. A moment later, Tim Gunn showed up to escort her back to the sewing room to pack up her things…or so we thought.
“I’m using my Tim Gunn Save…”
“I knew it,” I said aloud, sprawled on my couch in a tank top and sleep shorts. I’d been in practically the same position all day, only getting up to occasionally run to the bathroom or get a snack. On any other Monday, I would have been coming home from work right now, and I savored the luxury of being utterly lazy instead. Like playing hooky only better because I’d been ordered to be lazy today, which meant I didn’t need to feel guilty about it.
My phone buzzed, and I snatched it off the coffee table, expecting to see a text from Robin demanding I get off my butt and meet her for a drink. I’d been messaging her a play-by-play of all the juicy Project Runway drama throughout the day, even though it was years old at this point and honestly not that juicy, but that was part of the fun. It was low stakes. Nothing I had to think too hard about or get too emotionally involved in. Just pretty dresses and petty designers.
But the text wasn’t from Robin.
Jase: I heard you drove my brother to the hospital.
My heart lurched. I hadn’t expected to hear from him this soon.
Me: I wasn’t confident he’d find his way in a cab. He was pretty frazzled.
Jase: Oh, I know. Yesterday he tried to use his gym ID at a vending machine that didn’t even accept cards.
I grinned, bubbles erupting in my chest like a can of seltzer that had been shaken. Not at the story itself so much as the fact that Jase was texting me about Alec like it was no big deal. Like he was just Jase’s brother and not some inflated Christmas decoration the size of a house standing between us.
Jase: He’s a dad now, btw.
The next message was a picture of Jase sitting in a hospital recliner holding a baby, and I’d never been much of a baby person, but holy shit, was it the cutest thing I’d ever seen.
I asked after everyone’s health and sent along my congratulations, a bit of peace settling into the space where my Alec anxiety used to reside.
Jase: I also heard you talked to Jillian. Thank you.
Me: Did she go for it?
Jase: Sort of. I’ll tell you about it later.
My stomach fluttered at that last sentence. When he’d said he needed “space,” I’d assumed it would look more like it had when he’d avoided me. Limited to no contact. No interaction of any kind. I hadn’t expected texting and baby pictures and talking.
Jase: What are you doing?
I told him.
Jase: Not the cooking one?
My lips tugged up. I’d had Jase watch an episode of my favorite professional cooking competition with me a few weeks ago because I was curious what his reaction to it would be—what he’d think of the challenges or whether he’d agree with the judges’ critiques. One episode had turned into an entire season, then two. He seemed to like it well enough, but I was pretty sure he mostly kept watching for me.
Me: I decided it wouldn’t be as enjoyable without a certain running commentary accompanying it.
Because now the thought of watching it only made me think of him. Any cooking show did. Any food-related thing did, period. I couldn’t pour a glass of water without remembering the fancy tap system he’d had installed at Ardena or the way he always cut a fresh lemon for me to put in my glass, and the whole point of this binge-watch had been to distract me from him, not make me ache with longing.
Jase: Want to watch one now?
My smile hurt my cheeks.
We pulled up an episode and texted for the first half until, while the chefs raced through Whole Foods to buy their ingredients for the elimination challenge, my phone rang. I grinned as I brought it to my ear.
“Sarah just screwed herself,” Jase said on the other end. “Canned chickpeas instead of cooking them herself? Come on. The judges are going to crucify her.”
“I’m sure she has a plan. It could turn out incredible.”
“It’s gonna turn out a bland pile of mush.”
“So what would you have done?”
It went on like that for the rest of the episode. Easy and light. Laughing and fun. I squeezed a throw pillow to my chest the whole time, wishing it was him, grateful I was getting this moment with him anyway.
The episode ended, and neither of us said anything as the credits began to roll. I imagined him on his couch in his apartment, wearing those loose gray pants that rode low on his hips, with Baxter curled up on the cushion beside him.
“I saw my parents today,” he said, voice blank, like the memory alone drained him.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly. I wanted to do more. Make it better somehow. Protect him from the pain. But I couldn’t control his parents any more than I could control my own, and I’d given up trying to do that a long time ago.
“I’m getting there,” he said, and though his voice was quiet, it was also strong. Steady. None of the shakiness that had been there after the baby shower. “I told them about us.”
Us.
There was an us . I didn’t care what his parents thought as long as that stayed true.
“How’d that go?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager.
He made a breathy noise that might have been a laugh. “About as well as I expected. How my mother was upset when Alec was in the same room telling her it didn’t bother him will never cease to amaze me.”
“What’s upset? Like silent judgment or full-blown waterworks?”
“More just her run-of-the-mill ‘How could you do this to your brother? Why would you bring this up today of all days? How is Stephanie supposed to feel? What will my book club think?’ Nothing I haven’t heard before, really.”
“So I shouldn’t expect an invite home for Christmas, is what you’re saying,” I teased.
He let out a deep sigh. “I’m saying I don’t think I want to go home for Christmas at all for a while.”
I swallowed as his words landed. “Really?”
“You know I used to have panic attacks in high school?” he said. “Then I went abroad, and they stopped. I spent half my time with grown men screaming at me in French and never got so much as a hand tremor. It was only after I came back and tried to force a relationship with my parents on their terms again that I couldn’t find the air to breathe. I think maybe the ones I need space from are them.”
“Then I’m glad you’re taking it,” I told him.
“Thanks. And I’m sorry.”
“What for?” I asked, my mind blanking.
“This whole needing space in general thing. It was never from you . I need you to know that. Just space to sort myself out.”
“I do know,” I promised. “And never apologize for telling me what you need. I just wish there was something I could do to help.”
“You’re doing it right now.”
I laid my head against the pillow, tracing my finger over the sunburst pattern, and pretended it was his chest.
“Maybe you could come by the restaurant tomorrow night,” he said a moment later.
My heart skipped. “Yeah?”
“I owe you a celebratory drink.”
I bit my lip to contain my smile, like that might somehow keep the eagerness from my voice. It didn’t. “Are you sure? If you need more time?—”
“I’m sure. As long as you are.”
I didn’t even have to think about it.
He told me to dress up.
This was probably more along the lines of what I should have been wearing to the restaurant these past three months instead of the business casual attire I wore for work that leaned heavily toward casual, but no one had seemed to care, and I’d been far too comfortable to be concerned.
He’d also told me to arrive late.
I walked through the door to Ardena ten minutes before the kitchen was supposed to close. The timing made sense if I was here for a shift drink to celebrate a successful symposium with the staff—God knew they deserved it. But from the way the host Amelia smiled at me when she saw my dress and immediately gestured for me to follow her, that didn’t seem like the plan.
She led me through the near-empty dining room to a table in the back, the only one still set, and pulled out a chair for me. As I sat, my eyes went to the deep pink peony blooming in a small vase before shifting to the bucket of champagne on ice and finally landing on the simple menu card on the napkin.
It was the menu card I had designed for the gala. The one with the meal I’d been dying to eat ever since the first tasting session Jase had done for me.
“I figured you probably didn’t have a chance to sit down and eat during the gala.”
His deep voice rolled over me, drawing my gaze up to where he stood before the table, two small plates in hand, wearing a crisp white button-down instead of his chef jacket. It was tucked into a pair of black slacks, and my pulse ramped up to a thousand miles per hour as I soaked him in.
“You were right.” I hadn’t eaten at all that night. Hadn’t stopped moving long enough to give myself the chance to think, knowing my thoughts would only lead to Jase, and I never would have made it through the night if I’d let myself go down that winding path.
He set the plates on the table and reached for the champagne. My stare never left his face as he opened the bottle and poured two glasses. If there was even the slightest chance this was a dream, his face was what I wanted to remember of it.
The cool blue of his eyes that so easily warmed me.
The crease along the side of his mouth that deepened when he smiled.
The furrow in his brow whenever he concentrated, and the scruff along his jaw that brought a shiver to my skin—every piece of him like coming home.
Finally, he took his seat, and we were looking at each other, the rest of the world settling into place before falling away altogether.
“Hi,” he said, the flicker of the candlelight dancing in his eyes.
“Hi,” I said back, my lips rising.
“You’re breathtaking.”
My smile deepened. “You’re rather impressive yourself.”
“Impressing you was the goal.”
“You always have.”
His lips twitched as he glanced away, and I swore I saw a blush creep into his cheeks.
He cleared his throat. “For a while, I didn’t think that was possible. For me to impress you.” He flicked his gaze up to mine, then down again. “Not after you’d been with Alec. Been in love with him.”
I squeezed my napkin in my lap to keep from reaching across the table, craving that connection. For him to be able to feel straight through my skin to my soul and know how I felt about him.
“I was afraid you’d compare me to him and be disappointed,” he continued. “But I’m trying this thing where I believe people when they tell me things. Trust what they say over my own self-doubts.”
“I did compare you to him,” I admitted.
His stare locked with mine.
I took a breath to find the right words. “At first, I mostly noticed your similarities, which was annoying since all I wanted to do was forget he existed and you made that impossible.”
He swallowed but held my gaze, his chest rising and falling with deep breaths. I needed him to hear this.
“But the more time I spent with you, the more obvious it became all the ways you’re different. And the more I found myself relieved. Not because I wasn’t thinking about Alec anymore, but because I finally felt free to be myself.”
I hadn’t even realized I’d been missing that before. Hadn’t noticed how empty my life had been until Jase helped me fill it.
“It was being with you that helped me understand why I broke up with Alec in the first place,” I said. “Because being with you was easy in a way that being with him never was.” I wouldn’t have ever come to that conclusion nine years ago. Never would have classified Alec as anything other than perfect. But that didn’t mean he was perfect for me.
I didn’t know that Jase was perfect for me either. Perfect wasn’t a standard I was aiming for anymore. But I did know all the things I loved about Jase. All the ways I appreciated him. And in all our time together, I’d never once wished any of those things was more like Alec.
“I did love your brother,” I said honestly. “But I didn’t love myself when I was with him. I didn’t accept myself when I was with him.”
I’d hidden. Like I’d been hiding most of my life, too afraid of the possibility of rejection from my parents or bosses, or anyone else I’d deemed important, to dare show my real self.
Until Jase.
“You make me feel seen like no one has before. You make trusting myself easy. Make being myself the most natural thing in the world.” My eyes burned, and I tilted my head to blink away the tears before looking at Jase again. “I’m grateful for what I had with Alec, but never, ever, would I choose it over what I have with you.”
“I love you,” he said, voice low and thick, the full force of his emotion pouring into the words.
My breath shuddered, and I stood, dropping my napkin on my seat before rounding the table, his eyes soaking me in every step of the way.
He slid back his chair as I reached him, enough that I could settle onto his lap and pull his face to mine.
It was an eager, needy kiss, my mouth hungry for his, determined to make up for the days apart, to show him what no words could ever truly say. I pulled back just enough to say them anyway, my lips brushing his as I did. “I love you.”
His lips quirked as they pressed to mine in a lingering kiss, neither of us closing our eyes.
“Let’s eat,” he whispered, grazing his nose against mine. “We have a lot to celebrate. And I still owe you a dance.”