Chapter Seventeen
Henry
“Jason, I need Mum’s dumpling recipe,” I said as soon as my brother answered the phone. I was sat on the sofa in the cottage with a notebook and pen on the coffee table in front of me, hoping that Jason would be able to give me the information off the top of his head.
The cottage was blissfully empty with Kane having to do a late night on set and Cas enjoying a few days off.
He’d taken himself away to York for the weekend to do whatever Cas did when he had time off.
He’d been reluctant to go since there’d been more journalists sniffing around since the news of Alex’s and my relationship had surfaced, but I’d promised to keep myself out of trouble.
After Alex had taken me back to his last Friday night, I’d offered to cook for him this weekend.
We’d both had such a busy week that we’d hardly seen each other, so since I had a rare Saturday afternoon off, I could attempt to make a decent meal instead of just throwing something together and praying it tasted good.
Alex had promised not much had changed for him since the news had come out, but I wasn’t sure if I believed him. I knew we were both trying to ignore it as much as possible, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to impact our lives in some way.
Although Alex had mentioned a couple of journalists had tried to come into Novel Tea and been given the boot by the coffee shop’s book club, who’d taken a very dim view to people trying to pry into Alex’s life.
It seemed that while Heather Bay’s residents liked gossiping, they were also incredibly protective of their own.
I wondered if I could introduce the book club to Cas.
“What? Why?” Jason asked, sounding surprised by my request. To be fair to him, that was a justifiable response since I’d never asked for the recipe before.
We’d made them so much when I was growing up, I should have been able to remember it but the information had been replaced by random lines of dialogue and a carousel of images of Colin Firth in a wet shirt that had been imprinted on my brain when I was nine.
“Because I want to make dumplings and I can’t remember the recipe. I just remember pork and cabbage and various sauces, but that’s it. And flour and water for the wrappers, although I’m hoping I can just find somewhere to buy them. I don’t really fancy trying to make a million dumpling wrappers.”
“That’s because yours were always lopsided,” Jason said. “Which made wrapping dumplings in them a pain in the ass.”
“You could have done it since you’re Mr. Clever Clogs.”
“I could, but it was my job to chop cabbage and you never wanted to swap.”
“That’s because chopping cabbage is boring,” I said. “Do you remember the recipe then?”
“Yeah, but I still want to know why you want it. You’ve never had the urge to randomly make dumplings before.
” He sounded suspicious and I couldn’t blame him.
I’d rung Jason up for a lot of random things before but requesting a family recipe at one o’clock on a Saturday afternoon while I was on location was a new one.
“Would you believe me if I said I wanted to make them for my friends?” I asked.
“Yeah, I would have except now you’ve said it like that, I know you’re fucking lying,” Jason said. “You’re cooking for someone, though… who is it? Did you start seeing someone?”
“It could be Ros,” I said, but I knew I was grasping at straws. Either Jason had been living under a rock for the last week or he was torturing me because I’d forgotten to tell him and Lewis about Alex before it had been leaked to the press.
He was never going to let me live this down.
At least I could say it was payback for the fact he’d announced both his sexuality and his relationship with Lewis to the public before telling me.
“Nope, she’s still in New York. Lewis showed me one of her Instagram stories this morning.”
“Damn,” I said. “Trust my best friend not to be here when I need her.”
Rosamund Jones was an actress I’d met years ago when I was filming the adaptation of David Copperfield that had thrown me into the spotlight.
We’d clicked as soon as we’d started talking, and although we’d considered doing the hooking up thing, we’d quickly realised we viewed each other more as siblings.
Ros was like the sister I’d never had, and I missed her a lot, especially when we were both busy in different countries.
I really wished I’d been able to talk to her about Alex because I knew Ros wouldn’t judge me.
Well, not any more than I’d expect her to.
But our schedules hadn’t matched up for weeks and it seemed like whenever she was free, I was filming, sleeping, or with Alex, and when I was free, she was filming, sleeping, or busy with something she wouldn’t go into detail about. I wondered if she had a new boyfriend.
One day, I hoped I’d be able to introduce Ros and Alex because I thought the pair of them would get on like a house on fire.
Although they’d probably bond over stupid shit I’d done, and Ros would definitely tell Alex about the time I’d broken my wrist falling off a wall trying not to spill the slushie I was holding.
Maybe I wouldn’t introduce them. At least not for a while.
“Hen,” Jason said. “Tell me what’s going on, please? I told you about Lewis really early on.”
“You did. But I also got you drunk on homemade Baileys on Christmas Day and you basically just waxed lyrical about how cute his butt was and how pretty his smile was and how much you missed him even though you’d only seen him like three days before.
” It had been cute to see how enamoured Jason was with Lewis, even after their first date.
It had been less cute when he’d drunkenly spilled that they’d had sex on the leather sofa I’d been lying on at that point. Jason had promised me he’d cleaned it, but I’d never looked at it the same way.
I wasn’t sure Jason even remembered he’d told me. He had been completely wasted.
“Fine, I started seeing a guy here. It’s still early days, though, and I wanted to make him something nice for dinner since he brings me lunch every day because the catered food on set sucks.”
“That’s… really sweet,” Jason said softly. “Wait, is it that guy you were telling me about? Eric? No, Alex! The one who told you no and thought you were an absolute arse.”
I sighed and pursed my lips together, wishing Jason hadn’t remembered every detail of our conversation where I’d done my best woe-is-me impression.
I had to give him credit, though. He was doing a very good job of pretending he didn’t know.
Enough to give me hope that he’d magically avoided the internet all week.
“Yeah. That’s him. Apparently, I’m just the right amount of sexy and annoying to be endearing. ”
“Wow… can I meet him?”
“Maybe? It’s still new and I don’t want to overwhelm him. But you’re coming up in a couple of weeks anyway, right? Jenny said she managed to talk you into playing my cousin, so how about then?”
“Perfect,” Jason said. “Lewis is coming too, and we’d love to meet him. Maybe we can all get dinner or something?”
“That sounds perfect,” I said, smiling to myself. I loved the idea of introducing Alex to Jason—it felt like another step on the road to this being real. “Can I get that recipe now?”
“Er, yeah… hang on. I’ll forward it to you. I got Mum to write it down last year and send it over. It’s a bit vague, though—less actual measurements and more feelings.”
“What the fuck? You mean you could’ve just sent it over all this time?”
“Yeah,” Jason said, sounding totally unfazed about his treachery. “But how else was I going to get you to admit you’d got a boyfriend? Were you actually going to tell me, by the way? Lewis and I had a bet on about how long it would take you to admit it.”
“You knew?”
“Of course I knew, it was all over bloody Twitter!” He didn’t sound upset, just amused. “I thought it might be fake at first, but Lewis showed me a bunch of stuff during the week.”
“Yeah, it’s real… I’m just ignoring the press stuff, though. That’s nothing to do with me.”
Jason hummed. “Okay. Are you happy, though?”
“With Alex? Yeah,” I said. “I am.”
“Good, then I can’t wait to meet him. Dinner’s on you, and I’m never letting you live this down.”
I laughed. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“Okay, it’s not as bad as it looks,” I said when Alex walked into the cottage several hours later.
He grinned at me and raised an eyebrow in a way that made my insides go funny. “Do I want to know what you’ve done?”
“Yes, but you probably don’t want to see the process.
” Making dumplings had not been as easy as I’d remembered.
I’d managed to find most of what I’d needed in the large Tesco Extra on the outskirts of town, and some careful googling had given me the address of a local Asian supermarket where I’d been able to get the last few bits, including some dumpling wrappers.
I hadn’t expected a small seaside town to have an Asian supermarket and had fully prepared myself to spend the rest of the afternoon cursing non-stop while attempting to make passable wrappers.
The staff there had been very helpful and I’d come away with more than I’d needed, mostly because they had frozen custard buns shaped like bunnies, which had always been my absolute weakness, and a large box of White Rabbit candy, which I remembered my dad always buying us whenever he saw some.
It reminded me I needed to check in with my parents, who were currently enjoying a cruise to the Galapagos Islands.