CHAPTER SEVEN
(Matthew)
It wasn’t that I’d never been inside a grocery store before. I just hadn’t been inside a grocery store in a long time. I stood on the threshold of the automatic doors, assaulted by the lights and the sounds and the smell of fresh produce.
“Come on,” Charlotte said, tugging on my hand. “Nobody’s going to eat you.”
“A popular political phrase contradicts that claim.”
“Ha ha.” She rolled her eyes and dragged me inside. “You know, if you want to be rich, you could open up some grocery stores north of Central Park. It looked like a fucking food desert up there. Where do people get their groceries?”
“Bodegas,” I said, and when she abruptly looked to me with surprise, added, “I’m rich. Not totally unaware of the world around me.”
“Okay, well. Still, something to think about. Even nationally. You have enough money to put high-quality, low-priced food stores into a lot of communities.” She started walking, but my feet froze to the ground.
Of course, I’d heard about food deserts and the lack of available, affordable produce there, the high concentration of cheap, unhealthy fast food in areas deemed food swamps, but it had never occurred to me to do anything about it.
I’d recognized a need but hadn’t thought of a way to satisfy it.
Because I was always looking for a way to satisfy my own bank account. Which had way too much money in it for one person to spend.
“Are you coming?” she asked, looking back.
“Yeah. Tell me about this thing you want us to make,” I said, sliding my hands into the pockets of my jeans. The realization that Charlotte had hit me with her second profitable idea of the week had shaken me, in the best possible way.
“Okay, it’s these wraps that are so good.” She elongated the “so” with decadent enthusiasm. “My mom makes them with tortillas, but I’m telling you, spinach wrap is where it’s at.”
“Okay. What do we need?” I looked around helplessly.
“Since it’s your first time, you can follow me,” she teased. “I know, I know. It’s not your first time. You weathered all the hardships of the Ivy League experience.”
“Hey,” I complained, but didn’t follow it up. She was right; this was her world, and I was a guest in it.
It was fascinating to watch her breeze through the store, picking up items from memory. The spinach wraps, the lettuce, plain yogurt, guacamole, limes…
“How do you remember all this?” I asked.
“I mean, there are definitely recipes I need a list for, but these are a childhood favorite. I’m never gonna forget how to make these.” She sniffed a lime, considered, then put it back and tried another. At my raised eyebrow, she said, “I want a pungent one, because we need to use the zest.”
“Sure.” I nodded like I understood.
“What should we get to go with it? Mom always makes rice. Or couscous, if she forgets to start the rice on time. I’m good with either.” Charlotte’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, or some lime tortilla chips and fresh salsa.”
“Let’s go with the last one,’ I suggested, feeling deeply useless during this adventure.
At the checkout, I watched her eye the rising total with increasing agitation. Surely, she was aware that we could afford a few groceries. I handed over my credit card and the cashier looked at the black plastic, then at me.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“Just don’t see these every day.” She handed it back and gestured to a card reader on a stand. “Run it through there.”
I noted Charlotte’s smirk but did not dignify it with a strong facial reaction. I simply said, “I know how to use one of these,” and ran the card.
We were loading the groceries into the backseat of the car when I asked, “What did she mean about not seeing a credit card every day?”
“I think she meant she didn’t see people buying groceries with a black card every day.” Charlotte snickered and secured a bag on the floor. “What’s funny is, you’re a billionaire buying groceries on credit. Whenever I’ve done that, it’s because I’ve been short on cash.”
“Well, you caught me.” I opened the passenger door for her. “Now you know that I don’t grocery shop for myself every week.”
When we got home, we carried our own bags. She did most of the carrying, as one of my arms was occupied with my cane.
“Let me call someone down,” I insisted, watching as she helplessly struggled to balance a third paper bag atop the two in her arms.
“No!” she huffed. “It doesn’t count if we do it that way. Plus, if I can get it all in one trip, it’s a victory.”
Upstairs, she unpacked the bags with increasing glee. “Isn’t this fun?”
“So far, it’s taken an hour to get the things we need to even begin to make dinner, and I’m exhausted.” I was beginning to appreciate my wealth even more.
“Exactly. Fully normal. I feel like I’m in my element.” She hopped up on her toes and kissed my cheek before scanning the kitchen and worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. “We need stuff. Salt, pepper, a frying pan… but I have to pee. Do you mind getting started?”
“Not at all.” I gave her a kiss on the forehead and waved at her as she left the room. Then, I turned to all the stuff on the counter. And I panicked.
Salt, pepper, those were simple, right? I started opening drawers until I found tiny, shallow bowls for a mis en place. I poured out salt and pepper, then found bigger bowls for the yogurt, the pre-made guacamole, and a prep board. There was something about the limes…
“Hey, I—” She came to a halt at the end of the island. I hadn’t even heard her come back.
“You said zest.” I held up a lime helplessly. “What is that?”
She looked over the bowls I’d carefully arranged like a little prep station. “Usually, you can scoop everything out of the containers without dirtying a bowl. For future reference.”
“Noted.” I probably would have thought of that, if I ever did my own dishes.
I wouldn’t point that out to her.
But she didn’t need me to. “It’s not like you would have thought of it. You don’t do your own dishes. At least, you don’t leave your clothes and your used condoms on the ground or expect your staff to clean your sex toys. I read a book once where that happened and let me tell you: D. N. F.”
“Gross. I would never want someone else cleaning my sex toys. Except for at Ascend Red. But those people know how to get into all the nooks and crannies.” I paused. “What’s the acronym about?”
“Hmm?” She scanned her memory while she opened the spinach wraps. “Oh. DNF. Did not finish. It’s what you say when you don’t finish a book, and you don’t want people to think you’re a quitter.”
“Ouch. I don’t finish books all the time. I’m not a quitter.”
“I didn’t say you were. But some people have that attitude like, you couldn’t have stuck with it?
And no, I couldn’t. My time, while rarely dedicated to things like employment or any other worthwhile pursuit, is too valuable to me to waste it on a bad book.
” Her eyes narrowed. “But I won’t turn off a bad movie. Isn’t that strange?”
“Not really.” What was strange was the sheer volume of information about Charlotte and her personality that I was discovering by preparing a meal with her. My previous relationships hadn’t been like that, at all.
Of course, my past relationships hadn’t been like this one.
Not everyone had come from wealth or the upper social strata, but they’d all whole-heartedly embraced my lifestyle.
They’d relished the private chef, the household chores being taken care of for them, the fancy restaurants instead of hot dog carts.
My money hadn’t been a problem for them, but a bonus.
While Charlotte enjoyed the clothes and the trips and complained about not taking a private jet when possible, she still wanted to keep the mundane tasks of her own life.
“This is interesting,” I said, watching as she searched for a cutting board—which was not the same thing as a prep board, she informed me.
“Yeah?” She flashed me a smile and dropped a cutting board with the word “POULTRY” stamped across one end. “How so?”
“For the most part, I’ve shown you new things.”
“Have you ever,” she said with a snort.
“But you haven’t had a chance to show me new things.
Like I said, I did cook in college, but I’ve never made a proper meal in a real kitchen that didn’t have the suffix ‘enette’ attached.
I’ve never done this with a romantic partner before,” I explained.
“Even the ones who didn’t come from rich backgrounds were always content to be served by a personal chef. ”
“Literally all of your needs seem to be taken care of by other people. I honestly think if you could hire someone to pee for you, you would.” She found a knife and opened the plastic wrap around the packaged, raw chicken. “Zest the lime for me?”
“Sure. How do I do that?”
With great patience and freshly washed hands after having touched the chicken, she took a lime and a serrated knife and gently scraped the green part of the skin away with a few strokes.
“Away from yourself. Never toward,” she instructed. “And don’t cut too deep. Just scrape it all into a little pile.”
I set all my concentration on my task while she found plastic wrap and covered the chicken before whacking the hell out of it with a meat hammer.
“This is so violent,” I said, jumping at the thud of the mallet. “Do you have to be so rough?”
“Unless you want strips of chicken that are like four inches tall, yeah.” She looked over at my work and said, “You’re doing a good job.”
I never realized I had a praise kink.
“I think the reason this is so fascinating to you,” she began, peeling the plastic back and taking up a knife, “is that you’re used to whisking people away on adventured. Fulfilling their fantasies. That’s what you do, right?”
The concept seemed to amuse her, to strike her as corny somehow. “I mean, yeah. That’s my thing.”