Chapter 18 Eliana
ELIANA
meal prep: /mēl prep/: noun
Saturday morning hits different when you’ve spent Friday night doing…
whatever you call what I just did. I wake with that particular brand of emotional hangover that comes from enabling someone you love to hurt themselves, plus the actual hangover from all that Chilean Carménère.
My mouth tastes like a used ashtray from The Little Mermaid’s underwater collection. I loathe myself.
I squint at my ceiling, where a water stain shaped like Australia has been slowly growing for the past six months. My landlord keeps promising to fix it. You know what would be better than Mr. Estrada fixing it, though?
Bastian fixing it.
Just like that, my depraved little brain is off and running.
It’s conjuring up images of a shirtless Bastian in blue jeans with a toolbelt looped low around his waist. It’s imagining him sweating just slightly, a drop of it nestling in his chest hair, as he hammered and sawed and nailed or whatever the hell one does to fix a leaky ceiling.
It pictures those hands—Good Lord almighty, those hands—doing other stuff that maybe wouldn’t fix the ceiling but would probably go a long way towards fixing something else that’s leaky.
Ew. I’m gross.
I roll over and bury my face in my pillow, but that’s no better. It just makes me remember how he smelled in the car. God, I’m pathetic. The man had to pay me eleven thousand dollars a day to tolerate him, but here I am getting butterflies simply because he almost-maybe-sorta-kinda touched my face.
We all come from somewhere, Eliana. That’s what he said.
What kind of “somewhere” shaped a man like Bastian Hale? He knew the words to “Baby Got Back,” for God’s sake. What combination of forces produces a man like that?
It’s like some sicko pervert raised on romance novels went into Build-A-Boss Workshop and put together a truly insane array of components.
He’s an asshole and a joker, a bon vivant and a petulant prince.
He is an enigma with an incredible palate and the things he is doing to my brain, heart, and body should be brought up in the Hague for war crimes against womankind.
I lie there for a while, thinking myself in endless circles. I would probably keep on doing just that if Yasmin didn’t text.
YASMIN KAUR
Trader Joe’s in 30 or I’m eating cereal for every meal this week.
It’s our weekly ritual: grocery shopping and meal prep together, because we both know that, left to our own devices, we’d make your standard TikTok-inspired “Girl Dinner” look gourmet.
I’ve caught Yas eating dry, unboiled ramen noodles before when I canceled on our Saturday Shop ‘N’ Yap.
Just munching on a brick of the stuff, unseasoned. Terrifying.
So, for her sake and for mine, I drag myself vertical, throw on my least offensive sweatpants, and attempt to rearrange my face to make it look less like I’ve been crying into my pillow. The result is marginal at best, but whatever—Yasmin’s seen worse.
By 9:15, we’re navigating the special circle of hell that is Trader Joe’s on a weekend morning.
The place is packed with every demographic of Chicagoan: yoga moms with their post-class glow, couples arguing over which hummus to buy, college kids loading up on Two Buck Chuck like the apocalypse is nigh.
“Produce first,” Yasmin announces, grabbing a cart.
“As is tradition.”
We have this down to a science. I grab bell peppers while she debates between spinach and kale. She handles the onions because they make me cry even on good days, and today is decidedly not that.
But something’s off. Yasmin keeps pulling out her phone, squinting at it, then shoving it back in her pocket with a shudder.
“Okay, spill. What’s happening?” I ask as we stand before the meat section.
“Nothing.”
“That’s your ‘something’ face. The one you made when you accidentally sexted your dad that eggplant emoji.”
“We agreed never to speak of that again.” But her laugh sounds forced and brittle around the edges.
She pulls out her phone again and reluctantly shows it to me. What I see are texts. Dozens of them, all from an unsaved number. The preview is enough to make my stomach drop.
I miss you
We should talk
Why are you ignoring me
Bitch
“Brandon?” I ask, wrinkling my nose.
“Yeah. He got a new number. Again.” She deletes the thread with shaking fingers, but not before I see more:
I saw you at the coffee shop yesterday. You looked good
Answer me
You can’t avoid me forever you fucking slut
“Yas… ”
“It’s been three months.” Her voice is too polished, which is a dead giveaway that she’s trying not to cry in public.
“I’ve blocked, like, five different numbers, but it doesn’t matter.
He just gets new ones. Last night—” She stops and slam dunks a package of chicken thighs into the cart.
“Last night, I was pretty sure he followed me on the train, so I got off three stops early and hid in a Walgreens for half an hour.”
The fluorescent lights suddenly feel too bright. “That’s stalking, Yas.”
“I know.” She laughs too squeakily. “But what am I supposed to do? The cops won’t care until something actually happens. I can’t afford to move. I definitely can’t change jobs. I just have to… exist while he does this.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Because you’re literally going blind, El. You have actual problems. This is just… ” She waves her hand vaguely. “Drama.”
“Stop.” I take her hand in mine. “This isn’t ‘drama.’ This is criminal. And you’re staying at my place tonight. I don’t care if we have to sleep in shifts—you’re not going home alone.”
She starts to argue, but I press a finger to her lips.
“Save your breath, ‘cause I don’t even wanna hear it. I love you and if he comes for us, I’m gonna turn him into a shish-kabob, okay?
After meal prep, we’re filing a police report and a restraining order.
But first…” I lead her into the bakery, where I grab a carton of sprinkle sugar cookies and add them to our otherwise healthy smorgasbord.
“We deserve a sweet treat. And I’m maybe gonna try to set you up with someone who isn’t a walking red flag. ”
“Oh, God, please don’t. I can’t handle your matchmaking energy right now.”
“I make no promises.”
We finish shopping in relative normalcy—if normalcy includes Yasmin jumping every time someone’s cart comes too close and me mentally cataloging every exit in case Brandon somehow appears.
The fact that I’m even thinking that way makes me want to find him and introduce his face to my knee. Repeatedly.
I wasn’t a fan of Brandon the first time we met. We got dinner at a little bistro in River North, the three of us, and he took zero pains to hide the fact that he was checking out the asses of every waitress who walked past. But Yas seemed to like him, so I swallowed my opinions.
Even when they started dating, I had to shut up more often than I would’ve liked. He made Yas cry a bit too often and didn’t show up for her important things often enough. It wasn’t until the break-up that I finally ‘fessed up about how I felt.
Turns out I was right the whole time. Brandon was a Derek. And if there’s one thing I know in this world, it’s how to spot a Derek from a mile away.
Back at my apartment, we fall into our meal-prep rhythm. Vegetables get washed, dried, chopped. The rice cooker is doing its thing. Three pans are sizzling on my ancient stove that only has two working burners, so we have to rotate, and all the while, The Golden Bachelor plays on my TV.
It takes Yasmin until the carrots are almost roasted to bring up the subject I was really hoping to avoid.
“So. Let’s talk about these oysters.”
I focus very hard on my knife work. “Don’t start.”
“Start? Start what? Who’s starting? I’m not starting anything. I’m simply making a completely neutral observation that Bastian Hale, notorious emotional void and corporate Satan, took you out on the town to hand-feed you a known aphrodisiac.”
“We were already out, and we were hungry, so really, it was just convenient—”
“And then drove you to your mom’s place and waited in the hallway like some kind of… ” She searches for words. “Brooding guardian angel. Which is big boyfriend energy, by the way.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“I didn’t say he was. I said he has the energy.”
I scrape onions into the pan, perhaps slightly angrily. “We signed a deal and I’m sticking to it. I’m definitely not catching feelings for someone who comes with a built-in expiration date.”
“This is textbook denial, Elly.” She’s waggling a knife at me to punctuate her points.
I step out of range. She talks with her hands under normal circumstances, so safe to say I’m not a huge fan of adding sharp objects to the equation.
“There’s literally an entry in the DSM that just has the word ‘denial’ and your face next to it. ”
I gently redirect her wrist so that the knife is no longer pointed at my jugular. “Can we please just watch terrible reality TV and pretend my life is normal?”
“Your life has never been normal. That’s why we’re friends.”
But she lets it go. We work in comfortable silence after that. I notice that Yas keeps looking at her phone where it’s lying face-down on my coffee table, but she makes no move to check it.
Then, because the universe has a twisted sense of humor, the building fire alarm goes off.
“Every goddamn week,” Yasmin mutters as we sigh and grab our coats.
Outside, the building’s residents cluster on the sidewalk in various states of weekend disarray.
Mrs. Byrd from upstairs is in a bathrobe and curlers.
The guys from 1A are clearly still wasted from last night.
And I’m in my holey Northwestern sweatpants, ratty t-shirt, hair in what can charitably be called a bun but more accurately resembles a bird’s nest. No makeup. Probably some marinade on my shirt.
So naturally, that’s when Bastian jogs past.