Chapter 17
Seventeen
ADDIE
The only thing Eli had ever really made for me at this point was toast with an obscene amount of peanut butter on it most mornings, and so I had yet to see him in his element.
The kitchen.
What he was doing in there was pretty simple. Chopping, stirring, slicing, tasting. Basic cooking stuff.
But watching Eli’s hands perform those actions was like watching an artist at work.
If I thought that he was centred and calm during our yoga class earlier, it had nothing on how he was in the kitchen. Once I had assured him again that I was joking about the possibility of us ruining his Vivi’s career before it had even started.
He was clearly good at his job, and apparently, I was the kind of person who found someone being competent at what they did sexy.
Which was, frankly, unwanted.
And maybe it would pass when I was done ovulating, or the spirit that had possessed my body with the express intention of jumping Eli’s bones got bored waiting and bothered someone else.
Thankfully, I had been set free from the kitchen with mountains of gratitude from Kayla and was now sitting at our table in the main dining area.
I have no idea how the table I was sitting at—which was set for seven today—had become ‘ours’. All I knew was that we always sat at it, and it was always ‘reserved’ as a table for four on any given day.
It wasn’t what I would call the best table in the place, but it was perfectly placed for people watching. Considering that Clara and Jesse were the ones who made use of this table, it made sense.
Vivi’s had the eternal vibe of an outdoor plaza in France during August. There was a laid-back nature to it.
Giant windows on two sides that allowed an ample amount of light in, no matter how grey the London sky was, which all the plants dotted around the room appreciated.
The real ones, anyway. There were a number of fake ones thrown in as well to cut down on plant maintenance.
Wooden tables that always had a candle lit in the middle (the one on our table was sea salt, all the others were as neutral a scent as Xander could find) filled the floor, and the chairs were made of soft, brown leather.
There wasn’t a single table where you couldn’t see some part of the kitchen, but thankfully, Eli wasn’t visible from where I sat.
Kayla, however, had her tongue poking between her teeth as she piped something that was out of sight.
The tables were slowly filling up with staff members who waved courteously in my direction and then carried on with whatever conversations they were having amongst themselves.
I was just waiting for someone else to show up at my table and thinking about how Goneril might just be the epitome of ‘eldest daughter’ energy.
“I’m still very confused why it took you so long to answer me the other day, when the truth is so fucking obvious, it’s almost blinding. I forgot he looked like that, and you had the nerve to give it some thought,” Clara said as she sat down opposite me at the table, jolting me out of my head.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Jesse, what did you say when you walked past the kitchen and caught sight of the new chef while he set fire to a sauce?”
Jesse’s cheeks were flushed as he sat next to my sister.
“Why have you got to involve me in this?” he asked. He didn’t sound annoyed, just amused that he had been roped into an argument between sisters. Although I still had no idea what we were arguing about.
“Because it was the first thing you noticed, and it proves that my little macaroon over there is full of shit.”
I looked at Jesse. He looked between us, then took a deep breath.
“I said that it seemed mean that he was confined to a kitchen. He is aggressively attractive. I will say, Clo, you downplayed his attractiveness when you mentioned him last week.” Jesse took note of the smile on my sister’s face. “Happy?” he asked her.
“Oh, I’m elated. Anything you would like to say, Addie?” Clara looked smug, like she had caught me in a lie. She hadn’t. Not really.
“I said he wasn’t unattractive. What exactly about that statement makes me full of shit?”
I was absolutely full of shit. Whatever Eli was, after today, it didn’t feel like it could be encompassed by the word ‘attractive’. Clara didn’t need to know that, though.
“Because it was a gross understatement and you did it on purpose.” Clara sat up and waved someone over. “Rach, your thoughts on the new chef?” she asked as Rachel arrived around our table.
Rachel sat down next to Jesse. I felt like I was in an interrogation now. Shit, this was the full cavalry, in person for the first time in years. I’d given Clara an inch with my half-truth. And they were all going to take the mile. This was going to be hell.
“I think he looks stressed out of his mind.”
Clara turned in her chair to look into the kitchen. It was still only Kayla in view. “Oh, I hope he’s okay.” She turned back around to Rachel. “Not to completely change the tone, but what did you think of him?”
Rachel laughed. “So when you asked if I had thoughts, what you were actually asking was if I had noticed that the new chef is the kind of attractive that feels like it should be illegal?” Rachel directed this at me, the corners of her mouth pulling into a smirk.
“You lucked out in the flatmate department. He can cook and potentially launch a thousand ships,” Rachel continued, a hand playfully fanning her face.
“He doesn’t really cook at home. He’s here most days, and I cook dinner. I don’t see that changing much in the near future.”
“Boy, if I told teenage Addie that one day she would be cooking dinner for Elijah Vincent, she would have slapped me,” Clara said, a broad smile on her face.
“Twenty-nine-year-old Addie might still do that, macaron. Just for funsies.” I threw an insincere smile her way, and then the twins arrived.
“Why is Addie threatening violence?” Lucy asked as she, thankfully, sat next to me. She was wearing almost exactly what she wore to yoga—cycling shorts and a longline bralette—only in white, not black.
“She thinks Elijah Vincent is hot,” Clara said with a shrug.
“Oh. I thought it would be more exciting than that. You should have seen her earlier in our yoga class, she nearly fell flat on her face watching him at one point,” Lucy responded, her eyes glittering.
I felt the heat of Clara’s eyes on me and glared at my least favourite Harris twin.
“Come again?” Clara asked.
“I did not nearly fall on my face watching him. My knee slipped off my sweaty arm, and I couldn’t find my balance,” I said to Lucy before turning to my sister. “Eli, Lucy, and I were in the same yoga class this morning. Also, please stop calling him Elijah Vincent.”
“Wait, that’s who you hated in secondary school? Was it a crush that you confused for loathing?” Becky said, wearing a hot pink version of Lucy’s outfit, as she dropped into the chair on the other side of me, leaving one chair empty.
I huffed. Clara beamed, and Rachel and Lucy managed harmonised snorts.
“Why does everyone think I had a crush on him?” I didn’t then. “He was the bane—”
“Of your existence. Yes, I know,” Clara interjected before looking at Becky. Her eyes were downcast. “Where’s Gavin?” she asked warily.
Becky sighed and lifted her head. “Work.”
Clara’s eyebrows drew together. Rachel reached across the table to rest a hand on Becky’s forearm.
I wanted to ask for more details, but no one seemed like they wanted to talk about it.
In fact, just one word had shifted the entire mood of the table.
The weight of my absence and being out of the physical loop for so long dropped heavily against me.
“I didn’t have a crush on him then…but I might have one now,” I said, to break the tension at the table that I didn’t understand, and to also put me back in the loop.
This involved me, so they couldn’t leave me out.
Clara’s eyes lit up, and she clapped a hand on the table. The tension seemed to ease slightly.
“Oh, this is better than I thought.”
“That chicken was the best thing I’ve eaten in weeks,” Rachel said as she pushed her plate away and rubbed her stomach.
“I don’t know whether or not I should be offended since I’ve been the one feeding you for at least two weeks,” Jesse said as he twirled the last strands of spaghetti on his plate around a fork. Clara was playing with the hair at the nape of his neck, her plate empty.
“Sounds to me like you need to cut her off,” Becky joked. Her mood was brighter now that she had eaten, although she kept looking at her phone. Jesse laughed as he ate the last bits of his food.
“No! I mean, please don’t. You made a delicious paella the other night. I’m still thinking about it,” Rachel said frantically.
“You made a paella?” Becky asked, jealousy bleeding into her voice.
Clara nodded. “On a random Tuesday. It was good. Rach isn’t wrong.”
“Can I move into your spare room, Rachel, if you’re getting a random home-cooked paella on a Tuesday?” Becky asked, tapering off into a laugh. Although it didn’t necessarily sound like a joke.
“I’ll send out a telegram the next time he gets fancy for dinner,” Clara said, resting her head on Jesse’s shoulder. I had never known my sister to be this tactile with a partner before. It was almost like she couldn’t not touch him in some way. Even two years in.
“We will never get—” Lucy trailed off as Eli approached our table.
“I have it on good authority that if I want honest feedback, then this is the table to get it from,” Eli said.
“Our dads are out here making it sound like we’re Anton Ego or some shit,” Lucy scoffed.
“So, were they wrong?” Eli asked. He sounded nervous. I was still regretting my poor attempt at a joke earlier. I feared that it had done nothing for his nerves.
“No, they weren’t. But now, when we tell you that it was amazing, you’re going to think that we’re lying because they made us sound like the Big Bad,” Becky answered, nodding her head at the adults’ table.
“Do you actually think that?” he asked, still sounding sheepish.
“See! This is what I mean. Yes, we really did think that. And yes, I can speak for the whole table because we were just talking about it,” Becky said.
“I thought the pasta was wonderful. What was the sauce you used?” Jesse cut in. Eli’s shoulders seemed to drop now that another voice had offered compliments.
“It was lemon, mascarpone, some cayenne pepper, and then some of the oil that the chorizo was fried in,” Eli answered.
Jesse turned to Clara. “I told you there was something to do with chorizo in the sauce itself.”
“You cook?” Eli asked.
Jesse looked back at Eli. “Yeah. Everything but lasagne. That is all Clo here.”
I couldn’t see it, but it looked like there was movement under the table where Jesse was touching Clara’s thigh.
Much like I had never seen her be so touchy-feely, I had also never seen anyone be so tactile with Clara before.
It was the most comfortable I had ever seen her.
It opened a wound somewhere that made me yearn for something like that.
A safe space full of small moments. I hadn’t yearned for something like that since I was in my mid-teens.
“That’s cool. What about you, Addie, thoughts?”
I turned my head to look at Eli. His deep brown eyes were already locked in on me. It was like my answer had the power to make or break him.