Chapter 30
I try to push the thought out of my mind, but it’s a bully.
I decide not to tell Sammie my theory yet, having learned long ago to think before I speak.
I try to keep my mind on my béchamel, but it breaks.
I try to mince the garlic but get the tip of my finger, don’t notice at first, yet again peppering the kitchen with blood, then forget about the cut again until later, when I squeeze lemons right into the open wound.
When I go to drop the lobsters into the pot of boiling water, I get distracted by Birdie at my foot and am pinched painfully by a claw, drop it on the floor, and end up in a scene worthy of the Marx Brothers.
In the end, dinner is ruined again when I drastically overcook the lobsters, dealing with everything else. The lobsters, not the Marx Brothers.
I’m standing there, hands on hips, accepting that fact when I hear Austin behind me.
“You okay?”
I turn, and he takes in the bloody gauze on my finger, the lobster in the sink.
“Do I not seem okay?”
“You seem like a woman in a Hallmark movie. Except instead of flour on your face”—he licks his finger and swipes at my cheekbone—“it’s blood.”
I swat his hand away. “Stop that.” It doesn’t come out firm, like I’d like it to. It comes out as a whisper, a plea to touch me again. Instead of letting it linger, I nervously say, “I guess it doesn’t matter that I have a cut. It won’t be there in the morning.”
We stay in that weirdness for a second.
He takes a step back. “I know you don’t love accepting help, but maybe you can make an exception.”
“No, I’m fine. I’m just going to find something in the pantry or the freezer. It’ll be fine.”
He hesitates, and then says, “I actually—” He goes to the bottom drawer of the fridge. “I sort of prepared for this situation.”
“You what?”
He pulls out a few trays of raw burgers separated by parchment paper. “Don’t make this a whole thing, Red.”
“So you knew I’d screw it up. You were that sure.” I stare at the burgers, wondering how I’d missed him buying them.
“I thought it couldn’t hurt to have a backup.”
“Wow.”
Adrenaline has been coursing through me, as it does now, whenever I cook. Usually, it’s the right level of energy for a night at Baccarat, but here, where there’s no hurry, it’s rattling around inside me and turning into anxiety, making me edgy.
“Respectfully,” he ventures, as I arch an eyebrow, “this is a lot of dead lobsters for a kitchen that doesn’t plan on serving them.”
We both look over at the sink for a moment, before I say, “No—you know what, I’ll just go back to Lawson’s and—”
He catches me by the apron string tied around my waist and says, “You’re not going to go get five more poor lobsters. Let’s just eat the backup burgers.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“I can do this, Austin.”
My words seem to come from somewhere deep inside me, bringing with them the threat of heavy tears. I breathe through the urge until they wane again.
“It’s okay to get a little help, sweetheart.”
My heart skips as he calls me that. The lilt of that Texas accent putting an undeniably sexy spin on the word.
“Don’t sweetheart me.” I try to mean it, but it comes out distinctly flirty.
“All right.” He laughs. “No sweetheart.”
Even there, it makes me feel weak.
“Look. You’re an amazing chef, everyone knows that. Is it not okay for the perfect Didion Bennett to falter sometimes?”
I think about Baccarat. The critics. The high-stakes meetings we have every week, sometimes more than that, about the razor’s edge the restaurant lives on. “Not really.”
“Not Chef Bennett, of Baccarat.” He seems to read my mind. “What about Didion Bennett, the girl I used to know, huh?”
“Yeah, well.” I turn to the counter and busy myself. “You don’t know her now.”
When he says nothing, I glance back at him.
He tilts his head at me now, exposes that dimple again, a shadow falling in his eyes. “It’s a pity your own foot can’t slip a little sometime.”
Oh, and do I catch the reference. The Philadelphia Story played once at the movie theater in town; Austin and I saw it together for the first time.
The human frailty monologue struck a chord with us both, though it hadn’t come up until a fight later, when he referenced my so-called strength, my prejudice against weakness and blank intolerance, paraphrasing Cary Grant in his lines to Katharine Hepburn.
The fight had erupted, and when we made up, that’s when I—like Tracy Lord in the movie—earned the nickname Red.
For my hair, yes, but also for my temper.
The temper he promised me he liked, because he liked all of me.
At the time, anyway.
“Is that all?” I ask.
He smiles at the obvious, reluctant warmth in my tone and takes the burgers in the direction of the covered grill outside, saying, “That’s the gist of it.”
Weighty emotion courses under my skin and presses on my lungs. I stare at a spot on the wall for a long time before I set it all aside, and go about cleaning the kitchen, as if I can scrub away all the feelings I’ve spent so long ignoring.
The ones that are rearing up like angry hyenas, refusing to be ignored any longer.