Chapter 1 Now #2
“Thank you. There’s even more.” I indulge myself in a dramatic pause. “I, for the first time ever, prepped, cooked, and served an entire meal on my own.”
Lauren gasps. “Thea! You buried the lede!”
“I know!” The crosswalk signal tells me I can safely cross, right as a car whizzes through the intersection. I wait another second, look both ways, then step off the curb.
“So,” she says, “what’s this meal Hot Chef taught you to cook?”
I scowl. “Stop calling him that.”
“Why?”
“Because his name is Alex.”
“Not because you don’t want me to remind you that he’s a hot chef?”
“I don’t need to be reminded of that. I’m aware.”
“So jump his bones, already!” she yells.
“Lauren, we’ve been through this.”
She sighs, then says flatly, “Because he’s your local best friend”—a distinction she makes every time Alex comes up, and every time it makes me smile—“and friends don’t jump friends’ bones.”
“Especially local friends,” I remind her.
“So move away,” she says. “You’ve been talking about it for years. Then visit the ’burgh and jump his bones.”
To Lauren, this is a simple problem with a simple solution. To me, it is anything but.
She doesn’t know I see it differently. I haven’t admitted to Lauren how much Alex means to me, because I can barely manage to admit it myself.
Lauren doesn’t know, because I haven’t told her, that I love Alex, that I love him so much that loving him as anything other than my friend will be the last thing I do.
Because loving him as anything other than my best friend would mean loving him in a way that could end badly. And I will never risk that.
“It’s not that easy,” I tell Lauren, a sliver of the truth. “I can’t just move away. I’m still working on getting full ownership of Argos.”
“Oh my god, Thea, just take the dog from your shitty ex-husband—hell, I’ll come steal him for you—so you can get out of there already.”
“I’m not positive I’m going to leave. I’m… still weighing my options, here. Professionally, that is.”
Lauren’s quiet for a beat, then says, “You think you want to go for it, submit the co-ownership proposal for The Bookshop?”
“Yes. And no.”
“Those would be conflicting answers.”
“That’s because I’m feeling conflicted.”
“About what?” she asks.
I glance over my shoulder at The Bookshop, the dark charcoal-painted brick facade burnished bronze by the sunset.
The thriving glossy green ferns I planted out front, in honor of my boss, Fern, that made her smile in a way I’d never seen before.
And then I turn, facing ahead, toward Alex’s house. My heart twinges.
I used to be so sure, after the divorce, that I wanted out of Pittsburgh, the city my ex had dragged me to.
Two messy, healing years later, I find myself pinned between a rock and a hard place of loving my life here so much that I can’t stand the thought of leaving it, and dreading all the ways I could get hurt if I stayed.
“Thea?” Lauren says. “What aren’t you saying?”
“Compromise,” I tell her.
Lauren groans, then audibly gulps her margarita. “I’m listening.”
“You talk about the reason you wanted me to call, everything that’s making you miserable at work, and stop acting like a protective older sister who never lets herself have any problems—”
“You sound like my therapist,” Lauren mutters.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I tell her.
“And your part of this compromise?” she says.
“Tell me what’s going on with you, and I’ll tell you… some of what I’m weighing—”
“Only some?” she yells.
“And,” I add, “my plan to get Argos.”
Lauren’s silent for a beat, deliberating. “You really, truly, actually have a plan to get the dog for good?”
I hike the stack of children’s books higher in my arm and tell her, “I do. And I think it’s going to work.”
“Does it involve Ethan’s prolonged physical suffering?”
“Not likely, but definitely acute humiliation.”
“Fine,” she sighs, “but I want to switch to FaceTime first. I want to see the sinister, scheming glint in your eye when you tell me your fiendish plan.”
“Fine,” I say back, “but if I trip on the sidewalk and eat pavement because I’m looking at my phone instead of what’s in front of me, you have to jump on the next plane from…” I have no idea where she is right now, just that she isn’t where she was the last time we talked. “Not-Chicago?”
“Or, as most call it,” she says, “San Francisco.”
“San Francisco,” I tell her, “and nurse me back to health.”
“No deal.”
“Wow. Some friend you are.”
“Oh, I’m the best kind of friend,” she tells me. “Because if I stayed put, your local best friend, whose house you’re walking to now, would nurse you back to health instead.”
“Lauren!” I come to a dead stop on the sidewalk. “No location tracking!”
“I’m not tracking your location,” she says. “Just working off a hunch, which you’ve now confirmed.”
I shut my eyes and sigh. “Dammit.”
“Answer my FaceTime request, would you?”
I jab at my phone and hit the accept button. Her flawless, infuriating face pops up—bright green eyes, that sleek ink-black bob, a shit-eating grin.
“You,” I tell her, “are going to talk about work. Right now. Or I’m hanging up.”
She’s sprawled across a chaise on a sunny balcony, the blurry background of a bougie hotel behind her shifting as she sips her margarita.
“Sure thing,” she says. “Just one request, before I start. Please make sure we’re still FaceTiming when you get to his place.
I haven’t seen Hot Chef’s hot face in way too long. ”
My walk from the bookstore to Alex’s house isn’t far, the weather so dreamily perfect, that even if it was a hike, I wouldn’t notice.
By the time I’m coming up on the alley behind his house, I’ve told Lauren about the professional side of my stay-or-go dilemma as well as my get-the-dog-for-good plan, she’s filled me in on her client from hell misery, and Lauren’s wrapping up her second room-service taco. My stomach growls loudly.
“That looks so good,” I tell her.
“It is,” she says around her mouthful. “Have Hot Chef make you some.”
I roll my eyes as I turn into the alley. “He’s not my personal chef, Lo. And he’s busy right now, working on his next cookbook. If he’s testing recipes and whipped up something, I’ll eat it. If he hasn’t, I brought my leftover SpaghettiOs.”
“Thea. SpaghettiOs are barely edible to begin with. Leftover SpaghettiOs?” She gags.
“Back off my ’Os,” I tell her. “You and Alex are such haters.”
“What can I say? Hot Chef and I know good food.”
I open Alex’s backyard gate on a rusty squeak, then drag it shut behind me. “You’re fancy-food snobs, is what you are.”
“Uh-huh.” She pops the last bite of taco in her mouth and leans in, eyes narrowed. “Well,” she says, “I can see you’ve made it safely to your destination. And that Hot Chef keeps as messy a backyard as ever.”
I smile at her FaceTime view of the scene behind me. Lumpy grass and weed-ridden flower beds, chewed-up tennis balls, a kid-size soccer net that’s seen better days.
“It’s not messy,” I tell her. “It’s lived in.”
Lauren says, “It’s messy.”
“He’s got a high-energy six-year-old! And Argos is here all the time, tearing up his yard.”
“Is he.” She grins. “Meaning you’re there all the time, too.”
I lift my chin, defiant. Yes, I hang out with Alex most nights of the week. What’s the big deal? “So?” I ask.
“That’s an awful lot of time to spend with your local best friend whose bones you say you don’t want to jump—”
“I’m hanging up.”
“No, you’re not! I get to see Hot Chef’s hot face first, that was the deal.”
“Actually,” I tell her, “that was what you requested. I didn’t agree to it.”
Her mouth falls open. “You little shit.”
“Guess I’m getting better at pushing after all, huh?” I smile and wave. “Love you, bye!”
She flips me the bird, leans in for a smooch to the screen, then ends the call.
I’ll send you a pic of Alex, I text her.
Olive branch not accepted, she texts back. Unless it’s a pic of Hot Chef’s hot ass.
I laugh as I pocket my phone and step over another Argos-chewed tennis ball.
The warm breeze picks up and stirs the trees, whips my hair, lifting it from my sweaty neck.
I stop, savoring the moment as I glance out across the yard and drink it in—the sunset that’s turned hazy nightlight soft as it hovers on the horizon, the comforting glow of Alex’s string lights that kick on, zigzagged above the yard.
It feels so right. And two years ago, standing in this exact place felt so wrong.
Two years ago, everything felt wrong. That’s when my life story unraveled, when my happily ever after ended in my ex-husband, Ethan, at my suggestion of couple’s counseling, suggesting that we get divorced.
Then, very soon after, falling for another woman.
It felt like I was living a nightmare that I couldn’t wait to wake up from.
And yet, it led me to this—a moment that feels like a daydream that I never want to end.
Smiling to myself, I take the three steps up to the stoop and open the door.