Chapter 4 Now
I walk into Alex’s house and, with a nudge of my butt, shut the door, smiling at the familiar sight that greets me.
Alex at the stove, his faded black Pirates ball cap turned backward, its brim barely restraining curling licks of dark hair.
A white undershirt stretched across his shoulders and back, old threadbare jeans, two black apron strings tied low at his waist.
Slipping off my Birkenstocks, I say, “Smells good!”
Alex’s response is a monosyllabic grunt.
Not a good cooking day, then.
Scooting my Birkies toward the wall, out of the way, I breathe in.
Fresh-baked bread, butter, lemon, and… thyme, maybe?
I’m still learning my herbs. Whatever it is, it sure smells like a good cooking day to me.
Then again, my culinary wheelhouse is meals that start in the freezer and end in the microwave, so what do I know?
I try to steady the wobbling tower of books in my arms as I set them down, but they end up tumbling domino-style across the kitchen table. I sigh, defeated, as I shrug off my messenger bag and set it beside the pile of books. I’ll straighten them out later.
Judging by the grunt, this is not the time to ask Alex if there’s anything edible up for grabs, so I pull the container of leftover SpaghettiOs from my bag and unsnap the lid.
Alex lifts his head and goes still. He’s caught a whiff. The man has a bloodhound’s sniffer.
“Bold move,” he says, “bringing that trash into my kitchen.”
“Bold move,” I tell him, “calling early copies of highly anticipated children’s literature ‘trash’ in the presence of a bookseller.”
That earns me a small shake of his head, a wry smile I can’t see with his back to me, but I feel it all the same. “Not what I was talking about,” he says, “and you know it. Put the trash where it belongs, Ted.”
Gambling, I ask, “Got something better to offer?”
“Working on it,” he mutters, whisking as he adds a pinch of something to the saucepan.
I grab a spoon from the silverware drawer and scrape it around the container. “I don’t know,” I tell him, peering down uneasily at the SpaghettiOs. Lauren was right, darn her. Leftover ’Os are gross. “This is some tasty ‘trash’ I’ve got. I think it’s too tempting to toss.”
“Ted.” He sounds exasperated.
“C’mon, you know you want to taste it.” I lean his way, extending my spoonful, and chant-whisper, “Do it, do it, do it.”
Alex turns, facing me, and our eyes lock. My belly does a swoop.
Hot Chef indeed, Lauren’s voice says in my head. She drives me up the wall when she calls him that, but she’s not wrong.
Blue-flame eyes, hard-work muscles, tan skin tattooed with high-heat burns.
Loose curls of coffee-dark hair that he scrapes his fingers through when he’s stressed and tucks inside a ball cap when he’s cooking.
Thick brows and lashes, a five-o’clock shadow that shows up at noon.
There’s an attractive intensity to Alex’s looks, but even more so there’s an intensity in his gaze when he looks at me that feels like the first time I flicked on the light switch in my apartment and a jolt of electricity barreled through me.
I found an electrician who fixed the light switch. I have yet to find anything that fixes what happens when Alex looks at me.
“Ted,” he says again. I shouldn’t, but I love when he says my name like that. Frustration shot through with fondness.
“Alex.” I smile impishly as he leans in, commanding my heart not to fly in my chest.
He smells like he always does, woodsy spice and lemon kitchen soap. But then I catch a whiff of another kind of spice, the kind I haven’t smelled in nearly two years. My eyes widen. I point with my spoonful of SpaghettiOs, and say, “Nicorette!”
“Yes, Nicorette.” Alex plucks the container and spoon from my hand, then unceremoniously chucks them into the sink.
My smile drops. “What’s going on?”
“Have you checked your email recently?”
“Of course I have. You know how often I check my email.”
He nods, working the Nicorette in his mouth. “Right. Which is why I’m confused.”
“Makes two of us.”
“When did you check it?” he asks.
I wrinkle my nose, trying to remember the specifics. “An hour ago, maybe two? Why?”
He closes his eyes and presses his palms against them. This is clearly stressing him out. “Would you just… check again? Please?”
“Okay, okay.” I unearth my phone from my stretchy overalls pocket and open up my email.
Alex leans in, his chest brushing my shoulder.
“Oof,” I tell him. “Nicorette smells awful.”
“Tastes awful,” he says, then he nods his chin at my phone. “Email, Ted.”
“Right.”
We both scan my tidy inbox. Its contents are unremarkable, with the exception of an email that came in this morning from my water provider, explaining they’re going to charge me three hundred dollars for using water that I didn’t use, but that’s a problem for Tomorrow Morning Thea, who doesn’t go in to work until noon.
“This month’s water bill?” I ask.
“It doesn’t make sense.” Alex yanks off his ball cap and scrapes his fingers through his hair. “You were on the email, too.”
“What email?”
“The one,” he says, tugging his ball cap back on, “from your ex-husband and my ex-wife.”
I blink, stunned.
An email from Ethan and Jen means it’s Capital N News—something too important to text about, too awkward to say in person.
Alex and I have discussed this before, that at any point these past two years, the moment could come when they’d announce their engagement, elopement, pregnancy.
It’s seemed inevitable. My stomach still knots.
Alex leans a hip against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. “You still have Ethan’s email filtered out of your inbox, don’t you?”
I point to the hidden garbage cabinet behind him. “Straight to the Trash.”
“Not just any ‘Trash’ folder, though.” Alex lifts his eyebrows after a beat of my silence, confusion etched in his expression. “If I remember correctly? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m not looking at you,” I tell him. “I’m thinking.”
“At me?” he asks.
“I frown when I’m thinking, you know that.”
Suddenly, the memory of what he’s referring to comes rushing back. Peering down at my phone, I tap my way to my email’s Trash. It’s been so long since I made that vindictively titled subfolder, let alone looked at it, I honestly forgot it existed.
“You remember correctly,” I tell him. “The Buttface McGee subfolder remains.” My frown returns. “Why has Ethan been forwarding me scammy home warranty offer emails?”
Alex leans in, staring at my phone. A notch forms in his brow. “Ted, when’s the last time you checked this folder?”
“Never. That being the point of filtering my ex’s email address—oh, God, there it is.”
I stare at the screen, my thumb hovering over the newest email.
Subject: Family Vacation!!!
“Three exclamation points,” I say to myself. “Which means—”
“Jen wrote it,” Alex says. “Yes. But it came from Ethan’s email address. Obviously. Since it went straight to—”
“Buttface McGee.” I stare at the unopened email, biting my lip. What would possess Jen and Ethan to email us about a family vacation?
I peer up at Alex. “How about you just tell me what it says?”
He gives me his most disappointed look. “Ted.”
“How about I guess?” I take a step back, pocketing my phone. “Guess one: your mom accidentally sent the Bruscato family beach vacation itinerary to Jen again and now Jen’s forwarding it to us… from… Ethan’s… email?”
Alex gives me a flat look. “Mom only did that the first summer, right after we divorced, then she removed Jen from the family email list and hasn’t done it since.”
I feel immediate, tail-between-my-legs guilt for bringing that up. Alex’s mom, Lydia, is one of my favorite people, and she told me herself she felt terrible when she did that, an honest mistake born out of habit.
“That was poor form,” I admit. “I rescind my guess. And I apologize.”
“Apology accepted.” He takes a step toward me. “Now open the email.”
I take another step back and give him sad-puppy eyes. “Right now?”
“Yes,” he says, unmoved in the face of my puppy pout. “Right. Now.”
I freeze. And then Alex hits me with his sad-puppy eyes, which is bad news. My resolve against them is pitiful at best (when he’s being playful), hopeless at worst (when he’s being sincere, which he is now). Holding my gaze, he says, “Please, Ted.”
Sighing, I drag my phone from my pocket, tap my way to the Buttface McGee subfolder, and rip off the Band-Aid.
My eyes fully scan the email. My brain barely processes the first line. Breathing out slowly, I pocket my phone again. “I opened the email.”
“And?” he asks.
“I read one line.”
“Jesus,” he mutters.
“I will read the rest, I promise.” I let out a wheezing breath. “But first, I’m going to need a gas station hot dog.”
“The hell you are,” he says.
“You’ve got Nicorette!” I holler.
“It’s not a cigarette!” he hollers back.
“Well, I’m sorry there isn’t a gas station hot dog Nicorette analogue for those craving a hit of a week’s worth of sodium and nitrates!”
“That’s what you think,” Alex says. Opening his refrigerator, he unearths the last thing I ever expected to darken its pristine door.
“Grass-fed organic-beef hot dogs,” I read aloud from the package. I peer up at him. “You got these for me because… you knew I’d need them?”
He points to the Nicorette in his mouth by way of confirmation.
“Well,” I tell him, “now I’m really excited to read the rest of that email.”
“It’s bad.” Alex tosses the hot dogs on the counter and finally pulls me in for a warm, hard hug. “But it’s not that bad.”
“How do you know?” I whine into his shoulder.
“Because I actually read the whole thing,” he says. “And even after that, I still managed to bake damn good hot dog brioche buns.”