Chapter 34 - Annie
THIRTY-FOUR
Annie
From: pmaldonado@
To: ali@
Chef wants last min change to the introduction and now it looks crazy can you pls fix it
“Annie,” Fernanda calls over from a box in the corner. “Do your vibrators go in your closet or bedside table?”
“Bedside table, obviously,” May answers. She pauses. “You put yours in your closet?”
Fernanda shrugs. “The special ones go in the closet.”
I take a spoonful of wildflower honey straight from the jar. “Wouldn’t the special ones go in the bedside table?” I want to know.
“Special means rarely used, in my case. My old reliables go in the bedside table.”
Izzy frowns. “You have so many vibrators that they don’t all fit in your bedside table?”
I tug on a string of Nico’s hoodie, and surrounded by boxes, my sister, and my best friends in my old, shitty, beautiful-because-it’s-mine studio apartment, I open the attachment in the email.
The new title page smacks me in the face and leaves a mark.
NAKED REACTIONS
Experiments in Taste, Touch, and Truth
Anne Li
Nicholas Giannuzzi
He did it. He’s doing it. He’s letting the world know who he is.
“What?!” May shrieks from behind me, and I nearly fall out of my chair.
“What the fuck, May—”
“Are you. Telling me. That NICO FUCKING GIANNUZZI HAS BEEN THE NAKEDREACTIONS GUY THIS ENTIRE TIME?!” she screams.
May has gotten a little spicier and a touch unhinged since returning from her honeymoon. The one she took her ex-boyfriend on. She curses now.
“You know the NakedReactions guy?!” Betty bellows from across the room.
“He told me not to tell anyone,” I mutter.
May is losing her damn mind. “So you were ghostwriting this porn star’s book.
You had a crush on him. Then you went on a road trip with Nico, who you hated in high school,” she rages, pacing back and forth across the room.
“Then somehow, somewhere between Brooklyn and Miami, you fell in love with him, and then they turned out to be the same fucking person?!”
“WHAT?!” Betty and Fernanda shriek simultaneously.
I scrub my face. “I know.”
“So… the porn star thing… and now… and this… and then…” I watch as the room malfunctions.
Izzy appears behind me, looking at the screen. “This must be the big thing,” she muses.
“You knew?!” May fires at her.
She shrugs. “He told me.”
“Everyone shut the fuck up and let’s read this thing,” May snaps.
Filled with something that feels suspiciously like pride, maybe elation, I keep scrolling.
If you’re looking for a normal cookbook, I should warn you: this isn’t it.
Yes, there are recipes. Some are precise.
Others are more of a suggestion. A few were born during late nights in industrial kitchens, all burned fingers and bad lighting.
Others came to life in the quiet—slow mornings, long afternoons, the only sound someone breathing across the counter.
But none of them exists just for the food.
Because this book isn’t just about food.
It’s about the burn of wanting. The sweetness of trying. The strange alchemy of care.
It’s about chemistry—the molecular kind, and the human kind.
The kind that simmers low and slow, or sparks hot and irreversible.
The kind that lingers on your tongue long after it’s gone.
The kind that sneaks up on you in a kitchen, when you’re just trying to make something decent, and suddenly you realize you’re making something that means something.
Cooking is chemistry, yeah. I can tell you the exact temperature beef fat begins to render.
I can explain the molecular structure of an emulsion, the bonds in caramel, the slow miracle of a reduction.
Science demands respect. Timing. Attention.
The Maillard reaction doesn’t give a shit about your feelings.
It needs the heat high, the surface dry, and the contact exact.
But even the most scientific recipes can’t account for grief. Or joy. Or memory.
They won’t tell you how laughter gets caught in the shell of a crawfish. How bacon and eggs the morning after can feel like a truce. Or how ice cream for breakfast can feel like equilibrium.
How honey, slow and sticky on your fingers, can feel like love.
There was a time I thought I had to keep every part of myself separated—my past, my work, my body, my family, my future. Like I could compartmentalize myself into being palatable. But real flavor needs contrast. Sweet and acid. Soft and sharp. Something to burn, and something to cool it down.
This book came out of a season of undoing.
Of unlearning shame. Of finding ways to say what I couldn’t say out loud.
It’s full of recipes, yeah—but also full of risk.
Of things I made when I didn’t think I was allowed to want anything.
Of moments that demanded truth when I wanted to hide. Of the ways I’ve tried to be brave.
Of mistakes I didn’t think I could come back from.
Because sometimes, one wrong move can ruin everything. One missed cue, and you scorch the pan. Overbeat the eggs. Oversalt the broth. You lose the thing you didn’t even know you’d been building toward.
But if you’re lucky—and if you care enough—you try again. You taste as you go. You make adjustments. You get better. Not perfect, just braver.
Because cooking isn’t about perfection. It’s about attention. About presence. It’s about watching something change under heat and not walking away. Letting it get messy. Giving it time. Giving it care. Trusting it to bloom.
You improvise. You ruin things. You start again. You remember how someone takes their coffee, and you try to get it right next time. You feed people the way you want to be fed.
That’s what this book is about.
It’s about split-second timing and slow forgiveness. About chemistry, memory, and the miracle of what softens when it’s seen, what melts when you look at it long enough. About the truth that heat, when applied with care, can turn almost anything tender.
I’ve never been the one with the right words. That’s her superpower. But I know what it means to try. To keep trying. To beg. To make something with both hands and hope it lands as love.
This book? It’s messy. It’s meticulous. It’s full of heat, hunger, and a hell of a lot of heart.
It’s: Here. I made this.
It’s: I thought of you the whole time.
It’s: You’re allowed to want more. Please come back for seconds.
Let’s begin.
—N.G.
I touch my face. It’s wet.
There is a loud sniffing noise behind me. No, four.
“Wow, that’s pretty bad,” Betty squeaks out.
“Leaned on the metaphors a little too hard,” Fernanda sobs.
Izzy swipes at her face. “It’s better than the groceries.”
“It’s better than the handwritten recipe for sorbet that I can never make because I one, don’t have a Pacojet, and two, have no idea how or where to get essence of black sesame.”
“And the dress that he was returning to you,” Izzy sniffs.
“For a valedictorian of Stuy, he’s not very smart,” May says.
“He’s an illiterate gorilla,” I agree.
“An illiterate gorilla who you love,” Izzy says gently.
“And who loves you,” Betty adds on.
Four pairs of arms, ages thirty to seventy-five, wrap me in a hug.
“I miss him,” I admit.
It’s the truth. As soon as I signed the lease for this place, the first person I wanted to tell was him.
When I signed up for a pottery class, a bachata class, when I went for a walk through Green-Wood Cemetery—he was the only person I wanted to tell.
When I put the gold dress on, I wanted to send a selfie.
After combing through my notebooks and napkins and scraps of paper and the files on my computer, typing, formatting into some semblance of order and organization, after sending a query letter off to some connections I’ve made through Hawk Publishing, for an anthology of poems?
He’s the first person I wanted to read it. The Naked Truth: Self-Erosion and Shame, Grief and Girlhood. By Anne Li.
“Why won’t you let him back in?” Betty asks softly.
I tell the truth. “I’m afraid.”
“That what, he’s been cheating on you for years?” May snarls. I kind of love it, but wow.
I don’t answer.
May attempts to backtrack. “Nico made a mistake, Annie. It was a lapse in judgement, one that lasted minutes, not years. He’s not perfect. Who are you, Mom?”
“Christ, May, what have you done with my sister?”
But she’s right.
“He loves every version of you, even the pieces that are too big and too much. Can’t you do the same?”
“I…” Fuck.
“You have proven to everyone that you are the strongest, bravest, most badass woman who’s ever come from hell,” Fernanda tells me. “But why are you still trying to prove it to yourself? By kicking him out, no less?”
“Loving someone is an act of strength,” May murmurs sadly, knowingly, now. “Of bravery.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and press my face into Fernanda’s shoulder. The air smells like tears and old lady perfume and half-dried takeout. And comfort and love and strength and bravery.
I’m afraid. I’m afraid that loving someone means giving them a whole bunch of weapons and hoping they wouldn’t use it on me. I thought I had to stay sharp, stay armored, stay alone to stay safe.
But Nico didn’t break me. He made me softer without making me small. And in the aftermath, after the fallout and the fuckups and the fear, I’m still standing. I, Annie Li, Chaos Bringer. Still me. Maybe even more me.
And now?
“I think he just proved he will keep you safe,” Izzy says softly.
The vulnerable spots in his armor, the mistake that he made, the one that failed to protect me? It was based on his own insecurities and anxieties. Fear.
And those cracks have been filled with a big, impenetrable “Fuck you, bitches.”
I breathe. A real, full breath. And when I exhale, it’s like I’m letting go of something I’ve been clutching too tight for too long. I let it drain out of me, slow and quiet.
And what’s left isn’t nothing.
There’s a new fear.
Not of being hurt again—no, not that.
What if I miss out on something extraordinary because I was too scared to reach for it?
I’ve survived everything else. I’ll survive love too.
From: pmaldonado@
To: ali@
I have an idea for a launch party. Call me.