Chapter Seven
Chinese Food
Emmie
Two hours after we shake on the deal, I’m starving.
The cookies have worn off, my blood sugar is crashing, and I need real food immediately or I’m going to become a very unpleasant person to be around.
I pad out to the living room, phone in hand, and find Crew on the couch with his laptop open. He’s changed into gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt, and I absolutely do not notice how the fabric stretches across his shoulders.
Okay, I notice. I’m not blind.
“I’m ordering Chinese,” I announce. “You want anything?”
He doesn’t look up. “No thanks. I was just going to make some chicken.”
“The chicken breasts in the fridge?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Those sad, plain, gray-looking chicken breasts that have been in there for three days?”
Now he looks up. “They’re not gray.”
“They were definitely gray. And sad.”
His eyes narrow. “Were?”
“I threw them away.”
The silence that follows is deeply satisfying.
“You threw away my chicken.”
“I did you a favor. Those things were depressing. They looked like they’d given up on life.” I scroll through the menu on my phone. “I’m getting mushroom chicken, lo mein, and crab rangoons. I’ll order extra. You can share.”
“I have a meal plan—”
I wave him off with one hand. “Your meal plan tried to make you eat zombie chicken. Your meal plan has lost its privileges.” I tap in the order before he can argue. “Food will be here in thirty minutes. You’re welcome.”
He stares at me for a long moment, and I can’t quite read his expression. It’s somewhere between annoyed and… something else. Something that looks almost like he’s fighting a smile.
He loses the fight. Just barely. The corner of his mouth twitches up for half a second before he schools his face back to neutral. “You’re very bossy,” he says.
“I prefer the term ‘aggressively nurturing.’”
* * *
The food arrives, and I spread everything out on the coffee table like a feast. Crew eyes the containers with the same wariness he’d give a suspicious package.
“What is that?” He points at the crab rangoon.
“Cream cheese and crab in a crispy little pocket of deliciousness. Try one.”
He picks it up, turns it over, examines it like he’s checking for defects. Finally he takes a bite. His eyebrows lift—just slightly. But I catch it.
“Good?”
“It’s acceptable.”
I hand him a pair of chopsticks. “You know how to use these?”
“I was in the military, Emmie. I’ve eaten in a lot of different countries.”
Right. Sometimes I forget he’s not just an uptight FBI agent with a color-coded—sorry, topic-organized—roommate agreement. He’s actually done things. Been places. Probably been through a lot of things he doesn’t normally talk about.
We eat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and I watch him try the lo mein, then the mushroom chicken. Each time, there’s that tiny flicker of surprise, like he forgot food could taste like something other than whey powder and efficiency.
“Okay.” I set down my chopsticks. “We should do the get-to-know-you thing. For the fake relationship.”
“Right.” He pulls out his phone. “I made a list of essential information we should exchange.”
Of course he did.
“Birthday?” he reads.
“October 12th.”
“Mine’s February 3rd. Favorite color?”
“Pink. You?”
“I don’t have one.”
I stare at him. “Everyone has a favorite color.”
“I don’t see the point in ranking colors.”
“The point is having a personality, Crew.”
That almost-smile flickers again. “Blue, I guess. If I had to choose.”
“Blue. Okay. We’re getting somewhere.” I steal a piece of his mushroom chicken. “But this is boring. Let’s make it interesting.”
“How?”
“Spicier questions. Stuff that actually tells you something about a person.” I think for a second. “Worst date you’ve ever been on.”
He pauses, chopsticks halfway to his mouth. “I don’t really date.”
“You’ve been on at least one date in your life. Everyone has a horror story.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and I think he’s going to deflect. Then he sighs.
“There was a woman. From work. A few years ago.” He sets down his chopsticks. “She asked me to dinner. I said yes because I didn’t know how to say no without making things awkward.”
“Classic mistake. Go on.”
“We went to a restaurant. Italian. She ordered wine, I ordered water. She asked about my hobbies, and I told her I didn’t have any.”
I wince. “Crew.”
“She asked what I did for fun. I said I liked to organize things.”
“Oh no.”
“She asked if I was joking. I said no. She excused herself to the bathroom and never came back.”
I clap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. “She left? Just… left you there?”
“Stuck me with the bill, too.”
“That’s terrible.” I’m definitely laughing now; I can’t help it. “I’m sorry, but that’s objectively hilarious.”
“It wasn’t hilarious at the time.”
“No, I’m sure it wasn’t.” I compose myself, barely. “Okay, for the record? Organizing things is a valid hobby. You just have to frame it better. Call it, like, interior design. Or home optimization.”
“Home optimization.”
“Work with me here.” I grab a crab rangoon. “Your turn. Ask me something spicy.”
He considers this. “Why are you single?”
I nearly choke on my cream cheese. “Wow. Going straight for the jugular.”
“You said spicy.”
“I did say that.” I take a sip of water, buying time. “I don’t know. I date. It just never… sticks. Guys like me at first—I’m fun, I’m easy to talk to, I bring baked goods. But then they get to know me and realize I’m, um, a lot.”
“A lot how?”
“I talk too much. I’m messy. I have big emotions and I don’t hide them well.” I shrug, trying to keep it light. “I think guys want the fun, quirky girl until they actually have to deal with her every day. Then it becomes too much work.”
Crew is quiet for a moment, watching me with those gray eyes that see way too much. “That sounds like their problem,” he says finally. “Not yours.”
Something warm blooms in my chest. “That’s… weirdly sweet. For you.”
“I’m just being accurate.” He picks up another crab rangoon. “You’re not a lot. You’re just… you.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I change the subject. “Bucket list. Give me one thing.”
“I don’t have a bucket list.”
“Okay, now you’re just being difficult. Everyone has something they want to do before they die.”
He’s quiet again, and I’m starting to recognize this pattern. The silence isn’t avoidance—it’s processing. He’s actually thinking about the question, which is more than most people do.
“I’d like to build something. A cabin, maybe. With my hands. From start to finish.” He’s quiet for a second, turning the chopsticks over in his fingers. “I’ve never made anything permanent.”
The way he says it—permanent—hits differently than I expected. Like it’s not really about the cabin at all.
“That’s a good one,” I say. “Very rugged. Very lumberjack.”
“What about you?” he asks. “Bucket list.”
“Oh, I have a whole list. Learn to surf. Go to Italy and eat my way through Tuscany. Open my own cooking school.” I tick them off on my fingers. “Fall in love with someone who thinks my chaos is a feature, not a defect.”
That last one slips out before I can stop it. Too honest. Too real.
Crew doesn’t say anything, but something shifts in his expression. That rare soft look—the one I’ve only seen him give Murphy—is there for just a second before it disappears.
I clear my throat. “Fortune cookies. We haven’t done fortune cookies.”
I toss him one, and he catches it easily. We crack them open at the same time, and I pull out the little slip of paper.
“What’s yours say?” I ask.
He reads it, and his face does something complicated. “A new relationship is about to blossom. You will be blessed.”
I burst out laughing. “Okay, the universe has jokes tonight.”
“What’s yours?”
I look down at my fortune. “Adventure awaits—say yes to the unexpected.”
We sit there for a moment, surrounded by takeout containers and crumpled napkins, holding our stupid little fortunes like they mean something.
“Well,” I say. “At least the cookies are on board with our plan.”
* * *
We clean up together, and it’s weirdly domestic. He washes, I dry. He puts the leftovers away with the labels facing out—because of course he does—while I wipe down the counter.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, folding the dish towel.
“You’ve been asking me things all night.”
“One more. What was the military like?”
He pauses, hands still in the soapy water. “Structured. Clear expectations. I liked that part.”
“And the not-so-good parts?”
“There were… incidents. Things I don’t like to talk about.” He rinses the last dish and sets it in the rack. “But it wasn’t all bad. The guys I served with—we got close. Probably the closest I’ve ever been to having friends.”
“Tell me something good, then. A fun story.”
He dries his hands, leaning against the counter. For a long moment, I think he’s going to say no. Then—
“There was this guy. Josiah, we called him Curly. Total troublemaker. He once convinced our entire unit that we were getting inspected by a general the next morning.”
“Were you?”
“No. He just wanted to see how fast everyone would panic-clean the barracks at 2 AM.” Crew’s mouth twitches. “Twenty grown men scrubbing toilets in their underwear because Curly couldn’t pass up a prank.”
I grin. “Please tell me someone got revenge.”
“Someone put hot sauce in his toothpaste. He brushed his teeth for thirty seconds before he realized.”
“That’s amazing.”
“He couldn’t taste anything for two days.” The almost-smile is back, and this time it lingers. “He said it was worth it.”
I’m laughing again, and I realize this is the most relaxed I’ve seen Crew since I moved in. The rigid posture has softened. The constant tension in his jaw has eased. He looks almost… normal. Like someone who used to have friends and pull pranks and exist in the world like a regular human being.
“You should smile more,” I tell him. “It looks good on you.”
The almost-smile disappears immediately, replaced by his standard neutral expression. But his ears go slightly pink, which I’m counting as a win.
“It’s late,” he says. “We should get some sleep.”
“Right. Big week ahead. Dossier to study. Fake relationship to master.” I head toward the hallway, then pause. “Hey, Crew?”
He looks up.
“This was fun. The dinner thing. I wasn’t expecting that.”
He holds my gaze for a beat too long. “Yeah. Neither was I.”
I escape to my room before I can say something stupid, close the door, and lean against it.
Okay.
So maybe Crew Jensen is more than just a guy with control issues and sad refrigerator chicken.
Maybe he’s someone who secretly likes crab rangoon and remembers his military buddies and almost-smiles when he talks about pranks. Someone who says things like “you’re not a lot, you’re just you” without realizing how much that means.
Maybe this fake relationship thing won’t be as painful as I thought.
I change into my pajamas, crawl under my grandmother’s quilt, and tell myself it’s just the lo mein talking.
It’s definitely just the lo mein.