Chapter Fifteen
Cookbook Drama
Emmie
“Hey, Rach.”
“Emmie. We need to talk about the manuscript.”
I close my eyes. Take a breath. “Okay.”
“Your editor called. She’s… concerned.”
“Concerned how?”
“The pages you sent last week. She feels like something’s missing.
” Rachel pauses, and I can hear her choosing her words carefully.
“She says it’s technically good, but it’s not connecting emotionally.
It feels distant. Like a list of ingredients and measurements without the heart or story behind it. ”
My stomach drops.
“What does that mean? What does she want me to change?”
“She wants the whole thing to feel more personal. More lived-in. This book is called Cooking for Your Person—she needs to feel like you actually have a person. Like you know what it’s like to cook for someone you love.”
I think about Crew.
About standing beside him at the stove, feeding him sauce from a wooden spoon. Watching his face when he tastes something I made, that tiny flicker of surprise like he forgot food could be good.
“I can fix it,” I say. “I’ll revise.”
“You have five weeks, Em. Five weeks until the final deadline. If the manuscript isn’t where it needs to be…” She trails off.
“I know. I’ll fix it.”
I hang up and stare at my laptop, open to a blank page that’s been blank for two hours.
I have just over a month to somehow inject emotional depth into a cookbook about cooking for people you love when the only person I’ve been cooking for is my fake boyfriend who kissed me two nights ago and hasn’t mentioned it since.
Great. This is going great.
* * *
Sadie’s already at our usual coffee shop when I arrive, two lattes on the table and a look on her face that says she’s been waiting for this.
“Okay.” She pushes my drink toward me. “Spill. Everything. Start with the gala and don’t leave out a single detail.”
I slump into the chair across from her. “Where do I even start?”
“The dress. Did he react to the dress?”
“He said I looked beautiful.” I wrap my hands around the warm cup. “And then he helped me with my necklace clasp, and his fingers touched my neck, and I literally shivered, Sadie. Like a romance novel protagonist. It was embarrassing.”
She grins. “That’s not embarrassing. That’s chemistry.”
“It’s inconvenient is what it is.”
“Continue. The gala. How’d it go?”
I tell her everything. The way he’d held my hand the entire night, solid and warm. How I’d handled the small talk while he stood there looking intimidating, and somehow it worked. Margaret loving the food stories. Daniels nodding along.
“Wait.” Sadie holds up a hand. “His boss bought it? That was the whole point, right?”
I nod. “Seems like it. We even had his boss over for dinner. At our apartment.”
Sadie leans forward. “There was a boss dinner? At your apartment? And you didn’t lead with this?”
“I’m building to something.”
“Build faster.”
I tell her about the dinner. The short ribs that came out perfect. Margaret wanting the recipe. Daniels telling Crew he looked happy. The photos on the bookshelf that sold the whole thing.
“Okay, so the plan worked,” Sadie says. “What’s the problem?”
“The problem is we um, kissed.”
“Emmie.” Her eyes widen.
“It was his idea!”
“I don’t care whose idea it was.” She’s leaning so far forward she’s practically in my lap. “What happened?”
I close my eyes, remembering. The way he’d looked at me—soft, almost vulnerable. The way his thumb had traced circles on my hip while we stood there, neither of us moving.
“He asked if it was okay. And I said yes. And then he just… kept checking. Like he wanted to make absolutely sure I was into it before he—”
“Before he what?”
“Before he kissed me.”
Sadie makes a sound that’s not quite a word.
“It started slow. Gentle. Like he was making sure I was into it.” I’m staring at my coffee because I can’t look at her while I say this. “And then I, um. I made a noise. And something just… shifted.”
“Shifted how?”
“Like a switch flipped. One second it was soft and careful, and the next his hand was in my hair and he was kissing me like—” I shake my head. “I don’t even know how to describe it. Like he’d been holding back and suddenly couldn’t anymore.”
“Oh my gosh.” She fans herself.
“His hand was on my waist, pulling me against him, and I was grabbing his shirt, and I couldn’t think about anything except more. Just more of him, more of his mouth, more of whatever was happening.”
“Emmie.” Sadie’s voice is strained. “You’re killing me.”
“When we finally stopped, we were both just… wrecked. Breathing hard. And he stepped back and put his hands on top of his head and just stood there, staring at me like I’d broken something in him.”
Sadie sits back, processing. “And then?”
“And then Murphy screamed for food and the moment was over and we just pretended like nothing happened.” I laugh, but it sounds hollow. “We’re really good at pretending things didn’t happen.”
“That’s not sustainable.”
“I’m aware.”
“You have to talk to him.”
“Also aware.” I drain the rest of my latte. “But here’s the thing—after the boss dinner, when Daniels and Margaret left, we almost kissed again, for real this time, no practice excuse, but then Foster called and—”
“I’m going to kill Foster.”
“Get in line.”
“Wait, who’s Foster?” She laughs.
“His partner.”
She gives me a look. “Em. The man kissed you like that … I’m not sure that’s fake.”
I think about Crew with his hands on his head, chest heaving, looking at me like I’d wrecked him.
I think about the way he’d cupped my face after the dinner, so gentle, like I was something precious.
“I know,” I say quietly. “That’s what scares me.” I stare at my coffee. “There’s more,” I say.
“How can there be more?”
“My editor hates the manuscript.”
Sadie blinks, thrown by the subject change. “What?”
While I launch into my next round of drama, Sadie leans forward and gives me a sympathetic look. Yeah, my life is basically a mess right now. And one I have no idea how to fix.