Chapter Two
Basil
“Is it me or was that a total trip?” Evan strolled ahead of me into the open air of the pedestrian mall while we waited for the girls to make a pit stop.
“Definitely not what we planned.”
What we planned was a night revisiting some of our old college stomping grounds. Left to my own devices, I would’ve stayed home and sulked, but Evan cajoled me to hit some bars on his last night here, reminisce, forget our troubles.
This hadn’t been the best day of my life. Shit, I’d nearly quit my job earlier—and over a minor irritation. Thank God it was Friday, because I needed a weekend to recover from being scolded by a twenty-year-old for refusing to put “pumpkin spice” in the butternut squash soup.
Pumpkin spice.
As if that was an actual thing.
I took a deep breath to retain the mellow composure a simple conversation with a beautiful woman had brought me, swallowing the need to explain, to literally nobody, the existence of ginger and nutmeg.
Pumpkin spice. I shook my head.
Evan shot finger pistols at me. “I told you we’d have fun. You’re even smiling.”
I was. My thoughts returned to the cranberry lips and midnight black hair of the haunting vixen who’d captivated my attention from the minute I’d laid eyes on her. And her eyes, soulful and penetrating, had drawn me in. Sailors had been tempted toward jagged rocks by less.
“It didn’t turn out so bad,” I conceded. Understatement.
I’d worried for nothing that barhopping with Evan would make me feel worse about myself.
It was a practical concern. Whoever said comparison is the thief of joy must have spent time with a golden boy.
With his perfect smile, super-styled blond hair, and emerald eyes, Evan was the Type O of good looks—universally appealing.
Whenever we hung out, women hit on him like I wasn’t even there.
Evan was never a jerk about it, and I wanted to spend time with him, but I hadn’t been in the mood to feel even more invisible. Not tonight.
In the end, I’d agreed to go out because Evan had promised me no women.
He swore he wanted to catch up and get reacquainted with the town after he’d interviewed for a potential job at a local news station.
True to his word, he dorked up his look and batted away uninvited attention, right up until Lizzy and Chelsea crashed our party of two.
I gave Evan a pass for ignoring me. Chatting with an old acquaintance wasn’t the same as lady cruising.
Besides, flirting with Chelsea had vastly improved my glum mood.
After a day being bossed by a rug rat and an evening next to Mr. Television here, I drank in her attention.
She’d never once glanced at Evan and confessed straight-up attraction toward me.
But what had soothed my soul was the way she rhapsodized about my work, about my food.
It was the antidote to my what-am-I-doing-with-my-life blues.
I hadn’t realized how badly I’d needed some validation.
It had been so long, I’d nearly forgotten how good it felt to be appreciated.
Evan shoved his hands into his pockets and stared up at the sky. “It’s a shame I didn’t run into Lizzy earlier this week. If I had another night here, we could have a proper reunion.”
I did have another night here, an indefinite number of nights, though I didn’t know what that might mean. “I’m going to try to get Chelsea’s phone number,” I declared.
He shot me a skeptical glance. “Didn’t you hear her say she doesn’t do boyfriends?”
“Maybe she’ll do me,” I joked.
He wandered closer, not laughing. “If that’s what you want, you should invite her back to your place. It’s been long enough, Easy Lover.”
“Don’t call me that.” I hated when he chided me for being fickle. The trouble was I had a bad habit of confusing infatuation with love. Call it a genetic predisposition; passion was my birthright.
“Speaking of… Would it be weird to run into someone after ten years, bang her, then leave town?”
“Asking for a friend?”
This was a touchy subject. He’d renounced meaningless hookups with total strangers that left him emotionally bankrupt. But Lizzy wasn’t a total stranger.
He winced. “My therapist would dissect that for months.”
“But do you want to?”
“I want to see what she wants. Can you get a ride with Chelsea?”
“Sure.” Or I could walk home if she kicked me to the curb. It was only a mile.
At last, the two girls burst through the door, laughing.
“My performance has come to an end,” Lizzy called, as though she were addressing an entire crowd and not an empty pedestrian mall. Streetlights pooled on the bricks, creating the illusion of a spotlit stage.
Evan’s flirty grin contorted into a confused grimace. “I’m sorry, what?”
His question echoed like a shot through the eerie silence of the night.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said, more seriously.
Evan rolled his eyes and chuckled. “Why are you sorry?”
She frowned. “Well, for lying to you.”
“About?”
“About being friends in high school.” She flapped her hands like she was conjuring the past. “And basically everything. I didn’t mean any harm by it.”
My jaw dropped, but Evan took the bombshell in stride. Maybe I’d been the only one taken in by whatever game these girls had been playing.
“You have nothing to apologize for, Lizzy.”
She winced and added, “And I actually go by Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth?” Evan repeated, trying it out.
“Elizabeth Wright.” She made a little bow with her head, like she was introducing herself to royalty.
Evan chuckled. “Got it.”
“I hope you aren’t mad.”
“No. I mean, of course not.” He closed the gap and rubbed her forearm. “I wish we had been friends, though.”
Elizabeth took his hand. “We could be now.”
He stared down into her eyes, and she tilted her head, inviting a kiss, a picture-perfect ending to a romance movie. “Can I walk you home so we can talk more?”
Elizabeth sighed dreamily. “I’d like that.”
I shot a glance at Chelsea, and she gave me big holy shit eyes, watching this scene unfold. “Holy shit. My bestie’s gonna get laid tonight,” she whispered.
I moseyed over beside her. “Plot twist. I didn’t have this on my to-do list today.”
“Oh, I did.” She laughed. “Literally.”
“Sure,” I scoffed. “Friday night: be the sidekick to my best friend’s meet-cute.”
She cackled. “I’m serious. It’s why I was being so full-on TMI before.”
My eyes narrowed as I parsed her words. “I don’t understand.”
“One sec.” She unlocked her phone and scrolled to a page. “My to-do list. See, we had these two items to check off. And look: you’re right here.”
As I watched, she marked a little C next to Have a deep, authentic conversation with a total stranger.
Should I feel offended? “Oh, so I’m a notch in your bedpost?”
Did I imagine her sharp inhale before saying, “Yes to the notch. No to the bedpost.” She put her phone away. “I mean, sometimes I get lucky and meet a random stranger who fits the bill.”
I grinned. “I’ve never been called random before.”
“Would you prefer predestined?”
“Actually”—I waggled my eyebrows—“the Greeks love the idea of destiny. The Fates.”
“Say no more.” She laughed, and I could’ve kicked myself for making stupid jokes to hide my nerves.
On the other side of the mall, Evan and Elizabeth leaned toward each other under a wan streetlight.
Elizabeth looked like she wanted to eat Evan alive.
I’d seen that naked lust from nearly every woman in every bar we’d hit tonight, even though Evan had unsuccessfully tried to mitigate his appearance with a pair of dorky glasses.
He sometimes paid a price for his devastating good looks.
He wasn’t always eager for the interest he got, and he ended up in more shallow relationships than were good for his mental health.
It was nice to see him getting the kind of attention he craved, for the right reasons.
Evan lifted a hand to Elizabeth’s cheek, drinking her in with Mr. Darcy levels of longing. It was so intimate, and I couldn’t help glance over at Chelsea, at those lips, wondering how to orchestrate a good-night kiss of my own.
Chelsea called over, “Text me when you get home, Elizabeth.”
“Yes, Mom.” Elizabeth hooked her arm into Evan’s crooked elbow, and the pair headed away from us, toward a side street.
Chelsea shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t trust your friend, but this is how an episode of some show on ID Discovery starts out.”
My heart sank. Her wise fear of strangers snuffed the fantasy I’d been stoking to extend the evening with her. Not that I expected anything, obviously. But then Chelsea glanced my way and asked, “You going with me or them?”
Was this an opening to make a move?
“You,” I answered. No hesitation. I could at least walk her to her car, maybe get her number. Maybe get a ride home. Maybe more…
With the cobblestone lit only by moonlight and the sporadic streetlights, Chelsea strolled beside me, quiet at first, like we’d become strangers again, but as she veered onto a side street toward Water Street, she said, “I have been deep and authentic. It’s your turn. Tell me why you became a chef.”
“I just love to cook,” I said. Authentic—but barely scratching the surface. Whenever I let my honest passions shine, people usually looked at me like I was the leader of a newly emerging cult.
Her elbow bumped mine. “Nuh-uh. You owe me more than that. I’m your greatest fan. I’d like to know.”
The promise that her curiosity wasn’t idle gave me a jolt of pride, a desire to expose this vulnerable side of myself, so I started talking, watching her for signs of cringing.
“When I first mastered macarons, I knew I’d found my calling.
It’s fun to experiment and discover new ways to prepare food, but it’s a means to an end.
At the back of my mind, I’m always picturing someone I can feed.
It makes me happy to watch someone enjoy what I’ve created.
The beauty of food is I can repeat that performance again and again. ”