Chapter Twenty-Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Ellie

After three years of trudging through the desert, an entire tropical rainforest had bloomed out of nowhere, and Kieran wasn't a mirage. Night after night, it took so little—a word, a smile, a glance, and we'd be kissing again, undressing again. Sometimes we were hungry and just the right amount of rough, and other times we went so slowly that coming together made me want to cry with how good it felt.

Early on, we had an only-in-San-Francisco disaster where I drove in circles for thirty precious minutes looking for a parking space. Now, I'd let Kieran know I was on my way and he'd find an empty spot, send a pin for the map on my phone, and literally stand in the space until I got there. He'd take my hand and walk me back to his apartment. And every time he opened the door, the little studio was different.

"You have a bed now," I said the first time, running my hand over the plain light wood of the frame.

He paused from dotting kisses on my neck. "Did you know it's really bad for you to sleep on just a mattress? The internet told me so. Want to test it with me?"

Another night, after sex that was indeed better with a bed frame, I discovered that the bathroom wasn't moldy anymore.

"Did you know that YouTube has instructions for how to clean a really disgusting bathroom?" he said when I pointed it out.

"Kieran," I said, but his eyes wouldn't settle on my face. "Are you doing this because of me?"

He rubbed his forearm. "It was time," he said. "I'm too old to live in my own dirt."

One particularly foggy night I shivered in his arms from the chill, and two days later he had a fluffy down comforter and the softest flannel sheets.

"I know that down and flannel make beds extra warm," I said when I saw the green-and-blue plaid.

"Good," he said simply. "Means I can make you shiver for a better reason."

After we'd shivered twice, he fell asleep, his forehead pressed to my shoulder and his arm slung across me. In the last seconds before sleep claimed me too, I let myself taste the sweetness of this moment. No explanations, no obligations, no sacrifices.

For these dark, quiet hours, we could just be.

It was getting harder and harder to leave every morning. Harder to ignore Kieran's sighs as I slipped out of his arms, harder to ignore how he sleepily grabbed my pillow and buried his face in it. Somehow, I would sneak out as the sky shifted from black to light gray, driving back to Berkeley to feed Floyd and set up work for the day, but it felt like I was leaving more and more fragments of myself behind.

And when he'd arrive later, bouncy and cheerful, I'd fight so hard to be good. I couldn't throw myself at him, shouldn't tell him to forget about keeping it light, wouldn't ask him for forever. He'd given me what he could, and I was fine with that.

I had to be.

" I ' M SO EXCITED ," I said to Nicole two weeks later as we literally sped to Milpitas, Bad Bunny blasting from the speakers.

"It's just my mom's cooking," Nicole said as she passed three cars.

"You say this now, when you've been telling me about her lechon for years?"

"OK, fine, she's a crispy-pork-making genius." She flicked off the music. "But now that I have you locked in a car going seventy-five miles an hour, what's happening? I've barely heard from you."

"I've been busy," I said now as she turned up the air-conditioning.

"Busy getting busy. How is the Happy Pirate Leprechaun in bed?"

My hackles shot up on Kieran's behalf. "For the record, he hates that nickname."

"For the record, you're not answering the question. I think you meant to say fantastic, if you're blushing like that. How's the book going?"

"Fine."

"Are you going to make it? August eleventh is next week. The shoot starts on the twenty-fifth."

"We'll make it." I might be borderline hallucinating from too little sleep for too many days in a row, but I needed Kieran's touch more. Whatever You Want was almost ready. Just a few more tests and I'd send the complete manuscript to Tad.

"I mean, you deserve some hot action," Nicole said as she passed a Tesla and a BMW. She paused.

"I hear a fat ‘but' coming down the pike."

"Do you remember what it was like with Max?"

I rolled my eyes. "No, I totally forgot what it was like when I met the man I married."

"You came home and told me you'd met this hot grad student who'd talked dirty to you in French. The next thing I knew, you'd moved in with him and you were engaged."

That wasn't an approving tone in her voice. "And your point is what, exactly?"

"When you fall, you fall really hard. Is that what's happening here? Because you became the supporting actress for someone else's life."

I cringed. Maybe that was true, but that was because the spotlight found Max. He was the consummate extrovert, the dynamo whose stories everyone wanted to hear, Ben's warmth and Diane's brains wrapped up in a tall, dark, and handsome package. And what was I going to do at age nineteen, tell people about my terrible childhood?

"You would have given Max anything. You went where he went, his friends were your friends."

I bit out, "Also known as being married ."

"And what did he give you?" she snapped.

"Oh my God, where do I start? Affection, tenderness, care? A sense of purpose?"

"A sense of purpose in giving all of yourself to him. You're a smart, hot, badass woman, and he acted like he'd rescued you from an evil witch's tower."

The outrage shot up my chest like fire. "Why are you telling me now that you thought Max was a dick?"

She put a hand up. "No, I didn't think he was a dick ninety percent of the time. He absolutely adored you. But I think you didn't have much of a life outside him and he liked being your king."

"That's not what's happening now. Kieran and I, we're just enjoying each other. He doesn't have a claim on me, and I don't have a claim on him."

"Oh yeah? How would you feel if he fell for someone else?"

Devastated. "He wouldn't."

"But if he did?"

Desolate. "That's hypothetical. I'm trying to live in the moment."

Nicole burst out laughing. "You, living in the moment? Tell me what you've been smoking because I want some. Unless your drug of choice is Kieran's…"

"Stop right there," I said, and she cackled.

Then her phone bleeped with a call. She let it ring out, but then it beeped again.

"I'll silence that." I reached for it.

"Wait, don't," she said.

I looked at the screen. It was Jay. The calls came on top of a dozen missed texts.

"Speaking of someone who's fallen really hard," I said slowly.

She grimaced at the windshield. "I don't want to talk about it."

"So you can dish it out, but you can't take it?"

"Ugh, fine. She's not getting with the program. I told her at the beginning that I like being free and I'm not into romance. But she thought I was playing hard to get, and it got messy last night."

"How messy?"

She took one hand off the wheel and rubbed her face. "After we fucked, she said, ‘Please let me love you.'"

"Oh God, poor both of you. But why haven't you let her go yet?"

"Because the sex is the best I've ever had. And when she's not proclaiming her love, she's supersmart and low-key hilarious. Talking to her is almost as good as talking to you."

I sighed. "You know that as long as it's lopsided like this, you're using her, right? You have to stop sleeping with her."

"Jesus, of course I know that. I'm not a fucking sociopath. But my pain tolerance is so much lower than yours, so cut me some slack."

"What do you mean, pain tolerance?"

"You always do what's right for other people, no matter what it costs you." She smacked the wheel. "What about you, Ellie? What about finishing Nourish, or going back to France like you always wanted?"

" Enough . Right now, sleeping with Kieran is just for me. And I'm going to be able to buy my place soon—that's something that's just for me."

"Is it, though? I think you've been saving for an insanely expensive apartment because you won't think about what you want right now. And I'll bet you're planning to have a room for Hank to stay in, and to live close to Ben and Diane."

Nicole's words blew through me like incendiary bombs. They were my family, they needed me. I couldn't abandon them. "Fuck off, " I exploded.

We whizzed past another Tesla. The curse had blown a hole in the ground between us, one too big to jump across with a joke or a quick apology. I knew there was a fragment of truth in Nicole's harsh words, but keeping Ben and Diane and Hank close was the only way I felt safe, no matter how big the burden got. Sex with Kieran was the one respite I had from all my worries. I couldn't give any of it up, no matter how much of a professional and personal risk it was. Not yet.

"It sounds like you have it all under control," Nicole finally said distantly.

"Thanks," I gritted out. "So do you."

"Thanks," she said back just as curtly.

We found other things to talk about, and the lechon was heavenly, but Nicole had been short with me ever since.

Even though the Whatever You Want photoshoot started on the first day of a record heat wave, and the Emeryville studio was flooded with brilliant sunshine, there was a cool edge in the air.

"You and Nicole good?" Cameron asked as I leaned against the test kitchen counter, fanning myself with a page of notes. The food stylist's dark brown hair was in a tidy bun, and as their knife flashed through a pile of heirloom tomatoes, blue and red seahorse tattoos undulated up and down their thickly muscled arms. So different from Kieran's tiny perfect knife, his talisman.

"Earth to Ellie?" they said.

I blinked. "We're fine. Minor disagreement."

Their eyebrows raised. "OK, then. Roci, has Adam texted you?"

Rocío, the prop stylist, was dealing out silverware like playing cards and stacking plates, singing along to Lorde blasting from the stereo. "Nope," she finally said, shaking her long purple hair.

"Fuck, it's like he thinks that there aren't dozens of people who'd love this job."

I walked over to the other end of the room, where Tad was studying the huge whiteboard. Cameron had written the master list of recipes we were cooking and shooting today, and Rocío had studded it with Post-its like "green tablecloth" and "charcoal plate."

"Everything came together beautifully," Tad said. "Excellent work, Ellie. I knew I could rely on you. It must have been difficult, dealing with an attention span as short as his."

I shook my head. "Not at all. He pulled his weight."

He patted my shoulder. "You don't have to be nice about him. You don't even have to see him anymore."

"Morning, gang," Kieran said from the doorway, and every molecule of me woke up.

"Kieran!" Tad said, his voice dripping honey. "We were just talking about you."

Rocío and Cameron glanced at each other. They were in charge of reproducing the recipes from the book, and having Kieran here muddied the waters.

"What brings you here?" I asked.

"I took the day off," he said. "How often do you get to watch your own book being made?"

Behind Tad's back, I raised my eyebrows, but Kieran just beamed back at me.

Almost every second he hadn't been at the restaurant for the past five weeks, we'd been together, either cooking at my place or sleeping at his. It was only with some coaxing that I'd convinced him to give me some introvert time. I'd had four nights alone in my bed with a new Gilded Age romance series.

But it had been quiet, and not in a good way.

I'd missed him. I was allowed to miss a friend with benefits, right?

After Kieran convinced Tad that he just wanted to observe, Tad pointed him to a stool next to the whiteboard. My brain repeated ignore him like a life-giving mantra, but the rest of me was attuned to every warm word he said, every flicker of copper in his hair.

"I missed you," he whispered when I went to the board to check something for Cameron.

"Careful," I whispered back.

"When you wear black, I remember the time you chewed me out at Qui."

I couldn't keep the smile off my face, but said, "Behave."

"Cruel woman," he said with a huge grin.

I leaned so close my mouth brushed his ear. It was a risk, but he was just too delicious to resist. "You love it."

Kieran

Ellie's mouth touched my skin for a split second, but that contact and her hot words revved me from zero to sixty. Just as fast she was gone, calling something to Cameron, leaving behind her fresh laundry scent. I'd missed it so much I'd almost gone to the laundromat to huff detergent.

I flapped my T-shirt against my hot skin and imagined dumping a tray of ice cubes down my pants. I was here to watch, not drool. Ellie and Tad's heads were hovering over Nicole's shoulder as he pointed to her laptop screen. Nicole hopped up, adjusted a few pieces of cardboard surrounding a cobalt-blue bowl of corn chowder garnished with bright green chives, and tilted a light. Beep-click went her camera. She went back to her computer, and now Tad nodded.

I couldn't help my smile. I'd been so head-down and single-minded at Qui for so long, but now I felt like I'd made it to the next level of a video game and a whole world of possibilities had opened up. My optimism came with me to work, making me quicker to notice when junior chefs needed help and happier to suggest ideas to Steve instead of waiting for him to tell me what to do.

Now I saw these people working to create a beautiful thing that had come from my head. Mine and Ellie's. When they were done, I'd have the book, Mrs. Hutton might let me have my own restaurant, and I could finally ask Ellie to be with me for real, because I finally believed that I had something to offer on my own and that I could try hard things and succeed.

"Ready for the next one," Tad called to Cameron and Rocío.

"We're not," Cameron said. "Fucking Adam."

"He definitely stood you up?" Nicole asked.

"Yup. So he's totally fired, but we're still short an assistant."

I stood up. "I'll help you."

Cameron's eyes widened. "No disrespect, but I need to reproduce the dishes without your input."

I put my hands up. "I won't say anything. I was a commis once. I can take orders. And Ellie can help too, right?"

Their eyes flicked to her, and she nodded.

"I can't say no." They sighed.

At their command, Ellie and I swung into the dance we'd practiced in her place.

"Where are the…" I asked when we were working on the beef stew we'd written for the "Comfort" section.

She pointed at the shallots. "There. Could you pass…" She waved a bunch of chives.

"Sure." I handed her the kitchen scissors.

"Behind," she said, handing off a pot to Cameron.

"String?" I asked.

"Here," she answered, giving me the roll.

The flow pushed us through the day, with quick breaks to eat some of the food Nicole shot. We were working on the day's last recipes when she asked Ellie, "What are you doing tomorrow?"

Ellie held up a white plate for Rocío. "You want this one for the duck?"

"Ellie? Did you hear me?"

She gave the duck confit and orange salad one last toss in a metal mixing bowl, and carefully lifted it onto the plate in a pile that was just the right amount of messy. "I'm cooking Shabbos dinner for Ben and Diane. What else would I be doing?"

"Oh, come on!" Nicole yelled.

"What?" I asked from where I was slowly decorating a vanilla cake with strawberry frosting. I should have paid more attention in pastry class.

"Her goddamn birthday's tomorrow," Nicole said.

"Shush," Ellie grumbled.

"You shush." She turned to us. "She doesn't do anything to celebrate, and it's stupid."

"We need to start washing dishes or we'll be here all night," Ellie nonanswered.

Nicole threw up her hands. "Fine, ignore me when I try to make you the center of attention."

Ellie continued to do just that, and Nicole's frustration shifted into something that looked more like sadness. She scared the crap out of me most of the time, but it was reassuring to know that we both hated it when Ellie hurt herself for no reason.

Later on, Cameron was showing Ellie something on the whiteboard, and I grabbed the chance to sidle up to Nicole.

"What's up?" she said, packing a lens into a black foam-lined briefcase. "Besides you making my best friend lose sleep because she's sneaking off late at night?"

Was it ridiculous that I was throwing confetti on the inside, knowing that Ellie was lost in me, too? "You're protective of her. I like that a lot."

She looked up at me. The skepticism on her face. "Really?"

"Really. You know how she's your favorite person? She's mine, too." I tried to give off good-guy vibes, and now she looked a lot less wary. "What would you think if we did something to celebrate her birthday tomorrow?" I said quickly.

"Like what?"

"I could cook lunch for everyone, and you and Cameron could pick up some nice wine."

"If you made her a surprise birthday lunch, I would think that you had hidden depths," she said, her voice a little kinder. "Or a hidden depth."

I deserved that for all the messing around I'd done. "Do you know what she'd really love? I'd make french fries, but there's no deep fryer."

She tapped her lip. "Something with shellfish. She sneaks off and has lunch at Swan Oyster Depot by herself when she really needs a treat."

"Shellfish, sure. What about dessert?"

"Anything with nuts. She couldn't eat them for years because Max was so allergic. But she loves peanut butter."

"Perfect. I'm gonna be a little late tomorrow. Can you cover for me?"

"Only because I know you're doing something nice for her. And Kieran?"

"Yeah?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Don't make it too over the top. When you're showing off, nothing's safe from being foamed and jellified."

I shook my head hard. "I'm different for her," I said. "What Ellie wants comes first. Always."

I knew my feelings were all over my face, but Nicole still studied me. "Show her that," she said finally, and smiled, like I'd passed her final test.