Page 30 of Best Served Hot

My eyes strayed over the host’s shoulder as Bennett argued—okay, begged. They landed upon a table, upon a small plate mounded with glistening dark pink cubes of tuna, threaded throughout with dark green leaves, dotted with the benne seeds Jada Knox had said tasted almost like coffee . . .

Jada Knox . . .

Jada Knox had been here. That might mean . . . Maybe I could . . .

I stepped up beside Bennett, squaring my shoulders, trying to ignore how close I stood to him, the warmth that radiated from that blue-and-green sweater. “It’s all my fault. I got tied up at work. Bad boss,” I lied, gambling that the host would have some experience with a bad boss.

His eyes did soften. Just a little.

Time for phase two. “I know my friend Jada Knox ate here recently. You know Jada?” I didn’t wait for an answer. I wanted it to seem like the answer was assumed, because who didn’t know Jada? “She’s actually my colleague more than my friend. We’re doing a collaboration together soon.” Jada and I had been going back and forth, trying to figure out when and where. The girl was busy. “I’m Julie Zimmerman, also known as JulieZeeEatsNYC. I have almost seventy thousand—”

I stopped as he held his palm up toward me. “I’m sorry, but we don’t offer free meals to influencers.”

“I’m not looking for a free meal,” I said. “Just a table. Please. We had a—”

“As I said, I’m afraid we only hold tables for fifteen minutes past the reservation time. We gave your table away already.” The softness had leached out of his voice. “And we don’t cater to influencers here. If you were the food critic for the New York Times or the New York Scroll, that might be different.”

I glanced at Bennett, then at the floor, worrying I’d given him away. Or was it to hide that shame bubbling up inside me again? Because that was all I was to the host. An influencer. Someone who took pretty pictures in exchange for free meals.

Bennett thanked the host politely and stepped away. It took me a moment to follow him; if I dared to look up, I was afraid I might burst into tears. But I focused on taking deep, even breaths and thinking about the cutest thing I possibly could (the baby who’d waved at me on the subway this morning, that beagle teapot in the window of the mob front near Wander) until my insides stopped roiling so much. By the time we made it outside to the sidewalk, where we kept to the side near the brick wall of the hotel so that we wouldn’t get trampled by herds of businesspeople fleeing their offices, the tears had receded and I could speak normally again.

“I’m really sorry,” I said, and now my breath hitched for a different reason, because what if he was mad and didn’t want to review restaurants with me anymore?

I hated that I cared so much. “I had to send these contracts out for signature at the end of the day, and somehow they slid behind my desk and got stuck, and I couldn’t find them, and—”

“It’s okay,” Bennett interrupted. “I don’t blame you.” He sighed, tipping his head back so that the lights of the city above reflected off his glasses, making him look for a moment like a skyscraper himself. “I just really wanted to eat here.”

I nudged him with my elbow before I could stop myself, and then I had to stop myself from holding it for an extra moment against the hard plane of his waist. “Too bad you couldn’t tell him the truth.”

“Too bad,” he echoed. He sighed again, so long and drawn out he might have been letting out all the air in his body. “And we already lost the reservation at the other place. I can definitely get another one, but probably not for a few weeks.”

More sweat bloomed in my armpits. It took me a second to realize why, to put a word to the tingles in my stomach. Nervous. I was nervous. But why? We’d tried to get dinner. We’d failed. We could try again in a few weeks. Even if that meant I wouldn’t see him until then. “I’m worried that we’ll lose momentum if we don’t give the people something,” I said. I’d still been doing my regular reviews—I had material queued up on an excellent Thai restaurant I could put out instead of this one—but people loved our collaborations. My engagement numbers were highest on them. “There’s got to be something we can eat together. Something good that we can feature.”

Bennett scoffed. “All the hot new restaurants the Scroll would want me to do are booked up for weeks.”

“And God forbid we do anything other than a hot new restaurant,” I needled. “Why not . . . that diner?” I pointed at the nearest twenty-four-hour greasy spoon. I’d gone there plenty of times for a postmidnight drunken burger and fries, or omelet and fries, or just an enormous plate of fries. “Could be a fun angle. Mix it up a little.”

Bennett rolled his eyes. “I don’t like paying for food I could make better myself.”

Of course. Of course he’d be that insufferable. I’d dated a guy in college who was convinced he could cook better than any restaurant nearby. He would’ve needed to use salt for that, though. “Yeah, okay.”

His back stiffened. Behind me, somebody laughed loudly. I turned to see a guy ride by on a unicycle, a rainbow clown wig puffed all around his head. I turned back, unimpressed. Clearly, the laugher hadn’t been in New York very long. Bennett clearly hadn’t noticed him at all and was in the middle of a diatribe on how excellent a cook he was: “. . . will have you know that my skills may not be up to par as compared with a high-end restaurant chef, but they’re certainly better than the standard cook’s.”

The words shot out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying. “Not better than mine.” What about that time a few weeks ago when you utterly destroyed rice and eggs, two of the simplest things you can make? But I ignored that little voice. I hadn’t asked for its opinion. “I used to make these lamb burgers with yogurt and mint for barbecues that my friends and family would beg for. Sometimes they’d say I was only invited if I brought them.”

Bennett snorted. “That says a lot about the desirability of your company.”

“Stop trying to change the subject,” I said. “You’re a food snob. I can’t imagine you’ve made many burgers.”

“So many burgers, and all better than yours.” He raised an eyebrow at me. A challenge.

I took it. “Fine, then. Prove it.”

“Prove it how?”

I crossed my arms. Overhead, the sun was just beginning to go down, bathing us both in an orangey glow. I hadn’t actually thought this through.

Bennett crossed his arms back. The pose accentuated his forearms, made the rangy muscle bulge and the light dusting of fair hair glow in the dying light. My cheeks warmed, or maybe it was that they’d just figured out what was coming before my brain did. “Burger cook-off,” he said. “My apartment isn’t far from here. We’ll document it for our social media, have it be a fun special event behind the scenes.”