Page 31 of Best Served Hot

If I thought through the number of shit shit shits that truly applied to this situation, I’d be standing here silently until the sun went all the way down. Backpedal this situation. Figure out a face-saving way to get out of this. Fake an emergency call from your landlord. Your apartment’s flooded. With mice. “I don’t know,” I said. “I, um, I think I might have a . . . thing.”

Nice.

He raised an eyebrow, then the second eyebrow. “Are you chickening out?” He shook his head. “What a shame. But I guess it’s okay if you can’t handle the heat.”

How.

Dare.

He.

I straightened my shoulders, then inhaled deeply. If I breathed out right then, I thought I might actually exhale fire. “Of course I’m not chickening out,” I said. “I was just thinking . . . um . . . it would suck to have burgers without fries. But as long as you also want to make fries, of course I’m in.” Fries were easy—all I had to do to make oven fries was chop up potatoes and toss them in oil and throw them in the oven, right? I could definitely do that.

Somehow his eyebrows went up even higher. If he wasn’t careful, they might jump right off his head. “Good,” he said. “Then it’s on.”

• • •

As soon as we got to the grocery store, I ran ahead of Bennett so that I could surreptitiously consult Chef Google without him seeing—I hadn’t been lying about my famous lamb burgers, but I’d neglected to mention how long it had been since I’d fired up that skillet. Unfortunately, Manhattan grocery stores, especially this fancy little gourmet one Bennett frequented, didn’t leave a lot of room for hiding. Whenever I went back to suburban Pennsylvania to visit my parents, I treated going to the grocery store kind of like I treated going to the zoo. Oh my God, I didn’t realize there were so many species of cheese. Look at all the baking goods roaming this sprawling plain.

The first obstacle: the grocery store did not have ground lamb. They had regular lamb at the butcher’s counter that could be ground, but the butcher had gone home for the day. “Sorry, it’s almost closing time,” said a worker in an apron, not sounding sorry at all.

“Well, that’s a shame,” I said to Bennett as we stood in front of the meat cubby. Or at least it felt like a meat cubby compared to the meat warehouse in other grocery stores. “I guess we’ll have to—”

“Both use ground beef, I know,” Bennett said. Was it my imagination, or had he rushed to get those words out before I said cancel?

Of course he wants to do this, I told myself sourly. He probably got cooking lessons from Bobby Flay as a child. “I’m not as experienced with ground beef,” I said, setting the groundwork so that it wouldn’t be as embarrassing when I lost.

He shrugged and tossed the two most expensive packages into the cart. I wondered if it would be gauche to take one out and switch it for a cheaper one. Probably. “I have salt and pepper and all the basic pantry items at my apartment already,” he said. “But we’ll need buns.”

Obstacle number two: the bakery section had also been cleared out for the night. “We donate everything right before closing,” said the same worker as before, not bothering to apologize this time. And of course they didn’t have those squishy preservative-filled rolls that could last for weeks on the counter.

I heaved a sigh I hoped sounded more disappointed than relieved. “Well, we can’t make burgers without buns.” I hoped he wouldn’t suggest stopping at a bodega. Would someone like Bennett even set foot in a bodega? Would someone like Bennett even know what a bodega was?

Bennett scoffed. “You can’t make your own buns?”

Julie. No. Don’t bite this time. But he looked down on me, those blue-gray eyes already gloating, and they lit that spark in my belly. That, or maybe it was how close he was standing to me all of a sudden, so close I had to crick my neck to look him in the face, and I didn’t want to say anything that would make him back away. No matter how embarrassing it might be for me. But really, how hard could baking hamburger buns be? Baking was basically chemistry. Right? You just combine the right amount of the right ingredients and pop it all in the oven and—poof—hamburger buns.

“I assume you already have the ingredients we’ll need in your massive pantry,” I said, and this close, I could see Bennett’s Adam’s apple bob up and down.

“Of course,” he said. “What self-respecting cook wouldn’t?”

He stared down at me. I stared up at him. He could cook me with those eyes. I could already feel my insides heating up, melting . . .

I tore my eyes away, cheeks flushing. “I should get the potatoes.”

He followed me to the produce section, where, together, we sorted through the russet potatoes, turning them over and examining them carefully for any rotten spots. I couldn’t stop glancing over at his slender fingers running over the potato skin, wondering how they might feel on mine.

11

I’d mostly gotten ahold of my traitorous body by the time we made it to Bennett’s apartment. For one, I’d insisted on paying half the grocery bill—I wasn’t going to be in anyone’s debt—and the number on the screen had been like dunking myself under a cold shower. I didn’t have time to calculate in my head before handing over my card, so I had to settle for a silent prayer it wouldn’t overdraft me again.

My jaw dropped open when Bennett stopped in front of a building I thought was a fancy hotel and led me into the lobby. Which also looked like a fancy hotel: the floor was white marble, polished so finely I could clearly see my reflection and the hairs that had escaped my ponytail, and a glittering silver chandelier spun high overhead. “Good evening, Mr. Wright,” said the besuited doorman behind an ornately carved wooden desk.

Bennett smiled back and nodded. “How are you, Mr. Woods?”

The doorman chuckled as Bennett and I stepped into the elevator. The mirrored doors closed before us, and as we started rising, so smoothly I could hardly feel it, Bennett said, “Everybody else calls him Fred, but it feels weird to me for me to call him by his first name when he calls me ‘mister.’ ”

“I get it,” I said. I did not; I’d never had a doorman, or anyone who worked for me, really.