Crush du Jour (10 page)

Even still, I wasn’t completely ready to give up the squishy, chocolate-covered feelings I got whenever I was around Seth. Damien was like … like a Swedish fish. Completely yummy, and it would do in a pinch (I’m not one to turn down delicious gummy candy) … but somehow still less inspiring than a good hunk of Godiva. And I was kind of a Godiva girl.

I made a pact with myself: I’d give it one good, solid, honest-to-Godiva shot with Seth and see where that got me. Anna was
right: I had real feelings for him. Forget flirtation—this could be a romance. I owed at least that much to myself before I abandoned all hope of a five-course relationship with my favorite cooking coconspirator.

I’d give it one shot with Seth, and if that didn’t pan out, I’d head right back into the land of SAT prep, with no looking back.

On Saturday morning I awoke with the addled determination of a restaurant reviewer about thirty minutes before the weekend edition goes to press (for those of you not in “the biz”: I was stressed).

I spent more time than usual choosing my wardrobe; it was imperative to dress comfortably and in clothing that could take a beating from a spray of assorted foodstuffs. But this week I had particular reason to want to look if not my very hottest, then at least my least quirky. In theory I had to channel my inner (nonbratty) Callie. I had to get my flirt back on. Assuming, of course, that I still had one.

In the end, I settled on a worn and comfortable pair of overalls over a bright longsleeved T-shirt. Okay, so I’m quirky. I just
am. I have to learn to love it. I wasn’t going to show up at cooking class in peep-toed platforms and leggings. I just wasn’t.

The bangs were behaving, and after thirty-seven minutes of deep concentration, I managed to work something out with my makeup where I looked completely freshfaced and natural. Which I thought was kind of crucial in bringing what little inner Callie I did have to the surface. Inner Callie seemed like the type of girl who’d be well glossed, but subtly so.

Was it weird that my personal flirt mechanism seemed to be single-whitefemaling my archnemesis? I didn’t have time to give the matter further thought.

I stepped back to assess myself in the full-length mirror that stood in the corner of my bedroom. It was true: I would probably always be cute rather than hot, but I allowed myself the slight possibility that in this case, cute would be more than enough.

Feast your eyes, Seth
.

And Callie, eat your heart out
.

Yeah, as far as pep talks went, even I wasn’t exactly buying it.

Oh, man. When it came to matters of
the heart, these days I was completely and totally out to lunch.

But hopefully not for long.

“Gentle with the dough, guys!”

Even to my own ears, my voice was scaling notes best reserved for dogs and superheroes. It made me cringe, but I couldn’t help it. Dough was flying to and fro, and it was really just a matter of time before we were reenacting a slapstick scene from an old sitcom.

Why
had Seth and I decided on pizza for our next class? Yes, pizza made from fresh dough.

Oh, yeah. Because Pete wasn’t the only one with an Italian food fetish. Find me a kid who doesn’t like pizza, and I’ll find you a kid who’s never tried it.

And as it turned out, making pizza was almost as much fun as eating it. For safety’s sake, Seth and I had cordoned off the ovens, which were set to a level somewhere between “blistering” and “total meltdown.” But we’d given everyone his or her own prep work, and they were happily prepping away—some more enthusiastically than others, hence my shrieking. Any minute
now, Cameron, who kneaded away vigorously at a crust, was going to wind up wearing a pizza-dough bathrobe. While this would be amusing, it would also be a pain to clean up.

For my part, I was mixing together an industrial-sized tub of crushed tomatoes with a very precise blend of Italian herbs, which included an unexpected pinch of crushed red pepper, a secret ingredient passed down from my mom’s mom’s mom. There was lots of fine-chopping going on, which really wasn’t my strong suit. I would much rather have pulverized a clove or two of garlic, tossed it in, and have been done with it (and I think the boys in our class would be way into the pulverization process as well). But, you know, Seth was all into lists and ingredients and recipes. Talk about left brain. If there was one area in my life in which I wasn’t a complete control freak, it was in the kitchen. The kitchen is where you’re supposed to play around a little bit.

Okay. I have to confess: There was a method to my culinary madness today. There was a reason that I was mincing Spanish onions with the precision of a brain surgeon. Today I was the saucer and Seth
was officially in charge of the dough, so sooner or later we’d have to combine our efforts. As I pounded away at my bowl of tomato pulp, I inched closer and closer to Seth. I was curious to see how long it would take him to notice that his personal space was being invaded. Unfortunately, up until now, most of our respective attention had been spent on reining in Cameron, who, it seemed, was actively trying to stretch his hunk of dough out to as wide a diameter as possible. I was a little worried about him.

But not so worried that I couldn’t also keep my eyes on the prize. I coughed conspicuously and slid my bowl a few centimeters closer to Seth.

“Looking good, Laine,” he commented.

I froze. Success! The hour and a half that I put into my casual, kicky look for the day had
totally
paid off! I couldn’t wait to tell Anna the news. She definitely thought it was time to give up on Seth.

“Thanks,” I said offhandedly, trying to swallow the smile that twitched at the corners of my mouth. I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to be flirty. Unfortunately,
this resulted in my depositing a glob of tomato sauce in my hair.

Seth leaned forward with a napkin and dabbed at my head. I almost swooned from the intimacy. If he was willing to get up close and personal with my scalp, then he for sure thought I was looking good.

Awesome.

He crumpled up his paper towel and tossed it aside. “That’s probably just about ready for the pies,” he continued, jerking his head toward my big old bowl.

Right. The sauce. The
sauce
was looking good. Anna wouldn’t care so much about that. And his proximity to my scalp was pure charity.

“Just about,” I agreed.

I sighed. Maybe Seth was the type of guy who was more interested in cooking than couture. Maybe he liked perfectly portioned meals rather than perfectly proportioned girls. Maybe the way to Seth’s heart really
was
through his stomach.

Or maybe he just didn’t like me.

It would be just my luck to
finally
decide that some guy was worthy of more than just your standard three-date fling,
only to have him Like Me as a Friend.

I had enough friends. All at once, I was ready for the real deal. A
boyfriend
.

If I was lucky, he preferred hair saturated with the occasional smear of marinara to hair blow-dried within an inch of its life.

Maybe, just maybe, he was the perfect guy for a flowering foodie like me.

He slid his oven stone aside and whirled around.

“Cameron, the dough stays
on the table!”

He must’ve thought the sauce crisis had passed, because he dashed swiftly over to prevent Cameron from draping his pizza dough across an unwitting Marci’s stool.

I patted at my hair, which was feeling kind of sticky and would probably dry in a stiff little clump.
Maybe
Seth preferred a line cook to a leading lady. Maybe.

But it sure wasn’t looking that way.

Me: He’s so not into me.

Anna: Damien? Laine, we’ve been over this. He’s completely into you.

Me: Not Damien. Seth.

Anna: Well, we kind of knew
that
. Right?

Me: Gee, thanks.

Anna: Uh-uh. You do not get to turn this into a pity party. You have a very adorable second-runner-up waiting in the wings. Or should I say, waiting by the break room?

Me:
(snorting)
Right, because there’s nothing more romantic than semisweet nothings whispered across half-empty ketchup bottles.

Anna: Well, in that case, you’ll have to let me know when you’re ready to reel in your next catch of the day. The Cabana Club is teeming with gorgeous lifeguards, and I feel a new relationship coming on. I have my own fish to fry.

Me: By all means, fry away. I’ll just be over here by the salad bar, wilting like week-old spinach.

Twelve

I had to face facts: Though the kitchen at cooking class had generated plenty of heat, none of it was of the romantic kind that I was dying for between Seth and me. And the longer we continued
not
heating things up, the more my sad little one-way crush was feeling like a plate of limp, warmedover leftovers. I was turning into the human equivalent of a doggie bag, a concept I found thoroughly unappetizing.

I tried to throw myself back into my old patterns. I busted out my school yearbook and scanned the back pages to see which of the activities and clubs looked promising. I made new vocabulary flash cards. I subscribed to a
Naked Chef podcast
and cooked
a new recipe for myself (and Mom, if she was home) every night.

It didn’t work. I was still stuck on Seth. My tried-and-true techniques were starting to fail me. What would be next—my George Foreman grill shorting out?

On Saturday night I headed back to Hype. I knew Seth would be there. He’d mentioned to me that he was working a double shift, which meant he’d be properly zombified by the time I arrived, and maybe more susceptible to my many tasty charms. At least tonight—I hoped—I wouldn’t get spaghetti sauce in my hair.

I arrived to find the dinner rush in full swing. Seth was nowhere to be seen, but Damien was at the bar, clearly slammed.

“Hey,” I called to him as I made my way toward the back, where the break-room lockers were.

He beckoned to me. “Laine.”

Dutifully, I backtracked to the bar. It didn’t seem like it would be such great timing for a casual chat, so I was curious what he had to say.

He leaned over the polished wood. “Just a heads up. Boss man is here tonight, and he’s breathing down our necks.”

I gulped. Boss man was Seth’s father. Seth’s father whom I still hadn’t met, who still didn’t know that I was kind of a lousy waitress, and who had no idea I was kind of in hot-andheavy like with his son.
And
, for some reason, every single person in Philadelphia who had ever idly wondered about upscale American cuisine had found their way to Hype tonight, at exactly the same time.

That was not going to be good.

Probably one of the few bright spots in a night like tonight was that even Callie was too harried to hit me with any of her usual vitriol. Her trademark hair was pulled tightly into two braids (adorable, of course) and her silver-lined eyes were bright and no-nonsense. She barely even glanced up as I rushed back out of the break room and hastily tied my apron at my waist.

“Table two wants breadsticks,” she told me, actually managing not to spit at me for once.

“Right.” I pivoted and turned sharply back in the direction from which I’d come, which was where we stashed things like salt, pepper, cutlery, and bread baskets.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one headed in that direction.

Before I could take even a full step forward, I collided into something thick and solid—like a tree trunk, but wearing a black polo shirt and pants. Seeing as most tree trunks do not wear polo shirts and khakis, and also aren’t usually found inside casual-upscale urban eateries, this development was probably not good.

The collision was followed by a reverberant thud, and then the crash of many, many pieces hitting the floor.

This development was
so
not good.

My tree trunk? Was Seth. And he was covered in the detritus of at least three different entrées—the parts of them that weren’t slowly leaking across the floor beneath us, that is.

My eyes flew open. More than anything, I wanted to be swallowed up into the giant dry-goods pantry, never to be seen or heard from again. Was that really not an option?

“Um, sorry,” I squeaked, frozen in abject mortification.

“It’s okay,” Seth said generously, though his tight smile and stiff shoulders suggested otherwise. “It’s pretty hectic here tonight.”

“I should have looked where I was going,” I gushed, crouching down to help
him gather the fallout of our culinary collision.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said graciously.

It was beyond kind of Seth to be so pleasant about the fact that he was now wearing today’s pasta special. At least it was a white sauce. That was something, given my track record with marinara. I could tell he was freaking out, though. His forehead was dotted with little beads of sweat, and his shoulders had crept up to his ears.

“Let me get this,” I pleaded, stacking broken dinner plates onto my once-clean tray. “Seriously.” Never mind that I hadn’t even punched in yet, or checked in on any of my tables. I’d been here twenty minutes and I was already in the weeds.

No, not the weeds. Weeds would have been a delightful day trip. I was in the marshes, in quicksand, and I was going down fast.

“Uh, you know what would be really helpful?” Seth asked, glancing up, obviously hoping we weren’t being too conspicuous.

As if. We were two people ankle-deep in overly hyped food. Not to mention that the crash had been in total surround sound. The only people who hadn’t noticed us
were people who weren’t actually inside the restaurant at that moment.

“What? Sure. Anything,” I said. It was way bad enough to suck at waitressing all by myself. But to cut into Seth’s night?
Quel
humiliation.

He handed me a streaked and crumpled sheet of paper from his check pad. “Can you please just run these orders through the computer again? That way, the table won’t have to wait forever for new food. I’ll go explain what happened.”