She, Myself & I (30 page)

“Yeah. I was just about to go,” I said.

“You want a beer before you leave?”

“Um. Sure. Why not,” I said, and Oliver stepped back inside his office. I assumed that I was supposed to follow him, but I hesitated for a minute. He’d been sort of moody during dinner, which muted the usual mischievous atmosphere in the kitchen, and I was afraid that he was going to yell at me. Or fire me. Or both. I tried to remember—had I screwed up more than usual tonight? I’d brought a plate of lamb chops back to him, because the customer had insisted they were too raw.

“They’re perfect. You’re supposed to eat them rare,” Oliver had snapped, but he tossed them back into the sauté pan for a few minutes and then handed the plate back to me without further comment.

But that wasn’t my fault, was it? Or did he take it as my criticizing him?

“Are you coming?” Oliver called, and so I stepped into his office.

He was sitting behind a steel desk that reminded me of the indestructible ones my high school teachers had used.

“Take a seat,” he said. He popped the cap off of a bottle of Amstel Light and pushed it across the desk to me. I grabbed it and dropped into the visitor’s chair.

“Thanks,” I said, and took a long draw.

“Your boyfriend left without you?” Oliver asked.

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“I thought you left with Adam last night.”

“He was just driving me home. I don’t have a car. But there’s nothing going on between us,” I said.

Oliver looked at me for a few beats longer than I was comfortable with, appraising me with his dark eyes, and I wondered if he thought I was lying. Maybe that’s why he asked me in here, I thought. Maybe he just wanted to find out what was going on within the waitstaff ranks.

“Good. That kid’s a putz,” he finally said. He shook his head and drank some beer.

I laughed and tried to relax—it didn’t seem like he was planning to fire me after all—but being this close to Oliver filled me with nervous energy. I looked around his office and saw some framed awards and diplomas on the wall, between the pair of frosted windows.

“Where did you go to school?” I asked.

“Paris. Le Cordon Bleu,” Oliver said.

“I’m in the process of applying to the Culinary Institute of America,” I said.

Oliver’s eyebrows went up. “You want to be a chef?”

“Yes. I mean, I think I do. Do you think . . . should I try to go to school in France instead?” I asked anxiously, not wanting to screw up my career before it even began.

Oliver shrugged and took another drink. “It doesn’t matter so much. But I wouldn’t rush off to school if I were you. I’d take a year, try to get some apprentice work, and see how you like it. If it still seems like a good fit, then go next year.”

“Really? Because I thought you couldn’t get any work in a kitchen until after you graduate from culinary school.”

“Probably not paid work, no. But you should be working back in the kitchen, not up front in the dining room. Take whatever tasks are given to you, and if you’re lucky, you’ll find a chef who’s willing to take you under his wing as an apprentice,” Oliver said.

The thought of not going to culinary school—a path that I’d been clinging to as an acceptable and responsible alternative to medical school—scared me. And if I told my parents I was giving up Brown Medical School to be an unpaid kitchen lackey, I imagined it wouldn’t go over well.

“You need a ride home?” Oliver asked abruptly.

All thoughts of parents and career vanished from my thoughts, and my breath caught in my throat as I nodded. I was going to be alone. With him. In a car. We were alone now, but it was basically still just work, in the brightly lit office among indestructible industrial furnishings. But being in a car at night, seated just inches away from one another, was far more intimate.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said.

We walked into the kitchen and dropped our bottles—his empty, mine still half full—into the large green plastic trash can, and then I followed him outside. His BMW was parked right by the back door, and after he unlocked the doors with his remote key, I slid into the passenger seat, praying that the stink of kitchen smoke and sweat wasn’t clinging to my hair and body.

I gave Oliver directions to Paige’s apartment, and he pulled out, driving with the same efficient, silky motions that he used while cooking.

“Do you like Austin?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “It’s all right.”

“You used to live in Miami, right?”

He nodded, but didn’t say anything, so I, too, lapsed into silence, my feeble attempts at conversation having so dismally failed. Thankfully, the drive was short, and within moments, he stopped in front of my building.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.

“Do you have any plans tomorrow night?” Oliver asked.

The restaurant was closed on Mondays. It was the only day off most of us had.

“No,” I said, shaking my head.

“I’ll teach you how to make an omelet. The right way,” he said.

“What?”

“You said you wanted to be a chef. The first thing every student learns is how to make an omelet.”

“Okay. Um, where?” I asked.

“My apartment. I’ll pick you up here at seven,” he said.

“Okay,” I said again, trying to ignore my heart, which was thudding in my chest, as heavy as a potato.

And only after I’d climbed out of the car and watched him drive off did I wonder, Was this a date or a teaching exercise? Either way, I didn’t care. I’d take whatever I could get.

Chapter Thirty-four

“What are you looking for?” Sophie asked me.

I’d lured Sophie away from her budding photography business for the afternoon, and convinced her to come to the Arboretum with me under the pretense of catching up. What I really wanted was advice on how to handle the whole Oliver situation. And whether buying black stockings and a garter would be overkill for a first date.

We’d eaten subs, and stopped in at Gymboree, where she bought Ben a T-shirt with dinosaurs on it, and the Gap, where I picked up a skirt on clearance, and then I steered her toward Victoria’s Secret. Sophie was pushing Ben in a stroller, and he’d fallen asleep, his head lolling to one side. His navy blue hat was tipped forward, covering his face.

“I’m just browsing,” I said.

“Do you need panties?”

“Actually, I’m looking for something a little more . . . sophisticated.”

“You mean like a thong?”

“Maybe a matching bra-and-panty set. Or maybe a teddy,” I said, trying to sound casual.

“A teddy? Mickey,” Sophie said, grabbing my arm and turning me toward her. “Who is he?”

“Who?”

“Whoever it is you’re sleeping with,” she hissed.

“I’m not sleeping with anyone!”

She looked at me, head tipped to the side, eyebrows arched. “Yeah, right. You’re just shopping for a teddy to what, wear around the house? I don’t buy this stuff, and I’m married.”

“Okay, fine, there is someone. Nothing’s happened yet, but he’s invited me over to his place for dinner tonight,” I said.

“Your first date, and you’re already shopping for lingerie? Don’t you think that’s a little fast?”

“Don’t you think that’s a little judgmental?”

“I’m your big sister, it’s my job to be judgmental. Seriously, are you really going to go bed with him so soon?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m not even sure it’s a date,” I said, turning away from her so that I could browse through a rack of silk nightgowns. They were in pretty jeweled colors—deep purple, azure blue, crimson—but definitely not what I was looking for, unless I showed up for dinner wearing one under a raincoat. Definitely overkill.

“If a guy cooks you dinner, that’s a date. No, it’s more than a date, it’s a seduction ploy,” Sophie said.

“We work together. He’s the head chef at Versa. It could just be a collegial thing,” I said.

“Yeah, right. How hot is he?”

I sucked in my breath. “Really, really hot,” I admitted.

“So it’s a date. Shoot. I had a really nice guy I was planning on setting you up with,” she said, pausing to pick out some gray cotton briefs from a round table in the middle of the store. She held a pair up to me. “See, this is what you wear when you’re old and married. God, I feel fat.”

“I think you look great. Haven’t you lost weight?”

“A little. At least I’m not wearing my maternity pants anymore.”

“Who did you want to fix me up with?”

“Ben’s pediatrician.”

“The sexy Indian guy from the gym?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“The one you have a crush on?”

“I don’t have a crush on him. I told him all about you, and he asked me to give you his number,” she said.

“Paige warned me that if you ever tried to set me up with anyone, to run very fast in the other direction,” I said.

“Very funny. And I can’t believe she’s complaining, since I was the one who set her up with Zack,” Sophie said.

I pulled a corset-and-garter set off of a rack and held it up. “What do you think of this? Too much?”

Sophie considered it and then nodded. “Yeah, you don’t want to look like you planned this out. If things go in that direction—although I think you should wait a little longer and go out with the guy a few times, that’s all I’ll say—you want it to look more casual. Like you just happen to be the kind of woman who always wears sexy underwear. You want something that says,
I’m a fascinating, erotic woman.
The corset says,
I’m going to an S&M club after our date.
”

“Point taken,” I said, and put down the corset.

Sophie wheeled Ben over to a rack of bras and rummaged through them for a few minutes, before pulling out a black lace push-up bra. “This is what you want. Simple yet devastating. What size are you?”

“Um, 32B.”

She checked the tag. “Here you go. And these panties, too,” she said, handing me the bra and a matching pair of black bikini panties. “Unless you want the thong.”

“I’ll take the panties.”

“Do you want to try the bra on?”

“No, let’s just go. I’m sure it’ll fit,” I said, suddenly feeling shy and strange shopping for lingerie with my big sister. Up until now, I’d always bought my underwear at Target, the cotton kind that comes in a six-pack. My college roommate had been into the more exotic fare, and often announced that she felt underdressed if her bra and panties didn’t match—“I’m a set girl,” she’d giggle—but I’d always thought it was just an affectation. Maybe she had a point. She certainly got laid more than I did, even during the years when I had a steady boyfriend.

I paid for the underwear, and the salesclerk handed me back a pink-striped shopping sack. Sophie and I headed back to her SUV, loaded Ben in—somehow he stayed asleep even when Sophie lifted him from his umbrella stroller and buckled him into his car seat—and then climbed in. Sophie pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the access road for the highway.

“Have you talked to Paige recently?” I asked.

“Not for a few days, no. Why?”

“Zack asked her to marry him,” I said.

Yes, I was aware that it probably wasn’t my place to tell Sophie this news, but this is what sisters do. Paige had to have known she was taking the risk when she told me.

Sophie screamed, slammed on the brakes, and yanked the SUV over to the shoulder.

“Jesus. What the hell are you doing? Are you trying to get us all killed?” I asked, grabbing onto the side of the door, as though this would protect me if an eighteen-wheeler slammed into us.

“Tell me everything,” Sophie said. “And don’t swear in front of Ben.”

After my adrenaline level returned to normal, I gave her the highlights, and when I was through, Sophie looked more worried than excited.

“I hope she doesn’t screw this up. Zack’s the best thing that ever happened to her,” she said, flicking on her turn signal and pulling back out onto the highway.

“That’s so sexist.”

“I’m a woman. I can’t be sexist.”

“Of course you can. And Paige is an incredible, accomplished person in her own right, with or without a man in her life.”

Sophie shrugged. “I don’t mean it that way. Zack makes her happy. Happier than she ever was on her own. It’s like that line in
Jerry Maguire
—he completes her,” she said.

Sophie pulled up in front of my building, and I leaned forward to gather up my packages.

“Coming up?” I asked.

“I’d better get going. I still need to edit the photos I shot yesterday. Mick, you should have seen this child, she was the homeliest baby I have ever seen. I tried putting a headband of flower petals on her, I tried soft-lighting her, I even tried making the photos slightly out of focus, but nothing helped.”

“All babies are beautiful.”

“I know that’s what you’re supposed to say, but it’s just not true.”

“Well, Ben’s pretty cute,” I said, looking back over my shoulder. I could just see the top of Ben’s head over the rear-facing car seat. “Thanks for going shopping with me.”

“Call me tomorrow and let me know how your date went. And seriously, at least consider taking it slow. I’m not saying you have to be a prude, but sometimes it takes a few dates to get the measure of a guy and figure out if he’s really the kind of person you want to get involved with,” she said.