Skinny Bitch Gets Hitched (26 page)

Grrrr. She was driving me insane. I grabbed my phone and typed back,
YOU'RE FIRED, YOU IMPOSSIBLE SHREW
. Then, of course, Zach's face popped into my mind, and I deleted it. But it felt danged good for a second.

Z
ach was doing it again. Disappearing. Not responding to texts. Telling me he was working late.

Enough was enough. That mini-devil stabbed me in the shoulder with the pitchfork.
Told you, Cooper. Everything is falling to shit. You'll never impress the
New York Times
reporter now. Not with Zach and his disappearing acts messing with your head.
Clementine's No Crap Café will be history this time next year. You'll be walking into a day spa in this location.

The mini-angel pointed a finger at the devil.
Shut it, you. Whatever Zach is going through, they'll get through it. But right now, go work on your rustic-vegetable potpie.
Now,
she screamed in my ear.

Huh. Angel was getting quite the temper.

The next morning I was at my friend Alexander's house, helping him bake the one hundred cupcakes he'd volunteered to make for the fund-raiser for the middle school of his “little brother.” If you looked up
good guy
in the dictionary, you'd find a picture and description of Alexander Orr. Every week he hung out with twelve-year-old Jesse, an only child with divorced parents, went to all the kid's school events that his mother (his dad was out of the picture) couldn't attend because of work. And Alexander, who was pretty danged cute, was a great chef.

Baking bored him, so maybe he
did
need my help today. But I was pretty sure he'd just needed an excuse to call me. Before the competition for the
Times
article, we'd call or text a few times a week. Lately: zilch. We both wanted to win, which meant suckish things for the other.

Alexander poured apple-cider vinegar into the bowl of soy milk on his kitchen counter while I got to work on the flour, chocolate, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Forget this tiptoeing around each other crap. Alexander and I were real friends. We could handle competition.

“My rustic-vegetable potpie is missing something,” I said. “I'm thinking of offering it as a special for the
Times
reporter, and it'll definitely go on my Outpost menu, but something's wrong with the crust. I made a mistake somewhere in the sauté or in the baking time. I can't figure it out. There's a chewiness that shouldn't be there.”

“The Outpost? What's that? And of course I'll help you with potpie.”

I dropped my measuring spoon. “I didn't tell you about the Outpost?” How could I not have told Alexander?

He gave the batter a taste and then added a drop of vanilla. “Well, I think you've been keeping your distance from me.”

“Actually, it's you who's been keeping your distance from
me
.”

“Yeah, it's both of us. I hate that. This can't come between us, Clem. Okay?”

I nodded. “No way.” It couldn't and wouldn't. Alexander and I had been through a lot together already. We could deal with this.

As I told him about the Outpost, all my plans for it, how juiced my dad was to be chef, I could hear how right it was, how doable, how passionate I was about it. Why couldn't Zach? Why couldn't he just say,
Of course you'll make it work
.

“Zach doesn't think it's sustainable,” I said, mixing my batter. “And that I'll stretch myself so thin everything will fall to crap.”

“You're too awesome for that. You're smart, ambitious, efficient, and know how to make things happen. It's a bloody brilliant idea, Clem. Farm-to-table right at the organic farm? In a gorgeous red barn? You'll get a ton of publicity, draw on your great reputation and your dad's, and the place will be packed every night, just like the No Crap Café.”

Before I could stop myself my arms were wrapped around him in a fierce hug. I looked up at him, into those warm brown eyes, and for a split second I wanted to kiss him. On the lips,
not the cheek. He'd said everything I wanted Zach to say, everything I wanted Zach to believe.

But Alexander
wasn't
Zach. I'd fallen in love with Zach
because
of who he was. His dull concerns about the Outpost weren't off the wall; he was being corporately conservative. He was coming from a business perspective. Alexander was coming from a vegan chef's perspective.

I pulled back. “Thanks for saying all that.”

“It's all true.” He reached for my hand.

I gave him a smile and slipped away that hand to remove my batter from the mixer. “If Emil finds out you're helping the enemy, he'll have your head,” I said to change the subject.

Alexander handed me five cupcake tins and liners and got started lining his own five. “I'm not scared of Emil Jones. You're my friend, Clem. Friends help each other out. Like you're doing for me right now.”

As I placed the little colored wrappers in the tins, I wondered what life would be like if I'd gone for Alexander instead of Zach. Alexander and I were a perfect match on paper—both vegans, both giving the finger to unnecessary chemicals and other crap that clogged people's hearts, pores, and brains. We were both chefs, both got seriously excited over new sauté pans and good knives. We understood each other. He was goodness personified too, mentoring a tween, volunteering at the kid's school, bringing homemade soup and dinners to his grandmother, who'd followed him to the United States and was madly in love with Southern California.

Plus, he was incredibly cute with a great body, all tall and lankily muscular, with wavy sandy-brown hair and sharp brown eyes. I knew he was a hot guy. But every time the two of us had kissed? Like kissing my brother.

Still, since Alexander's parents were in England, I wouldn't have the future mother-in-law from KillMeNowVille breathing down my neck.

“Monday, before work?” Alexander asked.

“I don't know what I'd do without you.”

He smiled that hangdog smile that said he wished there were an
us
, that I'd chosen him instead of Zach.

The cupcakes cooling and two of them inhaled, we took Alexander's dogs, Lizzie and Brit, for a walk. Alexander filled me in on the woman he was dating, a carnivore like Zach, who was finding Alexander preachy even though he never said a word to anyone about going vegan. It just wasn't his way to get in someone's face the way some other people did . . . such as myself.

“The other night, we were out at a pizza joint, and I ordered a pizza, hold the cheese, and she got all offended. ‘It's just
cheese
,' she said. ‘It's not like the cow died for it.' ”

I rolled my eyes. “What did you say?”

“I tried to explain in a very reasonable and polite way about dairy cows and why they're mysteriously full of milk all the time and how we're the only species who drinks and eats another species' mother's milk, and then I got into some of the environmental issues, and she got up and walked out.”

I tried not to smile. “Not a lost cause, though. If I'm marrying Zach Jeffries, there's hope for vegan-and-carnivore love.”

“Well, I'll call her later. We'll see.”

Brit and Lizzie started barking at a dog walker and his pack of at least ten dogs, so we walked back to Alexander's house and I helped him package up the hundred cupcakes. I'd missed hanging out with Alexander and wanted to just stay and talk, but Keira was having a final test run of her lasagna at the restaurant and I'd promised to be there and watch every step. She'd planned to have
Eat Me
on in the background, turned up loud, so she could get used to Joe's screaming in her face as she cooked.

The minute I walked out the door of Alexander's house, I wanted to be back in there. With all that support. All that Team Clementine. All that . . . tension.

What the hell did that mean?

I
t was so weird being in the audience of
Eat Me
. When I was last in this studio, I was onstage, whipping up my $25,000 eggplant Parmesan. Sara, my trusty assistant, was furiously chopping vegetables and handing me utensils, yelling at Joe to suck it. Now I was in row two, sitting next to Zach, who was texting back and forth with his second-in-command. Did this man ever stop working?

Did I?

Would Alexander Orr be texting at his stepsister's debut on a national TV show? No, he would not.

All night, I'd flopped around my bed so much that Sara had come into my room to ask if I was being attacked by sharks in a dream or something. Every time I'd tried to think about Zach
and how I was going to handle our problems, Alexander's cute face would float into my mind.

Romanticizing, I knew. If I were in a relationship with Alexander, we'd have problems of our own. Not Zach-like problems, though.

Note to self: Go back over numbers six and eight of Jocelyn's list.
What do you expect married life to really be like? Are you expecting him to change once you're married?

Would Zach be texting his second-in-command during our ceremony? Okay, fine, of course he wouldn't. But at the reception? Yeah, probably. Would I be wondering how things were going at the restaurant? Wouldn't my entire staff be at my wedding, anyway? I'd have to close up shop on a Saturday night.

Luckily, the show's taping had been moved to Monday when the restaurant was closed, so we were all here to scream our asses off for Keira and Gunnar. Alanna, the McMann twins, Matteo and his even-more-gorgeous-than-Nadia-the-model girlfriend, and all my waitstaff and busboys.

“Joe Steak, Joe Steak, Joe Steak,” a loudmouth in the row behind us started chanting, trying to get the audience riled up with him.

Dominique, on Zach's other side, kept glancing around with a horrified expression, as though she expected someone to jump her any minute. Her husband sat beside her with his arms crossed against his chest, his expression glowering. Keira looked a lot like her dad, Paul Huffington, except Keira was
a smiler, and her father hadn't cracked one since Dominique had introduced us.

Sir Paul leaned forward and shot me the stink-eye.

Nice. Did Keira's parents have
any
faith in her?

The producer and her assistant came out from the side door to explain how the show would work and to point out the cue cards they'd use to prompt shout-outs and clapping. When the producer said we shouldn't hold back, we should feel free to shout out whatever we wanted—but no swear words—both Huffingtons leaned forward and shot me the death stare.

“Is
damn
okay?” a guy asked from the row in front of me. “What about
dickhead
?”

“
Damn
is welcome,
dickhead
is not,” the producer said. “Just remember, folks, if you wouldn't use the swear word with your aunt Gertrude, don't use it here. Otherwise, don't hold back. Being obnoxious won't get you bleeped!”