Sugar & Other Luxuries
By Everly Scott
Release Date: April 5, 2016
Genre: Romance/Humor
As a recovering perfectionist who hasn’t been on a date in five years, finding love is harder than she thought. Faced with beginning her twenty-sixth year of life insecure and living in Los Angeles where men and women either ignore or insult her curvy existence, Katherine decides to make dating her bitch. She’s not changing her curvy body. She won’t put down the dessert. And she isn’t going to apologize for any of it.
Her first night out ends nothing like she’d planned. When a flirty and rugged New Yorker asks for her phone number, Katherine freezes. She’s ready to give up before heartbreak happens. That is, until she meets a polyamorous, fairy-godmother-wanna-be, Hunter. The self proclaimed Queen of Pleasure coaches Katherine on badass, dating etiquette. Hunter’s first rule? Don’t fall in love. The second rule? Perfection doesn’t exist.
But when a bet with a sexy and sensitive music teacher changes her perspective on the dating game, Katherine learns that breaking badass rule #1 before loving every inch of herself might spell trouble. On the other hand, breaking rules might be exactly what Katherine needs to discover the true power of a woman’s body, the sugary sweetness of indulgence, and whether saying yes to her dream life against the wishes of advice-slinging friends will lead to heartache or harmony.
Chapter One
I spent the first half of my
twenties accusing myself of being a feminist fraud for wanting a boyfriend who
thought I was perfect. I had been a good girl, a maniacal, career-focused,
intellectually stimulated woman who leaned-in, took a seat at the table, and
made my voice so heard I had become hoarse. But none of that seemed to matter
in the Los Angeles dating world.
Looking for love had led me into the
defined biceps of guys who thought I might turn into an acceptable companion
if, and only if I changed something about myself. If I lost fifteen pounds. If
I didn’t say “fuck” so much. If I made more money. Less money. Had a smaller
nose. Didn’t always want to eat pasta. If I didn’t have a belly.
At some point between learning how
to flirt in high school chemistry class and stumbling furiously toward the eve
of my twenty-sixth birthday, I had given up. Stopped dating completely. Packed
away the dresses, heels, and the innuendo. Vowed to focus on myself. Sharing a
chocolate chip cookie sundae with a guy who wouldn’t be afraid to caress an
arm, thigh, or hip bigger than a size two, five, or eight only happened in my
imagination.
A male sundae-lover definitely
didn’t exist in a Los Angeles gym.
I went to the gym once.
My childhood best frenemy, Jenna,
convinced me that the gym helped women burn energy, melt fat, and meet men. The
entire experience mirrored meditation, she’d told me. “Don’t complain about
being fat. Complain about things you can’t change.”
I went alone, without telling her
that I had decided to test out her theory. Bad idea.
With my phone, tiny polka dotted
towel, and headphones in hand, I entered the world of adult, organized,
physical activity. It smelled like stale water.
I flashed my electronic guest pass
at the laser scanner, kept my focus towards the back of the big square room,
and moved quickly past the cardio machines, knowing that if I tried to run or
elliptical or spin bike myself, I’d be exposing my newbie status. A tsunami of
terror hit me, hard. I had no idea what to do in a place like this. I quickly
looked for a place to fit in, a place to disguise myself. A group of women
crowded around one weight machine like it was a pan of brownies and they had
PMS. It seemed like the magic potion. It was the Miss Universe of the gym, and
if they had to have it, so did I.
Jenna’s directions echoed in my
mind. “Stretch first. You don’t want to pull a muscle. Touch your toes or
something.” So I leaned against the wall and touched my toes. Except touching
my toes was more like leaning my elbows against my bent, trembling knees. I bent
over a little farther, and the back of my thighs burned. A couple of bones
crackled, but I had a good view of the magical machine.
“Totally worth it,” I whispered to
myself, rubbing my hamstrings. A woman in a full face of makeup, with
boob-length blonde hair taught me how to use the contraption without knowing
it. I continued touching my knees.
Step 1: adjust the weight on the
machine. Step 2: pull the level that makes the thigh pads fly apart. Step 3:
sit down. Step 4: clench thighs together. Step 5: Repeat. A lot.
It seemed easy enough. The blonde
sitting on the machine made it look like thigh clenching was a way of life.
Real women learn to walk, talk, read, and thigh clench. So when she was done,
and the crowd of women had busied themselves with other gym work like butt
extenders, and arm pumpers, I approached my machine like we had an intimate
relationship.
“Looking good,” I said, patting the
seat.
I adjusted my weight and assumed my
clenching capacity would be 50 pounds. I didn’t want to look like a complete
wimp. I pulled the lever, sat down, and tried to squeeze my thighs together.
Nothing moved. The more I tried to pull my knees toward each other the more
everything stayed in place. At that moment, I understood why the weight lifting
men grunted. I closed my eyes and pressed my knees against the pads. A grumble
vibrated inside of my stomach.
Roar like you’re a queen. Queen of
the fucking jungle, I thought.
My best attempt at roaring resulted
in a throat clearing sound, a thankfully silent fart, and yet again, a complete
lack of movement.
I lowered the weight down to
twenty-five pounds and did two of rapid squeezes. The weights slammed together,
alerting everyone within ten feet of me that I worked hard. I pumped iron. Made
my body fat cry.
A woman with a bright orange towel
draped around her neck walked back and forth in front of me. Sighing and
pacing. Her orange shoes squeaked each time she spun to walk in the opposite
direction. She was hunting me. Staring. My knees hovered in mid-thrust,
incapable of meeting in the center, already too shocked by this new range of
motion. Orange bang and I had been subjected to watching my shameful attempts
at exercise long enough. My inner thighs tingled, and damp sweat bubbled under
my butt. I would sacrifice my time on the clencher before Orange Bang threw me
to the floor in an exercise-induced rage. I rubbed my inner thighs before
getting up.
“She’s all yours,” I said.
Orange Bang looked at me, her head
now between her legs because she could actually touch her toes, and mouthed
thanks. She wiped down the seat before she took her turn.
I stood in the middle of the gym,
scanning to find my next work out option. A thick film of steam covered the
floor to ceiling windows of the gym. Bathroom mirrors after a hot shower had
nothing on these shining beauties. Men were everywhere. And only one of them
had a belly that hung over his shorts. He was diligently at work, doing squats
all the way across the length of the gym floor. Squat. Step. Squat. Step. I was
relatively inexperienced when it came to exercise protocol and gym etiquette,
but I was pretty sure squats could be done in one location. A trainer, dressed
in the gym’s collared uniform shirt, stood in the corner scribbling on a
clipboard. The squatter smiled through open teeth, and kept his eyes glued to
the clipboard – his finish line.
A man, who could have been a
football player, or model, or a professional Hulk impersonator, fumbled with
the weight control on a machine that looked like a horse and carriage. Right
next to me. He set his desired weight, somewhere way at the bottom of the
weight stack, and then jumped into the empty space fit for a human’s body – the
horse section of the horse and carriage. He rested in a squatting position, his
legs bent at an awkward angle. It already looked painful to me, and he hadn’t
moved yet. He placed the handles on his shoulders, and unbent his knees, until
they were completely straight. He let out a guttural sound that, to me, suggest
he tore something. I squinted, but couldn’t look away.
He pressed his chin into his chest,
took a deep breath, and bent down again.
This was it. My next victim. It
seemed simple enough, as long as I stuck with what I had found to be my
twenty-five pound limit. The man, finished with his grunting and growling,
stepped out of the machine, and looked my way. “You next?” he asked, wiping the
sweat from his forehead.
“Yeah. I do these all the time,” I
said, not moving from my spot in-between the thigh clencher and the horse and
carriage.
“I’ve got a couple sets left. Let’s
rotate.” He patted the machine, raised his eyebrows, and then poured water into
his mouth from a water bottle he held a foot away from his face.
I had no idea what he was talking
about. Rotating sets sounded more like baking cakes than exercising. Instead of
being clueless and admitting it, I was clueless and nodding. “Yep,” I said.
“Rotations.” I cracked my fingers on my right hand one by one.
I assumed he would simply move on to
the bigger and better things this place had to offer, maybe returning to the
horse and carriage when he was done with a different machine.
Pulling the levers down to rest on
my shoulders turned out to be impossible. I leaned against the back of the
machine looking for switches or hooks or buttons that would make it do what I’d
seen happen for the Hulk a few seconds ago. I refused to read the instructions.
No one at the gym read the instructions on anything since I got there, and I
wasn’t going to be the first one.
You are a lion, I thought. A lion
goddess. Jenna will be jealous because you will look like a fucking lion
goddess. And then I roared at myself. Out loud. While the levers of the machine
were still in the air and I, stood there, obviously not lifting weights.
“Get off for a second. I’ll adjust
it for you,” the hulky-man said. And then he laughed softly.
My face felt like it had caught on
fire. I had been discovered. “Why are you still here?” My undercover mission
was prematurely aborted. I got off the machine. “You didn’t happen to hear any
roaring, did you? Cause, if you did, I think it was that lady over there with
the orange towel.” He shook his head.
“If you did these all the time,” he
said, “you’d probably know that you gotta pull this handle back here. It raises
the height and loosens the shoulder rest.” He rattled the metal, pulled what
had to be fifteen different handles, and slapped the machine. “We’ll just have
to adjust it again when it’s my turn.”
“Thanks,” I said. I needed to make a
quick recovery if I was going to survive this encounter with any dignity. “I
meant, I come here a lot, but I never use this machine,” I said.
He dropped the weight from
twenty-five to ten. I adjusted the underwire in my sports bra.
“You know, if you want to lose
weight quickly you have to focus on your diet more than exercise,” he said, as
if he were talking through me.
I got off the machine, made some
excuse about having to use the bathroom, and walked to the water fountain near
the entrance. We were separated by half a wall, a couple of mirrored pillars,
and hundreds of sweaty people, but what he said felt like it lodged itself in
between my ribs. Jenna had been so wrong. No one designated wanna-be Hulk as
the king of the gym universe. He didn’t know if I was there to lose weight. He
didn’t know what I ate on a regular basis, if I was actually healthy or not. He
didn’t know anything about me, and yet, out of his mouth came an ice cold
dagger.
But neither the Hulk or Jenna could
know that the gym had gotten under my skin. So I stuck around. I played with a
strange arm contraption, choked back tears of embarrassment, waved some free
weights in the air, and accidentally hit the max speed button on my archenemy
the treadmill before I ran out of the gym basically screaming.
When I came home sticky and red
skinned, I looked in my own mirror for an entire hour. Sat and stared. It
seemed like I had grown larger than I was when I left for the gym. I removed my
faded white shirt and saw rolls of flesh that had in no way been taught a
lesson by an ab-ripper. Without the support of my sports bra, my breasts were
sagging and young, a complexity I still can’t understand. And under my yoga
pants there were seas and valleys, mountains, craters, and hills that were
either created by nearly twenty-six years of a delicious diet, or a poor
genetic makeup. I sat for the entire hour, inspecting my body, centimeter by
centimeter, wondering how anyone could unveil me, explore me, and touch me
without seeing this history of a rebellious body. At the end of the hour, I was
naked and alone and unchanged.
I texted Jenna.
Me 7:05 PM: Liar! Meditation does
not exist at the gym. There are no magical fixes. I have boobs and thighs and
arm bulges and cheeks and I hated the entire experience. Keeping my body the
same. Thanks.
Jenna 7:10 PM: Hahaha, you actually
went? Okay chubs. If you say so.
I knew my best frenemy was an
asshole, but the longer I sat in front of the mirror, the more I solidified my
belief that someone out there could love a stomach that wasn’t the countertop,
washboard, six pack, bikini ready bombshell type. Jenna had to be wrong.
Somewhere, there’s a single guy who would love a woman even though she despised
the gym. He would probably have three sisters and would adore his mother. He
might eat large portions of healthy lettuce wraps and protein shakes when in
public, but at home would nurture gnocchi in pesto creams, butter sauces, and
béchamel toppings. He’d indulge in garlic breads and steaks and brownies and
ice cream cakes. When entertaining a lady, he would not stare at her
disapprovingly if she went back to the kitchen for a second taste. And he
certainly would not recommend that she accompany him on his next trip to the
gym.
I wasn’t so desperate for designated
exercise time that I was willing to justify paying hundreds of dollars a month
to attend the sweatiest, most judgmental place on earth at four in the morning
on a Thursday. I didn’t want to go running at four in the morning on a Thursday
either. And doing crunches to an online workout video wasn’t my idea of an
enthralling way to spend a Friday night. I wouldn’t have wasted a Monday night
on that. I’d rather paint, or browse make up blogs, or learn how to play an
instrument. Anything other than the gym, honestly.
I hoped that I could find a man
willing love the naked woman sprawled exhausted and overwhelmingly bootylicious
on the floor of her bedroom. I had only encountered the opposite of him. Then
again, I didn’t bother to spend time in many different places – I went to my
makeup studio, I went to the mall, to the bank, to buy groceries, the park– but
surely the most enticing and rare of the male species must have gone to places
like these too. If he did, he must have been hiding from me.
I was absolutely against the online
dating world – if not for any larger reason than that upon meeting my initially
two-dimensional friend, he might have found that my picture didn’t accurately
portray who I was in person. Maybe he would expect my body to be similar to a
nutritionist or a gymnast instead of a hardcore foodie or a self-proclaimed
pizza connoisseur. I was always in the mood for a good, thin crust, fresh
mozzarella covered pizza. Anyway, the body-type mix up was possible despite
video chatting and selfie-sending. Honestly, no one ever looks like themselves
on Skype.
And so, on the eve of my
twenty-sixth birthday, in a gym induced state of fatigue, I threw both middle
fingers in the air. Fuck Jenna, Orange Bang, the Hulk, and the gym.
“Victory,” I screamed. I stood in
front of the mirror, middle fingers still up, swaying, spinning, and posing for
no one but myself.
After many years of contemplation
and in the face of all the things that men and women might have considered my
cosmetic deal breakers, I decided to find new public places to spend some time,
places that embraced bodies like mine. A place where I could find my person. My
tribe. I committed to participating in a new social activity every weekend,
even if I was uncomfortable or terrified. Promised myself I would stay for at
least an hour. Pinky swore I would talk to or maybe even flirt with at least
one guy during that time. One place, one hour, and a couple of weekends to find
the love of my life. Or maybe to find a couple of men who showed potential. At
least, that was the plan.
Chapter Two
I walked into the cooking class
alone on the first Saturday evening in February. My twenty-sixth birthday. The
day I had casually titled Find My Soul Mate Date. It was raining outside, a
cruel and unusual punishment for Angelenos. The windows of the corner
restaurant speckled with condensation. A sign informed the public that the
restaurant was closed for a private event, but it was written on a chalkboard
positioned inside the closed door. Helpful, right? As I got farther into the
room, the door behind me opened and closed, and hungry groups of people hummed
and grumbled while retreating back into the damp night.
I brushed past empty tables for two
or four, and targeted the ten people already in the back of the restaurant, not
including the chef who wore a floppy, white hat covering the very top of what
could only be a charmingly bald head. I wondered how many people in the group
already knew each other before that night. It definitely crossed my mind that
all ten of them came in a huge party bus, and that I would be the intruder, the
odd woman out, the one oblivious goldfish in a pond of stunning family of koi.
Initially, I thought a cooking class
would be a perfect event to find a man who appreciated a curvy body. But as I
pried each foot off of the ground and then forced one in front of the other, I
saw that of the ten people, only two males were present. One of them attached
his pinky to the brightly polished pinky of a woman in a short black dress.
Taken. Under no circumstances should a woman attempt to attract a man who
obviously operates under the spell of another woman. Even I knew doing that
brings bad dating karma. So I immediately diverted my attention to the other
male. He was surrounded by a group of three women, and none of them looked particularly
attached to him. I was interested, and terribly sweaty.
I made it my mission to sneak into a
conversation with the only seemingly single man in the room. With about ten
minutes until eight, we had time to mingle. The ten people were standing in
subgroups of six and four, and I turned slightly to the right to angle myself
at the single man. The more I focused, the more clammy my palms got. There was
no ring on his left hand, and he had very nice facial hair - the kind that
required special grooming tools and more time to perfect than the amount
traditionally expected for a man to spend. I approved.
When I was about five feet away, I
made eye contact with the woman standing next to the single man. I smiled. The
extra fat on my stomach wiggled up and down with each bang of my heel against
the floor. Looser clothes were on the list of necessary items for my next night
out. While draping my coat over my right arm and sliding it in front of my
stomach, I continued smiling. Looking friendly had to give off good vibrations.
Standing just slightly outside of
the circle their bodies had formed, I leaned forward, glancing at each person’s
face.
“Hello,” I said, which sounded way
too professional and not at all fun. Who ruins saying hi? I waved, hoping it
would lighten up my manly hello. Sweat formed in my armpits, lubricating my
skin in the most unpleasant way. I made sure that my hand was the only part of
my arm that moved. “I’m Katherine,” I said through a forced smile.
The woman standing next to the single
man grabbed the hand I waved with and shook it. My arm flailed wildly as she
pulled it up and down. Mission accomplished. Sweat droplets fell from my armpit
and slid down the side of my torso, settling somewhere near my belly button.
Pull yourself together. You’re not meeting the fucking President.
“My name is Mindy, and this is my
brother Zander,” the woman said as she pointed to the single man.
All signs pointed to Zander’s
potential. He had a sister, and she was friendly. Progress. I moved to shake
Zander’s hand and I made a quick but complete once over. Brown eyes. Trimmed
mustache. Crooked bottom teeth. Tousled black hair. Tight green shirt. Black
suit jacket. Dark jeans. Converse. Maybe twenty-eight. Skinnier than the
average guy. Cute.
“Nice to meet you,” he said. It
looked like he was winking but I didn’t know for sure so I acted like he wasn’t
and decided that I needed to say something interesting to Zander. That was my
self-imposed requirement before meeting the other two people in the circle.
“So what brings you here on a
Saturday night?” I said and then immediately regretted. It didn’t get any
cheesier than that. No, the first thing out of my mouth was even worse than
cheesy, it was strangely forward. Not even cute-forward. Just bizarre. No one
says that tired line except cougars who know they sound like an extra from a
one season sitcom. I continued picking myself apart for asking that question
while Zander made conversation.
“My sister loves cooking. I live on
the east coast so we don’t get to spend much time together. While I’m visiting
I try to hang out as much as possible. Quality time, you know?” He grinned. His
sister was chatting furiously with the other two women from the original group
of four. I told myself to go for it. It. Zander. Flirting for the first time in
five years. Because I had already been cheesy and strange, so I thought the
night had to be up from here.
“And,” he hesitated a little,
leaning forward, “I don’t ever turn down good food.” He smiled a one-sided
grin.
And we have a winner, everybody!
That was all I needed him to say.
Before I had the chance to convince
myself that I totally wasn’t Zander’s type I was blurting out things like, “I
could show you around sometime,” and “Maybe I could take you to see the Hollywood
sign?” Determination goes a long way, I guess. He stared straight at me as
stupid words fell out of my mouth. I stood there squeezing my arms into my
sides, feeling shocked at my ability to be bold, and worrying that in about two
seconds I’d be shot down. I wasn’t worried because I’d be getting shot down
from Zander in particular, but because I didn’t want to be shot down at all. No
one likes to be told they suck. The possibility of rejection, of someone saying
right to my face that they didn’t want to get to know me, or even have a one
night stand with me (not that a one-nighter was the goal, even though hell, it
might be nice) was enough to make me run straight out into the rain and down
the street to the closest gym. Really, any kind of rejection, even a remotely
polite one, might as well scream “You’re not good enough,” or “You don’t look
like that girl on T.V. and you probably eat a lot so taking you out to dinner
would be too expensive.” I worried that if someone told me that I might want to
change myself.
I resisted the sudden urge to bat my
eyelashes and flip my hair because I wanted this guy to like me for me and not
for whatever horrible impression of a runway model I could come up with on a
fifty-four degree winter night in the back of an empty restaurant on Pico
Boulevard.
“That’s nice, really. But, no need
to show me around,” he says confidently. I knew it was coming. There was no
chance that we had made a connection in the first place. I should have walked
right back out into the rain when I saw there were only two guys here. I could
have pretended I was a hungry customer turned away by the chalkboard
announcement.
I wanted to break eye contact with
him but he smiled and then I couldn’t look away.
“I’m from here originally. Born and
raised. I work in New York now, but I’ll always be a California boy at heart.
Actually, I could probably show you a thing or two about L.A.,” he says. He
nudged my arm and walked over to his sister who had joined the pinky partners’
group.
I touched the spot on my arm where
his elbow brushed my skin. I had become a giddy teenager in less than ten
minutes.
“Everyone find your kitchen
companion,” the man with the chef hat said. “It’s going to be a delicious
night.” He walked around to the front of the kitchen where his counter top was,
and explained in a thick Italian accent that the class would be making
Fettuccini Alfredo. “Pasta and sauce from scratch,” he said, “because that is
the only way.”
After everyone was paired up, Zander
with his sister of course, myself and the second half of the pinky partners
were the only two people standing alone. Her male companion found himself
partnered with a woman with giraffe legs. He drooled and stood there staring,
right at eye level with her breasts. I looked at him, and then back at the
woman he came with. I sighed. “Men,” I said under my breath.
The kitchen assistant dropped a ball
of dough on my work stand, slapping the dough once on its puffy top before she
moved to the next pair of amateur cooks.
My partner’s name was Hunter and the
pinky partner was her husband. She told me they have an open relationship, and
patience is not in his nature. It was going to be a long night.
We began rolling out our own
sections of pre-kneaded dough just like the chef instructed. “So,” Hunter said,
moving her rolling pin in short bursts, “Anyone special in your life? A lover,
I mean, not a best friend or a sassy grandma or anything.” Her eyes fixed on
me, expectant. I told her I didn’t, and that I was in the market for a
six-foot-two businessman who had a thing for bigger women.
“Oh please. You’re not a bigger
woman,” she said, almost too quickly in my opinion. I laughed it off and put
more pressure on the rolling pin. “Honestly Hunter,” I said, putting too much
upper arm strength into the task, “you and I both know that out here anything
bigger than a size 5 is a bigger woman these days.” Holes began to peek through
my dough, which looked more like lace than like pasta. Hunter rolled her eyes.
“It’s true,” I continued. “ They
call size eights plus sized models, and if any woman dares to call herself
curvy but has a little extra stomach, then she’s not the hot kind of curvy
she’s just fat.”
“Honey,” Hunter said, throwing a
flour-covered hand in the air. “A little confidence goes a long way.”
“Do you know how long it took me to
get into this dress?” I asked.
“Same amount of time it took me to
get into this thing,” Hunter said, pushing her breasts together with her arms.
“Impossible,” I replied. “I’m a 10,
the dress says it’s a 10, but it wanted to act like a 5 tonight,” I said,
pulling the dress down at my thighs. Smudges of flour polka-dotted along the
hemline. “My dress has multiple personalities.”
Hunter shook her head. “Poor thing,”
she said while laughing. “All the best ones do.”
The chef spun around quickly in our
direction. “All the best what?” he asked. He peered down his nose at our
workstation, and held my dough up for the class to see. It hung in the air; the
weight of the mass opened the holes up even more.
“Attention class! This dough here,
is not the best. Don’t. Do. This.”
I could have sworn it wasn’t that
bad stretched out on the counter. Even though there were only ten other people
there, my face went red as he explained that my lack of technique resulted in a
poor product.
“Stop all the talking. You are not
focused,” he added.
I glanced around the room to gauge
everyone’s reaction to the chef’s tirade and there he was. Zander. He looked at
me and mouthed the words: I like it. He shrugged his shoulders.
I felt sweat seep from the pores in
my hands. The rolling pin slid easily against my palms. The chef handed my
dough back to me, and I crumpled it up to start over. The chef shook his head.
“You are not a natural. It will take more work,” he said. Zander watched and
laughed silently. With my crusty ball of dough in hand, I swung it through the
air in a halfhearted attempt to hurl it at Zander’s head. I quickly slapped it
back onto the counter, and blew him a small kiss. Zander held up his flattened
dough and swirled it in the air like a pizza.
“The biggest and most important rule
of my kitchen, this kitchen, or any kitchen is: do not play with the food,” the
chef said as he wandered over to Zander’s station. He said something directly
to him that I couldn’t hear. I was staring long and intently enough that I
should have been able to read their lips, but I couldn’t. The chef walked away
and Zander whispered in his sister’s ear. In that instant I was already jealous
of their relationship. If he were that interested in me, wouldn’t he have
looked at me first? After all, we were having an across the room food fight
when he got busted. His attention should have been directed at the last person
of contact before the interruption.
And there I went. My imagination
exploded in a fury of fake memory montages: my first date with Zander, quickies
before work, meeting the family, Thanksgiving dinners. We had absolutely no
relationship and I was already acting like we had to decide which set of
parents to visit on Christmas.
If Zander would have shown up here
alone like me, maybe then we could have been partners. Maybe I could have
practiced this flirting thing without adding in the complications of jealousy.
I was still watching him when Hunter began to tell me about how she and her
husband met. She mentioned something about Palm Springs in the summer time and
a business trip to get away from his ex-wife who was adamantly against the open
relationship lifestyle. But when Zander’s eyes met mine and I had absolutely no
idea what Hunter was talking about anymore. He winked. I was sure of it.
“After going through all of that,”
Hunter said, “I knew for sure he was supposed to be my husband. If we could get
through something like that and still be in love. And I mean he really
supported me through it all, then I could explore a non-traditional
relationship for him.”
“Definitely,” I said, pretending to
be completely up to speed with the conversation.
“Who knew I would love it so much?”
Hunter burst into laughter. “Well, honey that’s life.”
I nodded, the other half of my
consciousness sill across the room lost in whatever Zander was doing with his
hands.
My hands had given up on rolling my
useless crumbly ball of dough into anything edible. So Hunter made the
fettuccini. I asked Hunter if she thinks she has found true love. She handed me
a hand held pasta cutter and a sheet of dough. “Do that.” She pointed to the
screen at the back of the class, magnifying the intricate work of the chef.
Hunter slipped her section of dough through the slicing machine as she looked
at me and asked, “is dough only pasta after you cut it?”
“Not sure,” I said.
Hunter raised her eyebrows, and
plopped the long noodle into a pot of boiling water. “So you’re the type who
likes to speak in riddles?” I asked.
“A little bit.”
We dropped the fettuccini into
boiling, salted water, and the chef taught everyone how to make Alfredo sauce
with butter, Parmesan cheese, and a little heavy cream.
“No garlic or onion or any extra
seasoning. Not authentic,” he said.
I let Hunter do most of the work. My
job was to stir. Wooden spoon in my hand, I stirred and stirred to meld the
ingredients into one united sauce, and to keep it from burning. My hand sweat
made the spoon slide around in my grasp. The damp hands could have been a
result of nerves or a product of the sauce’s tiny sauna. Both were equally
possible. I stirred while I looked at the back of Zander’s head wondering if he
was too handsome. I wondered if he lived too far away, or was too skinny, or
too rich, or too smart to be interested in someone like me. I consoled myself
with the idea that he could simply be a nice guy. The nice guy who said nice
things to the sort of chubby girl who came to the cooking class alone. I laid
the spoon handle against the side of the pan and then wiped my palm against my
shirt.
“I’m sorry if I’m being too
intrusive,” I said to Hunter, who still hadn’t told me the status of her belief
in one true loves. “I thought we were sharing stories.”
“I haven’t heard very much about
your story yet.”
“Well,” today’s my birthday-“
“And you’re by yourself?” She looked
surprised. “That’s usually a thirty-something thing to do.”
“How do you know I’m not
thirty-something?”
“Honey, because I’m
thirty-something. You’re still a baby.”
“I’m twenty-six today, thank you.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m twenty-six today, and I’m-” I
lowered my voice. “I’m trying to meet people, kind of the old fashioned way. I
felt like I needed to do it on my own. Be responsible for my own happy ending.”
I tapped the top of the sauce with my spoon. “So here I am.”
Hunter directed her attention to
Zander, and then back to me. Then she did it a couple more times, raising her
eyebrows the whole time.
Hunter asked if I was interested in
the guy with the black suit jacket. “You know, the guy who likes to play with
his food,” she said. “I know you want to go talk to him. In my opinion, he’s a
little immature for you, but if that’s what you like…” I stirred the sauce
again, my eyes fixed on the pot.
“Oh come on, you’ve been staring at
him the entire time. I thought you were going to slip your fingers into the
pasta machine.” The pasta machine was highly frowned upon by the chef, but was
there in case anyone was inadequate with slicing by hand.
“Practice. Practice. Practice.” The
chef clapped after every pause. He stopped to hover over every station,
inspecting the sauce’s aroma.
An intense heat flooded my cheeks
and I wondered if I had in fact been that obvious. “Look, Zander seems alright
but I think I’ve embarrassed myself enough for one night,” I said. “I just want
to eat this pasta and head home.”
The chef stopped at our station,
adjusted his hat, and yelled with a wide-open mouth. “Practice!” He clapped
twice.
Hunter dropped the freshly drained
fettuccini into the alfredo sauce and inhaled deeply. “Sweetie, don’t be sorry
when that cutie walks right out of here and you never see him again. Mine likes
to be curious and all,” she said, gesturing to her husband who was chatting
with the giraffe girl and not even attempting to learn about making fettuccini
alfredo, “but I know who means the most to him.” She smiled and dropped fresh
pasta into boiling water
“True love?” I asked.
“Our own kind of true love.”
At the end of the class everyone was
sitting around eating fettuccini with slices of bread and drops of olive oil
and the scent of Italy rising from the pots seated on multiple stoves. I shoved
my elbow into Hunter’s side when I saw that Zander was walking over to our
station. “Oh my God,” I said as I shoved a forkful of pasta into my mouth.
“Swallow that pasta! You don’t want
to look like a pig, do you?” She giggled after asking and I assumed it was to
take away the sting of calling me a pig.
“Asshole,” I muttered to her. She
ignored me.
I swirled the fettuccini around my
fork and asked Hunter if she thought it was pasta or dough now. “Both.” She
shrugged and I swallowed. I shoveled in another bite hoping I would still be
chewing when he reached our station.
He started talking before he made it
all the way to where I was sitting. “How’d yours come out? Mine was a little
dry,” he said, attempting to replicate the chef’s accent. All I could manage
with my mouth fully occupied by creamy starch and cheese was a clumsy head nod.
“I take it that nod means your food
was molto magnifico,” he said with some kind of waving hand gesture. “Your
horrible job on the rolling must have been the secret.”
“Did you have too much wine or do
you always speak in tiny spurts of Italian?” I asked.
Hunter butt-bumped me from her spot
at the counter, and then cleared her throat.
I took another bite of the
fettuccini, a little smaller this time, hoping that having something to do with
my mouth would excuse any moment of silence in case the small talk grew stale.
As I looked up from my plate, I noticed Zander’s eyes weren’t focused on my
face. He wasn’t even staring at my chest like I expected. His eyes were glaring
at the area directly underneath my chest, and I couldn’t be sure what his
conclusion about that area was. I had a feeling it could be something like:
This girl should really stop with the forklift of cheese and cream ‘cause I can
see right where it’s headed, and it’s not pretty. I stood up immediately to
help disguise the bounding rolls. I smiled and took another bite. Bigger this
time.
“My sister and I are leaving now,
but I thought maybe I could get your number,” he hesitated, for what I could
only explain as an attempt to read my reaction. “In case I forget something
about L.A. and need a tour guide or something.” He smiled and his eyes traveled
from my face back down to my stomach, and all the way to my feet. I didn’t know
if he was intrigued or appalled.
“I think its sweet that you’re
asking, really, but you really don’t have to do that,” I said. I put my plate
down and wondered if his sister put him up to this. She probably said, “Zander,
that poor girl looks so lonely. And I can tell she likes you. She could have a
fun time with a successful, attractive guy for once. Show her a good time and
then go back to New York. No harm done.” I could just imagine it happening. If
I could read lips I probably would have recognized the exact moment it happened
too.
“Don’t have to do what?” Zander
asked as he fumbled with his cell phone. I pressed my tongue into the corner of
my lips and wished I was still chewing so I could buy myself some time to
respond without having to tell him the ugly truth. I couldn’t tell him that I
was too afraid to give him my number because if he never called all of my fears
would be staring me in my big, hope-filled face. I couldn’t tell him that I
didn’t want him to call out of pity, or because he just wanted a girl he wasn’t
attracted to for a friend so that the relationship would never get messy and
complicated. I must have stood there thinking for too long because he shifted his
weight to his left side and asked, “So do you have a boyfriend or are you just
not interested after all?” His gaze stayed on my face this time.
All at once I could see my heart
breaking before it happened. If we actually started a relationship his friends
would ask him when he started being into bigger chicks. They’d tell him he
could do better. His mother would disapprove. His sister would tell him she
didn’t mean for us to actually date, she just wanted us to have a little fun.
He would go back to New York and would decide that he’s too nice of a guy to
dump me. So we would have a long distance relationship, and then he would run
into a model on her way to a photo shoot. He would cheat on me and they would
fall in real love. And it would all be because I was never meant to be with
someone that far out of my league anyway.
“Its none of that Zander. I actually
have to go. It’s getting so late. Great job on the dough though!” I turned
around, grabbed my coat and my plate of pasta, and ran out of the kitchen and
into the cold, sprinkling night.
Everly Scott loves Italian food, yummy candles, and love stories. She recently made the switch from teaching college writing to hogging all of the writing time for herself. But, when she’s not writing, you can find her hanging out on Twitter, Instagram, and her website, or learning how to powerlift, kind of. Eventually.
10 Random Facts About Me:
1. I am the proud owner of Bachelors Degrees in Honors English Literature and Creative Writing and an MFA in Writing.
2. Sunny (and dehydrated) Los Angeles has been my home base since birth. I’ve never lived anywhere else.
3. I love dogs, especially my own fuzzy Shih Tzu baby, but I am not the biggest fan of dog beaches.
4. I am utterly in love with my high school sweetheart. Not in a creepy, still crushing on him kind of way, but in a we-are-married-and-more-in-love-than-ever kind of way.
5. I may or may not be addicted to pasta.
6. I also may or may not be addicted to Dateline, 20/20, and Investigation Discovery. Don’t judge me.
7. Beyonce is #lifegoals.
8. I used to sing. A lot. In choirs, at weddings, and funerals, and football games. And in the shower. Actually, I still sing. Mostly in the shower.
9. When I was a kid I wanted to be a veterinarian. Then I realized I was allergic to cats, hated science and really sucked at math. Dreams crushed.
10. Tattoos. I love them. I have three, and if I could be covered from head to toe in beautiful art, I would! Okay, maybe not head to toe. Maybe just from collar bone to toe.
10 Random Facts About Me:
1. I am the proud owner of Bachelors Degrees in Honors English Literature and Creative Writing and an MFA in Writing.
2. Sunny (and dehydrated) Los Angeles has been my home base since birth. I’ve never lived anywhere else.
3. I love dogs, especially my own fuzzy Shih Tzu baby, but I am not the biggest fan of dog beaches.
4. I am utterly in love with my high school sweetheart. Not in a creepy, still crushing on him kind of way, but in a we-are-married-and-more-in-love-than-ever kind of way.
5. I may or may not be addicted to pasta.
6. I also may or may not be addicted to Dateline, 20/20, and Investigation Discovery. Don’t judge me.
7. Beyonce is #lifegoals.
8. I used to sing. A lot. In choirs, at weddings, and funerals, and football games. And in the shower. Actually, I still sing. Mostly in the shower.
9. When I was a kid I wanted to be a veterinarian. Then I realized I was allergic to cats, hated science and really sucked at math. Dreams crushed.
10. Tattoos. I love them. I have three, and if I could be covered from head to toe in beautiful art, I would! Okay, maybe not head to toe. Maybe just from collar bone to toe.
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