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“It’s steak.”

“God, I love you.” She made her way to the kitchen and planted herself on one of the island’s barstools, swinging her legs as she watched him prep dinner. “Can I do anything?”

He laughed while shaking his head. “Please don’t. You’ll just mess it up.”

There was no point in pretending that this hurt her feelings. He was right. Instead, she pulled up Spotify and started playing their joint playlist through the surround sound while Justin put some potatoes in the oven.

He started chopping vegetables for a salad, pausing at one point to toss a cucumber to her. She tried to catch it in her mouth, and instead it bounced off her nose.

“Try again,” she said.

They spent a few minutes like this, Justin softly lobbing radishes, carrots, and peas at Lola’s face, none of which went into her mouth. A pile of vegetables was forming on the ground around her. She was laughing so hard that tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes. The harder she laughed, the more determined Justin became.

When a tomato hit her in the eye, he said, “We need to work on your technique.”

“All right, coach,” she said.

“But you’re benched for now. There’s more salad on the floor than the cutting board.”

She crouched down and started picking up the vegetables. Thanks to Justin’s insistence that they always wear house slippers, the floor was probably clean enough to eat off of, but she took the veggies over to the trash anyway.

Keeping the floors—and everything else—clean was a major theme in their relationship. One of their only ongoing disagreements was over whether to get a cat. Lola desperately wanted one; Justin couldn’t deal with the potential cat hair and litter-box smells. She respected his wishes enough to not just come home with a kitten, and so far the floors remained pristine.

“How was your day?” she asked when everything was clean again. “I mean night?”

“It was pretty quiet,” he said as he sizzled butter in a pan before dropping the raw steak into it, dousing it in herbs. “A couple of really sick kids, but nothing too horrible.”

She appreciated that he was vague when describing the horrors he saw at work. She didn’t have the stomach to hear details, and he knew it. He was always looking out for her in little ways like this, sparing her from the information that would haunt her.

He continued, “Now that it’s nice out, I bet things will pick up. Everyone goes so hard in the summer.”

“Except me,” Lola said, stretching her arms over her head. “In the summer, I become a sloth.”

“A beautiful sloth,” he said as he checked on the potatoes in the oven. “Oh, and my mom called. She says hi and that she’s sad you’re not coming home with me this week.”

Lola bristled, annoyed at the secondhand guilt trip. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her to meet us in Capri if she wants to see you so badly.”

Lola laughed, though she also felt some trepidation. Meeting them in Italy on a whim was exactly the kind of thing Justin’s parents would do. Not that she didn’t love them, but sometimes a girl just wanted a sexy vacation with her boyfriend, even if she couldn’t remember the exact dates of their trip.

“My car to JFK comes in an hour,” he said, checking his watch. “I think I timed this perfectly.” They high-fived.

Justin carefully made their plates: a perfect piece of steak, a glistening pile of roasted potatoes, and a green salad with homemade dressing. She poured two large glasses of Bordeaux and lit a candle.

When they sat down to eat, their feet touching under the table, Justin made her taste it first. “Watching you eat my food is the best part,” he said.

She beamed at him with her mouth full, a little bit of grease trickling down her lip.

They’d started dating because of their chemistry, but they’d stayed together for half a decade because of simple, sweet little moments like these. She knew it was rare, what they had—how easy it was, how loving they were.

She wished she could freeze time, stay in this moment, not change a thing. But she couldn’t. All she could do was look forward.

But everything was going to be okay. How could it not? She had the love of her life with her. Her career was about to be saved by a splashy profile for the whole world to see. She wasn’t sure what more she could possibly want.

Chapter 3

The Cut