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Right until now, though, no one had sparked my curiosity the way Arlene did. Maybe that meant following my gut could be worth it.

Maybe.

It was a possibility.

“Yeah.” I forced myself to smile, but my heart was thrumming irrationally fast. “Tell me when and where.”

Uh, actually, this was going to be a disaster.

Well, I could always run back here after and eat my weight in cheese fries.

Yeah, nothing wrong with that plan.

THREE

Arlene

“Hey, babe, you sure you’re okay?”

Well, definitely not if he asked like that.

There was no reason for concern, though. It was all under control. I was just a messy baker, but Dylan knew this already. Still, I forced myself to take a break from pouring the cheesecake into the molds and turned to look at him.

He’d agreed to leave us the townhouse for the evening—me and Claude, who would be here in about an hour, and no, I wasn’t freaking out about it. It was all fine, and perfectly under control. Sure, I was not doing well on time, because I should’ve popped these into the oven for the batter to bake twenty minutes ago.

It was fine.

I’d just let my perfectionism take charge.

Dylan—since he was the one who ended up suffering through my baking experiments the most—joked that I was great at flavors, but not presentation.

He was right.

“I’m fine.” I just needed a towel.

I knew I was overthinking this too much. Claude would not care if something didn’t look absolutely perfect. They never were that kind of YouTuber that was all about appearances.

But… Shit, call me shallow, but I wanted to impress them. First impressions, and all that.

Sure, this was technically the second impression—and I was still trying to figure out why they didn’t run for the hills after the first one—but…

But. It would be the first time they saw my baking. It counted.

“You don’t sound fine.”

Was he not leaving?

I sighed.

No, I’d told myself eons ago that I did not lash out at people.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Dylan had his head tilted to the side as he watched me from one of the stools by the kitchen island. He always managed to look like a lost puppy.

“Just stressed. It’s fi—it’s whatever. It’ll all work out.”

I wasn’t completely happy with how the cake was going to set, but… At least I got the right proportion of honey for the base. I’d messed that up before.