Page 68 of Boyfriend of the Hour

I leaned closer to the screen. “Damn, Mimi. I didn’t know you felt that way.”

She just smiled back. “Me neither, as it happens.”

I went back to stirring the sauce, if only for something to do.

“Joni?”

I looked up. “Yeah?”

“I miss you too.”

Sister to sister, we watched each other through the screen for a little bit longer, neither of us talking.

Then the front door opened and closed.

“Mimi, I gotta go,” I said. “Dinner time.”

“Okay, but maybe strain the sauce to get out the extra basil,” she suggested. “It will make it look less clogged. Oh, and don’t forget the fresh grated Parm?—”

“Thank you, bye!”

I ended the video and went to strain the pasta. It seemed a little too soft, but I figured it would be all right. No one was as picky about pasta as my family.

Nathan walked into the kitchen, looking like he had just gotten back from the gym. He had traded his typical button-down and slacks for athletic shorts and a synthetic shirt that clung to his muscles in a disturbingly hot way. The fact that he was still wearing his glasses only added to the Superman effect of the clothes—surgeon by day, bodybuilder by night.

Lord, I was in trouble.

He seemed to be on autopilot as he walked in, rubbing his chin but stopped exactly two steps into the kitchen.

“Hi!” I greeted him as I dumped the steaming spaghetti into a bowl. “Surprise! I made us dinner. You hungry?”

He looked around the kitchen, brown eyes growing wider by the second as they took in the mess.

“Joni?” His voice was hoarse, almost like he’d lost it. “What the hell did you do to my kitchen?”

TWELVE

PEOPLE I THINK NATHAN HAS SLEPT WITH

#4 Nobell Prize Barbie. If their isnt one there shoud be.

Nathan peered around the kitchen like he was expecting a bomb to go off. To be fair, it sort of looked like one already had. An effect that got…worse…the longer I looked with him.

Okay, so I had used almost every pot hanging over the island to make the sauce, cook the pasta, toast the pine nuts, and make a few other things thatreallydidn’t pan out. Broiling vegetables is actually kind of hard, okay? They catch fire in like a second.

Two pans were still on the stove while the others were piled in a sink along with the failed attempts at other side dishes. The white marble counters were, yes, littered with the ends of carrots, onions, tomatoes, and herbs along with too many utensils to count, several used bowls, and a variety of spices that had spilled when I was hurrying to measure them. Add a good amount of sauce splattered around for luck, and it was basically my preschool finger painting.

So I wasn’t the cleanest cook in the world. I never said I wasn’t going to clean it all up after.

“I cooked,” I told him again, mustering my very brightest, “don’t kill me” smile. “I thought it would be nice for you to come home to a hot meal instead of those premade things in the fridge.”

Over the last few weeks, I’d learned that Nathan’s meal planning was as regimented as the rest of his life. On Sunday, a box of prepackaged meals arrived, along with an accounting of their nutritional content and macros. They sat in the fridge in stacks, labeled with mealtime and ingredients, alongside a water filter and the cream he used for his coffee. The only vice in this man’s life, so far as I could tell, was the scotch he barely drank at Opal every Thursday night.

Nathan’s gym bag fell to the floor as he continued staring around the kitchen. The longer he went without replying, the more my cheeks heated, and it wasn’t from the heat coming off the stove.

It really was a mess, but until now, I’d been sort of proud of it. This honestly might have been the first meal I’d ever made, top to bottom, all by myself, without Lea jumping in to dice the onions for me, Nonna scrubbing pots behind me, or Marie reaching over me to handle something on the stove. And I’d done it for him.

But Nathan couldn’t know that. All he saw right now was the disaster.