Page 141 of Learn Your Lesson

Mom would be so disappointed. Grandma would suck her teeth and shake her head.

I was a simpering idiot.

My eyes flooded so quickly I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop the tears before they were streaming down my cheeks. I swiped them away as quickly as they came, but it was too late.

Mitch and Arushi shared a concerned look, and then Chef was wiping her hands again, hooking me by the arm and tugging me out into the back yard. She barked some orders for Mitch to take over in the kitchen, and then we were outside and she was hugging me in the shade near the pool.

“Okay. This is not about Ava,” she said, squeezing me tight as more tears fell. “What’s going on?”

I sniffed as I pulled back, shaking my head, emotion clogging my throat and making it impossible to speak. But Chef Patel wasn’t taking no for an answer. She stood there with me, letting me cry, letting me feel it all while she rubbed my arms and waited.

“Oh, sweetie,” she said after a while, her thick brows folding inward. “You love him.”

I covered my face and cried harder, ashamed by the possibility that she might be correct.

“I’m a foolish girl,” I whispered.

“Stop that.” Arushi pulled me to sit in one of the lounge chairs, taking the one next to me and folding my hands in hers. “He loves you, too, silly.”

I barked out a laugh at that.

“Don’t laugh me off,” Chef said. “I know that man, okay? I’ve had four years in this house with him, with his grumpiness and general disdain for the world. But you?” She smiled, shaking her head. “You made him smile again, made himlaughagain. You brought the light back in. Not just for him, but for all of us — for me, for Ava. You may not be able to see that clearly, but I can.”

“He left,” I said, sniffing and bringing my eyes to her. “We… last night, we…”

Chef made atsknoise, but her disappointment wasn’t toward me. “He is such abewakoof.”

The corner of my mouth lifted, because I didn’t need to know the literal translation to know she was calling him an idiot of some kind.

“It’s fine,” I tried, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. “We had an… agreement of sorts. And this is what we agreed to. It’s just that last night, something… well, he…”

I groaned, slapping my forehead at the stupidity of it all. Was I really going to sayhe kissed me, so I thought it was different?

Chef leaned down to catch my eyes. “Start from the beginning, and tell me everything.”

Every part of me wanted to screamno, thanks, but at the same time… Ineededto talk to someone about it. And Arushi and I had become friends,goodfriends.

How long had I wished for friends like her, like Maven and Livia and Grace?

So, after a deep breath, I let it all spill.

I told her about the tension between Will and me in the beginning, about the night we’d made a deal. I told her about the rules, how they’d been bent even from the beginning, how we violated thelet’s not be friendspart almost immediately. I told her about why he’d booked the boutique for me, about how he’d opened up to me about Jenny, about all the nights we stayed up talking and laughing, about how he’d kissed me, and what he’d said…

Fuck the rules.

When I finished, I felt like hiding, but Chef wouldn’t let me.

“Listen to me,” she said, taking my hand in hers. She seemed to be struggling to find the right words. “I am not making an excuse for him, okay? I want to make that clear. I am so upset with him and how he handled this morning that I have a right mind to storm down to the arena and pull him back here by his ear.” She shook her head. “But, if I know him the way I think I do, my bet is that his mind is just as stirred up as yours.” She squeezed my hand. “My bet is that he just needs a moment to get his thoughtstogether.”

I let out a sigh.

It felt dangerous to hitch a wagon to that little bicycle of hope.

“You have the right to make whatever decision you need to for yourself,” she continued. “And I want you to do that without any influence from me. But, for whatever it’s worth… I think he loves you, my dear. I think he loves you so much it has scared the ever-living shit out of him. And I think he’s probably blocking shots at the rink this morning, jumping rope, and killing himself on an exercise bike trying to work through the mountain of thoughts in his head. He’s scared — just like you are. He doesn’t want to ruin anything, least of all what you have with Ava. He’s treading carefully. But,” she said. “That doesn’t give him a right to not ease your mind, to nottellyou that’s what’s going on and let you in. It’s unfair for him to just leave after a night like you had with him. So, if you see this as a red flag and you don’t want to hear him out, I won’t blame you.” She shrugged. “But I hope you’ll give him a chance to surprise you.”

We were both quiet for a long moment, and I laughed a little, running her words over in my head.

“This advice is so different from what I would receive from my mom and grandma,” I said, giving her a wry smile. “They’d be calling him all kinds of names, telling me they were right, making me regret ever questioning their way of life in avoiding men altogether.”