To Sir, with Love

“I don’t,” he says quietly, looking down at his glass. “I think I understand it more than you think.”

“Okay, so here’s another fear,” I say, the bubbly apparently starting to go to my head. “And brace yourself, because this is high school–crush territory, but… what if he doesn’t like me as much as I like him?”

Sebastian nods slowly. “I get that too. It’s not high school territory. It’s human territory. Nobody wants to learn they’re the only one feeling things.”

Our eyes lock for a moment that feels… important, somehow.

We both look away.

“So, how did you and Mr. Complicated meet?” he asks as he accepts the basket of ingredients for the crab cake from Josh. “Blind date? Mutual friend? Dating app?”

Oh, you know, we haven’t actually met.

I may be sharing things with this man that I haven’t with anyone else, but I draw the line at that humiliating little tidbit.

“You know,” I say slowly as we begin unloading panko, eggs, and crab meat from the basket, “until just a couple weeks ago, I was so sure there was only one right person for everyone and that my guy would find me, Princess Jasmine–style. Or I’d find him, Little Mermaid–style.”

He lifts his eyebrows. “You think you’re going to rescue your soul mate from a shipwreck?”

I grin. “Mr. Andrews! Your knowledge of Disney impresses me.”

“I try.” He inspects a lemon, and I hope he doesn’t plan to slaughter it like he did the last one. Aqua eyes cut back to mine. “And you’ve found him? Or he you?”

“Well, that’s the thing—it feels like it, but I don’t want to be wrong.” I pick up a red bell pepper and sniff it distractedly, then turn to him. “You ever feel completely convinced you’re supposed to be with someone but have no idea how to go about it?”

“Actually. Yes. Twice,” he admits. “You?”

“Yeah.” My voice is quiet now, nearly a whisper. “Twice.”

His eyes darken in what seems to be irritation or… jealousy?

Keva starts explaining the art of the crab cake, and I quickly turn away from Sebastian and walk to the front table to watch the demonstration.

Partially because I need all the cooking help I can get.

Partially because I can’t let Sebastian Andrews know that for a split second on a Manhattan sidewalk, I’d thought he was that guy.

Thirteen

Sebastian and I stare at our sad excuse for a strawberry parfait.

“I thought she said it would be easy,” Sebastian says, sounding vaguely accusatory.

“I thought she said we couldn’t possibly do worse than the crab cake,” I add.

He hands me a spoon. “Together this time?”

I take it reluctantly. “Do we have to?”

“It’s just berries in some orange gunk and cream whipped with almond flavor. How bad can it be?”

I sigh and take the spoon.

“One,” he counts as our spoons tip into the parfait glass in unison. “Two…”

We lift the spoons to our mouths.

“Three—”

So bad. So so so so bad, that’s how bad it can be.

He hands me my water glass, then reaches for his own. “Jesus.”

“Yeah, in case it wasn’t clear, you guys get an F,” Keva calls over her shoulder as she heads toward the front door, arms full of cooking equipment.

Sebastian looks affronted. “I’ve never failed anything in my life.”

“I have,” I say cheerfully, a little loose from the champagne, though I was careful not to have too much. Lowering defenses around this man feels… dangerous.

“What’d you fail?” he asks curiously.

“Psych. Freshman year of college. It’s not worth the long story, but short version: you’ll get over it.”

Since Sebastian and my cooking efforts were among the worst of the group, most everyone else had cleared out before us. Grady arrived with his catering truck, and all but two of the wheeled kitchen island stations had already been moved out of the space. Still, there’s plenty of cleanup to be done to get the store back to rights before opening tomorrow, and I begin to gather the champagne flutes on our station. Since we’ve rented them for the night, they just need to be rinsed and put back into the crate.

Robyn comes out of nowhere and takes them both out of my hand. “I’ve got this.”

I blink at her. Never, in the nearly two years she has been working here, has she initiated helping with the more menial tasks around the store.

“That lipstick really suits you,” I say, referring to more than the way the color lights up her face.

“Thanks!” she says brightly. “Keva says it’s a tad too warm for my complexion, so we’re going shopping on Saturday for something with more blue undertones. And how did you not tell me she knows the somm from Blago over on Third? He’s gorgeous, single, and Keva’s going to try to set us up.”

I can only blink at her, wondering where the Robyn I’ve known—and let’s be honest, suffered through—for almost five years has gone.