Skinny Bitch in Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

territory. Obviously he wants you back. Or some afternoon delight. He wants something.”
    “I know. And if he wants me back, why is that so bad?”
    “Because I scraped you off the floor for a month,” he reminded me. “You didn’t eat for a week. He crushed you, Clem. Don’t go back there, okay?”
    But.
    “Fine, whatever,” he said. “Just be careful.”
    I’d try.
    That night, Sara, who totally got it, told me we were going out to celebrate the gig—but we were banned from what-ifing about Ben. And so we went dancing at Olios—not a single what-if coming out of my mouth, despite the many swirling through my mind. But after one idiot told Sara she would be “so hot” if she lost some weight, we left and went home. Sara made a mental note of the asshole so that when she did get “so hot” and he asked her out, she could tell him to suck it. I sprawled out on the sofa, writing up lists of ingredients I needed to buy at the grocery store and the farmers’ market, drifting off to thoughts of artichokes, deep red tomatoes, and two thousand four hundred necessary dollars. Oh yeah, and Ben Frasier.

    On the way to 5202 Violet Drive in Hollywood Hills on Saturday, I swore I saw Scarlett Johansson jogging with a German shepherd trotting beside her perfect body. I drove slowly,not only because, yeah, I was actually kind of nervous, but because I had fourteen expensive dinners packed very carefully in coolers on the backseat.
    House after beautiful house reminded me so much of Ben, how we’d spend Sunday afternoons driving in the Hills and West Hollywood, gaping at the homes. I passed my favorite, the English country stone cottage with the blue door and fruit trees. Every time Ben and I would drive past it, I’d sigh, and he’d say he’d buy it for me as my cooking studio when he made his first million. We’d picked out “our house” on the next street, a gorgeous Spanish hacienda that was practically all windows, and Ben had pulled up in front of it and told me all the delicious things he’d do to me under the Jacarandas and orange trees at night in the backyard. That was more than six months ago, and I could still remember how he’d looked at me, the way he’d kissed me in the car, how we’d freaked and then laughed when a gigantic Rhodesian Ridgeback suddenly jumped at the passenger side window.
    Did I want him back? On a scale of one to ten, a nine. One point taken off for the scraping Ty did have to do that first month. So, yeah, Ty was right. But maybe Ben had had to work something out of his system, and now he was ready for the real thing. Me.
    Ben’s place was a stunning limestone mini castle. Clearly Ben had gotten some big-money clients himself. I parked my ten-year-old Toyota in the driveway behind a black BMW. I got out, put my chef jacket on, and loaded up the pull cart I’d borrowed from Sara, who used it for lugging props to auditions.I put my case of pans and utensils down first, then carefully arranged the flat coolers of entrees, which I’d loved every minute of preparing. I’d made the Mediterranean Pizza and Pizza Rustique, two pastas, two tofu-based dishes, including my pad thai, two amazing rices, the risotto, an Indian-style seitan-vegetable biryani that Sara and I ate half of, my kick-ass African chile, my sick falafel, and two noodle dishes, yuba and soba. I used only the best, freshest ingredients.
    I sucked in a quick breath and rang the chimy doorbell.
    A woman opened the door. Model gorgeous, with the kind of long, slightly wavy light brown hair shot with gold so perfectly it looked naturally sun-kissed. She was almost six feet tall and rail thin, but still managed to look lush. She wore low-slung jeans and a tiny white tank top. Bare feet, red polish, silver toe ring.
    “So you’re Clementine,” she said, smiling.
    And who the hell are you?
    “You’re just darling,” she added, a big honking diamond twinkling on her left hand.
    Darling? I forced a smile.
    “Come on