Skinny Bitch in Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

my neck and—
    “So what are we making?” he asked, snapping me out of my memory and back to this ridiculous kitchen.
    “One of your favorites, actually—falafel, topped with cilantro, onions, tomatoes, and tahini, with garlic hummus and pita bread.”
    “My mouth is watering already,” he said. “Set me to work.”
    So I did. I handed him a clove of garlic. He forgot how to remove the skin from the clove, and I had to take his hand and press down, my heart shifting in my chest. There was now an actual ache there. Not like six months ago, of course, but a lingering longing. Maybe it would never go away.
    “So how’s your dad?” he asked, adding the coriander to the bowl of mashed chickpeas.
    That was nice of him. At least he still remembered my life, even if he was probably just making conversation. “Good and bad,” I said. “Holding on. Fighting.”
    He looked at me with compassion in those dark blue eyes. “He’s a great guy.”
    “Yeah, he is,” I said, remembering the first time Ben met my parents. It was their twenty-ninth wedding anniversary. We stayed for the weekend, my sister good-naturedly arguing with my father over the whys of corporate greed; my younger brother, Kale (whose food-of-the-earth name suited him fine as a perpetual student working on his masters in marine biology), talking about his deep-sea expedition to study the mating habits of orcas. My dad had been bringing in a basket of carrots and was humming. The next second he was on the floor, his face ashen, the carrots rolling in every direction.
    Ben had stayed with me an entire week at my parents’ farm while my father was in the hospital undergoing tests. He’d been there when I’d first heard the word cancer .
    And now, he was someone else’s fiancé.
    “Oh, not that much pressure forming the balls,” I said when I realized he was compressing the chickpea mixture in his palms. “Gently, like this,” I added, showing him how to use a lighter touch.
    I wondered if he’d make some sort of sex joke, some reference to how I used to like the rough way he touched me in bed. If he’d grab me up against the zillion-dollar stainless steel refrigerator and go at me.
    Of course, he didn’t. He just gave me that sweet smile and asked if he was doing it right now, and he was.
    We fried, we plated, we ate. Ben declared the falafel the best he’d ever had. As he licked tahini sauce off his lips, heoccasionally brought up something from our past as though it was just a fond memory that didn’t matter a whit anymore, because, of course, to him, it didn’t.
    “Uh, Clem, did we forget to put something in the hummus? It’s kind of . . . boring,” Ben said, handing me the fork.
    Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I could make orgasmic hummus in my sleep. Did I screw it up?
    “Oh, no, her hummus isn’t great?” Laurel said, coming into the kitchen with two boutique bags in each hand. Of course, she had to come in at that exact moment. Not when Ben had been “Oh my God”ing over the tahini-drizzled falafel. “Baby, I thought you said she was an amazing cook.” She eyed the two-thousand-plus check stuck to the fridge with a little barbell magnet, narrowed her eyes at me, then dipped a spoon into the hummus. “Huh. Yeah. Bland.” She glared at me, then cut a tiny piece of falafel. “Oh my God, this is incredible.”
    Saved by a teaspoon of cumin.
    “I forgot to add the garlic to the hummus when she told me,” Ben said. And it was true; he wasn’t covering for me. “Don’t worry—my money was very well spent.”
    As I started cleaning up, Laurel told me not to bother, that their housekeeper came every afternoon to do a basic tidy-up. She handed me my check. Instead of feeling like the teacher, the businesswoman, the brilliant chef who’d just earned two thousand four hundred dollars, I felt like a loser.
    I had barely left the kitchen with my pull cart before Laurel launched herself into Ben’s arms for another sex kiss.
    “Thanks