Apron Anxiety (12 page)

While helping out with Chef’s PR is the only activity that makes me feel ever so slightly relevant, I am also getting the drift that my input is becoming a serious annoyance to everyone involved, even him. By now, he has a well-oiled machine on payroll; they know what they’re doing and don’t need my input.

“You don’t have to include me in everything that’s going on with the media anymore, if you don’t want to,” I say to Chef, a few days before our one-year anniversary. He’s just come home from work at 4:00 a.m. and I’ve forced myself out of bed to fix him a roast beef sandwich.

“Okay, baby, perfect …” he says, not looking up from his BlackBerry.

Okay, baby, perfect
hurts.

It triggers a catastrophic sense of rejection.

Hello, cruel nothingness
.

So I start drinking at noon and logging in and out of his e-mail to read the latest slutty note from some sex-deprived housewife, or the details of his travel itineraries to places I’ve always wanted to visit yet haven’t been invited to. I eat very little, can’t sleep at all, and have developed adult acne. I show up at the restaurant tipsy and in tears, unraveling every time one of his partners gives me a disapproving look or a customer pushes me aside for a photo with Chef.

I think about shaking things up the way I would in the old days … partying hard, starting an affair, disappearing for a few days, but I love Chef too much to risk it. And I’m older now. I also wouldn’t even know how to bum a light in this town.

One afternoon I’m feeling so unsteady and insecure about all his female fans, and the fact that he’s usually perceived as
single in the press, that I drink screwdrivers like it’s my job and send anonymous sightings of us “looking very much in love” into the
Washington Post
from a fake e-mail account.
He’s mine, bitches
. Somehow my real name appears along with the alias, and by the time the reporter e-mails back, “Wait, aren’t
you
the girlfriend you speak of?” I just want to curl up and die.

I am not myself, not even a knockoff of myself, which is a problem for so many reasons, not the least of which is that my boyfriend fell in love with a lit-from-within writer, with bluebirds on her shoulders, perfectly content with a few strands of licorice, a handful of real friends, and a library book about Mötley Crüe. We need to find her before he bolts or I have a nervous breakdown.

Chef panics at the sight of me so sad, frustrated, and lonely, promising that his hours will calm down soon. He tempers me by hinting at the ruby, but we both know an engagement ring can’t give me the closeness I require.

I’m just desperate to feel part of
something
. But who am I to make a peep? I am a nobody now.

D
on’t fuck it up, Shelasky,” my Emmy Award—winning friend whispers as we walk to his shiny SUV after dinner at a Mexican restaurant, just off Hollywood Boulevard. “Don’t fuck it up.”

He’s referring to my love life. We’re in Los Angeles because Chef has a cooking series in Santa Monica to shoot and he knows I need to get away. The trip couldn’t have come at a better time. California has always been a special place for me—it’s my long, deep breath, my escape from reality. (If New York weren’t my environmental soul mate, and we weren’t so stuck in D.C., I’d move us out west in a second.) Despite a jam-packed itinerary, Chef has taken the night off to finally meet my old, naughty neighbors, who are still fabulous, but now sober and thriving. Shelley, of course, comes along, and a few other New York transplants, including one who has made it big on a hit TV show and recently won several awards. Over Shirley Temples and corn tortillas, we all have a lot to celebrate, including my one-year anniversary with Chef.

I never want the night to end. To most couples, dinner with friends is known as Tuesday. To those in a “relationchef,” as I call our situation, it is known as a blessing. Tonight, Chef is
the guy I first met in Williamsburg—sweet, pure, relaxed, and warm. He’s not watching the clock or being whisked away. I too am my old spirited self—confident and alive. Shelley and I tell the most dramatic rendition of our Nick Nolte story. Chef spits out an empanada in a fit of laughter, and our other friend falls off his chair. When a young kid comes to the table and nervously asks for a photo, Chef affably agrees, pushing back his seat to stand up, like a good sport. The confused fan says, “Sorry, mister, I wanted one with him,” pointing to our actor friend. The gang erupts into more laughter.

The next morning Chef and I hike Runyon Canyon, where I drag his skinny ass all the way up to the sky and back. The crisp air and rigorous exercise feels amazing and we make false promises the whole way down about finding hiking trails back home. “Let’s do this every first Sunday of the month,” I say. “For sure,” he pants.

Then we drive down the Pacific Coast Highway toward Malibu, where we share a delicious avocado and sprout sandwich from the town market, park at the beach, sunbathe topless, and feel a universe away from C Street.

“How do we keep you as happy as you are right now?” he says, standing in the departures line at the airport, his tanned, sandy arms wrapped tightly around my waist. “I’ve missed you, Lys.”