Skinny Bitch Gets Hitched (7 page)

I went to the kitchen and poured us two mimosas. “Here.”

Sara took the glass and held it up. “Oooh, what are we celebrating?”

“This.” I held out my left hand.

She grabbed my hand and stared at the ring. “Oh my God. Clem!”

“I know! I can't believe it myself.” I'd tell her the whole story later.

Sara hugged me tight. “I'm so happy for you, Clem.” Her blue eyes got all misty, and I laughed. “Now I'm sobbing. Can you imagine how I'll be at the wedding? A puddle on the floor.”

“Will you be my queen bridesmaid? I have to ask my sister to be my matron of honor. But you can lord over whoever else I ask as a bridesmaid.”

She hugged me again. “Of course I will. Me, a bridesmaid at the society wedding of the season,” she enunciated in an English accent.

“Ha. I've barely given two thoughts to the actual wedding. I'm just so happy!”

She hugged me again. “My Clem, getting married. I'll never forget that day Zach rang the buzzer after you barged in on his meeting. You could feel the sparks in the air when you opened the door.”

I loved remembering that day.

She sipped her mimosa. “So how long do I have you before you move into Zach's house?”

I bit my lip. I didn't know how to tell her I was moving out ASAP. “The rent's paid through the end of the month, and I'll pay next month's also. But I'm kind of dying to move in with Zach right away.”

“If I had the choice of living in this dumpy closet with sloping floors or moving to Zach's palace, I'd be out of here in a heartbeat.”

I squeezed her hand. “You'll find another roommate fast.”

“No one like you, but, yeah, I'm sure I will.”

I hugged her again. “I'll miss you, Sar.”

“That diamond is bigger than your face,” she said, looking at my ring.

Twenty minutes later, as I was getting ready to leave for the restaurant, Zach called.

“My mother's dying to meet her soon-to-be daughter-in-law. She, her stepdaughter, Keira, and my siblings and I will be coming to your restaurant for dinner tonight around seven.”

I froze for a split second. Was that the slightest nervous flutter I just felt? Zach's mother had a serious reputation as difficult to please. And I wanted to please her. This was my future mother-in-law we were talking about.

“I'll make their orders myself,” I said, going over tonight's specials in my head. I hoped Dominique would order the fettuccine carbonara. I'd worked for months to perfect my sauce. “Can't wait to meet your mom and her stepdaughter.”

I knew Zach was a lot happier since he and his mother had started talking again. They'd never been close, not even when Zach had been a kid. His mother had been a flighty jet-setter—still was—and regularly missed birthdays and holidays with a “Now, darling, don't pout. We have right now!” There had been some kind of huge blowout a few years ago, something Zach refused to talk about, but apparently his mother had made amends or had tried to, and now she and Zach met
for lunch or dinner every couple of weeks, working on repairing their relationship.

My future mother-in-law. Even when I was imagining all of Zach's relatives as my own, I'd completely overlooked Dominique Jeffries Huffington. Now that she was being all nice and motherly and wanting to meet her future daughter-in-law, we'd get along great. It would be like having a second mom.

I could practically hear Sara laughing in my face at the notion of that too.

C
lementine's No Crap Café, between a Pilates studio and a popular new bookstore, gleamed in the bright California sunshine. The large front window, stretching across the entire width of the restaurant, was framed by gorgeous burnt-orange curtains pulled back on each side,
CLEMENTINE'S NO CRAP CAFÉ
stenciled in gold across the glass. Even back when this space was just that—an empty space with so much potential, I knew it was special. The shops up on these blocks of Montana Avenue made for great street traffic. And the cool art deco office building across the street, which housed a production company, a holistic-health center, and an in-demand acupuncturist, had brought me sick business from the beginning.

I was about to pull open the silver front door when a couple, heading toward the bookstore next door, smiled at me.

“This place good?” the guy asked, peering in through Clementine's window.

“It's fabulous, Check out the menu.” I pointed at the shadow boxes containing the menus on the side of the door. “Complimentary glass of wine awaits your first visit. Tell the waitress Clementine said so.”

I left them eyeballing the menu and headed inside, through the small, inviting waiting area with its cushioned bamboo benches made for me by my brother, Kale, and past the host's station, where I could still smell the lingering fragrance from the beautiful flower arrangement Zach sent every week. The rectangular main dining room was spotless, the wide-planked wood floors gleaming, the polished wood tables, round, square, and rectangular, shining. The pale persimmon walls showcased several local artists' work—large abstract paintings that complemented the Bali-meets-California vibe. Every time I walked through the restaurant, I felt that I was home.

I glanced at table five, on the far side of the window. The large, round table, under a low lit antique chandelier I'd found during a road trip to New Mexico with Sara last year, would be perfect for tonight's special guests—Zach's family. My soon-to-be family.

In the kitchen, which smelled amazing, my staff was prepping on the specials.

“Wait a minute,” Alanna said, her hand poised on her knife and an onion. “What is that glittering on your finger?”

They all stopped what they were doing and looked at my finger, which I wanted to hide behind my back. Too late.

“Okay, here's the deal. Yes, I'm engaged, but in this kitchen, I'm a chef, not some bride-to-be. So let's go over tonight's specials and—”

“You wouldn't deny us an excuse to crack open a bottle of champagne, would you?” Alanna asked. For someone who wanted to celebrate, she was eyeing my ring with something like horror in her eyes, as though the ring would turn into an eight-armed monster and attack her. What was up with that?

“One sip for everyone and then back to work,” I said. “Drunk cooks mean burned plantains.”

Gunnar opened a bottle of champagne, and we clinked our glasses. I was true to my word. One sip and then I got everyone prepping the samples of the specials for the staff meal at three o'clock. Tonight was fettuccine carbonara, Jamaican jerk tofu with baked plantains, which Zach loved, and chickpea curry over basmati rice.

Alanna kept looking at my ring while she cut and peeled plantains. One false move and she'd cut off her finger. “Okay, fine, I'll tell you,” she said out of nowhere. “My boyfriend gave me an ultimatum on Friday—right before I came to work. That's why I was such a mess. Either we get engaged or he'll find someone who actually wants to marry him. I'm just
not
ready, though. But I don't want to break up, either.”

Ah. Now the glances of horror at my ring made sense too.

“How'd you know you were ready, Clementine?” Alanna asked.

“Good question. I guess I said yes because I know he's it for me, regardless of how busy I am.”

Gunnar rinsed basmati rice in a silver colander. “He's probably not it for you, then, Alanna. Dump the poor schlub and move on.”

“But I do love him,” Alanna said. “I'm just not ready for marriage and all that. What is the big rush to get married? So what if I'm thirty.”

“You're just not that into him,” Gunnar said, stirring the rice. “If you were, you'd want to marry him. It's like chef said. Her dude is it for her. That's all she needs to know.”

“Maybe I'll be ready next year. Or the year after,” Alanna said. “Right now, being
here
is the most important thing to me. Working my way up to executive chef one day. My boyfriend hates when I say that. He keeps saying, ‘
I
should be the most important thing in your life.' ”

“What a whiny wuss,” Gunnar said.

“You're not ready and
that's
the thing you need to know,” I said, sautéing the vegan pancetta for the carbonara sauce with crushed garlic and minced onion. Mmm, it smelled amazing.

Alanna sliced the batch of plantains, brushed them with oil, and laid them on a baking sheet. “I know. I just don't want him to dump me.”

“Maybe
you
should dump
him
,” Gunnar said. “Put him out of his misery. If you really loved the guy, you'd want to marry him.”

Not necessarily true. Though it sometimes was. Who the hell knew? Timing was everything.

“See what you started?” Alanna asked, wrinkling up her face at my ring. “Let's change the subject before I start throwing chickpeas at Gunnar for his annoying honesty.”

Gunnar's expression softened. “Sorry. So who's on tofu?”

That got us back to work on the samples, which did double duty as our staff meal and a tasting for the waiters, so they'd be able to answer questions about what was scrumptious and what they liked better, in their humble opinions, and what was spicy or not. With Alanna, Gunnar, and the McCann twins hovering around my sauté pan, I went over the steps for making my new carbonara sauce, which the
LA Times
had said last week was “deliciously indistinguishable from the one-hundred-fat-gram version.” My version: ten grams, and worth every one.

The waiters arrived at three, and we sat down to the staff meal, everyone taking a little bit of everything. The three waiters were dressed in their uniforms: black pants and silver T-shirts with the No Crap logo, a tiny platter of vegetables in batik. The kitchen staff wore the same under their chef jackets.

“VIP coming in tonight,” I announced, taking the serving bowl of fettuccine from Alanna and adding some to my plate. “My fiancé's mother. Her stepdaughter, Zach, and his siblings are all coming too. I hear his mother is a foodie, so I'll make her order. Who wants the table?” I directed to the waiters. “Zach's a great tipper.”

No one raised a hand. I eyed Finn, secretly my favorite of the waitstaff. He was a great waiter—patient, friendly, smart, and fast, and he knew the menu inside out. He was also incredibly good-looking, which got him insane tips.

“Oh, fine, I'll take it,” Finn finally said. “But if I trip and spill jerk tofu on your future stepmother's head, you can't fire me.”

By 6:55 p.m., the restaurant was so busy that I barely had time to look out into the dining room to see if Zach and his family had arrived. Every table was taken, except for the big, round one by the window, with its special
RESERVED
placard. The specials were selling like crazy, as was the always-popular harvest pizza.

Even with one eye on the huge silver clock on the wall, one hand stirring the fragrant pot of Jamaican jerk tofu, and the other hand working a
sofrito
of onions and garlic sautéing in olive oil, I couldn't help but close my eyes and breathe in the delicious aromas of the kitchen. The ginger, limes, cayenne, and bit of maple syrup in the jerk sauce wafted up from the pot in front of me. I had to remember to bring home some of the jerk tofu for Sara—she wasn't crazy about tofu but loved jerk seasoning and called it Jerk Joefu.