Hot Mess. Emily Belden
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Название: Hot Mess
Автор: Emily Belden
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Вестерны
isbn: 9781474083645
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He put his hand on my thigh as he asked the question—an action I would normally reject from a guy who wasn’t physically my type. After all, I was drawn to dudes who looked like they were sent home the first night on The Bachelorette. Clean-cut, maybe wearing a little concealer, just trying to be nice until we took things to the Fantasy Suite.
Like I said, walking, talking cliché.
Before I could answer, the bartender came back.
“Sorry, we don’t have wineglasses. But here’s your sauv blanc.”
“Well, cheers,” said Benji.
“How did you know...”
“It’s a burger place. They have mustard.”
“So?”
“I assume if they’re charging $15 for a basic hamburger, they probably make the mustard in-house, meaning there’s got to be a crisp white wine in the walk-in cooler back there or they wouldn’t be able to get the recipe right. He knew they had sauv blanc. He was just being a douchebag who was too lazy to walk ten feet and get it.”
I had been out with straitlaced stockbrokers sporting impeccably tousled hair who had held doors for me, brought me flowers for a first date and pushed in my chair for me at dinner. But no one in the last two months had ramped up my mojo as much as Benji had in that first five minutes. He stuck up for me—and my girlie drink order—all while showing off his culinary chops just a little bit.
From that point on, I knew he was going to be trouble. But I never imagined he’d become my trouble. Big difference.
Throughout the night, Benji excused himself a handful of times to go to the bathroom. Sure, a part of me wondered if he was doing coke in there, but I had to remember we both were drinking. I, too, would be in and out of the bathroom all night had I broken the seal earlier. Also, I had never done coke, nor did I know anyone in my social circle who had, so what was I looking for anyway? White powder to be coating his nostrils? A nagging itch at his nose? For what it was worth, neither of those things were happening, so I shrugged it off and stopped counting his trips to the bathroom. After all, I wasn’t in this for the long run, so what the guy did in the men’s room was none of my business. All that mattered was that he kept rejoining me back at the bar and picking up right where our scintillating conversation left off.
A one-night stand was inevitable. But by the time I realized the drug thing was real, and it was serious, we were way past just one night.
It’s late in the workday Monday when I get an email from my alma matter, Mizzou. It’s the quarterly journalism alumni update wherein they compile a list of about a hundred bullet points, all just quick mentions of who got hired where, which people have been promoted at their jobs and which of the former editors are now stay-at-home moms and freelance taste testers for Nabisco. Being three years post-grad and still happily working for an ear-cleaning company, this digest is basically my version of Page Six news.
Which is why I’m particularly shocked to see my name about a third of the way down the list.
Allie Simon is dating celebrity chef Benji Zane. They live together in Chicago.
Normally the chairman of the department solicits for these kinds of updates, and this is most certainly a blurb that I did not submit myself. So the fact that one of the best journalism schools in the country has scooped this intel straight from a popular food blog and finds my personal life newsworthy makes me feel like a goddamn celebrity, I must admit.
I don’t blame them for not including a word about my role at Daxa in the roundup. In fact, it’s kind of a shameful career choice considering I was at one point the managing editor of the school paper. But the truth is, I never wanted to be a reporter and by the time I pocketed my degree and moved back to Chicago, the way the world works had changed. People wanted to speak and read in bursts of 280 characters or less and Daxa, headquartered here in the River North neighborhood, was looking for someone to help them get in on a conversation of that caliber. Couple that with my need to pay bills and suddenly tweeting about cotton swabs became my calling. Or something like that.
It’s always a bit difficult to play catch-up on Monday mornings since we switch over to an automated community management system for nights and weekends. Unfortunately, the “NightHawk2000” has the personality of a bad first date and sometimes misses an influx of tweets if the system has to reboot itself—which it does, often. I want to say that today is no different, but it’s actually worse. Taking off last Friday for Benji’s pop-up set me back about 300 replies before 9:00 a.m.
I somehow make it through the day and am now standing outside my office waiting for the Route 22 bus up to Lincoln Park while group texting with Jazzy and Maya about tonight’s premiere of the new season of The Bachelor.
Maya: Starts @ 7. My Place?
Jazzy: Can BZ whip up some garlic hummus?
Suddenly, I’m interrupted by a tap on my shoulder.
“Babe! What are you doing here?” I pull my headphones out as Benji brings me in for a clammy hug. He clearly walked to my office, which is a good forty-five minutes at a brisk pace. He smells like a cigarette accompanied him and deodorant did not. Still, I’m happy to breathe him in, although I’m regretting the fact I haven’t touched up my makeup at all today. It may sound shallow, but in my defense, I’m not like Benji. I can’t just throw on a white Hanes V-neck with a sweaty man-bun and automatically look like I should be on the cover of People’s Sexiest Man Alive issue.
Plus, this is an ambush. He surprised me outside my work. Now, what for is the question.
“Remember how I told you there were a few VIPs on the dinner list at the pop-up? I circled their names on the sheet I gave you before service...” His eyes are big and intense. Kind of like how they always are, I guess.
I squint as I rack my brain. I don’t remember any one person in particular, but immediately panic wondering if they all got food poisoning or something.
Benji doesn’t wait for a reply.
“The guy who runs Republic, Ross Luca, invited us in tonight.”
Ross Luca is a Chicago restaurateur—an iconic one at that. I know this because FoodFeed loves Ross Luca. They seem to run a blog post about him daily. At first, I wanted to know who he was paying off for all the good press, but then I realized there’s a lot to cover about Ross. For one thing, he’s both a businessman and executive chef. In something like two short years, he’s managed to open everything from a kitschy Jewish deli to an over-the-top steak house and rotates cooking at them all, six days a week. It’s rare to find someone like that, who can fire from both sides of the brain. Who can be artistic in the kitchen and savvy in the boardroom. Everyone in the industry knows that Ross Luca is that prodigy. Hell, even a typically jealous Benji agrees Ross is the shit. Which is why his name was highlighted and starred on the VIP list—that I recall for sure.
While he may have just about every cuisine in this city cornered, Republic is Ross’s fine-dining spot. FoodFeed called it “an instant classic” when it opened about a year ago and the reservation list hasn’t dwindled one bit since СКАЧАТЬ