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“Yeah, but just for Peter and me,” she says. “Is your class fun?”
“Of course it is,” I say, making sure to sound offended. Predictably, she laughs.
Bailey’s got a great laugh.
“Maybe I’ll sign up for the next one,” she teases.
Please don’t. I have enough trouble concentrating these days.
And it’s really, really inappropriate to be thinking about another man’s fiancé in those terms, so I bow out of the conversation as gracefully as I can, promising to text Bailey after class.
Burke shows up as I’m shoving the phone back in my bag.
“About time,” I say. He shrugs, offering no explanation. “Right. Okay. I’ll go in first and introduce you.”
The class isn’t large, fifteen students total. All adults, all paying to be here to learn what I think of as cooking 101. My friend and colleague James is sitting toward the back next to his handsome dark-haired friend Ben. I’ve caught some vibes between them, but James and I aren’t that close so I’ve never asked if they’re together.
I lay my bag on the counter at the front of the room and clap to call everyone’s attention, shooing some of the stragglers back to their seats.
“Sit down, everybody. As you may have noticed, we’ve got a guest for the next few minutes. Put a sock in it and let him speak.” They laugh and I smile at Burke, gesturing for him to take the floor.
He announces the brand-new cooking competition being held here in town, hosted by Sizzle TV. The students ooh and aah accordingly over the prize money and the promise of their very own pilot episode on the network should they win the competition. I spend most of Burke’s speech pointedly ignoring the one man whom Burke came down here to talk about.
He’s sitting in his regular seat, halfway to the back of the room at a table by himself. His dark hair is artfully mussed, falling over one eye. I’ve seen tattoos peeking out from underneath the seams of his shirt while he works, colorful designs I can never quite make out. His face…
Is staring right at me.
Cooper Lawson, kitchen klutz and pain-in-the-ass extraordinaire. Why aren’t assholes like him ever ugly?
“And now for the reason I’m really here,” says Burke. “Sizzle TV has finally found a host for this brand-new competition series.” He pauses, then extends a hand out. “Cooper Lawson! Get on up here.”
Cooper’s smirk tells me all I need to know about how he feels about Burke’s announcement. He doesn’t care at all that the rest of the class has seen him set his own eyebrows on fire, or that he’s made a spectacle of himself every week since class started. And not a good spectacle.
I grit my teeth, shoving my hands in my pockets, determined not to say a word one way or the other. It wouldn’t be professional to roll my eyes, or particularly mature. That guy brings out the worst in me.
Lawson’s got a significant online following, thanks to his videos reviewing unusual foods and restaurants. Don’t ask me how, but he’s got a reputation as a foodie—the network thinks he’s perfect for the hosting gig.
Ignoring Lawson as he resumes his seat, I lead the class in a round of applause for Burke and resume the lesson as normal once he’s gone.
All I have to do is get through a few more weeks of class, then a few weeks of filming, and I’ll never have to see Lawson again. I can take it; no problem. Question is, can he?
1
Bailey
A few months later…
Peter’s a dick.
Yeah, I can laugh about him and his stupid name now, but seriously. As exes go, the guy is a straight-up rat bastard. Don’t ask me how I missed that for the fourteen months we were dating. Or the two months we were engaged after that.
He was supposed to be here over an hour ago to pick up the last of his boxes. You’d think that because we’ve been broken up long enough that he’d have picked up all his crap by now, but no. In true pest fashion, I keep finding his shit in every corner of my apartment.
Not after today, though. I’ve combed every surface, nook, and cranny in this place, pitching the last of it into two final boxes. After this, I can draw a veil and pretend I haven’t just wasted yet another big chunk of my life on a man who didn’t respect me.
Not that I have a history of that. Much.
Alan, Stephen, Peter… and those are just the fiancés. Who’s counting?
