Page 53 of Twisted Beauty

He was probably just being nice. She hadn’t captured anything someone else couldn’t have gotten with a point-and-shoot.

“Makes sense though,” he continued. “You do this for a living. But I didn’t realize you were a food photographer.”

“I’m not. I’m not really a photographer at all. I— I work as a camera operator for my ex at a TV station in Los Angeles. Worked. Past tense.”

Matt raised an eyebrow. “He fired you when you broke up?”

Liv shook her head, not wanting to pursue this conversation at all. It felt humiliating. She sighed and decided to just say it fast. “I quit after I walked in on him and his assistant going at it in our editing room one night after work.”

“Well, shit.”

“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.” She took a deep breath. “It wasn’t what I wanted to be doing anyway.”

“Which part?”

“Any of it. I was just trying to be a responsible adult. Get my head out of the clouds and get a real life. A real job. You know.”

“A real— No, I don’t know.”

“Something that’s not frivolous like photography,” Liv said. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head so clearly, sometimes the thoughts felt like her own. Like she’d come to this conclusion by herself. “It’s not exactly a legitimate career choice.”

“And being a chef is?”

“Being a chef is an incredible career choice. And you’re obviously so talented at it.” Liv gestured toward the meal set up on the table.

“There’s nothing frivolous about photography.” Matt flipped through her photos again as he spoke. “Where did you get that idea?”

She shrugged. Her family was definitely not something she wanted to talk about today.

“If no one ever took photos of my food, I’d never have made it into any of those high-end magazines or websites that put me on the map,” Matt said. “Don’t sell yourself short. You’re good. And without photographers like you, I probably wouldn’t have gotten noticed enough to win all those awards.”

Outside of the people she’d gone to school with, no one she knew thought her passion for photography would amount to anything more than a hobby. Liv swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “You won awards, huh? So you really are a world-famous chef.”

Matt gave her a sad smile. “Those are Lita’s words. She used to walk around telling everyone who would listen that her grandson would be a world-famous chef one day. I guess the phrase stuck with Tito. That’s all in the past anyway. I’m here now.”

“Okay, that doesn’t make sense at all,” Liv said. “I mean, can’t you get a job in a restaurant here?”

“Chef jobs here don’t pay enough to live on. I’d want to start my own restaurant anyway. That’s been my plan all along. At the moment, either one would take too much time away from Tito.”

“Are those his words or yours?” Liv regretted saying it the minute it came out of her mouth. Matt seemed to be bottling something up when it came to his career, and she really didn’t want to rile him up this morning. She was having too much fun.

His brow furrowed and he leaned back into the couch, away from her. “What the hell does that mean?”

“From what I’ve seen, Tito adores you. He’d want you to be happy. Successful. You can always hire someone to work in his shop, you know.”

“Are you volunteering?”

She didn’t mean to laugh in his face. “No. I mean, I leave in a few weeks. I’m definitely not the right person for the job.” Absently, she pulled her hair out of its bun and ran her fingers through it, trying to get it to dry.

Matt reached over and tucked a loose strand behind her ear. He looked into her eyes for an extended moment and she felt her pulse accelerate.

“Speaking of Tito, I should check on him again,” Matt said suddenly and stood up. He grabbed his cell phone off the kitchen island and walked out.

“O-kay,” she said slowly, surprised at his abrupt departure. Her heart was still racing from that one millisecond of contact.

When Matt disappeared down the hallway, Liv rushed back to the guest room to grab her phone and send a text to Katie.

I need you to tell me I’m an idiot.