The bosomy babe has confidence for days. She drags a bright pink nail along the counter, then her eyes drift to the two men in the vests cooking up corn dogs and prepping pickles. Her expression goes a little loopy and warm. “My two guys. We’re together—the three of us. We like to have fun in all sorts of ways. I wanted people to come here and have a good time, and to think about maybe what they could do afterward,” she says, owning her sexuality and her business, just like that.

  I file that away—how she blends both those things, along with romance. This is a woman who is making it all work.

  “So, food is foreplay,” Nolan chimes in.

  Lucía’s warm brown eyes glitter. “It is if you let it be. Speaking of, you should try the strawberry shish kebabs dipped in chocolate,” she urges with a purr.

  Nolan turns his dreamy hazel gaze on me. “Want some?”

  My chest feels all kinds of flippy from the question. Want some? I want everything.

  “I do,” I answer. If the viewers like “what-if,” we’ll give it to them.

  The what-if.

  Lucía hands him the chocolate-dipped stick of fruit, and he offers it to me. I bite into a juicy strawberry, savoring the taste of the chocolate and the fruit. A gust of breath coasts over his lips as I eat. If he were a cartoon hero, he’d be drooling puddles right now—a bespectacled, muscled, charming, hot nerd hero, his carved jaw all agape.

  And . . . I’m fantasizing about cartoon men now.

  Great. Just great.

  Maybe that’s part of the mystery for the audience—what happens with us after the cameras stop rolling—but that’s a mystery to me too.

  Possibilities crowd my brain. What if we didn’t work together? What if I wasn’t terrified of losing someone I love? What if I didn’t want our show to succeed more than I wanted to get close to him again?

  Now, there’s a question—is the show what’s holding us together or keeping us apart?

  When Nolan peels away to chat with fans, I seize the chance to quiz Lucía about something other than food. I’m a planner, after all, and I like to do my research. “Is it hard? Working together with your men?”

  She scoff-laughs. “So hard. We don’t always get along, honey.”

  “And what then?” I’m dying to know.

  “We try to work through the problems.”

  “But the business . . . mixing it all,” I press. “Do you worry?”

  She gives a soft smile. “Only every day,” she says, then pats my hand, squeezes it, and whispers, “Good luck.”

  I file that away too—it takes some luck to pull off what she’s got.

  When Nolan and I leave, the pride flag in the window jogs my memory about something Jason said that night in San Francisco.

  “I keep wanting to ask you something,” I tell Nolan. “What did your brother mean about you being there for him when he was fourteen?”

  He turns his head to look at me as we walk. “I was the first person he came out to. When he was fourteen.”

  I do the math. When I met his brother, Nolan and I were sophomores in college, and I visited him and his family over break. We were twenty; Jason must have been fifteen then. But I didn’t know he was gay. Nolan never mentioned it, nor did Jason. Not that he needed to, but it’s a contrast to how open Jason is now.

  “So, you were nineteen? Was that our freshman year?”

  “Yeah, he came out to me when I was home for Christmas break.”

  As we pass an organic dry-cleaner on our way to the subway, I put it together. “Ohhh. He was out to you, but no one else?”

  “For a long time, yes,” he says easily—the secret he kept is no longer a secret. “At first, he didn’t want anyone else to know because he was worried about what it would mean for him as an athlete. The kid lived and breathed football,” Nolan says, admiration in his tone. “But he wasn’t sure how he was going to manage it all—sports and, well, who he was. And he wasn’t sure how our dad would react. But he needed someone to talk about it with.”

  “You were his person,” I say, feeling all sorts of tender for the two of them, thinking of what they meant to each other. What they still mean. “I don’t think I knew he was gay till we graduated from college.”

  “Yep. That’s when he was ready for others to know,” Nolan says, matter-of-factly.

  That all makes perfect sense. “I’m glad he had you, Nolan. It makes me happy he did, and I’m happy, too, that you never told me. That you waited for him to be ready.”

  “You gotta keep your sibling’s secrets,” he says, bumping shoulders with me.

  Don’t I know it. “Callie was like that in her own way. She didn’t want to tell Mom and Dad she was making plans for her bucket-list road trip. She didn’t want anyone to know till we were doing it.”

  He tilts his head, a line creasing his brow. “Was she afraid they’d talk her out of it?”

  I shake my head, absently running a finger over the ladybug necklace as we cross the street. “She just knew it was going to be harder for them to accept what it meant—the road trip, that is. The symbolism of it all,” I say, fighting to keep my tone even. “The reality of it.”

  “You’d already accepted it,” he says softly, knowing me so well.

  “And I wanted her to have her trip. It was her wild childhood dream. I wanted to give it to her.”

  He’s silent for half a block, but it’s a comfortable silence, the kind we both have grown accustomed to over the years. “Did you ever read or see The Last Lecture?”

  “I watched it on YouTube,” I answer.

  “That reminds me of what Randy Pausch said. ‘And as you get older, you may find that “enabling the dreams of others” thing is even more fun.’”

  Yes. So much yes.

  That nugget of wisdom is a key turning in a lock. A door opens, and I don’t feel so stupid for what I did. I get, now, what my heart realized back then.

  I stop on the corner, grab his arm. “Do you know why I got an extension on my college loan?”

  He shakes his head.

  “I thought I could pay it off in time. I’d put aside enough to pay it off. I had six months of fashion shoot contracts coming in, and I was going to use that to pay most of the balance,” I say, then begin my confession. “And instead, I used that for the road trip. I told Callie it was money from the makeup gig. Which it was, so I didn’t lie to her. I just didn’t tell her I’d budgeted that cash for something else. I wanted her to have her dream trip.” I swallow around an ache in my throat. “So, I got an extension and used the money that was supposed to pay off my loan for travel expenses.”

  “You did that for her?” He sounds awestruck.

  I give a what-would-you-do shrug. “It was her dream. How could I not?”

  He smiles, and it feels like a new kind of grin, full of an even deeper understanding of me. “You couldn’t.”

  I twist the necklace in my hand. “Am I stupid?”

  “No. That’s . . . beautiful, Emerson.” He looks like he wants to hold me, and kiss me, and tell me all the things.

  Instead, he clears his throat and drags a hand along the back of his neck. “Thanks for sharing. I’m really glad you did.”

  So am I. Funny, because I didn’t think I’d want to tell him. I didn’t think I could say that without feeling foolish.

  But he made me feel the opposite. I shouldn’t have been afraid. Talking, sharing, showing him the sad, scared, ugly, and weird parts of me is what I’ve always done.

  Trouble is, I fall a little more for him every single day.

  The genie is getting so much bigger than the bottle.

  The next night, I head out to Jo’s apartment, wearing a cute black dress and Converse sneakers, and a backpack with makeup in it.

  As I step onto the elevator, a broody man looks up from his paperback. It’s Max, in the flesh. He practically drips Mister Rochester vibes. I’m surprised he’s not carrying the dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre he stepped out of. But he’s reading The Sun Also Rises, so that tracks too.

  Better to catch flies with honey, though. “Hi, Max. I’m Emerson Alva. I’m a food person too.”

  In slow-mo, he rakes his gaze over my face, studies me. “I know.”

  Okayyyy. “And I think your videos are great,” I say.

  He’s silent for several long, weighty beats. “I suspect yours are too,” he says, then nods crisply when we reach the lobby. “After you.”

  Weirdo.

  “Have a good night,” I call out, then I put the broody guy out of my mind. My brain only has room for so many men, and someone else is occupying the prime real estate.

  Over at Jo’s place on West Seventy-Third Street, we get dolled up for the Tommy revival on Broadway. I do her makeup, giving her fabulous smoky eyes and glossy lips.

  “Gorgeous, babe, just gorgeous,” I tell her, then spin her around and show her my work in the mirror.

  She gasps. “Don’t ever leave me. When I run my next auction, I want you to do my makeup too,” she says, grabbing my hands, playfully begging.

  “I won’t even charge you, babes,” I stage-whisper. “Speaking of, when will you be wowing the New York art world with this fab collection you’re working on?”

  “Next month,” she says, and as we finish getting ready, she gives me details of her new projects and a promotion she’s applying for at her auction house. “I have an interview for it next week. Fingers crossed.”

  I cross mine and hold them up. “I’m proud of you, woman. You have made a name for yourself in the New York art world,” I tell her as we make our way to the St. James Theater.

  “I’m proud of you too, Em. Doing your thing, making it all happen.” We reach Times Square, and she gazes up at the glittery lights of the marquee, beckoning us to enjoy a few hours of make-believe. “I knew I could get you here in New York at last. I manifested it and it happened.”

  “You’re magic like that,” I say as we go inside and snag our orchestra seats.

  “Speaking of magic, how’s everything with you and Nolan?”

  It’s a leading question. I sit up straight, my radar beeping. “Why do you ask?”

  She points at me. “Why do you react like that?”

  I groan and drop my head in my hands, then serve up my heart. “I think I’ve had feelings for him for a long time, Jo.”

  When I look up, she smiles sympathetically and rubs my shoulder. “I know you have, sweetie.”

  Funny, how we’ve had this long-distance friendship, talking on FaceTime and seeing shows together when I’ve been in New York, but we’ve rarely lived in the same city. Yet, that hasn’t stopped us from forging this deep bond.

  Nor has it stopped her from seeing right through to my heart. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing.” Saying it hurts more than it should, but then the overture swells, the music billowing throughout the theater, and I lean into the make-believe for the next few hours—something I’ve been doing a lot of these days.

  15

  Food and Other Gasms

  Nolan

  * * *

  Sometimes when I’m alone, I practice things I want to say to Emerson. The stupid secrets I want to share with her. The why of them.

  “Funny you should mention loans. So, about mine . . .”

  After learning what she did for her sister, I’m even more convinced my story, the reason I’m so determined to keep my head above water, makes me sound like a complete nitwit.

  So, I kept it to myself when she shared with me. I keep it under wraps like I’ve always done. The only people who know the details are my two best buds.

  I’m out for a run with them a few days after the Long Food shoot, TJ and Easton pounding the pavement alongside me in Central Park.

  “You almost done paying off the loan?” TJ asks.

  “Close like a horseshoe,” I say.

  “Good. I still can’t believe you got stuck with that,” he adds.

  “Well, I haven’t always made the best decisions.”

  “Who has?” Easton shrugs like it’s no big deal. “But you’re almost there, so that’s good.”

  “Yeah. I just want to make the final payment and put it behind me.”

  “And never have to tell Emerson about it?” TJ asks pointedly.

  Never tell anyone but these two guys. These dudes are vaults, and they are also far, far away from my family and my life in San Francisco. “It doesn’t exactly scream this guy has his shit together,” I say.

  Easton shakes his head. “It says nothing about you.”

  “Exactly,” TJ agrees. “But it bugs you that you never told her. That does say something about you.”

  I’ll bite. “What does it say?”

  “That you want her to know the real Nolan,” he tells me plainly.

  Do I, though? Probably. But do I want that as a friend? Or as something more?

  I shouldn’t want more with her. There’s no room for it in our plans. “What I want is to move back to New York,” I say as the sun climbs higher. “So, the sooner I pay it off, the sooner I can do that.”

  TJ goes with the subject change as we near the reservoir. “Look, I’m not saying I want to see your ugly face around here more often, but I heard from some friends about a sublease in Queens,” he offers.

  “Awww. I love it when you sweet talk me,” I deadpan.

  “And Bellamy mentioned a friend in Brooklyn who is moving out of her studio soon,” Easton says, just as chill. “Not that I give a fuck if you’re here either.”

  I plaster on a smile as we run, pretending I’m inhaling the scent of their . . . adoration. “The love, gentlemen. The love. It wafts off you two like cologne.”

  “And I bet it smells fantastic,” TJ says.

  “Seriously, though,” I add. “Appreciate the hookups. I truly do.”

  That’s the simple part. But what about Emerson? Would she stay on the East Coast if the show worked out, or bounce back and forth? Would she stay if it didn’t? And what happens next?

  That’s the trouble.

  Our fate is in the hands of a network that has its own agenda, as TJ pointed out the first night we arrived.

  As my buddies chat about New York rent and other quirks of the city—last week TJ saw a dude walking a tiger on a leash in Soho—my gaze falls on a food truck setting up for the day.

  Kale-ing It is the sign on the truck, and it peddles all things, well, kale. It’s perfect for How to Eat a Banana, and I need to talk to Emerson right the fuck now.

  “I gotta go.” That’s all I say before I pick up the pace and dash back to the hotel, breathing hard and sweating as I knock on room 1208.

  Ten seconds later, Emerson answers, and my heart jackhammers. Damn, she looks pretty in the morning when she’s doing her makeup and her hair is all slicked back and wet. She’s wearing a T-shirt and skinny jeans, and I want to undress her and kiss her all over. And make her feel spectacular with my tongue between her legs. I bet she tastes like a dream.

  And fuck me. Here I go again, thinking with my little head.

  I slam the door on the dirty thoughts. Now is not the time. She has her loan. So do I.

  Business. Just business.

  “What if they don’t pick us up at the end of this trial?” I blurt. “What if Dot and Bette win the slot? What if we’re relegated to the bottom of the streaming menu? If the service doesn’t promote you, you don’t become the next Stanley Tucci touring Italy. You become a blip.” My worry spills out in a verbal ten-car pile-up. “I can’t be a blip, Emerson.”

  With a makeup brush in one hand, she grabs me with the other and drags me inside. “That’s all true. What do you want to do?”

  What I don’t want is to be back on the cusp, scraping by, bouncing from couch to couch, crushed under debt.

  I take off my glasses, pinch the bridge of my nose, and pace up and down in her room. “There are no restrictions in our contract against us doing the YouTube show, so long as we don’t do the chef interviews or cover the same places.” I looked over the contract with Hayes, though I’m only working this idea out now. “We’ve only done one or two shows for our own channel since we’ve been here. That’s not like us, Em.”

  “True,” she says, moving to the bed and perching on the edge. “We’ve been busy on the Webflix show.”

  “And we have to do that. And I want to do that.” I pace to the window, fiddle with my glasses and slip them back on. “But I also think we need to keep doing our own thing. Even if it’s hard. Even if it takes a ton of time.” I meet her eyes, desperation chasing my thoughts, my plans. “We can’t depend on someone else.”

  “I wasn’t doing that,” she says a little defensively.

  “I wasn’t saying you were,” I point out. “But it’s just . . . we can only trust ourselves, you know?”

  “I do.”

  “We’re the only ones who’ll have our backs. We were already ticking up before Webflix called. We just need to keep that trajectory, keep the same pace. What do you think?”

  I implore her, hoping like hell she’ll agree. She’s always been a go-getter and always wanted this future. Still, I’m tense as I wait four, five, six seconds.

  Then, she smiles. “When do we get rolling again?”

  I stab the air. “Right now. And I know just the place to do it.”

  She lifts a brow and points her makeup brush at me. “No offense, but you’re kind of smelly and gross. Maybe shower first.”

  “Brains and beauty,” I say, holding my arms out wide.

  She pinches her nose. “And brutal honesty,” she calls as I leave to wash off the run and make myself presentable.

  Three hours later, we’re sampling kale chips that are so good, so crunchy, the chef must be a wizard. How else could he make these vegan, low-cal treats taste like decadent junk food?

  Don’t even get me started on the kale fries.

  “These fries are a nine,” I announce after I taste one.

  Emerson goes still with shock, then gradually unfreezes. “The man can bend, evidently,” she says.