Читать книгу The Next Best Thing - Kristan Higgins - Страница 11

ETHAN WAS TWO YEARS BEHIND ME at Johnson & Wales. I didn’t know him until my junior year—while I’d grown up in Mackerly, the Mirabelli family had moved to town and opened Gianni’s my second year of college. They heralded from Federal Hill, the Italian section of Providence, and their restaurant was an instant success. I’d eaten there a time or two, but I hadn’t met any of the family until Ethan approached me one day as I was lounging on the grass at school, sketching out my final project for Advanced Cake Decorating.

“Aren’t you one of those bakery babes from Mackerly?” he asked. I grinned and affirmed that indeed I was.

“I’m Ethan Mirabelli,” he said. “My family owns Gianni’s. Do you know it?”

“I sure do,” I said. “Best food this side of Providence.” I shaded my eyes and took a better look at young Ethan Mirabelli. Fairly cute. Lively brown eyes, mischievous smile, the kind that curled up at the corners in a most adorable way. “Do you work there?”

“Not yet. My brother and dad are the chefs now, but maybe someday. What about you? Are you in the chef program, too?” he asked, sitting on the grass next to me.

“Pastry chef. I’m a sucker for dessert,” I answered.

“She loves sweet things,” Ethan murmured, lifting an eyebrow and giving me a sidelong glance. Flirt. I grinned again. “You’ll have to come in and try my mom’s tiramisu,” he said. “It’s the best in four states. Including New York.”

Ethan and I became instant pals. We hung out together, met for lunch a couple times a week, sat together on the old couches at the Cable Car theater and watched foreign movies, snickering inappropriately at the love scenes. “Sex in German,” Ethan murmured. “How awful.” The couple next to us glared, then muttered to each other—in German—sending us into gales of silent, wheezing laughter.

We didn’t date, but we were compadres. He was a sophomore, I was a senior, and we were at the age where that still sort of mattered…my almost twenty—two felt much older than his still nineteen. He couldn’t go out for a beer—not legally, anyway—and I was interviewing with hotels and restaurants while he was years away from graduation. And though he was pretty cute and very fun, it wasn’t, as we girls liked to say, that way. We never held hands or kissed or anything. We were just friends.

A few months after we met, Ethan and I shared the short ride home to Mackerly, and he brought me to Gianni’s.

“Hey, guys,” he called as we went into the kitchen.

“Hey, college boy, nice of you to drop by and visit the working class” came a voice, and Jimmy turned around, and that was that.

His eyes got me first…blue—green, ridiculously pretty. The rest of his face was awfully nice, too. Gorgeous cheekbones, generous lips, a little smile tugging at one corner. Time seemed to stop; I noticed everything…the golden hair on his muscular forearms, a healing burn on the inside of one wrist. The pulse in his neck, which was tan and smooth and seemed to urge me to bury my face there. Jimmy Mirabelli was tall and strong and smiling, and I didn’t realize I was staring at him—and he at me—until Ethan cleared his throat.

“This is my brother, Jimmy,” Ethan said. “Jim, this is Lucy Lang. Her family owns Bunny’s Bakery.”

Jimmy took a few steps over, and rather than offer me his hand, he just looked at me, and that little crooked grin grew into a slow smile that spread across his face. “Hi, Lucy Lang,” he murmured as I blushed. Ethan said something, but I didn’t hear. For the first time in my young life, I’d been hit hard with lust. Sure, I’d had a couple of boyfriends here and there, but this…this was indeed that way. A warm squeeze wrapped around my stomach, my mouth went dry, my cheeks burned. Then Jimmy Mirabelli did take my hand, and I almost swooned.

Hours after I left the restaurant, Jimmy called the bakery and asked me out. I said yes. Of course I did. And when Ethan and I drove back to school that Sunday night, I thanked him for introducing me to his brother. “He’s a great guy,” Ethan said mildly, then listened as I gushed some more.

Jimmy Mirabelli was, I quickly learned, the missing link in my life—a man.

It hadn’t been easy for Mom, raising Corinne and me alone. She’d done her best—we had enough money, with Dad’s life insurance policy and Mom’s small but regular income from the bakery. Mom wasn’t a bad mother, but she was a little distant, not the type to ask where we were going or with whom—she said she trusted us to make smart decisions, and then she’d turn back to her crossword puzzle or true—crime novel, her parenting done for the night.

I grew up in a constant state of father—envy. I adored my friends’ dads…the approval, the affection, the strictness, the rules. I remember Debbie Keating, my BFF from grade school, getting absolutely chewed out for wearing a trashy tank top and blue eye shadow to our seventh—grade dance. Boy, did I ever want a dad to make sure I wasn’t trashy! To protect me and adore me the way only Dad could. My small and precious cache of memories told me my dad had been a very good father, and a good father loves his daughter like no one else. He adores her, protects her, bails her out when she gets in trouble, defends her from her mother’s chastisement. He urges her to be whatever she wants (president, astronaut, princess), and later in life, advises on which boy is good enough for her (none) and when she can start dating (never).

But, given the Black Widow curse, men were scarce in my life. I had no uncles, no grandfathers, no brothers…my closest male relation was Stevie, and you already know about him. Corinne and I used to try to summon our father, sitting in the closet where my mom still kept a few of his clothes, holding a coat or a sweater against our faces, chanting, “Daddy, Daddy, talk to us, Daddy.”

Mom never even considered dating, but I enjoyed picturing her with another guy, marrying him, some gentle, kind soul who would love Corinne and me as his own and indulge us in ways our mother didn’t. One summer, I waitressed at a nice restaurant in Newport, and Joe Torre, then manager of the New York Yankees, came in for dinner with his wife. Though Rhode Island is part of Red Sox nation and we’re raised to hate all things New York, I thought Mr. Torre was a very nice man. Dinner cost $112 that night; he left $500 and a signed napkin that said “The service was very special. Thank you so much. Joe Torre.” Whenever I pictured a stepfather, it was always Joe Torre’s dolorous, bulldog face that came to mind.

It was fair to say that I was hungry for men…not in the sexual way necessarily, but in the way a vegetarian yearns for a steak when the scent of roasting meat is in the air. The way a Midwesterner can yearn for the ocean, even if they’ve only seen it once. When a man came into the bakery, I hustled to be the one waiting on him, regardless of his age, and soaked up all that fascinating masculinity—how he moved, spoke, stood. How his eyes crinkled when he smiled at me, how decisively he’d ask for whatever it was he wanted. The blunt fingers, the hair on the back of the hands, the shadow of beard.

At the time I met Jimmy, Ethan was probably my closest male friend, but he was all fun, no gravitas. A boy, in other words, not a man. Not then.

Jimmy…he was a man. Strong, solid, tall, three years older than I was, he was so commanding and capable. He’d never worked anywhere but in a kitchen, and he knew what he was doing. Quick, sure movements, the ability to make a decision in a heartbeat, confident and secure and talented, he was dazzling.

I started coming home from school more and more, because Jimmy’s job didn’t give him much wiggle room on the weekends. Gianni worked in the kitchen alongside his son, yelling at the sous chef and prep chefs, and whenever he saw me, he’d give me a kiss on the cheek and call me Jimmy’s Girl. Marie, who served as hostess of the patrons and terror of the waitstaff, would seat me at the family table, urging me to eat more so I wouldn’t be “so thin.” She’d grill me about if I wanted children (yes), how many did I think I wanted (three or four) and did I ever want to move away from the area (absolutely not). Then she’d smile and, I imagined, do the math as to how much longer she’d have to wait for a grandchild.

And then Jimmy would come out of the kitchen, schmooze a little with the diners, always hearty and friendly. His eyes would seek me out, and he’d look at me a beat too long, letting me know I was the one he wanted to be with. He’d walk past, back to the kitchen, stopping for a kiss, squeezing me on the shoulder with his strong hands, leaving me in a wake of garlic and lust.

Being with him was being with a local celebrity—someone who was better looking than first remembered, who smelled better, who, when he wrapped his arms around me and lifted me off my feet, made me dizzy with love. Everyone knew Jimmy, despite the fact that he’d just moved to town a year or so before, and he remembered everyone’s names, sent over complimentary appetizers, asked after children. Everyone adored him.

He was a wonderful boyfriend, bringing me flowers, hiding notes in my dorm room on the rare occasions he made it to Providence, calling a couple of times a day. He constantly told me I was beautiful, and with him, I felt it like never before. He’d gaze at me as we lay in the grass in Ellington Park as the tidal river flowed past, the smell of brine and flowers mingling as the sun beat down on us, and he’d forget what he was saying, breaking off midsen—tence to reach out and touch my face with his fingertips or kiss my hand, or even better, lay his head in my lap and say, “This is all I’ll ever need. This and a little food.”

It was Jimmy who gave Bunny’s a boost when he suggested that Gianni’s buy their bread from us. He recommended us to other restaurants, too, and that side of the business mushroomed. My mother and aunts thought he just about walked on water because of it. “That Jimmy,” they’d say, shaking their heads, their dormant love of men peeking through the snows of their widowhood. “He’s something, that Jimmy. He’s a keeper, Lucy.”

They didn’t have to tell me.

Jimmy waited till I was done with college to propose. He asked me to have a late dinner with him at Gianni’s one night, after everyone else had left. It was something we did once in a while, the restaurant only lit by a few candles. I still remember the taste of everything he made that night…the sweetness of the tomatoes, the yeasty tug of the bread, the smooth vodka sauce on the perfectly cooked pasta, the tender, buttery chicken.

When it came time for dessert, Jimmy went into the kitchen and returned with two dishes of Marie’s famous tiramisu, a cool, rich combination of chocolate cream, sponge cake and coffee liqueur topped with the creamy mascarpone. He set my dish down in front of me. I glanced down, saw the engagement ring perched on top of the cream. Without missing a beat, I picked it up, licked it off and put it on my finger as Jimmy laughed, low and dirty. Then I looked into Jimmy’s confident, smiling, utterly handsome face and knew I’d spend the rest of my life crazy in love with this guy.

Obviously things didn’t turn out quite that way.

When we’d been married for eight months, Jimmy drove down to New York for a chef supply show. He’d gotten up at 5:00 a.m. to get there early, spent the whole day learning about new oven technologies, hearing how remodeling a restaurant kitchen could save time and money, looking at hundreds of new or redesigned tools for the chef. Then he and a bunch of other chefs headed out for dinner.

It was past midnight when he called me from outside New Haven, nearly two hours from Mackerly.

“You didn’t have too much to drink, did you?” I asked, cuddled up in our bed. I’d been waiting up for him, and in truth was disappointed that he was still so far away.

“No, baby. One glass of wine at about five, that’s it. You know me.”

I smiled, mollified. “Well, you’re not too tired, are you?”

“I’m a little beat,” he admitted, “but not too bad. I miss you. I just want to get home and see your beautiful face and smell your hair and get laid.”

I laughed. “Now that’s funny,” I said, “because I just want to see your beautiful face and get laid, too.”

I didn’t say, Jimmy, at least pull over and take a nap. I didn’t say, Baby, we have our whole lives together. Get a motel room and go to sleep. Instead, I said, “I love you, honey. Can’t wait to see you.” And he said the same thing, and that was the last thing he ever did say.

About a hundred minutes after we hung up, Jimmy fell asleep at the wheel, crashed into an oak tree six miles from home and died instantly, and the rest of my life was rewritten.

“HOW’S THE CAKE?” I ask Ash, my seventeen—year—old Goth neighbor from down the hall.

“It’s fantastic. You sure you don’t want any?”

“I’m sure. I taught this one in class, remember? You can make it yourself.” Ash, who doesn’t have a lot of friends her own age, helps out at my six—week pastry class from time to time.

“Why bake for myself when I, like, have my own bakery right down the hall?” She takes another huge bite. “Anyway, stop stalling, Lucy. Get this done.”

Feeling the need for a little company, I’d bribed Ash with bittersweet chocolate cake and the latest James Bond DVD. Tonight, I’m registering on a dating Web site, and while it seems like the perfect way for me to find someone, my stomach jumps nonetheless. I drain my wineglass, then drop a kiss on Fat Mikey’s head. He blinks fondly at me, then, fickle as only a cat can be, pricks my knee with his claws and jumps down.

“Lucy, I’m, like, aging rapidly here,” Ash reminds me. “I do have school tomorrow, and my stupid mother wants me home at like, eleven.”

“Sorry, sorry,” I mutter. I need to do this. Aside from hitting a sperm bank, this is the way to get what I want. Find a husband. I glance at my young friend, who could also do with a boyfriend. As always, her hair is Magic—Marker black, her eyes ringed with eyeliner, her eyebrows painfully overplucked. Because she’s been eating, some of her black lipstick has been dislodged, revealing a Cupid’s bow mouth in the prettiest imaginable shade of pink.

“What are you staring at?” she asks. “Get your butt in gear. The movie’s two hours long.”

I obey, entering my pertinent information, then click to the next screen and begin the questionnaire.

“Heard from Ethan lately?” Ash asks with careful nonchalance. She’s had a crush on him for years.

“Um, not really. I saw him on the water today, though,” I say, looking at her again. “He was sailing.” The truth is, I haven’t really talked to Ethan since that night.

“So cool.” She blushes, then picks at the sole of her engineer boot to hide her love.

I hide a smile and look back at the computer. I’m only halfway done. It’s really too bad that I don’t live in a society of arranged marriages. The Black Widows could pick someone out for me…a nice enough man who didn’t have expectations of romantic love. That being fond of each other would be sufficient…he’d take care of me, I’d take care of him, we’d be the parents of the same children, rather than two people crazy in love.

Fat Mikey heads over to the slider to gaze into the night. If I open the door, he’ll take the fire escape down to the street, then kill something and bring it back to me. His way of showing love, his soul as romantic as Tony Soprano’s. “Not tonight, buddy,” I tell him, clicking “maple” for the If you were a tree question. Finally I get to the screen that offers the available men in a twenty—mile radius. “And here they are,” I say. Ash lurches off the couch and peers over my shoulder.

“Hey, there’s Paulie Smith,” she says. Paulie and I play in the baseball league.

“I wonder if his wife knows he’s looking,” I murmur, clicking on the next choice. “Oh, it’s Captain Bob. Nice that he’s at least trying to score with someone other than my mom.”

“Totally gross,” Ash mutters. “Hey, look at this one.” She taps the screen with her stubby black nail. “He’s cute.”

I look. Soxfan212. Nice eyes, lawyer, single, no kids.

“Oops,” Ash says at the next bullet point. “That’s a deal breaker, isn’t it?”

Soxfan212 likes to sail. Immediately, I picture him clinging to an overturned boat in high seas, rain pelting down, sharks circling, the rescue helicopter waving regretfully as they fly off, unable to make the save.

“Sorry, Soxfan,” I say.

This afternoon, the same images of death and drowning were strong in my mind when I saw Ethan as I was piloting for Captain Bob. The wind was much too fierce in my opinion, and Ethan’s sailboat, a two—masted sixteen—footer, sliced through the water, tilting with speed, sails taut. Ethan waved, grinning, and it was all I could do not to radio the Coast Guard so they could tell Ethan to slow down. He’s a good sailor—won a few races and whatnot—but it just seems crazy, going out in the ocean over your head, alone, on a boat, in the wind. Though I guess that is the point of sailing.

“Okay, let’s move on,” Ash says firmly. “Here. Type in your little message.”

“Right.” I type dutifully. Thirty years old, no kids, widowed five years ago. Seeking long—term relationship, hoping to meet someone I won’t love a whole heck of a lot but won’t hate, either. Good teeth a plus.

“What do you think?” I ask my friend. “Will they be lining up for me?” Ash just shakes her head. Fat Mikey rolls his eyes (I swear), then begins licking his privates.

“You have three minutes,” Ash says, “and I’m starting the movie. And you can’t watch it if you don’t finish this.”

“Yes, Mother,” I say. I call to mind my tiny niece, the indescribable look on my sister’s face when she looks at her child, the wonder and pride and protectiveness. I remember Nicky’s wriggly hugs, how he danced in excitement yesterday when telling me about finding a woolly bear caterpillar. I look at Ash, the nicest kid I know, though she tries desperately to hide it in her hideous clothes and makeup.

And so I delete what I’ve written and type something a bit more palatable.

“Good for you, Lucy,” Ash affirms. “Now grab a Twinkie and come watch the wonder that is Daniel Craig.”