Jasmine Guillory - The Proposal

He moved back to the pan on the stove and started stirring. He was wearing a soft blue cotton T-shirt, the gray pants that he’d clearly worn to work, and patterned socks that made her hold back a smile.

“This kitchen is incredible. You told me you were a good cook, but I didn’t know you were, like, copper-pots-hanging-from-the-ceiling good.”

He glanced up at the pots and shrugged. Was that a blush she saw? He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“The copper pots were definitely an extravagance. To be fair, the first one was a housewarming gift from Angie. But when I bought a house with a beautiful rack to hang pots, what was I supposed to do?”

She thought about her collection of high heels that she almost never wore but kept buying because of the built-in shoe shelves in her walk-in closet that displayed them so beautifully. She nodded.

“Obviously you had to buy pots to fill it; I get it.”

He handed her a glass of wine.

She took a sip of the wine as she looked around the kitchen and big open living room. She liked it. Even without anything but the TV on the wall, it felt like a home.

“I didn’t even ask what you wanted to drink. Sorry, I didn’t have any rosé,” he winked at her, “but that should go well with dinner.”

Wait. This seemed way too cozy, didn’t it? His nice little house, his big warm kitchen, Carlos at the stove, stirring together things that smelled delicious . . . maybe Courtney had a point after all.

No. They’d talked about this, remember? Carlos had looked very relieved when she’d said she wasn’t in the place for a relationship. This wasn’t that, this was just one friend making dinner for another friend. She and her friends did this all the time. This time, she and her friend would just happen to have sex afterward, that’s all.

“I wouldn’t dare to question you on wine. You told me to always trust you with food and drink recommendations, and I took that to heart.”

She took another sip of wine and tried to let herself relax. She’d spent days wrestling with a big story that she still didn’t know if she was good enough to write. While she’d had moments of thinking she’d nailed it, the rest of the time she worried it was a complete failure.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Yeah. I’ve just been holed up in my apartment for the past three days finishing that story, and now that it’s done, I feel like I’m coming out of a coma.” She took her sweater off and tossed it on a stool. “It’s great to relax here with some wine and have you cooking a delicious-smelling dinner for me.” He looked back down at the food with a smile. Was he blushing? Maybe.

“Thanks for inviting me to share your dinner, by the way. What are we having?”

He looked back up at her.

“Risotto. I hope you like it.”

Wow, he wasn’t kidding about being able to cook.

“I don’t know anyone who knows how to make risotto. I’m pretty sure I’ve only had it in a restaurant.”

He laughed as his big wooden spoon made rhythmic circles in the pan.

“Oh, I love making it.” He poured some liquid from the smaller pot on the stove into the big one and stirred some more. “It’s funny; I don’t even really like eating it that much. I mean, I like it, but I would never choose to order it in a restaurant. But I love to make it.”

She took another sip of her wine and looked around at his kitchen. He had four bowls lined up next to him, two with mushrooms in them, one with bacon, one with cheese. And then there were the two pots on the stove. But most amazingly, other than a cutting board with a knife sitting on top of it, there were no dirty dishes anywhere. The rest of the kitchen looked spotless.

“It seems like a lot of work for a Wednesday night,” she said.

He nodded.

“It is—that’s why I love it. When I’ve had a really long or difficult day, it relaxes me to cook. It gives me a break in the day to concentrate on something else. And risotto is especially great, because after you do a whole bunch of chopping, then you just have to stand there, preferably with a glass of wine, and slowly stir the rice until it’s just right. Every so often, you add some liquid, and you stir some more. You can’t rush it; you can’t turn up the heat or add the liquid all at once to make it go faster. It’s ready when it’s ready. And so you just stand there and keep stirring, and everything settles down by the time the food is ready.”

She’d never heard anyone be so eloquent about risotto before.

“Wow. I feel more relaxed just hearing you talk about making it.”

He looked up and met her eyes, and she could feel his smile all the way down to her toes.

“What a nice compliment from the person who wrote that heartbreaking story about foster children in the Times Sunday magazine.”

Now it was her turn to blush and look away. She didn’t expect him to have read that story. She couldn’t remember the last guy she’d dated who had read any of her work. Well, Justin had, but only ever to tell her how bad it was.

“Oh, you read that? I didn’t . . .” She looked up at him and smiled back. “Thank you. I was proud of that story.”

He poured more liquid in the risotto and kept stirring.

“Good. You should be. It was excellent. It’s such a hard topic—I know from dealing with it with my patients who are foster kids—and you handled it so thoughtfully.”

She sipped her wine so he wouldn’t be able to see the sudden tears in her eyes. She cleared her throat.

“Thanks for saying that. It means a lot. I was feeling pretty down about my work today, so it was really good timing to hear that.”

He reached out and touched her shoulder.

“I can’t believe that someone as good as you ever feels down about your writing, but I’m happy I could help you realize how amazing you are.”

She laughed. If he only knew.

“I think all writers feel down about their work sometimes . . . or most of the time. At least, I hope they do and I’m not the weird one here.” She swallowed and looked down into her glass. “But also, I had an ex who was pretty insulting about my writing, and despite everything I’ve accomplished since then, sometimes it’s still hard to get him out of my head.”

Good Lord, a few sips of wine on a hard day and she started spilling everything.

Carlos touched her hair, then her cheek.

“Well, he was obviously an asshole who doesn’t know anything about good writing or good people, and I’m glad for more than one reason that he’s an ex.”

She smiled at him.

“Me too.” God, was she ever glad. “It feels stupid to still dwell on something a jerk said years ago, but for some reason I remember some of the negative stuff people have said about my writing like it’s imprinted on the inside of my eyelids, and it’s much harder to remember—or believe—the compliments.”

He poured more wine into her glass.

“Well, now that you’ve told me that, I’ll just have to repeat my compliments a few times, maybe in different words so they’ll stick. Hey, Nik, I really loved that piece you wrote, especially how you managed to make it hopeful while acknowledging the pain.”

Oh shit, now he really was going to make her cry.

“I wasn’t fishing for a compliment there, but thank you.”

Why was she so emotional tonight?

It was probably just because she was about to get her period and was feeling sensitive about everything. Plus, even though she couldn’t remember the last time a guy she dated had given her a compliment on her writing, her friends did all the time.

See? She and Carlos were friends. They had actually been friends first, pretty much from the moment he’d pushed that cameraman out of the way at the stadium. They’d gotten to know each other pretty well before they started sleeping together and had had some pretty deep conversations about their lives long before they’d even thought about getting naked.