ibuprofen in my bag,” Anu offered. “Not sure how that’s going to react with all the alcohol you’ve been drinking.”
“I swear,” I told the judges, “New Year’s Day, I’m starting a whole-food diet with water and pressed kale juice. No alcohol, no desserts, no fatty foods. Clean eating.”
“Really?” Anu asked. “Because I don’t know if I could give up a cake like that.”
“That doesn’t count,” I said as Morticia approached with her dessert. “That has berries on it, so it’s pretty healthy.”
“And it’s low carb-ish,” Morticia added. “The recipe contains very little flour, at any rate.”
“Sounds healthy enough for me,” I said. I grimaced as that pulled something in my neck. “I’m never having another massage again.”
“I would have assumed you would be in hog heaven,” Morticia said as she slid her dessert on the table.
I grimaced then winced as the expression pulled another muscle in my neck that one of the previous contestants had manage to cramp up.
“It’s the most American thing ever,” Morticia said with a small smile, setting down the tray with the cocktails. “You strained a muscle while gorging yourself on dessert.”
“I proudly represent my country,” I said, rubbing my neck then reaching for a cocktail.
“Lean back,” Morticia ordered, brushing my hand away.
I sighed. “I just need a foam roller, maybe a sauna.”
She pushed me to sit back in my chair.
“This is stupid,” I complained.
Morticia put one hand at the base of my neck and the other on my shoulder, rubbing it. Then she tugged. My neck popped.
“Don’t stand up too fast,” she warned.
“You fixed me!”
“My neck is tense too,” Anu said.
Morticia worked her magic on the other two judges then served the dessert. It was amazing. The chocolate and the berries and the custardy filling were everything I wanted in a cake.
“This is such an aesthetically pleasing dessert,” Anu marveled.
“It reminds me of one of those paintings from the eighteenth century,” Nick added, “where they have heaps of fruit and bread and meat.”
After the day’s judging was over, I hung around to try and catch Morticia.
I didn’t just need her to like me; I needed to make her fall in love with me. I needed her one hundred percent on my side so that she could help convince Dorothy to sell me the land.
What if she saw through my lie, though? I couldn’t just say, “Let’s go up to my apartment and bang. Oh, by the way, can you put in a good word for me with Dorothy?” No, I needed to really sell it. I needed to take her out on a date.
The thing was that I did not date and had not dated since Sarah. I slept with women. I did not have relationships with them. I had sworn I never would again. I barely knew where to take a typical woman, let alone someone like Morticia. I paced around the lobby.
The studio door opened as Morticia exited. She held a container of cake and a thermos.
“Wait, I didn’t know that we could take dessert home!” I complained, all my carefully crafted pickup lines going out the window.
“You can if you grab it fast enough. I basically had to get in a knife fight with your sister for this last piece,” she said. “Now I plan on going home and enjoying it.”
No, she can’t go home. Stick to the plan.
“You want to grab a drink first?”
She raised the thermos. “Already have it covered.”
“Come have a drink with me.”
“Don’t you mean come up to your condo and sleep with you?” she replied.
“Do you think I’m really that much of a manwhore?” I asked.
“Is this the part where you give me a rundown of all the ways you’re going to make me come?”
“When you put it that way…”
She snorted.
I took her hands. “I like you, Morticia. Go out with me. Let me wine and dine you.”
Shit, that sounded too strong. I should have studied up on strategies for fake dating.
Morticia looked at me with suspicion. “What are you playing at?”
“I, uh, nothing! I just want to take you out to dinner,” I insisted.
She blew out a breath. “Honestly, I would have respected you more if you had just come right out and said that you wanted to fuck and were willing to play hardball for it.”
37
Morticia
“But I don’t want to just do that with you,” Jonathan crooned, one hand encircling my waist. “I want to get to know you and spend time with you. I have to admit I’m a bit infatuated with you.”
Those were