Good With His Hands (Good in Bed #1)- Lauren Blakely Page 0,26
boyfriend was four years ago. Well before the accident, and well before Chad.
Brian and I met at a wine and painting class in Williamsburg and hit it off in a way only liquor and poorly drawn otters make possible.
There’s a reason I don’t drink and draw. Yes, I’m an artist, but I’m also a lightweight.
We dated for eight months, exchanged I’m falling for yous, but then the relationship just . . . petered out.
It was weird. I suppose I expected betrayal, like poor Gigi’s gone through, or some Sturm und Drang like Claire and her love affairs, which were all sparks and fire.
Brian and I were more . . . weak tea and cold scrambled eggs.
I’m not sure what could have made us work—or what makes relationships work in general—but I know Gigi is awesome and that someday Henry Cavill, or his doppelgänger, will see that.
So I reply with nothing but the truth.
* * *
Ruby: You’ll find someone loyal someday. I know you will. You’re smart and sexy and funny and fabulous, and the right guy is going to see that and bend over backward to hold on to you.
* * *
Gigi: Back at you, mama. So don’t settle, okay? Go after what you want, no matter what obstacles might be standing in your way.
* * *
Ruby: I will. But friends-with-benefits is all I want from Jesse.
* * *
Gigi: Okay. If you’re sure. Good night and sweet dreams. Or dirty dreams, I guess. Sounds as if that’s more likely, lol.
* * *
Her words are prophetic.
I do, indeed, have dirty dreams about Jesse all night, and wake to the sun shining through my apartment window, still every bit as sure that I want to get naked with him, ASAP, as I was last night.
I also, however, wake to a text from my mother.
My mother, who would probably give birth to a litter of kittens if she knew I was thinking about rolling around in bed with Jesse. She knows Jesse and I are good friends, and Barb isn’t a fan of crossing those kind of lines.
Friends should stay friends, lovers should stay lovers, and everyone should just get with the program and marry their second serious boyfriend the way she did and keep relationships simple so we can all focus on important things like running a successful business and making the world’s most mouth-watering pie.
I jettison nudity from my mind and focus my bleary eyes on Mom’s text.
* * *
Mom: Chocolate sampling for the German chocolate cream pie recipe I’m fine-tuning? Cocoa Is Love is opening an hour early for me. Be there or be sad because you missed Mom-and-chocolate bonding time.
* * *
Ruby: I see you’re relaxing and enjoying your vacation.
* * *
Mom: What’s more relaxing than playing with new recipes? Come join me. You know you want chocolate for breakfast!
* * *
I can deny neither that truth nor my mother, so an hour later, I enter the cool, air-conditioned chocolate shop in Park Slope.
My mom, looking adorable with her salt and pepper hair in a bouncy ponytail and the sparkly eyeshadow Gigi bought her for Christmas last year dusted around her eyes, leans in to peck my cheek. “Hey, baby. Glad I could twist your arm.”
“Of course. Wow. It smells amazing in here.” I lift my nose to inhale the scent of chocolate—luscious, decadent, expensive chocolate. The kind that’s priced by the ounce, like gold.
She beams. “Like I always say—there’s no better job in the world than pie-ing.”
She does say that. A lot. She loves her work so much it’s not really a “job” to her at all. It’s more like a calling. A passion.
We sit at a cute café table in the back, and a soft-spoken clerk in a faded pink linen dress brings us a tray of samples surrounded by fresh, edible flowers. I place the circular morsels of chocolate on my tongue, the initial bitterness of the dark cocoa giving way to subtler hints of raspberry or cherry (my fave, of course) or even chili spice with the third one (a little weird, but still delicious).
Mom asks my opinion on each, which I happily give. My palate isn’t as sophisticated as hers, but I know my way around a chocolate tasting—unlike the mushroom fest last night.
Though, mushroom meals that end with kissing Jesse could absolutely get me back at one of Abe’s tables.
Any day of the week.
God, that kiss . . .
“So you like that one, huh?” Mom asks with a little laugh as she points