Brad carried a huge bakery box into the Forum’s office building. He had called Lindsay ahead to make sure she would be there and to explain his actions. Would her office like some cupcakes? She said sure. Brad managed to get as far as the reception desk before Lindsay had to come fetch him. As far as stealthy grand gestures went, it was not a complete success, but hopefully the cupcakes themselves would win her over.
“Why are you really here?” she asked as she led him into the main office area.
“I wanted to do something nice,” he said, laying the box on the table Lindsay indicated.
A tall woman with dark hair wandered over. Lindsay said, “Brad, this is my boss, Erica Sanchez. Erica, this is Brad Marks.”
“Of the cat café!” Erica extended her hand, so Brad shook it.
“I brought some cupcakes. For the office, not just for Lindsay. As a thank-you for everything.” He took the lid off the box.
Erica gazed at them, looking delighted. “What have we got here?”
There were a dozen cupcakes, two of each kind. The cakes themselves were leftovers from that morning’s cat café display, but he’d gotten a little creative with frosting because it was easier to make a small batch of frosting than a small batch of cake batter. So there were six kinds of cupcakes. Brad pointed to each and said, “Vanilla, chocolate, cookies and cream, red velvet, cinnamon apple, and maple bacon.”
“Oooh.” Erica wiggled her fingers as she tried to choose.
Lindsay grabbed one of the maple bacon cupcakes and led him back to her desk, which wasn’t so much a desk as a station in the middle of a large table. As she ate it, other workers in the office drifted over and helped themselves.
“I’m wrapping up here in a few,” Lindsay said. “I guess we could go get a cup of coffee or something.”
The lukewarm reaction was a little less than he’d been hoping for, but Brad would take it.
There was an indie coffee shop near the Forum’s offices, which is where Lindsay led Brad. It was full of college students studying, but there were a few empty tables, so Brad snagged one while Lindsay ordered their drinks.
She joined him a few minutes later and handed him a latte, exactly the thing he would have ordered. He hadn’t even told her what he wanted.
“So,” she said.
“So.”
Lindsay frowned. “I heard through the grapevine that you bungled an interview with the Times because the reporter wanted you to introduce her to Aaron and you refused.”
Brad could only wonder at how small the food world was. “That’s true. I didn’t think Aaron would do another favor for me.”
“So in a roundabout way, you sabotaged a good opportunity for my sake.”
“If you want to look at it that way.”
“Is that not what happened?”
Brad shrugged. “I mean, yes, I wanted that opportunity for you and not for this reporter, but I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it.” Which was true. He hadn’t planned to say anything, but maybe it was best that it worked out this way. Maybe this would show her he cared, that he was looking out for her.
Lindsay nodded. “The maple bacon cupcake was good.”
It still wasn’t much, but Brad felt like he was chipping away at her armor. “Thanks. I know you like a good sweet and salty combo.”
“I was in San Francisco for a food festival last year, and the hotel had a café that served maple bacon doughnuts that were to die for.”
“Everyone says that trend is over, but never underestimate the American love for all things bacon.”
Lindsay smiled. “I think cupcakes are also proving to have staying power. A few years ago, all the little cupcake bakeries in the Village started getting replaced with macaron shops, but I think they’re going back. Everyone loves cupcakes.”
“It seems like a bad strategy to build a business around one trendy item.”
“Do you make macarons?”
“I can. I haven’t for the café yet. Although, I wonder if I could give them little cat ears. I’ll have to experiment.”
“I have never successfully made a macaron. I caught the flu this past winter and wound up spending almost a whole week on my couch. I watched like three seasons of that British baking show, and I came away convinced I could make macarons. As soon as I recovered enough to stand upright in my kitchen, I gave it a shot. I failed spectacularly. They came out flat and misshapen.”
“It takes some practice. I’ll show you the trick sometime.”
“We used to talk about cooking together but hardly ever got around to it.”
Brad nodded. That was true. In their culinary school days, they did most of their cooking at school or work. Brad still liked the idea of him and Lindsay sharing space in a kitchen, working together to prepare a meal for their friends. He liked that picture immensely.
“We used to talk about opening a restaurant together,” said Brad, fully letting himself revel in nostalgia.
“Yeah. I thought about that a lot back in culinary school. We’d be partners, you know? Me as executive chef, you as pastry chef.”
“Sure. If we did it now, what kind of food would we make?”
“American, probably. Maybe with a focus on seafood. Mediterranean influences because I really like that flavor profile. Light, delicious, nothing very heavy.”
“So, uh, no little crocks of lasagna covered in red sauce.”
Lindsay laughed. “God, no. Don’t get me wrong. I love Italian food, but for my own restaurant, I’d want to serve food people feel good about eating. Then they can opt to have a decadent dessert if that’s how they roll.”
Brad liked the sound of that. “You have thought this through. Recently, I mean.”
“Yeah, I guess I have. It’s been on the brain. I reviewed a crab shack in Red Hook last summer that reminded me how much I love seafood. It doesn’t even have to be fancy. I took the girls and Evan and we ordered this clam-bake-for-four option. It was literally a metal bucket full of seafood, but they used their own seasoning mix and everything was cooked perfectly. Just picnic tables on a deck with a bit of a breeze coming in off the water. Sometimes food like that beats the food at a Michelin-star restaurant. Pretentious doesn’t always mean good.”
Brad smiled at that. “You know, I spend almost more time talking about food than making food.”
Lindsay laughed. “I definitely do. But food is kind of our whole lives, isn’t it?”
“Well, not my whole life. I like…baseball. And video games. And now cats. I have a pet cat.”
“Me too. Those cats do make your life better in ways you don’t expect.” Lindsay smiled. “And I know you will tell me this is blasphemy, but the food is better at Citi Field than at Yankee Stadium.”
“That is blasphemy, but I appreciate how you were able to turn one of my nonfood interests back into food.”
“Have you eaten at both to compare?”
“As a matter of fact, I have. You remember Sam from culinary school? His brother has season tickets to the Mets, so Sam and I use them sometimes. So, having sampled the cuisines of both teams, I can say that Citi Field has more options near the cheap seats, but you can get a better steak sandwich at Yankee Stadium. I of course did a lot of testing. For science.”
“Of course.”
“The Yanks are having a great season.”
“That’s good. I don’t care about baseball.”
“I know. I don’t care that you don’t care.”
Lindsay shook her head. “I did used to like going to games with you.”
“That is a thing we can do this summer. I have season tickets to the Yankees that I end up giving to Aaron a lot because I work all the time. My seats are over first base.”
“Is that a thing friends do?”
Brad tried to read between the lines of her question. “Sure. It’s a thing people who are dating do, too.”
“Brad, I—”
“So, okay, I brought you the cupcakes as a grand gesture. I thought it would go over well in your office. I’ve been racking my brain about what I can do to impress you, and the truth is, most of what I have is food. I can make really good food. Specifically, good pastry and desserts.”
Lindsay let out a sigh. “That’s true, you can. And you’re surprisingly persistent for a guy I keep turning down.”
“You haven’t done that.”
Lindsay lowered her eyelids. “Haven’t I? I’d remember saying yes.”
Brad shook his head. “Nope. You keep saying maybe, and you’ve slept with me twice. This is going to come out sounding creepier than I mean it, but if you really didn’t want to ever see me again, you wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
Lindsay just pursed her lips and nodded slightly as if to acknowledge that this was a good point.
“You’re beautiful and smart and sexy and can talk to me all day about food, which is basically the only thing I know how to talk about. We had fun together once upon a time. I don’t know about you, but I’m having fun right now just sipping a latte and talking to you.”
“I know, but…”
“So I’ve put it all out on the table. I have feelings for you. I baked you cupcakes with bacon. I gave you space to think. So what do you think?”
She shook her head, “I don’t—”
“What do you want, Linds? Do you still want to open that restaurant? I’m game. Let’s talk about it. Do you want to keep your current job while I bounce around various pastry jobs until I have enough of a nest egg to open my own bakery? That’s cool. Do you want to be with me? Because I definitely want to be with you. So stop questioning it, believe me when I tell you I’m being sincere, and decide what you want.”
Lindsay stared at him. “Oh.”
***
Lindsay hated being vulnerable. It was one thing she knew for sure about herself. But accepting Brad back into her life would require making herself vulnerable.
“I’m glad for all that,” she said, folding her hands around her coffee cup. “I want to trust you.”
He reached over and peeled one of her hands off her cup and wrapped his around it. “The happiest year of my life was that year we were together in culinary school. I’ve done some great things since then and had some good times and had some jobs I really liked and some I really didn’t. But I was never as happy as I was when I was with you. And I kinda suspect the same is true for you. And if that’s the case, I think we should try to see if we can be happy together again, is all. Maybe it won’t work out. But maybe it will this time because we have a better handle on the people we’re supposed to be.”
Lindsay let out a breath. She had been happy that year. It had been one of the best years of her life, too.
They’d sometimes worked together inventing new recipes in one of the school’s test kitchens late at night. There’d been a night when her friend Ashley and Brad’s friend Sam had been working out the best way to make a particular French dessert—some fancy pâtisserie that was beyond Lindsay’s comprehension—and it ended with them all throwing flour at each other like a bunch of kids. It had been a bitch to clean up after the fact, but Lindsay couldn’t remember ever laughing so hard.
Or there was the time Brad had taken her to meet his parents in Philadelphia, and he’d insisted on taking her to the best cheesesteak place in the city, but they’d gotten lost on the way because Brad had decided to drive there in his parents’ car and had taken a “short cut.” A fight had ensued in which Lindsay had called Brad a typical male for not wanting to ask for directions. Lindsay had used the GPS on her phone to get them there, and by the time they finally got their cheesesteaks, they were both starving. It was a damned good cheesesteak, though, and the matter-of-fact way Brad had said, “Worth it,” once they were eating had made Lindsay smile despite herself.
Or there was the time Aaron had organized a cookout in Prospect Park, and asking a bunch of culinary students to prepare simple burgers and hot dogs on the portable grills someone had brought was somehow too simple. Lindsay and Brad had just sat on a blanket and watched their friends argue over the intricacies of this particular challenge. Lindsay had her head on Brad’s lap and was content to let the breeze waft over her, and… Yeah. She’d been happy.
And her life hadn’t been the same since leaving him.
If she could find it in herself to trust him, if they both went all in on this, they could have that again.
“I’ll go on a real date with you,” she said.
He stared at her like he couldn’t believe what she’d said. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. You’re right, we did have fun. But I don’t want to just accept on faith that we will have fun now. I want to get to know the new you. I want to trust you. I’m willing to give us a chance to see if we still have something between us. How’s that?”
Brad’s face broke into a wide grin. “Sounds great to me! I’m working the rest of the week, but I have Monday off. Maybe I can come up with something to do. You want to eat at that new restaurant Pepper?”
“You think you’re funny.”
But even as they agreed that Brad would call her to make arrangements, she remained deeply skeptical that this could work.