“Looks phenomenal,” Cole says, turning on the charm with the flick of a switch.
Only after Arthur leaves us does Cole examine the food with his usual critical glare.
“What is this?” he demands.
“That’s the bacon sampler platter,” I say, nodding toward four marinated strips of premium pork belly labeled with fancy script like each is a guest at a wedding.
Cole frowns. “It looks . . . intense.”
“It’s the best thing you’ll ever put in your mouth. Look,” I cut off a bite of the rosemary balsamic bacon. “Try this one first.”
Cole takes a bite. He chews slowly, his expression melting from skepticism into genuine surprise.
“Holy shit,” he says.
“I told you—try this one now. Brown sugar cinnamon.”
He takes a bite of the second strip, eyebrows rising and an unwilling smile tugging at his mouth.
“This is so good.”
“I know,” I snap. “That’s why I work here. It’s the literal best brunch in the city.”
“Is that really why you work here?” Cole asks, watching me closely.
“Yes. The smell of food—I can’t stand it if it’s not good. The food here smells incredible because it is incredible. Here, try this now—take a sip of the mimosa, then eat one of the spicy-sweet potatoes.”
Cole does exactly what I said, taking a small sip of his drink, then quickly biting into the potato.
“What the fuck,” he says. “Why is that so good?”
“I dunno.” I shrug. “Something about the sour citrus and then the pop of salt. They amplify each other.”
Cole is watching me as I eat my own food, taking a small bite of one thing and then another, cycling through my favorite combinations.
“Is that how you eat?” he says.
I shrug. “Unless I’m in a hurry.”
“Show me more combinations.”
I show him all my favorite ways to eat the magnificent brunch spread Arthur laid before us—lemon curd layered with fresh strawberries and clotted cream on the scones, blueberries between bites of maple bacon, a dash of hot sauce mixed in with the hollandaise . . .
Cole tries it all with an unusual level of curiosity. I’d assume somebody as rich as him has eaten at a million fancy restaurants.
“Don’t you eat out all the time?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “I don’t spend much time on food. It bores me.”
“But you like this?”
“I do,” he says, almost as if he hates to admit it. “How do you come up with all this?”
I shrug. “When I was little, we never had fresh groceries. Dinner was whatever I could scrounge from the kitchen without mold growing on it. A can of corn. Boiled egg. Dry cereal. I never tried most foods until I started working at restaurants. I’d never tasted steak, or cilantro, or avocado. I wanted to try everything—it was like discovering a whole new sense.”
“But there was a time when you weren’t poor,” Cole says, harrying that point like a dog with a bone. He’s really not gonna fucking drop it.
“Yes,” I say testily. “When we lived with Randall.”
“That’s your stepfather.”
“Yes.”
“What did you eat then?”
“Not fucking much. He used to scream at me if my spoon clinked in my cereal bowl.”
“How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
“He didn’t like having a stepkid?”
“No. He didn’t. And by that point, he had learned a thing or two about my mother. She’s very good at fooling people for a while. By the time he realized, they were already married.”
“Realized what?”
“That she’s a parasite. That her only ambition is to latch onto people and bleed them dry.”
Cole nods slowly. “Including you,” he says.
“Especially me.”
I leave brunch in a kind of a daze, wondering how in the fuck Cole Blackwell now knows more about my sordid history than my closest friends. He’s relentless . . . and hypnotic, the way he fixes me with those deep, dark eyes, never looking away for a moment. The way he absorbs everything I say with none of the usual displays of sympathy or irritating commiseration. He just soaks it in and demands more, like he plans to drill down to the core of me, strip-mining my soul.
He insisted on paying for the meal, leaving an extra hundred-dollar bill as a tip for Arthur.
I can already see how he uses his money to manipulate people—including me. I cashed that two-thousand-dollar check because I had to, because I owe Joanna for rent and utilities, and I have to pay the credit card bill for the replacement cellphone, and my hospital bill, too.