the celebrity chef • pedro pascal

mint chocolate chip

july, 2018

"We both know he's been there many times before, so why now?" Barbara's grimace was just a confirmation of what I was already pretty sure of.

"Well, took him long enough to grow some balls, I guess" She shrugged, shoving a spoonful of mint chocolate chip ice cream into her mouth. "so... did you guys talk?"

"Do you want me to walk you through our conversation again?" I furrowed my eyebrows, unable to hide how annoyed I was that she apparently hadn't been listening to me back in the car.

"What? That was all of it?" She gasped, offering me a very undesirable view of the neon green goo inside her mouth. "I meant like talk talk!"

"What the hell is talk talk?" I inquired, glancing quickly at the playground a few feet away just to make sure Eugene was still there. "Are you asking me if we banged on the kitchen counter?"

"Girl, language! He's a fast learner!" She gave me a look of disapproval while trying to cover Mads' ears without dropping her ice cream, but luckily he seemed very uninterested in our conversation, busy with his own dessert. "I wanna know if you guys talked about your thing."

"My thing?" I raised my eyebrows.

"Not your thing. I mean, like - the thing between you guys." She rolled her eyes at me, but it really wasn't my fault if she wasn't being clear enough.

"There isn't a thing between us, Barbs!" I retorted and then decided to shove as much ice cream as I could into my mouth - both to feel better about what I had just stated and to run away from that conversation for a bit.

"Babe, stop playing dumb with me. You can lie to yourself all you want, but I saw it with my own two eyes. Maybe there isn't now, but there sure was." She paused for a second to help Mads wipe the ice cream from his hands and get him down from the bench so that he could join his brother on the playground. "And this might sound rough, but you gotta hear it: It was just your fault as his."

"What do you mean?" I mumbled, almost feeling a bit hurt because it sounded a lot like she wasn't on my side.

"Are you fucking kidding me, Joana?" Funny how she complained about my language just before bellowing this out for the whole park to hear. I'm pretty sure we even got some dirty looks from the moms on the other bench. "You got engaged out of nowhere!"

"It-it wasn't out of nowhere" I choked out, trying to stop my mind from going back to what I had been trying so hard to forget for the past couple of months. "You know it wasn't, Barb."

"Well, maybe not for you - or Wren - but for Pedro?" She slowly shook her head. "That was pretty low, Jo."

###

The afternoon was still coming to an end when I dropped Barbara and the kids back at the house. The unfamiliar car I had seen earlier when I came in for work was still parked on the driveway, and I had to refrain myself from even glancing at it - because now that I knew it meant he was there, I was afraid it would make me want to go back inside just to see him again.

As I waited for the bathtub to fill up, I hurried to the kitchen to get myself a glass of wine. I had woken up extra early today to hit the fish market before going to work, and thankfully the traffic wasn't so bad so I even managed to get to work earlier than I usually did. After such a long day, I was expecting to be fucking exhausted and dying for a nap, but seeing Pedro again had the exact opposite effect on me - my thoughts were restless, my heart was all jittery and I just couldn't sit still. That idiot had me feeling like I was on coke.

I didn't really like to drink too often as I was the definition of a lightweight, and I also avoided drinking by myself because it usually made me feel like an alcoholic. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and that's why I even decided to forgo the glass and just stick to the whole bottle. I also stuck one of Barb's hot pockets into the microwave because things were just that bad.

I lingered in the tub even though my fingers had become allpruney and the water had turned cold. The bottle was two thirds empty but my mind was still full - the only difference was that my thoughts felt even messier now.

I felt so angry at myself for not saying anything. For not saying anything a couple of years ago and also for not saying anything today. If I hadn't been such a coward back then, things probably wouldn't be so weird now. Maybe things would've worked out, maybe they wouldn't, but even then I think I'd be proud of myself just for giving it a try.

But honestly, I was still angry at him and hearing Barb say that I was also to blame didn't diminish the feeling at all. He could've called. He could've answered my fucking texts. He could've just come down the stairs all the previous times he had come by Oscar's in the past couple months - and god, how many times I heard his voice echoing upstairs and wished he would walk into my kitchen and give me a fucking hug. But he didn't.

So why today?

My cellphone buzzed on the edge of the bathtub and I thanked god it was just a text because I was pretty sure if it had been a call I'd probably be searching for the device at the bottom of the tub.

I didn't even need to look at the screen to know it would be Barbs wondering what I'd be making for dinner. And I was just about to tell her to grab me a sushirrito on the way home, because there was no way in hell I'd be cooking another meal today, when I actually read the text.

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