She steps aside while another server sets a pot of melted cheese on the table.
I reach out a hand before he can light the fuel beneath the pot. “Please don’t.”
He glances at me, and his face does the kind of gymnastics you’d expect from someone connectingBea Best is here—parents died in a fire—don’t light the candle—boss’s ex-girlfriend—messy breakup—oh shit, that’s the boss’s favorite actor with her.
He visibly gulps as he holds eye contact with me.
“Please,” I repeat.
Is sweat breaking out on his forehead, or was it already there? “It’ll get cold and lumpy pretty fast, Bea. Jake would want you to have, erm, creamy fondue cheese.”
I twitch, wondering how good Simon’s memory is for names. If my face isn’t the color of a tomato, I’ll eat these stilettos. “I’ll handle the lumpy cheese problem,” I force out.
“Lumpy cheese is a risk we’re willing to live with,” Simon agrees.
The young man looks between us, then back at the cheese, then back at me. “Fuck, you’re epic,” he whispers.
“I dislike dining with anyone who is less than epic,” Simon says. “That will be all. Thank you.”
His voice holds an unexpected authority that has both of the servers scurrying away from the table as if they know they’ve been dismissed.
“Bea?” Simon says quietly to me as he peers at me over the top rim of his glasses.
I gulp champagne. “I didn’t know it would be a cheese- and cream-based fixed menu. I mean, I expected half the dishes on the menu would be cheesy, but notallof them.”
“Ms. Best.”
“Yes?”
He removes his glasses, then leans into the table with his nose right over the warm pot of cheese. “Are you afraid of fire?”
I need to tell him.
I need to tell him why we’re here.
Because any minute now, Jake’s going to walk into this room to see his favorite actor, and Simon has no idea, and?—
“Would you like me to request that everyone else put their candles out too?” Simon asks.
I am an asshole.
The biggest, assiest, holiest of assholes.
I’ve set this man up on a spite date and he’s offering to ask everyone in the room to put their candles out in deference to my discomfort around open flame. “Can we open this window? It’s hot in here. Are you hot? I’m hot.”
I’m hot. My dress is too tight. My shoes are too tight. My handbag is too tight, and I don’t know how that even works, but it is.
“You’re stunning, in fact,” Simon says. “I believe I made sure of that.”
Mr. Smiley has left the room, and in its place is a man watching me with compassion and concern.
We could leave.
Bolt right now.
It’s not like he can eat anything on the menu. And then Quincy will tell everyone we fled the restaurant because there was nothing Simon could eat, and I don’t have to see Jake, and why can’t I be more like Daphne for just one evening?
Buying a burger bus to make it more successful than a restaurant out of sheer determination to one-up my absolute douchenoodle of an ex is one thing.
