“Annie,”Fernanda calls over from a box in the corner. “Do your vibrators go in your closet or bedside table?”
“Bedside table, obviously,” May answers. She pauses. “You put yours in your closet?”
Fernanda shrugs. “The special ones go in the closet.”
I take a spoonful of wildflower honey straight from the jar. “Wouldn’t the special ones go in the bedside table?” I want to know.
“Special means rarely used, in my case. My old reliables go in the bedside table.”
Izzy frowns. “You have so many vibrators that they don’t all fit in your bedside table?”
I tug on a string of Nico’s hoodie, and surrounded by boxes, my sister, and my best friends in my old, shitty, beautiful-because-it’s-mine studio apartment, I open the attachment in the email.
The new title page smacks me in the face and leaves a mark.
NAKED REACTIONS
Experiments in Taste, Touch, and Truth
Anne Li
Nicholas Giannuzzi
He did it.He’s doing it.He’s letting the world know who he is.
“What?!” May shrieks from behind me, and I nearly fall out of my chair.
“What the fuck, May?—”
“Are you. Telling me.That NICO FUCKING GIANNUZZI HAS BEEN THE NAKEDREACTIONS GUY THIS ENTIRE TIME?!” she screams.
May has gotten a little spicier and a touch unhinged since returning from her honeymoon. The one shetook her ex-boyfriend on. She curses now.
“You know theNakedReactionsguy?!” Betty bellows from across the room.
“He told me not to tell anyone,” I mutter.
May is losing her damn mind. “So you were ghostwriting this porn star’s book. You had a crush on him. Then you went on a road trip with Nico, who you hated in high school,” she rages, pacing back and forth across the room. “Then somehow, somewhere between Brooklyn and Miami, you fell in love with him, and then they turned out to be the same fucking person?!”
“WHAT?!” Betty and Fernanda shriek simultaneously.
I scrub my face. “I know.”
“So… the porn star thing… and now… and this… and then…” I watch as the room malfunctions.
Izzy appears behind me, looking at the screen. “This must be the big thing,” she muses.
“You knew?!” May fires at her.
She shrugs. “He told me.”
“Everyone shut the fuck up and let’s read this thing,” May snaps.
Filled with something that feels suspiciously like pride, maybe elation, I keep scrolling.
If you’re looking for a normal cookbook, I should warn you: this isn’t it.
Yes, there are recipes. Some are precise. Others are more of a suggestion. A few were born during late nights in industrial kitchens, all burned fingers and bad lighting. Others came to life in the quiet—slow mornings, long afternoons, the only sound someone breathing across the counter. But none of them exists just for the food.
