She examined me silently. She was so close I could count her every eyelash, which was exactly what I did as I waited for my heart rate to return to normal.
The activity was oddly calming.Shewas oddly calming, which was not something I thought I’d ever say about a girl who once snuck into my boarding school dorm room and threw every piece of clothing I had into a hot wash. I’d had to replace my entire wardrobe.
My heart finally slowed enough for me to sit up without getting dizzy.
I hadn’t had such a vivid nightmare in over a year, which was why I’d stopped seeing my therapist a few months ago. Lingering anxiety was expected, but the double pressure from the collab launch and my potential career change must’ve fanned that spark into a wildfire.
Maya sat back, her forehead still creased with concern. “You’re right. Maybe we should go home,” she said. “We’re not getting anywhere tonight.”
“No.” I cleared my throat. Cold sweat glued my shirt to my skin, and a small shiver rolled through me. “Let’s talk about something else for a bit. Reset our brains. It’ll help.” I searched for a safe topic. She wouldn’t tell me why she’d left our meeting so abruptly a few weeks ago. She kept insisting she had a doctor’s appointment, and while I knew she was lying, I couldn’t force her to tell me the truth. “What did you do over the weekend?”
Halloween fell on a Tuesday this year, so most of the events had already happened over the weekend.
“I went to a few parties with my friends,” Maya said. “Ayana hosted a girls’ night at her place, and we pre-gamed there before going to a pop-up experience in Brooklyn. It was like a party mixed with a haunted—” She sucked in a sharp breath. Her face lit up, and she grabbed my arm hard enough to hurt. “Oh my God. That’s it!”
The last time she was that excited, I’d gotten roped into creating over a dozen recipes for a whole fucking frozen foods line.
I eyed her with suspicion as she released me and jumped to her feet. “A pop-up. That’s it,” she repeated. She paced back and forth in her classic thinking stance. “We can launch the line with a pop-up restaurant. We’ll serve the guests the frozen foods—well, they’ll be heated, obviously—but we’ll present the dishes as if they were at a gourmet restaurant. White-glove service, fine china, designer decor. It’s not a dinner party; it’s an experience.”
Interesting. I didn’t hate it, but… “That’s like serving fast food at the Ritz.”
“Exactly. It’s weird and unexpected, which means it’ll get people talking.” Maya stopped, opened her laptop, and started typing furiously. “The medialovesa good pop-up. We can have a soft launch with press and influencers, then open it to the public for a limited time.”
Her excitement was contagious. I still had my reservations, but my mind spun with a sudden influx of ideas. “What if we took it further?”
She raised a questioning brow.
“We serve them food from the new lineandregular gourmet dishes,” I said. “Diners can guess which one’s which. It’ll add an element of mystery and make the experience interactive. Plus, it’ll speak to the quality of the line—frozen foods so good, you can’t tell they weren’t made fresh.”
“That’s…” Maya blinked. “That’s kind of genius.”
“I know.”
I laughed when she grabbed a crumpled-up napkin from the table and tossed it at me. My earlier nightmare was already a distant memory, and I chose to attribute that to our breakthrough rather than Maya herself.
“I have one question,” she said. “Canyou make the frozen foods taste as good as regular gourmet food? That seems like a tall order.”
“It’ll be a challenge,” I admitted. “I can’t guarantee they’ll taste exactly the same, but we can make them good enough to put doubt in people’s minds.”I hope.
I was burying myself under more and more pressure every day, but fuck it. I was tired of playing it safe, and I refused to let my anxiety get the best of me.
I was Sebastian fucking Laurent. Either go big or go home.
A slow smile spread across Maya’s face. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
We didn’t go home that night. We stayed in the office, where we spent hours bouncing ideas off each other and creating a plan for the pop-up. The project finally felt likefuninstead of a chore, and I could’ve kept going forever had my body not eventually rebelled.
One minute, we were back on the yoga mats to take a break—just a quick one to stretch our limbs.
The next, my eyes were drifting closed, and Maya’s arm was draped over my waist, and my leg was…
I yawned. I tried to finish my last thought about my leg. Or was it about our guest list? Maybe it was something about Maya’s perfume, which was even nicer up close. It was light and sweet, and the warmth of her body kept the aggressive air conditioning at bay.
Lying next to her was kind of like being wrapped in a cozy, floral-scented blanket, and this time, when I sank into the depths of sleep again, I didn’t have a nightmare.
Not even close.
CHAPTER 11
