Abruptly, Cam’s arm shoots out and smacks a hand to my back as if she’s squashing a bug. It knocks me forward with a quietoof. Then she moves the hand in clumsy circles, as if smearing the imaginary bug guts around on my shirt.
I shrug her off and whisper, “Is this your attempt at couple-y affection?”
Her eyes stay fixed ahead when she replies, “Not now, honey, Chef Tony is speaking.”
Am I being punished? Did some higher power hear me thinking about Cammie’s legs in her cutoff shorts while we were sitting in a church earlier? Now I’m in a sort of relationship purgatory, where we’re not really dating, not really just friends, but this strange, in-between, fake-couple bullshit? Can I buy my way out of here, or did Martin Luther kind of ruin that shortcut for everyone?
Tony claps his hands once, yanking my attention back to where it should be—on him. On figuring out whatever we can about this man, and what part he could have played in Cammie’s story. Now that I know even more about why she’s looking for her dad, it’s all the more important to me to beinvolved. I need to be here for her, protect her heart and her already shaken sense of self-worth, no matter the outcome with any of these men.
When Tony sets us free with our first instructions for starting the dough, I gesture to the aprons we were given when we arrived. Souvenirs, Tony said, that we’ll get to take home to remember this workshop forever. They’re red with a loopy white script that saysI left a pizza my heart at Antonio’s di Napoli.
“Do you think these come with all the workshops, or just the ones forcouples?” I emphasize the last word with an accusatory look.
Cam meets my gaze with an apologetic wince. “I swear I didn’t know. It was just called Pizza Making Two!”
I nod toward a flyer taped to the wall by the entrance, one I hadn’t noticed when we walked in that advertises the recurring weekly workshop in this exact time slot. “Uh-huh—Pizza Making for Two.”
Cammie looks at the sign, then back to me with a cute scowl. “Adding this to my list of grievances with that archaic website.”
“I’m sure Tony will appreciate that,” I tease. I peer around the kitchen to find everyone else too busy chatting with their own partners and starting their pizzas to pay attention to us before I continue. “So, what, now we…pretend we’re together?”
“Was that not clear from my gentle caress?” she demands in a serious whisper, then breaks into a quiet chuckle at my unimpressed look. “Okay, I panicked and just went for it, but I’lldo better from now on. It’s probably easiest to be a fake couple for tonight, for the sake of blending in?”
Her voice goes up at the end, making it sound more like she’s gauging how I feel than expressing a firm opinion. I’m no more confident when I answer, “It can’t be all that different than how we act as friends, right?”
“Right, of course,” Cam agrees quickly, nodding a little too vigorously to look natural about it. “Just act natural, act like ourselves, like friends, nice and normal.”
It quickly becomes clear that Cam and I have different definitions of nice and normal.
“Hey, babe, do you want a turn with the dough?” she asks in a sugary-sweet voice that isn’t even her own, making cartoonishly wide doe eyes that are beginning to scare me.
“Sure…darling,” I try.
It’s all I can do to follow her lead, try to match her lovesick energy so no one thinks there’s trouble in paradise or that I’m not as into her as she is into me. The latter possibility is laughable.
“Beautiful, West, yes,” Tony enthuses as he passes by our station while I’m kneading the dough. “Nowthatis a man who’s good with his hands,” he jokes with a pointed look to Cammie.
She giggles, the sound reminiscent of a Tickle Me Elmo I had as a toddler whose sound box started glitching. The resulting demonic laughter it released led me to sleep in Pops and Dad’s room for a week.
Between the wood-fired pizza oven and my rising panicfrom the pressure of pretending to be hopelessly in love with my friend, while secretly, possibly inching toward those feelings for real, I am sweating profusely by the time we add the finishing touches to our unbaked pizzas. I am holding the tub with shreds of a fresh mozzarella ball that I tore off by hand, weighing where to place another couple pieces on my margherita pie, when Cammie suddenly presses up against me, her front to my side. I flinch so hard, I drop the tub, sending mozzarella spilling out to cover the whole round of dough and sauce.
“Mmm, lots of cheese,” she says with a flirtatious lilt that the words do not call for, followed by a casual kiss dropped on my shoulder. “Looks so good, babe.”
It’s not a good performance. But if they gave out “Tried Way Harder Than the Role Required” Oscars, Cam would be a contender. She’s at least got my heart—and every other part of my body, save for my brain—convinced. Every one of my systems is on high alert, blaring SHE KISSED US alarms while the single rational brain cell I have left slams down a bunch of buttons with labels like FAKE and ONLY OUR SHIRTSLEEVE.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” I manage to grit out between clenched teeth. “Can never have too much dairy.”
It’s a lie that my stomach will be refuting later, if I’m able to chill out enough to eat any of this. My unease isn’t entirely because of my fake girlfriend’s real PDA, either. It’s also from what I see happening with Tony, one of my fears about this whole dad hunt endeavor playing out in real time.
Cammie is dazzled by the chef. He’s charming, sure, with his dimpled smile and endearing mix of dry Australian witand ridiculous dad humor. Every time he comes by our station, her smile brightens, her posture straightens, all the deep-down parts of her that so sincerely want to be loved and noticed bursting at her seams.
This is feeling increasingly like the worst idea. Like something I should have protected her from somehow, as if I even have that power. But I see the determination in her eyes, telling me this isn’t over until she has her answers—even if they’re not the answers she wants.
All I can do now is knead some dough, crush some tomatoes, and wait, ready to stop Tony Campbell-Costa from breaking her heart in whatever way I can.
“All right, all right, all right, Camilla and Weston,” Tony says in what I think is meant to be a Matthew McConaughey impression. We’re the only Americans in class tonight, with two British couples and one from Switzerland.
Cammie and I carry our pizzas by the edges of the squares of parchment paper on which they sit over to where Tony stands holding a pizza peel. Beyond the brick opening of the oven is what looks like the fires of hell.
