Skinny Bitch Gets Hitched Read online

  “Ha. Like you have any clue, Clem. You’re tall and blond and thin and gorgeous. Everything’s always been easier for you. I lost twenty-two pounds and everything is still the same. I’m the same.”

  “Yeah, I hope so. I never want you to change. No matter what you weigh, you’re awesome and my best friend.”

  “But everything was supposed to be perfect. I lost weight. I have a great job in TV. On air, no less. I have an interesting boyfriend. So why does everything still suck?”

  I slung my arm around her shoulder. Everything didn’t really suck. She just had stuff to figure out. And my life wasn’t easy and never was. Before I could say a word, though, her cell phone rang and she lunged for it in her bag. It’s Joe, she mouthed.

  I could hear him talking because he did everything on high volume. He was saying something about having called his assistant to ask if someone had checked on the burned contestant, which of course they had, and the guy was fine and wasn’t going to sue.

  “Maybe there’s hope for you yet,” she said into the phone with a smile.

  “I wish he would sue,” I heard Joe say. “That would trend on Twitter and get written up everywhere. Great for publicity.”

  Sara sighed into the phone.

  Then I heard Joe say, “Gotta go, hot stuff.”

  Sara put the phone back in her bag. “Shitburgers, maybe there isn’t hope for him.”

  The opposite of Joe “Steak” Johansson? My cousin Harry Cooper, who had invited Zach and me to lunch—his treat—this afternoon at the Santa Monica Pier to celebrate our engagement. We were meeting at the Mexico Ole food truck.

  “I hope Zach won’t think that’s cheap of me,” Harry had said on the phone twenty minutes ago. “But I won’t be making the big bucks until I pay my dues and that’ll take a while.”

  “Mexico Ole has the best burritos in LA and everyone knows it.”

  “Does Zach know it? He probably never ate food from a truck in his life.”

  “Oh, trust me, I’ve introduced Zach to all sorts of new wonders. He thinks it’s really nice that you invited us out to lunch. Zach’s not a snob.”

  “There are about twenty layers of bosses above me before you get to him. Tell you the truth, I’m surprised he even agreed to go out to lunch with me.”

  “Zach is a great guy. Yeah, he’s megawealthy and runs Jeffries Enterprises. But he’s the best.”

  “He’s gotta be if he’s marrying you,” Harry had said because he’s awesome. “See you at twelve thirty, Clem.”

  Now, Zach and I sat at a picnic table as Harry, who would always look wrong to me in a suit and tie, carried over our orders. The sight of Harry Cooper always made me smile. Tall and lanky, half-surfer-dude with his slightly long blond hair, and half-corporate with his shiny black shoes and wire-rimmed glasses, Harry would always remind me of home.

  Zach opened up his steak burrito (meat: ick) and took a bite. “So, Harry, how’s life on the second floor?”

  Jeffries Enterprises had its own gorgeous art deco building, five stories, on Santa Monica Boulevard. Zach’s office, twice the size of my apartment, had the top floor with a wraparound balcony.

  “Great,” Harry said, opening up his black-bean quesadilla. “I’m learning a lot. Reviewing profit-and-loss statements, writing reports on how to maximize profits. Jeffries Enterprises is having a great quarter.”

  Zach smiled. “I’m glad to have you on board.”

  I’ve always been glad to have Harry on board, ever since we were little kids. Harry, son of my dad’s brother, was an only, and since we’re practically the same age, we were inseparable growing up. He was too old to play with my brother, Kale, who’s five years younger. And my sister, four years older, couldn’t be bothered with a tagalong boy. But Harry and I were kindred sprits. His house was two miles up the road, and he’d always walk or bike over and spend a good hour talking shop with my parents from a numbers standpoint, interested at age twelve in the cost of doing business. After he jotted down notes in the little journal he carried everywhere, we’d walk into the fields with the dogs and talk for hours about everything—our parents and their rules, school, the opposite sex (Harry always had girls chasing after him), each other, what we wanted to be and do with our lives. I loved that although Harry came from a family of meat eaters, he’d been so horrified by my stories of what happened to chickens and cows and goats at some farms that he’d become a committed vegan at age ten and had never veered—even though I had that one summer when I graduated from high school. When he’d gone to college in New York and then stayed there for graduate school and his first job, I missed him. Just six weeks ago, he’d finally come home to California and settled in Santa Monica. Zach had agreed to look at his résumé, and only if he had the chops would Zach hire him. Harry had the chops.

  While I ate my grilled seitan-and-veggie burrito, Zach and Harry bored me to death talking business. After fifteen minutes, though, Zach crumpled up his wrapper and three-point-shot it into a garbage can.

  “I’m sorry to have to cut lunch short, but I have a meeting I couldn’t change at one fifteen. Thanks for lunch, Harry.” Zach kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll call you later, Clem.”

  “Let’s see a movie tonight,” I said. “Harry, want to join us?”

  “Oh, I can’t tonight,” Zach said. “But you two go ahead.” He nodded at Harry, gave me a brief smile, and walked away.

  “Everything okay?” Harry asked, looking at me pointedly.

  “Everything’s fine. He’s just incredibly busy. I’ve barely seen him the past couple of days.”

  “You still mad at me for having to hire his stepsister?” Harry asked, taking a bite of his burrito. He knew it was a trade of sorts.

  “Yes. I’ll be mad at you for that forever.”

  In just a few hours, Keira Huffington would start at Clementine’s No Crap Café as a trainee. I had no doubt her first night would be a total disaster.

  According to the big silver clock on the wall, it was 3:59 p.m., which meant I had exactly one minute left before Keira would arrive like a wrecking ball and destroy my kitchen.

  I’d told her to arrive at four, an hour later than normal, and there she was, coming through the swinging door of the kitchen exactly on time, which was a good sign. Her hair was in a low ponytail, she wore the white, skinny jeans and the Clementine’s No Crap Café T-shirt I’d told her to wear, and her usual blingfest was gone, except for a delicate silver chain around her neck with a dangling K. The necklace would have to go. No one wanted to be eating his or her French onion soup and find a silver initial in a spoonful.

  The kitchen staff were eyeballing the newcomer.

  “Everyone, this is Keira Huffington, our new trainee. She’s going to spend a few days at different stations, learning the ropes. She’ll start on vegetables tonight.”

  Gunnar perked up. He could use an extra pair of hands. Once he saw how she used a knife, though, he might go from his usual seething calm to screaming in her face. How she handled it would determine if she stayed or went. If she could handle Gunnar pissed and didn’t quit in twenty minutes, she might work out.

  “Hi, everyone!” Keira said. “I’m really, really, really excited to be working with you all!”

  Okay, no one liked eagerness. But ten minutes from now, when she’d be racing around the kitchen, grabbing produce from the refrigerator or taking too long to deliver something one of the cooks wanted, sweat pooling on her forehead, she wouldn’t have the breath to talk so much.

  I went over the specials, detailing the ingredients. Burrito sampler—four-bean, grilled-veggie, and seitan-guacamole with a side of Spanish rice. Harvest pizza. Spicy potato curry. Every Wednesday night was the popular Souptopia, with five soup specials—chipotle split-pea, the French onion, my to-die-for minestrone, Hungarian mushroom, and curried lentil. Alanna and Gunnar and I went to work on samples for the wait staff and quizzed them on the ingredients, which I’d e-mailed to everyone yesterday.

  At fo
ur thirty it was time to start prep. I told Keira to take off her necklace and stuff it in her pocket, then sent her over to Gunnar, who was about ten feet down the length of stainless steel counter from where I stood.

  I could hear her trying to make small talk, something Gunnar hated. I smiled as he held up a hand. “Don’t talk. Just watch. This is how I mince garlic. This is how you’ll mince garlic.”

  “Okay!” she said perkily, and took a garlic clove from the basket. “I totally worked on this last night.”

  I watched her press too hard on it and mangle a clove.

  Gunnar glanced at me and raised an eyebrow. He was onto her. There had to be some reason I’d hire a novice, and since everyone knew I’d just gotten engaged, Keira had “I’m related in some way to the owner’s fiancé” written all over her face. “No,” Gunnar told her. “Just watch me. When you think you can do it like I can, then do your own.”

  “Um, it’s just garlic,” she said with a laugh. Hint: never say um or that anything was just anything to Gunnar Fitch.

  He stared at her. “So let me guess. You’re the fiancé’s sister or something.”

  “Stepsister, actually.”

  “What a surprise,” he said, rolling his eyes.

  She tried another head of garlic and knocked the basket over.

  “Jesus!” Gunnar shouted. “I don’t care who the hell you’re related to. If you don’t know how to mince garlic—after I just showed you, after you supposedly practiced all weekend—you shouldn’t be here.”

  “So show me again. God,” Keira yelled back.

  At least she can take it and dish it back, I thought.

  Gunnar rolled his eyes and grabbed the knife. “Watch.”

  Within an hour, Keira had pissed off everyone, including the nicest waiters after I put her on making pitchers of lemon water and the pitchers were full of seeds.

  I gave Keira a break in the little alley with a half glass of wine. “I’ll totally understand if you want to leave right now,” I told her. Please say, “Oh, thank you,” and race for the door. Please. “Tonight’s been really rough on you and it’s only six o’clock. In a half hour, things are going to get wild in here.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, good! I love a fast pace. So what can I help with next?”

  Donkey balls.

  By eight thirty, my arm felt as if it were going to fall off from stirring pots of soup. My cell phone rang on the counter. Everyone knew not to call me when I was in the kitchen unless it was an emergency. It wasn’t my sister’s special ringtone, which I’d set up so I’d never miss one of her calls—the last time I’d ignored a call from Elizabeth, our dad had been rushed to the hospital with complications. The phone kept ringing. Finally, I pulled it out of my pocket. Unfamiliar number. I ignored it. The person called back a second later. I ignored it again. It rang again.

  Who the hell was this?

  I called over a McMann twin to take over my pots and finally answered.

  “Clementine, darling, it’s Dominique Huffington. How’s my baby girl doing? I would have called her, but I don’t want to get Keira in ‘trouble’ for chatting on her first day.”

  I wanted to dump the phone in the pot of curried lentils. “Hi, Dominique. Sorry to cut this short, but we’re very busy right now. I’ll—”

  “While I have you, let me tell you your wedding date. It’ll be May seventh at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Of course, the date is important so we can plan accordingly for a spring wedding. I would have made you a June bride, darling, but June at the Beverly Hills Hotel has been booked for two years. Tomorrow I’ll need you to pop by my house to look at photographs of gowns I’ve earmarked for the designer to do some preliminary sketches of. You may choose your five favorites.”

  My five favorites from a preselected group of pictures? Was she kidding? But first things first.

  “Dominique, I only have five seconds to talk, and then I have to get back to work or all my soups will boil over. May seventh won’t work—it’s my father’s birthday.” My father wasn’t expected to live much longer than a year, and I would celebrate his birthday with him and my family. Not at my insane wedding for five hundred strangers.

  “Of course it will,” she said. “You’ll be together anyway.”

  I stirred the Hungarian mushroom with one hand and the curried lentil with the other. “Dominique, my father is dying of cancer. This is likely the last birthday we’ll spend together. The wedding can’t be on May seventh. No negotiation on that.”

  “Oh, darling. I’m so sorry. I had no idea! But, really, once you think about it, you’ll see that the very best birthday present you can give your father is to see his little girl marry her prince.”

  Do not yell into the phone. Do not throw the phone. Take your aggression out on the French bread, which needs tearing up into pieces anyway for the French onion soup.

  “May seventh is out of the question. Dominique, I really have to say good-bye now—the chipotle split-pea is about to boil over,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “Talk soon!” Click.

  Keira flew over, holding a knife so carelessly that I motioned to her to put it down. She set it on the counter. “Was that my mom? Checking up on me, huh?” She flashed her too-white smile at me. “Oh, no, the pan I’m babysitting for Alanna is crackling!” Keira rushed back over.

  “Jesus Christ, Keira,” I heard Alanna yell. “Watch what you’re doing!”

  But it was too late; Keira had backed right into one of my waitresses, Mia, and the plate she was adding to her tray landed sideways on her uniform.

  “What the hell!” Mia shouted, peeling the plate and an order of caramelized eggplant from her silver shirt.

  “Sorry!” Keira said, and knelt down to scoop up roasted vegetables that had fallen.

  I had to fire her.

  And while I was yelling You’re fired! at people related to my fiancé, I’d include Zach’s mother as my wedding planner.

  “You can’t be so hard on people,” Zach said into my ear on the phone at almost 1:00 a.m. He was away on business in San Francisco for the next three days and I already missed him like crazy. “Let them be who they are and meet them halfway.”

  I flipped over onto my stomach in bed, staring out the dark window at the building that had brought us together. “I’m trying. I didn’t say a word of what I really wanted to say—to your mother or to your stepsister.”

  “Good. And you didn’t spontaneously combust. You’ll get used to them, they’ll get used to you, and you’ll find a happy medium.”

  Why did I doubt that?

  “And, yeah, Keira screwed up her first day. You have to give her credit for not quitting. She was probably humiliated a hundred times tonight. But she’ll be back tomorrow. Give her a chance.”

  “Can I fire your mother, then?”

  He laughed. “She wouldn’t let you fire her. She’d just ignore you and keep throwing sketches of twenty-foot-tall wedding cakes at you until you caved and said yes to whatever she wants.”

  “I miss you. My head hurts.”

  “I miss you too. And don’t worry about either Keira or my mother. Everything will be okay, Clem. Just do what you do and let them do what they do. That’s the key to life.”

  If only they could both do what they did really far away.

  11

  The next morning, I woke up in a crappy mood and no one was around. Sara had slept at Joe’s. Harry was at a seminar on number crunching. My other best friend, Ty, was in Paris working as a pastry chef. I missed him. And Alexander was volunteering at his “little brother’s” middle school today.

  I had only one place to go when I felt this way and no one was around to tell me bad jokes and drag me out to do some goofy karaoke until I cracked a smile.

  Home. My parents’ farm.

  Three hours in the car, headed north and blasting vintage Bee Gees, helped. So did the turn onto the long dirt driveway that led to my parents’ place, their dogs, Willy and Pete, coming to greet me and run
ning along my car until I parked. The white farmhouse, surrounded by acres of green fields and colorful crops, was better than a double martini. I sucked in a deep, clean breath and looked all around. A few more deep breaths of the country air, a long walk on the property with the dogs, some kitchen time with my dad, and a good talk with my mother, and I’d get my mojo back.

  A few hours here always worked. This was the place where I’d been through everything for the first time. The place I’d learned to cook at my father’s side when I was five, handing him eggplants and carrots and garlic and watching everything he did. It was the place where I’d had my first kiss as a know-it-all thirteen-year-old. The place where I knew, without a doubt, that I’d fallen in love with Zach whether I liked it or not.

  I was about to head into the house when I froze beside the orange trees. This was also the place where I’d have my wedding. Not only did I grow up in this country, so did Zach, just a half hour away. This was home for both of us. And this was where I was getting hitched.

  Whether or not the wedding planner I didn’t hire liked it.

  If it rained, we’d set everything up in the barn, which my parents had built themselves thirty years ago. The barn was gorgeous, seriously. If I could have transported the barn to Santa Monica, I would have opened my restaurant inside it.

  “Clem!”

  I turned around to see my dad walking—not fast, as he used to, but walking—toward me, in his LA Dodgers baseball cap and short, green wellies, dragging a small, red wheelbarrow behind him as his dogs raced ahead of him toward the crop fields.

  “You look great, Dad.” I hugged him. Stage III cancer or not, he had good color in his cheeks, his blue eyes sparkled, and he was free of the wheelchair he’d been forced to use when his chemo treatments made him too weak to stand.

  “You too,” he said, studying me. “Though I know my girl and I can see something’s bothering you.”

  I could never get anything past my father. He knew me better than anyone else. “Actually, something was bothering me, but the minute I got up here, I solved it. What do you think of me getting married right here?”