Best Served Hot by Amanda Elliot

Author:Amanda Elliot [Elliot, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

12

Marcus woke me up the next morning with his laughter. Which I suppose is preferable to being woken up by screaming or crying, but still much less preferable to not being woken up at all.

I cracked a bleary eye in the direction of my phone. Which said eight forty-four.

Shit.

I shot upright, rubbing my cheeks. I hadn’t gotten to bed until late last night because of our Shake Shack dinner and a subway ride home that had lasted an extra half hour thanks to a sick passenger in the train ahead. (Bennett had tried to call me an Uber, but I’d lied, saying that I’d get my own downstairs. Ubers from Manhattan to where I lived in Brooklyn cost a fortune—I didn’t want him paying for that for me.) I must have forgotten to set my alarm. Now I was going to be late to work unless I really hustled.

I ran out to the bathroom past Marcus—still chortling—to brush my teeth and wash my face. No time for a shower. Ran back past him—what was the man laughing at for this long?—to throw on the first dress I found, then whipped it off and pulled on another one after I remembered the reason the first one had been hanging in front had been to remind me to do an extra-intensive cleaning because of a salad dressing stain I couldn’t get off.

A hair tie pulling my hair into a high bun—lopsided, I’d redo it in the office—and I was ready to go. I grabbed my satchel, shoving a new library book in as I walked out into the living room, and finally had a moment to ask Marcus, “What’s so funny?”

“You,” he responded, and I realized he was holding his phone up to his face.

“You mean my videos from last night?” On my subway ride home, during the delay, I’d gone on and done a little live Q&A. It had been a lot of ignoring the people asking me my bra size or what color panties I was wearing and a lot of describing the disaster of the night’s cooking, my journey from being a pretty good cook in college to a current mess. I’d gotten a lot of great tips, too. Now doubt seized me, made me nervous. “Was it that bad?”

He lowered his phone. “No, it’s great,” he said, and it took me a moment to realize he was being sincere, not sarcastic. My shoulders relaxed. “You came off really funny and authentic. I’m not the only one who loved it.”

“Really?” Tight schedule be damned, I pulled out my own phone and quickly scrolled through the top comments. Marcus was right. They were overwhelmingly positive, full of encouragement and sympathy and stories about how they, too, had overcooked the pork chops until they were dry and tough, or accidentally served their vegetarian sister-in-law beef stew. I smiled. “Wow.”

“There’s only one thing that’s unfortunate,” Marcus said, sighing dramatically. I braced myself for the one troll who had ruined everything or how I hadn’t noticed the glob of cheese sauce clinging to my chin.

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