by Kim Barnouin
My sister, the least sentimental, least nostalgic, least superstitious person alive, had let out her trademark snort. “If I’m tossing the bouquet to anyone, it’s straight at my mother-in-law, who paid over four hundred bucks for it.”
“But your mother-in-law is married,” the single guest had protested.
I’d been able to tell from Elizabeth’s expression that she was dying to lecture the woman on archaic, antifeminist traditions that made her blood boil. Elizabeth got seriously worked up over these things. But she held her usual let-loose tongue. “I just meant I’m not doing a bouquet toss.”
The single guest walked away with an “Oh,” shoulders kind of slumped, heading back to her table of singles, where she’d been seated between a ten-year-old cousin using a rubber band to slingshot crap at unsuspecting guests all night and the groom’s mentally unstable bachelor uncle. Elizabeth called out the single woman’s name, and when the guest turned around, my sister, who was much kinder than she let on, tossed that bouquet, albeit with a slight roll of her eyes, directly into the guest’s hands.
With a surprised smile—and a silent, triumphant I will be next!—the single guest went back much happier to the ten-year-old, who’d barfed up his third piece of wedding cake on her chair.
“Jesus H. Christ on a Ritz cracker,” my best friend, Sara, had said as we’d watched the woman’s entire demeanor change from despairing to hopeful. “If I ever get like that, which I never will, please slap me really hard across the face to snap me out of it.” Sara and I were both in committed relationships, but marriage—and cheesetastic wedding rituals—was the furthest thing from either of our busy minds. If anyone tried to toss a bouquet in Sara’s direction, she’d instinctively drop-kick it.
“Oh, I will,” I’d said. “And same here.” Not that either of us would be getting married anytime soon. I’d been with Zach seven months, and Sara and Joe had been together for six. Couple newbies! But spring wedding season, with its bouquet tossing and ice sculptures and bands still playing Kool & the Gang, had taken over our lives.
Last month, Sara and I had attended our Pilates teacher’s wedding, the bride and groom in lotus position in the woods. Zenia, one of the coolest women we knew, had shocked us by calling for the single women to line up for the bouquet toss. Zenia, of all people!
“A wedding itself is traditional, is it not?” Zenia had said in her usual Zen style to our “How could you!” questioning afterward.
“I’m making a statement by not lining up,” Sara had whispered to me. “Can you imagine if I actually caught the bouquet? I don’t want to be next! I’d run for the hills. Join a nunnery. Anything to not be next and marry that guy.”
We’d glanced over at Sara’s boyfriend, the loudest person at any social event, but especially in the calm quiet of the woods, telling another cringe-worthy story about “the loser schmuck wannabe chef” he’d humiliated as host of his own weekly TV show, Eat Me, on the Food Network. Sara was something of a cohost, and how she’d landed that gig was a frightening story for another time. But her boyfriend, Joe “Steak” Johansson, was the only person alive capable of embarrassing Sara, who was hard to offend. It was half the reason she liked him so much.
“No way will Jolie do a cheesetastic bouquet toss,” I whispered now to Charlie as I searched the kitchen for his leash. “That chick is as antitradition as they come.”
Evident by her choice of wedding-cake baker. Despite having her pick of the best bakeries in LA to make her wedding cake (this was a no-expense-spared, unlimited-budget wedding, paid for by Cornelius Jeffries, bajillionaire father), Jolie had asked me. I’d met Jolie back when I was getting my Skinny Bitch Bakes business off the ground, cakes and muffins and cookies and scones and pies for coffee shops all over Santa Monica. That was just six months ago, but my life had completely changed since then. Now, I was baking those cakes and pies only for Clementine’s No Crap Café. New note to self: think about hiring a pastry chef so you can focus on running the kitchen. My other best friend, Ty, the best vegan pastry chef, was working in Paris for the year. He’d know someone I could count on.
The other big change? The amazing guy sleeping upstairs. Zach and I had gone from rocky beginning to true love. No one, Zach and I especially, expected a mouthy vegan such as me and a steak-house-owning carnivore such as him to last more than five minutes in the same room together. But seven months later, Zach and I were still going strong.
Not that I’d seen much of him these past two months except for late at night when I’d leave Clementine’s No Crap Café feeling exhausted, exhilarated, and covered in tomato sauce and smelling like garlic. He’d pick me up on the Harley (leaving the annoying Mercedes at home), bring me back to this spectacular beach house, make a mess in the kitchen as he whipped us up a late-night snack of spiked fruit smoothies, and then we’d hang out on the couch for a little bit, watching TV and talking until one of us led the other upstairs. Zach was always gone in a suit and tie before I ever woke up. Our hours were as different as we were, but somehow, during the brief time we had together lately, Zach and I had grown even closer.
Zach was a package deal—he came with Charlie, waddling, little beagle, who continued to stare at me, tail wagging. It had taken me a while to win over the ancient, sweet-faced dog, but I’d done it. Which meant I had to take him out for his morning pee and let him get oohed and aahed at by the early-bird joggers on the beach. If I could find his leash. Where was it?
I checked all the kitchen drawers. The baskets under the bench at the front entryway and the French doors to the backyard that led down to the beach. No leash. I poked my head into Zach’s office, spotless, unlike my own at the restaurant. No leash on his desk. Charlie followed me, and I swore he was rolling his eyes with a “C’mon, already, Cooper. I gotta goooo.” I headed back into the entry hall. Not looped on the coatrack or hanging off the hooks. I checked the pockets of Zach’s jackets, including the expensive black leather one he refused to get rid of even for his vegan girlfriend. No leash.
But something else was in the pocket of that leather jacket. Something smallish. Square. Velvet.
Like a jewelry box.
Fabulous earrings for my birthday, which wasn’t for another month? I couldn’t resist a peek. I took out the little box. Black velvet. I glanced behind me to make sure Zach hadn’t mysteriously woken up early for once on a Saturday, but there was only Charlie, still staring at me.
Don’t do it, the dog seemed to be saying with those soulful brown eyes. You put that back, even though it’s for you, Clementine Cooper.
But I couldn’t stop myself. I hated surprises. I loved knowing something was coming—the anticipation of receiving. I opened the lid of the little box—and my eyes bugged out of my head.
Holy hell.
A diamond ring.
Round, glittering diamond. Two carats. Platinum band.
I was about to hyperventilate. Deep breaths, Clementine, I told myself.
I stood frozen on the round wool rug in the foyer, barely able to take those breaths. It was as if I had a mini-angel playing a harp on one shoulder as out-of-nowhere wild happiness coursed through my usually cynical, tradition-stomping veins, while on the other shoulder, a mini-devil wielding a tiny pitchfork screamed, “You can’t get engaged! You have a restaurant to run! Staff to manage! Customers to feed! Food critics to impress! The New York Times travel section on deck! Wedding plans will derail you!”
From what I’d seen around me these past couple of months, marriage proposals meant congratulations for weeks on end and multiple engagement parties and wedding plans up the wazoo, and the only plans I wanted in my head were about the restaurant—how to impress the stuffing out of the New York Times reporter and ensure Clementine’s inclusion in the article. How to keep the joint packed as the months went by so it wasn’t just the “awesome new vegan on Montana” anymore.
Then Zach’s face popped into my mind. That face I loved, with those intelligent blue eyes that missed nothing.
Zach was great. I thought of all he’d done these past seven months—hiring me to create vegan offerings for the Silver Steer, which had led other restaurants that served dead animals to do the same. Hey, it was a start for their blood-dripping menus. And it had been a huge start for me when I’d needed to rebuild my name as a chef. I also couldn’t forget the time Zach had dropped everything—before we were even dating—to drive me three hours to the hospital to see my dad, who’d been admitted with complications from Stage III cancer. How Zach had calmed me down on the long drive there. How he’d been there for me in every possible way all these months of our relationship. The guy was true-blue and red-hot.
I dropped down on the padded bench lining the foyer wall. I knew that Zach and I were serious, that he loved me, but I had no idea he was thinking about forever now.
I loved Zach. I did want to marry Zach. Later, though.
I knew what happened to brides-to-be. Even my sister had got all freaked out because she couldn’t find a wedding dress she liked, let alone loved. Everything was too bridal, too white or ivory, too traditional, too gowny. In the end, corporate lawyer Elizabeth, the one who wouldn’t normally give a flying rat’s butt about a dress, drew a pencil sketch of what she envisioned, brought it into every boutique and department store in LA and asked the salesclerks if the shop had something like it. She’d finally found the ecru, kimono-style dress of her dreams off the rack in Nordstrom for two hundred bucks. She’d lost three days of her honeymoon time to her crazed dress shopping.
Then there was my friend Jules, who without warning six months ago went from being a normal, twenty-eight-year-old small-accessories buyer to the biggest, baddest bridezilla you’d never want to meet. No detail was too small, including the push-up bras for the bridal party, which had to be special-ordered for $212 so that we would all have the same-shaped boobs in the $400 pale peach silk dresses she’d made us shill out good money for. No one had seen this crazy Jules coming. I forgave her after the honeymoon, but I did not forget.
Not that there was a chance in hell I’d become some lunatic bridezilla. I knew that. But a big, honking diamond ring on my finger would be a huge distraction.
Was he going to propose at his sister’s wedding? Or maybe later tonight?
See, I was already distracted by the ring. I had a dog to walk. A cake to bake for 260 guests, many of whom I’d soon be related to by marriage.
Holy shiitake.
I needed Sara. Now. My heart beating like crazy, I ran into the living room to grab my cell phone from the coffee table and was about to text her, but this time I did manage to stop myself. Right now the proposal was supposed to be Zach’s secret, unless he’d shared it with anyone. It would be wrong to go blabbing it, even to my best friend.
And guess what was coiled in a basket on the far side of the coffee table, on top of the stack of Vegan Life magazines I was always leaving around for Zach never to read. Charlie’s leash. I clipped it on him, put a note on the fridge that I was taking Charlie for a walk on the beach, then left in freaked-out wonder.
3
The first time I saw Zach Jeffries I hated his guts. Well, I thought he was gorgeous—tall, lean, muscular, with all that thick, dark, glossy hair and deep blue eyes, impossibly long lashes, and a slight cleft in his chin. But I still hated him. Seven months ago, I’d been in the middle of teaching my first cooking class, in the kitchen of my dumpy little apartment on Montana Avenue, when a loud, booming noise interrupted my scintillating lecture on the wonders of tofu. I’d gone to the living room window to find a giant 3-D sign being erected over the beautiful space where I’d dreamed of one day opening my own vegan restaurant.
What did that sign say? The Silver Steer—complete with a 3-D silver steer’s head staring with its dead eyes right into my living room window. I’d marched right into that space and demanded to talk to the owner about taking down the dead-steer head; it had been bad enough he’d stolen my dream location for Clementine’s No Crap Café. That owner: Zach Jeffries, thirty-two-year-old entrepreneur millionaire who mysteriously morphed into my boyfriend.
Soon-to-be fiancé.
As Charlie and I sat on the beach, him happily digging, me watching the sun rise over the Santa Monica Pier, I couldn’t help but smile as I thought about our early days—a vegan and a carnivore falling in love and trying so hard not to.
“Do you believe this craziness, Charlie?” I asked, scratching behind his floppy ears. He rested his chin on my knee. “Zach is going to ask me to marry him. What do you think of that?”
Charlie snuggled up against me, and for a moment it was so stinking cozy that I put my arm around his furry, little body, thinking that he’d be mine, that Zach would be mine. That Zach, whom I loved, wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.
Wait—now I was about to get all sentimental?
“Charlie, what the hell is happening to me? Now I want to get married?”
Because you can have it all, I realized. Who said we couldn’t get engaged, not plan a wedding or talk about it at all, and just elope one day when it felt right to Paris or Barcelona or even Vegas? My restaurant didn’t have to suffer. Surely Zach wouldn’t be interested in discussing lame cummerbunds and boring centerpieces.
I just wanted to sit there and bask in the amazement of it all, that this would really work, but after the sixth jogger stopped to pet Charlie and remark on his cuteness, we headed back to Zach’s house. I had a big-ass wedding cake to bake—for my soon to be sister-in-law.
The five tiers, gradating in size, were cooling on the island counter when Zach came into the kitchen just after nine o’clock. Bare-chested and wearing his Stanford sweatpants, he hugged me from behind, kissing my neck.
“The delicious smell of the cake woke me up,” he said.
You’re going to propose was all I could think. God, it was mind-blowing.
In four seconds, ocean-blue fondant and the hundreds of tiny, intricate seashells I had to make had been forgotten in the unexpected reality of Zach Jeffries asking me to marry him. An hour ago, I didn’t give a gorilla’s butt about where my relationship with Zach was headed.
I’d promised myself to focus on the restaurant, on wowing the New York Times reporter, reviewers, critics, my customers—even the health inspector. Having my own restaurant had always been my dream—not walking down the aisle in some poufy, white gown.
Seriously, I’d been fantasizing about having my own kitchen since I was five years old, since my dad had handed me a cup of flour and water and taught me how to make pasta from scratch, how to add fresh vegetables from the organic farm he and my mother ran to make a pasta primavera that would rival a five-star Italian restaurant’s.
I’d known then, since I was three feet tall, that I would be a chef someday, that I would rule over my own kitchen, but turning that dream into reality had been a long time coming. I’d graduated from the Vegan Culinary Institute and worked at a slew of top vegan restaurants in LA, busting my tush on the way up from trainee to line cook to sauté chef to sous chef. Just weeks before I’d met Zach, a jealous coworker at Fresh had sabotaged me the night a Los Angeles Times restaurant critic had come to dine. I’d been blackballed all over the city. So I’d started my own business—and it slowly took off. Personal chef, cooking classes, baked goods. But when I got the money together to open my own restaurant—without a penny from my millionaire boyfriend—and saw my first customers walk through the door on opening night, it was as if fireworks shot off inside me. My fantasy had become hard-won reality.
Wait a minute. Breathe deeply, Clementine. I was forgetting again that Zach, who owned his own new restaurant, the Silver Steer (in a different location from the one that had brought us together), understood why I was never around, and best of all, he actually admired me for it. This will work out. You can be engaged and keep Clementine’s a success.
The pitchfork-wielding little devil disappeared off my left shoulder and the smiling angel on my right aimed a miniremote-control at my brain
, reminding me of two weeks ago when Zach had come home exhausted at ten at night from boardroom business negotiations to find me frustrated in his kitchen, my hands coated in tomato guts for a new version of my ratatouille, which was missing something. A producer from Good Morning, L.A. was having me on to teach how to make ratatouille in the studio in two days, and my ratatouille was—in my hard-to-impress opinion—a solid meh.
Zonked as he was, Zach had sat down at the kitchen table, kicked off his shoes, Charlie’s head resting on his foot, and looked through my three recipes, suggesting what to delete, what to add. He’d tasted all three versions, even though he’d barely been awake by the time I’d finished the third, and declared the third the charm. In the morning, he’d even had the winning ratatouille for breakfast to make double sure on morning brain that it was good enough for the perky hostess, who’d potentially rave on the popular morning show and send hordes to Clementine’s to try it in person. It had been, by the way.
The mini-angel switched the channel, this time to my younger brother, Kale, calling me from the freeway a few weeks ago to say he had a flat and could I come pick him up. In the middle of dinner rush at the restaurant. Apparently he’d called everyone he knew in LA and no one was around. So who had left a dinner party with investors to pick up my brother, get his car towed, and loaned him his old Porsche until his ancient Honda was ready?
Yeah: Zach.
The little devil, now on my right shoulder, lunged the pitchfork at the angel and switched the channel to the Ghost of Clementine’s Future: Me in some fancy bridal salon in a gorgeous white gown, five seamstresses pinning and hemming for hours. Cut to Zach and I at yet another of his dull business functions, me dressed “appropriately” in a pastel Chanel suit. Eating a cube of cheese for some ungodly reason.
Cut to Clementine’s No Crap Café with boarded-up windows and a FOR RENT sign across the window.
