Page 90 of The Best Kind of Bad

She looks up at me. “A bunch of us food people like to visit a new restaurant every week. We call them field trips.”

I would ask what food people are, but they start filtering in, answering the question. Chefs keep late hours, as it turns out.

They’re an interesting bunch. Educated. Well-traveled. Funny and loud.

Normally, I would be psyched to meet new people. Especially, people like this.

But I can’t stop comparing myself to them.

I don’t have a fancy degree or an interesting job.

I’ve never been out of the country.

Eventually, Marnie is going to see that. It’s inevitable.

Meeting her friends, seeing how vibrant her life was before, I can already feel her slipping out of my grasp.

I slide my arm around her waist, holding her tight.

59.

Marnie

I figured Dusty would have no trouble hanging with my eclectic friends.

I was not wrong. He’s charming their pants off.

He has what the rest of us have spent our lives trying to emulate. Natural cool.

Where Simon spends hours carefully crafting his hair so that it looks ‘messy’, Dusty rolls out of bed looking like that.

Simon. That infuriating fucker.

I spent the last year flirting with the guy and while he was happy to flirt right back, he never seemed interested in taking it to the next level.

Now that I’ve moved on, that I’ve got a beautiful man on my arm, he’s suddenly changed his tune.

Too little, too late.

I’m glad things didn’t work out between Simon and me because Dusty is so much better. Charming and funny and completely without vanity. Looking like he does, he should be vain as shit, but he never comes off that way. He’s better than that.

I watch him with proprietorial pride.

He’s smiling and has them rolling with laughter, but something’s off.

It takes a careful eye to know the difference between a genuine smile from this man and the mask he sometimes puts on.

He’s got something on his mind, and I want to ask him what he’s thinking about, but we’re in the middle of a food circus.

My friends are talking over themselves, trying to impress the Silver Bend crew. It’s kind of funny to watch because I get the feeling the Silver Bend group is trying just as hard to impress my friends.

Renata and Ivy are working double time to talk me up. They’re great hype women, but I really wish they’d stop.

For one thing, compliments make me break out in hives.

And for another, it’s making me feel strange.

Renata is going on about my old bakery.

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