Page 17 of Now That It's You
“It’s a compliment, jackass. Take it like one.”
“I will. Thank you.”
“Sure.” She handed him a dish towel. “Really, thanks. To be honest, I forgot that thing didn’t work.”
“Glad to help.”
Kyle turned his attention to the graham crackers while Meg scrubbed her own hands and then began digging through the fridge. They worked in companionable silence for a while, with Kyle grinding graham crackers in the food processor and Meg moving close beside him to splash in some melted butter.
“So tell me about this cookbook,” Kyle said. “The one Matt took pictures for?”
“What do you want to know?”
“I remember hearing something about it that year before the wedding, but that’s when I was spending most of my time in Montana.”
He kept his voice even, hoping she didn’t ask about his year out-of-state. About the reason he’d looked for the first excuse to get out of town the moment she and Matt announced their engagement.
“Right.” Meg blew the curl off her face again and sighed. “You weren’t around to witness the whole fiasco.”
“What do you mean?”
Meg shrugged and began squeezing lime halves in a funny contraption. She was doing it with more force than the job seemed to require, but what the hell did he know?
“It was stupid, really. I had this big dream to put out an aphrodisiac cookbook with all these cool recipes I created and a lot of fun stories about ingredients that boost libido.”
Kyle felt himself getting a little dizzy, but he focused on pressing his graham cracker crust into the tart pan she’d handed him. “So what happened?”
“Zilch. None of the agents or editors I queried had any interest in the project.”
“Fools.”
“Thank you.” Meg sighed. “Anyway, I decided to self-publish it.”
“Ah. So that’s why Matt took the photos?”
“Yeah. A friend of mine who’s a graphic designer laid the whole thing out in exchange for me doing the catering at her family reunion, and Matt volunteered to take all the food pictures.”
“Volunteered?” He thought about his mother’s accusations and wondered how Matt might tell the story differently.
“We were a few months from getting married,” Meg said. “It wasn’t a big deal for my photographer husband to take photos for my cookbook any more than it was a big deal for me to volunteer to cater his office Christmas party. It’s just the sort of thing couples do, you know?”
“But then the wedding didn’t happen.”
“Right.” She let out a shuddery breath. “And the book sold a whopping twelve copies, two of which were for my mother.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It was a dumb idea anyway.”
The sadness in her voice made Kyle turn to look at her, but she kept her eyes averted, focusing now on beating an egg with enough force to set her whole body in motion, which wasn’t unpleasant to watch. But the rigid set of her jaw gave him a stronger urge to hug her than ogle her.
Neither seemed like the right thing to do, so he settled for pressing the butter-damp graham cracker crumbs into the edges of the tart plate. “I remember that feeling,” he said. “Back when I was starting out as an artist. I’d have this awesome, spectacular idea for a sculpture and I’d stay up all night for weeks on end getting it just right, only to have one gallery owner after another tell me it just wasn’t what they were looking for.”
“Probably didn’t help having a brother who was this super-famous sports photographer making it all look so easy.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “Though commercial photography was always a lot different from the sort of art I wanted to create.”
Meg nodded. “I remember you talking about that. Everyone kept telling you to give it up and go get a desk job.”
