Page 41 of Caught in a Bad Fauxmance
I roll my eyes before helping myself to another fry. “An allergy isn’t something you’re bad at.”
“It’s something my body’s bad at.”
“Doesn’t count.” I gesture for him to come up with something else.
The amount of time it takes him to answer speaks volumes.
“I have a really hard time with math. And science. Anything with numbers, really,” he says after what feels like an eternity. His eyes focus on a spilled drop of sriracha mayo, his shoulders locked. “They all kind of…blend together sometimes.”
I can sense the hesitance in his voice, see it right in front of me. The fear of being vulnerable with the person who could hurt you the most. He wasn’t searching for an answer; he was weighing whether it was worth telling the truth. “That makes your cooking skills even more impressive,” I reply, worried I’ve let the silence sit for too long.
But instead, he beams. “My mom gets most of the credit for that. Dad’s big on personal chefs, but it was different when we moved in with my mom after…everything,” he says with a shrug. “Mom’s schedule is all over the place, and I was always the first one home from school, so it just made sense that I’d handle getting dinner ready. I didn’t think I’d like it as much as I did.”
He pauses to reach into the drawer and pull his notebook out. He flips to a random page, a recipe for fried rice. Every margin is filled with notes scrawled down to the farthest edges of the page, every line color-coded.
“We started off without recipes, going by taste for the most part. When she was home, Mom helped me make up my own system, a way of doing things that made more senseto me. It makes recipes less intimidating, knowing I can figure things out my way.” He brushes his thumb reverently against a note at the bottom of the page, not written in his handwriting.
Yours is my favorite—don’t tell halmeoni xx love you
The intimacy feels jarring, like I’m intruding more than I already am. But I’m rooted in place, unable to tear my eyes from Julian. For a fleeting second, it doesn’t feel so impossible to believe that he’s changed. That he’s now too nice to play dirty.
“Maybe you really should consider culinary school.”
That makes him stiffen and chew on his bottom lip. “Yeah…maybe.”
The longer the silence stretches, the more I want to ask the question sitting on the tip of my tongue. “Are you really going to Princeton?” I ask, telling myself it’s because I want to know him. Not because I want to take him down.
Any trace of that old smile fades into a full-on frown as he puts the notebook away. I’m prepared to apologize for asking when he shakes his head slowly. “No.” He meets my eyes, his lacking their casual confidence and charm. “Could you keep that to yourself, though. Please?”
Suddenly, I feel terrible for bringing it up at all. “Yeah, totally, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
I set my fork aside to shove my hands into my pockets, guilt ruining my appetite, but Julian grabs my hands before I can. “It’s okay,” he says, releasing me as quickly as he’d grabbed me. “You’re fine. My dad doesn’t know yet.”
“Oh.” With those few words, Julian becomes an evenmore complex puzzle than I thought. “Do Stella and Henry know?”
He nods. “And my mom too. It’s just Dad.” He starts busying himself with throwing dirty dishes into the sink. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to drop that on you.”
I’m awful at consoling people. Maya once said I have the emotional intelligence of a broom, and honestly, she had a point. I like distance. Distance means I won’t say the wrong thing or trip my way through saying the right thing.
“It’s okay,” I reply, an empty response to a loaded situation. “That’s what fake boyfriends are for, right?” He turns with a quirked brow. “Saving you from your ex and accepting your baggage.”
It’s not sentimental or endearing or uplifting, but it calms him. Maybe, for once, I said the right thing after all.
“Guess I picked a good one, then.” He returns to the counter with a certain glimmer in his warm brown eyes—maybe sadness, maybe hope.
“The very best,” I reply, and let myself believe that it’s the latter.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
For someone who’s spent his entire winter break dreading having to return to student life, I’m really digging having a schedule again. Afternoons at the Seo-Cookes slot easily into this new routine, though I’d look forward to anything that doesn’t involve jumping jacks at this point. After just a few days, the Seo-Cookes’ home becomes an unexpected haven.
Without having to worry about upsetting Maya or the bats in the attic, my application piece finally starts to come together. The sketch of the cabin grows into something much bigger. A replica of the picture hanging in my room—me and Mami in the backyard, Maya running after us. I’m more productive at Julian’s than I’ve ever been in my own home—so much so that he even lets me come over all week instead of just the two days he agreed to. It’s a two-way street—Julian likes having a culinary guinea pig who isn’t paleo, keto, or gluten free.
At the rate I’m working, I won’t have to pull an all-nighter to finish my application after all. With a little over two weeks until the deadline and only a few finishing touches left, I might even be able to submit early. A first for my academic career.
While I spend most of my time at Julian’s working, there’s room for other activities when I’m not hunched over my sketchbook. Like coffee together in the kitchen, or banter about music or books or whether the corner piece of a brownie is better than the center piece (obviously not). We spend our afternoons on the couch, him binging the movies his dad warned him would rot his brain, and me sketching until my hand cramps. Evenings are spent on the back dock, sharing bites of whatever noodle, rice, or vegetable dish Julian’s concocted.
Dad’s been so consumed with the renovations that he hardly even notices that I’m gone half the time. He and Isabel tackle the more complicated tasks—anything that involves heavy machinery—while we’re delegated the more mundane jobs, like luring the possums out and unclogging the sink.
