Page 10 of Don't Remind Me
Stop fucking talking.
Jase’s shoulders jerked back, his spine going rigid as his face went blank. “What?”
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly lined with sandpaper. “Alec. Your brother.”
“I know who he is,” he snapped, then clenched his mouth shut. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“Right.” I gripped the edges of my binder. “Well, we dated.”
He threw his gaze to the side with a sharp exhale of what might have been disbelief, as if he had no clue what to do with this information. I didn’t really know either, except that it suddenly felt wrong to sit here talking with him, for him to share these parts of himself with me, and for him to not know the history, however far removed it was, between us.
“Okay,” he finally said.
“I just thought you should know,” I attempted by way of explanation. “I mean, it’s not like it matters. We haven’t spoken in years, and he’s married and…everything.” Stephanie’s pregnant belly flashed through my mind. “I guess I just didn’t want it to be weird if you talked to him and it came up or?—”
“Can we get back to the menu?” he asked, avoiding my gaze. The words were stiff. As cold and detached as the rest of him had gone. Like a door had slammed shut on the warmth and laid-back ease he’d embodied a moment before. I wanted to pound my fists against it until it opened again.
“Of course.” I tucked my hair behind my ear, my face heating to about a thousand degrees.
I never should have said anything. Not only was it completely unprofessional for me to bring up my dating history at all, much less in the context of his brother, but now he probably thought I was some crazy ex stalking his family with the hopes of wedging my way back into Alec’s life. And at this point, anything I said to convince him otherwise would only make it worse.
“I’m not cooking this.”
It took a second for my mind to reel itself in and realize he meant the existing catering menu. “What? Why?”
He slid the paper back my way. “Besides the whole thing being boring and lazy, it’s totally unoriginal.” I guess that answered my question on what he thought of the idea. His opinion wasn’t a shock so much as his standoffish delivery of it.
“Does it have to be original if it tastes good?” It wasn’t like I was asking for frozen pizza bites. The menu came from one of the top-rated caterers in the city.
“If my and Ardena’s names are going to be on it, then yeah,” he said plainly.
I searched his face for some hint of the excitement he’d shown earlier, but all I found was a wall of indifference.
I pulled the old menu onto my binder and skimmed it again, running through a timeline for workshopping a whole new menu. It wasn’t like I had much of a choice. Thanks to Jillian, I was stuck with Jase, and I couldn’t force him to cook something he refused. “I guess come up with your own, then.”
“Any food restrictions?”
“No.”
“Good. I can have a tasting ready for you in a week. Anything else for today?”
I whipped up my head to find him two steps back from the bar, his body angled toward the kitchen. “I…no.”
He walked away without another word.
I sat frozen as I watched him disappear into the back, struggling to process what had happened. With each second that passed, more humiliation flooded me. In the span of two minutes, things had gone from surprisingly great to Jase practically running away from me.
Whatever hope I’d had of things going at all smoothly between us was clearly scorched to shit, thanks to my big mouth. And now I’d have to relive the humiliation whenever I saw him.
I’d thought being reminded of Alec every time I looked at Jase for the next three months would be torture enough, but this was worse. This was having to see Jase’s judgment every time he looked atme.
I had to get out of here. Now.
I sprang from my stool and hurried to gather my stuff, refusing to be here when he walked back out. My bag caught on the hook, and I wrestled it free, then shoved my binder inside as fast as my shaking hands could manage.
Fuck, why were my hands shaking? Why did I care this much about what Jase thought?
Alec’s brother or not, at the end of the day, he was a means to an end, and I didn’t need him to like me or think highly of me to pull this event off. I just needed him to cook good food.
