Page 24 of Change My Mind
“Oh, I’m elated. Anything you would like to say, Addie?” Clara looked smug, like she had caught me in a lie. She hadn’t. Not really.
“I said he wasn’t unattractive. What exactly about that statement makes me full of shit?”
I was absolutely full of shit. Whatever Eli was, after today, it didn’t feel like it could be encompassed by the word ‘attractive’. Clara didn’t need to know that, though.
“Because it was a gross understatement and you did it on purpose.” Clara sat up and waved someone over. “Rach, yourthoughts on the new chef?” she asked as Rachel arrived around our table.
Rachel sat down next to Jesse. I felt like I was in an interrogation now. Shit, this was the full cavalry, in person for the first time in years. I’d given Clara an inch with my half-truth. And they were all going to take the mile. This was going to be hell.
“I think he looks stressed out of his mind.”
Clara turned in her chair to look into the kitchen. It was still only Kayla in view. “Oh, I hope he’s okay.” She turned back around to Rachel. “Not to completely change the tone, but what did you think of him?”
Rachel laughed. “So when you asked if I had thoughts, what you were actually asking was if I had noticed that the new chef is the kind of attractive that feels like it should be illegal?” Rachel directed this at me, the corners of her mouth pulling into a smirk.
“You lucked out in the flatmate department. He can cook and potentially launch a thousand ships,” Rachel continued, a hand playfully fanning her face.
“He doesn’t really cook at home. He’s here most days, and I cook dinner. I don’t see that changing much in the near future.”
“Boy, if I told teenage Addie that one day she would be cooking dinner for Elijah Vincent, she would have slapped me,” Clara said, a broad smile on her face.
“Twenty-nine-year-old Addie might still do that, macaron. Just for funsies.” I threw an insincere smile her way, and then the twins arrived.
“Why is Addie threatening violence?” Lucy asked as she, thankfully, sat next to me. She was wearing almost exactly what she wore to yoga—cycling shorts and a longline bralette—only in white, not black.
“She thinks Elijah Vincent is hot,” Clara said with a shrug.
“Oh. I thought it would be more exciting than that. You should have seen her earlier in our yoga class, she nearly fell flat on her face watching him at one point,” Lucy responded, her eyes glittering.
I felt the heat of Clara’s eyes on me and glared at my least favourite Harris twin.
“Come again?” Clara asked.
“I did not nearly fall on my face watching him. My knee slipped off my sweaty arm, and I couldn’t find my balance,” I said to Lucy before turning to my sister. “Eli, Lucy, and I were in the same yoga class this morning. Also, please stop calling him Elijah Vincent.”
“Wait,that’swho you hated in secondary school? Was it a crush that you confused for loathing?” Becky said, wearing a hot pink version of Lucy’s outfit, as she dropped into the chair on the other side of me, leaving one chair empty.
I huffed. Clara beamed, and Rachel and Lucy managed harmonised snorts.
“Why does everyone think I had a crush on him?” I didn’t then. “He was the bane?—”
“Of your existence. Yes, I know,” Clara interjected before looking at Becky. Her eyes were downcast. “Where’s Gavin?” she asked warily.
Becky sighed and lifted her head. “Work.”
Clara’s eyebrows drew together. Rachel reached across the table to rest a hand on Becky’s forearm. I wanted to ask for more details, but no one seemed like they wanted to talk about it. In fact, just one word had shifted the entire mood of the table. The weight of my absence and being out of the physical loop for so long dropped heavily against me.
“I didn’t have a crush on him then…but I might have one now,” I said, to break the tension at the table that I didn’t understand, and to also put me back in the loop. This involvedme,so they couldn’t leave me out. Clara’s eyes lit up, and sheclapped a hand on the table. The tension seemed to ease slightly.
“Oh, this is better than I thought.”
“That chicken wasthe best thing I’ve eaten in weeks,” Rachel said as she pushed her plate away and rubbed her stomach.
“I don’t know whether or not I should be offended since I’ve been the one feeding you for at least two weeks,” Jesse said as he twirled the last strands of spaghetti on his plate around a fork. Clara was playing with the hair at the nape of his neck, her plate empty.
“Sounds to me like you need to cut her off,” Becky joked. Her mood was brighter now that she had eaten, although she kept looking at her phone. Jesse laughed as he ate the last bits of his food.
“No! I mean, please don’t. You made a delicious paella the other night. I’m still thinking about it,” Rachel said frantically.
