The last remaining customer in the room packed up and left. Lindsay waited until she was gone to sit across the table from Brad and say, “Hello.”
“Long time, no see.”
He smiled. She seemed tense, her whole body compact like a compressed spring.
She eyed him warily. “I assume Lauren told you why I’m here.”
“To write a profile on me for theForumon account of my movie-star good looks and my ability to make magic with pastry.”
Her face twisted to suppress the smile that leaked out anyway. “I wouldn’t go that far,” she said.
He shrugged, trying to seem cool, but he felt gratified by that smile.
“I’m surprised, after the gig at Milk Bar, that you’d deign to make cupcakes for the teeming masses at a coffee shop in Brooklyn.”
“Is this an interview question?”
Lindsay got a notepad out of her bag. “If you like.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I loved working at Milk Bar, but I was making someone else’s recipes there. It was great as a learning opportunity, but I’ve been wanting to design my own menu since I graduated from culinary school. This is an opportunity to do that without me having to create my own shop. Lauren is giving me complete creative control. Plus the cat treats are kind of a fun challenge.”
He could tell that his cheerful tone—and the canned answer he’d been mentally rehearsing all morning—was bothering her. He knew she wanted to hate him, and he was making that hard for her.
She scribbled something on her pad of paper.
“I’m not your enemy,” he whispered.
“Aren’t you?”
He grunted. “We can keep this professional if that’s what you’d prefer.”
She sighed. “This was a mistake. I’ll get one of my freelancers to do the interview.”
“Do you really hate me so much that you can’t even have a simple conversation about my job with me?”
Lindsay looked chagrined.
But Brad was irritated now. He didn’t deserve this level of enmity. He’d tried to make things up to her dozens of times, and she’d never even heard him out. He hadn’t cheated on her, and she hadn’t seen what she thought she had, but she’d never let him explain himself. She’d made some decision about what had happened between them and wasn’t willing to back down from it. “You are the most stubborn woman I have ever met,” he said.
“Stubborn?I’mstubborn?”
“You also hold a grudge longer than anyone I know. We had a good thing going for a while, and it fell apart, and I’m sorry that happened. But it was five years ago. We’re both older and wiser now, or at least I am. I’m not asking you for anything more than to sit here without griping while we do this interview for your magazine. I’m surprised that’s not what you want.”
Lindsay bristled. He’d offended her. Good.
She sat there staring at the table for a long moment. Brad thought she’d calm down and get back to the interview, but instead she shoved her stuff back in her bag and stood up. “I can’t do this right now.”
“So you’re just going to leave?”
“We’ll reschedule. Or I’ll send another writer. I’m finding this too overwhelming.”
Brad didn’t think Lindsay knew how telling that admission was. “Come on. I’m sorry. I’ll behave.”
Lindsay shook her head.
Brad grabbed a stray napkin and the pen Lindsay had left on the table. He scrawled his phone number and then handed her the pen and the napkin. “Text me when you’re ready to talk. I promise to limit anything I say to cats and baked goods. But that’s my number. It’s the same number I’ve had since before culinary school, but I assume you deleted it from your phone the same day you ritualistically burned all the photos of me after we broke up.”
Lindsay snatched the napkin out of his hand. “You don’t have to do that.”
