Page 51 of Hate To Be Mine

“Cookie, please don’t starve her or withhold water,” I said. “She’s not trouble. She’s just doing her job.”

“I thought she was uptight? A giant pain in your ass, right?”

“She’s nice,” I said defensively. “Once you get past the… everything.”

“She’ll get the leftovers,” Cookie muttered. “I’m not making anything for her.”

“I doubt her personality will get any better when she’s hungry and dehydrated,” Elizabeth said thoughtfully. “We don’t want Buzzkill Bernadette coming back.”

“Please don’t call her that,” I said immediately.

Cookie flipped Elizabeth’s sandwich onto a plate. “Everyone’s been calling her that, you know. Buzzkill Bernadette. Since that first day.”

“Fuck.” I ran my hands through my hair. “I need to tell everyone to cut it out.”

“That’ll just have the opposite effect,” Elizabeth said, picking up her sandwich. “Tell people not to use a nickname and they’ll use it more. It’s like the Streisand effect. Just say nothing. Don’t get involved. She’s a grown woman. She can handle it.”

“Fine,” I muttered, grabbing a cookie from the table Cookie kept stocked. I shoved half of it in my mouth, chewing aggressively. I wasn’t usually a cookie guy, but I needed sugar.

“You’ve got it bad,” Elizabeth observed.

“I don’t have anything.”

“Mm-hmm.” She took a bite of her sandwich, somehow making grilled cheese look elegant. “Just so you know, avoiding each other isn’t going to make this less weird.”

“I’m not avoiding her. She’s avoiding me.”

“You’re both avoiding each other. It’s actually impressive how synchronized you are. Although I saw the way she watched you doing your thing in front of the camera.”

“Don’t tell Adrian you were looking at me,” I teased.

“Oh, honey, I wasn’t looking at you. I was looking at her look at you. That’s the way I look at my man.”

I finished the cookie and grabbed another one. Stress eating. Again. At this rate, I would need to extend my morning runs.

“What am I supposed to say to her?” I asked. “Hey, sorry I kissed you and then bolted into the rain like a coward. Want to pretend it never happened?”

“Do you want to pretend it never happened?” Elizabeth asked.

I thought about Bernadette pressed against the porch railing. “No.”

“Then tell her that.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It really is.”

Cookie nodded her agreement.

“When did everyone become relationship experts?” I muttered.

“When you started acting like a lovesick teenager,” Elizabeth said sweetly. “Now go finish your shoot, and tonight, talk to her. Really talk to her.”

I reached for a third cookie, but Cookie swatted my hand away.

“No more cookies for you,” she said firmly. “You’re going to break out and then blame me when you look puffy in the photos.”

“I don’t get puffy.”