It Had to Be You by Georgia Clark (iphone ebook reader .TXT) 📕

hypochondriac who regularly diagnosed indigestion as stomach cancer. An extrovert who needed constant stimulation. Around Eliot, Liv was always on. So now, without his enormous, unwieldy needs, she had time for her own. Needs like the time to sit. To let long thoughts unspool. So the question was:

“What do you need?”

Liv blinked twice. She hadn’t been saying all that out loud, had she? “Me?”

“Do you have a list, or is it all up here?” Sam tapped his temple. “In that brilliant brain of yours?”

Liv used to make shopping lists, itemized and neatly printed. She’d get back in that habit. She liked having a list. “I think I want to make a pie.”

“Ooh, nice. What kind?”

“When I was a kid, my mom would put a tin of condensed milk in boiling water until it turned into caramel. She’d pour it into a pie shell and serve it with vanilla ice cream. It was outrageously good.” Liv looked up at the man next to her. How strange to have a desire for something and state it out loud. Conjuring the abstract into matter. “I think I want to make that.”

“Well then,” said Sam, looking around. “Let’s find the baking aisle.”

They finished their shopping together, conversation skating around topics like cooking and kitchen staples. Safe topics: Sam was a vendor, and she was a business owner trying to repair her company’s reputation. But he was so easy to talk to, she kept forgetting they weren’t old friends. Being with Eliot had been like wearing couture. Being with Sam was like slipping into comfy sweats.

Outside, they were going opposite directions. “Nice to run into you.” She hitched her tote bags of ripe fruit and pie crusts over her shoulder. “See you at the Fitzpatrick-Maple wedding.”

He dawdled. “Yes, see you then.”

She gave him a nod, and took a few steps in the direction of her car.

“Do you want to get dinner with me?”

The question came so unexpectedly, it pulled her up short. “What, like… like, a date?”

“No! I mean, yes. Yes, like a date. You and me. Eating. Me paying for eating. Unless you want to split, which would also be”—Sam drew in a breath, face starting to flame—“highly acceptable. Not right this second. Just… soon.”

The concept of a date was akin to alien technology. Everything about it felt beyond the realm of comprehension. “When?”

“Whenever. Wednesday?”

“Oh, Wednesday I have a thing.” Liv was surprised to find herself lying, each word layered on top of the last like a messy brick wall. “A cooking class. I mean, a yoga class. A hot yoga class where you cook a hot meal after.”

“Liv, it’s fine.” Sam retreated a step, his smile wounded but intact. “My apologies. I misread… I won’t mention it again. Good night.”

He walked evenly to the end of the street, rounding the corner to disappear.

Liv caught herself staring after him, returning with a thud to the reality of her four bags of heavy groceries. She couldn’t stop a sinking sensation that it was all going to go to waste.

36

“We don’t have any butter?” Savannah’s voice cracked. “What kind of monsters don’t have butter?” She slammed the fridge door shut and pressed one hand shakily to her forehead. A woman on the verge of a dairy-related breakdown.

The buzzer sounded.

Thank. God.

A minute later, Honey placed two uncooked birds on the kitchen table, furrowing her brow at the pile of crushed groceries. “What’s going on?”

Through gritted teeth, Savannah explained the failed dinner attempt and now-absent roommates, topped off by the indignity of a lack of butter, a key ingredient in everything worth eating.

Honey rubbed her shoulders. “Hey, it’s okay. I’ll go to the bodega and grab whatever you need. Then you and I can cook dinner. Even if it’s just the two of us, we’ll have a time.”

The familiar, selfless hospitality prompted Savannah to take Honey’s hand. “Oh, Honey, that’s so sweet of you. But I can’t make you cook on your day off. Making fried chicken in this dinky little kitchen is probably the last thing you feel like doing.”

“The only thing I feel like doing is hanging out with you. And trying out your grandmother’s recipe. Gotta get to know the competition.”

Savannah met Honey’s eyes. The color of Hershey’s Kisses. She was so lucky to have found someone who felt like home in a city so far from it. They melted into a hug, the afternoon’s tension draining away. Honey could always reset her mood.

“That would be wonderful.”

And just like that, everything was okay.

As the rain got heavier, the kitchen got cozier. Together, they made Nanna’s fried chicken, the recipe for which called for a fresh buttermilk brine and a handful of crumbled Cheetos in the coating. Savannah pan-fried the different parts, filling the apartment with the warm, salty smell of a backyard barbecue. Honey put a pan of cornbread in the oven and made a bowl of creamy grits. They traded playful insults and made each other laugh. It was both easy and enlivening to be in Honey’s presence. Two Southern girls in New York City, chasing their dreams, figuring it out. Honey got excited around food, talking and moving faster than usual. She was at ease in the poky, understocked kitchen, a deft improviser. Her confidence in all things made Savannah feel confident, like what she wanted in life was actually attainable. But more so, as a single girl, it was just so nice to have someone to rely on, for a laugh or a chat or comfort when things went wrong. Just like she used to rely on her best friend from home, Cricket. Except where Cricket was small-town, Honey was big-city, the one who introduced her to the restaurant reviews in the New Yorker and hidden speakeasies dotted all over Brooklyn. As the collard greens simmered on the stovetop, Savannah opened a bottle of cheap white wine. They toasted to friendship.

“Speaking of,” Savannah added, “I have something for you.”

She handed Honey a T-shirt. When Honey unfolded it, she