Margo
Knocking on the door of the little house on Leland Street was more nerve-racking than walking into a crowded bar looking for a blind date.
Everything in her wanted to turn and run, but she knew enough about anxiety to know that would be feeding a very dangerous monster, and she couldn’t possibly afford to do that. The last thing in the world she needed was to become a completely neurotic mess who never left the house.
Before she could even make contact with the door, it swung open and a blond woman exclaimed in surprise, “Oh! Hi! I didn’t know you were there!”
Margo’s face flamed. Now she felt like a stalker. “I was about to knock.”
“Are you Aja?”
Margo felt her face grow even hotter. “No, Margo Everson.” She’d gone back to her maiden name with some optimism. “I DM’d with, um, BoozyCrocker on Instagram?”
“Yes!” She reached her hand out, noticed Margo’s hands were full with a bowl of sweet and salty coconut rice, and gave a little wave instead. “Of course! I’m Boozy! Well, Trista Walker. Sorry, I had a fifty-fifty shot and I got it wrong. Come in, come in.” She stepped back. “Welcome to Chrissy Teigen Cravings night!”
Margo stepped into a compact, chic, industrial-style living room that extended back to a dining room and table at the far end, already getting loaded up with dishes, despite the fact that no one else seemed to have arrived yet. “Should I take this . . .” She nodded toward the table.
“Yup, put it anywhere. What’d you bring?”
“The Sweet and Salty Coconut Rice from the first Cravings book.”
“Yum! I almost made that, since I did the Shake and Bake Chicken with Hot Honey and the garlic and soy shrimp. That should be great with both of those!”
Margo knew it was Grilled Garlic-Soy Shrimp with a homemade hot sauce, because that was another thing she’d thought about making but dismissed, wary of ending up with an army’s worth of shrimp decaying in her fridge if she decided not to come. “You did all that yourself?” This was going to be so sad, all that leftover food.
Trista splayed her arms slightly. “I’m trying to get a good collection of recipes together, so it requires a lot of testing. And leftovers are always a good thing, aren’t they?”
Margo smiled. She couldn’t help it. She liked Trista. “That’s a good way of thinking.” She indicated her purse. “I also brought spiced rum. You left the booze options open, so I figured this went with coconut.”
Trista gave a laugh. “Perfect. I have wine. Ooh, and I have ginger beer and limes we could use! I love this!” There was a knock at the door.
“Aja,” Margo suggested with a smile.
Trista nodded. “Got to be. So, make yourself at home and just . . .” She shrugged. “Help yourself to whatever you want.” She hurried off to the door.
Margo suspected that Trista had already had a drink or two, owing to her effervescent personality and the light pink hue of her face. But she was very fair, and that might have been her look in general; it had just been a long time since Margo had met anyone who was just fun.
Trista came back into the room, followed by a petite girl, maybe midtwenties, with perfect golden-brown skin, chestnut hair with funky copper highlights, and almond-shaped eyes that would keep her looking young forever. She also had both hands on a large green Saran Wrap–covered glass bowl. Fortunately it was a different shade of green from Margo’s bowl.
“Well,” Trista said, “we’re all here now. Margo Everson, this is Aja Alexander.”
The John Legend soundtrack that was playing swelled.
“You both brought coconut rice!” Trista raised her hands. “I can’t wait to dig in! I’ve got to run to the back room but I’ll be right back.”
Aja made her way straight over to Margo after putting her dish down. She was holding a bottle of water. “Sorry,” she said. “I feel like I copied you because you got here with the rice first.”
Margo laughed. “You might have started making it first.”
“Probably. If you count the dozen batches I burned or otherwise ruined as I was trying to make this one.”
“Oh no, really?”
Aja crossed her heart. “I finally had to ask my landlady for help. I’m no cook, so I thought rice would be easy.”
Margo was a cook and she felt sudden embarrassment at having chosen such a potentially plain dish, not because Aja had said that but because of why Aja had said it. “Rice can always burn easily,” she said. “It’s a weirdly delicate art. And if you get past that hurdle, and make it really well, there’s the risk of consumption.”
“Consumption is a risk?”
“It is if you eat it all. I ate a ton while I was making it.”
Aja nodded, with a smile. “I get that. I can usually take or leave rice, but once I got it right, I was going to town on this stuff! I had to toast extra coconut just to eat it like an animal with my hands while I was cooking. Then again, my eating it all and constantly adding more was probably the only reason I didn’t burn the hell out of the coconut too and ruin the dish.”
Margo laughed sincerely, picturing this small, pretty thing pigging out on the good half of a half-horrible dish. “So if you don’t cook, how did you end up in a cookbook club?” she asked her.
Aja answered without apparent self-consciousness. “I need to learn to cook, man, I grew up on Stouffer’s frozen lasagna, and that is not impressing anyone these days.”
“Please tell me you’ve tried to pass it off as your own.”
“No!” Aja said, but her cheeks turned pink. “But I’m just not into the idea of microwaving a factory-built-and-frozen dinner for three minutes and then sitting down in front of Netflix to binge Gossip Girl and obsess over Chuck Bass all over again.”
“God, that sounds relaxing.”
Aja pursed her lips and nodded. “Granted. But my boyfriend thinks of himself as a lot more cosmopolitan than that, so I’m trying to keep up with the Barefoot Contessa, you know?”
“Dating is the worst,” Margo said involuntarily. She regretted it immediately. What an obnoxious, bitter thing to say.
Aja’s gaze drifted to her left hand. “Are you married?”
Margo remembered her widow lie but felt no compunction whatsoever to use it. “Not anymore. I guess.” She frowned. She wasn’t divorced but she was, what? Separated? Legally? So did that make her Not Married? Something made her settle on the truth and let Aja sort it out. “My husband was a jackass and he walked out on me unexpectedly about three weeks ago.”
Aja’s reaction was to look horrified.
“It’s okay,” Margo assured her, then smiled. “I mean, he really was a jerk and now he’s gone, so all of that is good. I’m just here now because I needed to get out of my house before I went nuts or started adopting a lot of exotic animals.”
It had been clear Aja had taken in everything Margo said, but when she got to the part where she said before I went nuts, Aja’s shoulders had relaxed and she’d begun nodding vigorously. “I so get it. I’ve had a couple of relationships like that, though they weren’t actually marriages, but not much feels better than taking the power position over a bad relationship. When they leave first”—she shook her head—“man, I know that sucks. Particularly when you don’t see it coming. Yuck.”