Boyfriend Material(69)

When I’d given my name to the teenage hippie running front of house, I was ushered into a cosy corner and given a complimentary bowl of, um, seeds? Which was kind of the worst, because I didn’t particularly want to eat them, but they were there so I was definitely going to, and I’d probably have finished them before my intended schmoozees had arrived. I was trying, and failing, to stop picking at the seeds—they were actually quite well seasoned, insofar as you could season something that was itself basically seasoning—when a large woman in chef’s whites, her abundant chestnut hair stuffed into a hairnet, came over to greet me.

“You must be Luc,” she said. “I’m Bronwyn. Rhys told me all about you.”

“Look. Whatever he said, I’m not actually racist against Welsh people.”

“Oh, you probably are. You English are all the same.”

“And how,” I asked, “is that okay?”

“I think you’ll find it’s a complex question of intersectionality. But basically my people never invaded your country and tried to eradicate your language.”

I slumped lower on the upcycled whisky barrel I was sitting on. “Okay. Good point. Thanks for taking the booking.”

“That’s okay. Rhys said you were a hopeless berk and you’d be fired if this didn’t go perfectly.”

“Nice to know you’re both on my side. So what’s good?”

“It’s all good.” She grinned. “I’m amazing at my job.”

“Let me rephrase. Suppose I was a committed meat-eater trying to impress two potential donors who run a chain of vegan cafés. What can I order that will make it look like I know what the fuck I’m doing?”

“Well, if you want something relatively predictable, then you could go for the sunflower seed and cashew burger, but that might make you look like you’re really wishing you could have a steak.”

“No offence, but I probably really will be wishing I could have a steak.”

“Yes, that is a little bit offensive considering you’re in my restaurant. If you want to pretend you actually know what a vegetable is, you could go for the jackfruit Caesar or the tomato lasagne. And if you’re feeling adventurous, you could try the sesame-rolled tofu.”

“Thanks. I do have some self-loathing issues, but I don’t think I’m quite ready for bean curd.”

“Little bit of advice if I may, Luc. Stop talking like this when your guests are here. They won’t like it.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m just trying to get it out my system before I have to be polite to the Clarkes.”

Her face contorted. “What, you mean the Gaia people?”

“Not a fan? Are they like the Starbucks of veganism?”

“It’s not so much that. But they’re very… Well, let’s say I do this because I think eating animal products is unnecessarily cruel and an avoidable environmental catastrophe. I don’t do it because I want to bathe the world in healing goddess energy and flog yoga mats.”

I gave her a faintly alarmed look. “You’re not going to say that to them, right?”

“Of the two of us, which was the one dissing tofu in front of a vegan chef?”

“I thought I was more dissing myself, but fair enough.”

“Anyway, I’ll leave you to the… Oh, you’ve eaten all the seeds.”

Fuck. I had. “I don’t suppose I could have some more? What do you put on them, anyway? Crack cocaine?”

“Salt, mostly, and a few spices.”

“They’re really moreish.”

“I know, and they don’t even come out of a dead cow.”

A few minutes after she’d gone back to the kitchen, and the teenager had replenished the seeds, Adam and Tamara wafted in, looking willowy, bronzed, and smug. They Namasted at me and sat down across the table, making it feel unpleasantly like a job interview. Which, I suppose, in a way it was.

“Oh, this is charming,” said Tamara. “Well done, you.”

I put on my best smile. “Yes, the chef’s been on my radar for a while. And when I heard she was doing a pop-up, I thought of you immediately.”

“I feel like it’s been a while since we’ve spoken.” Adam popped a seed into his mouth. He was handsome in this weird picture-in-the-attic sort of way. The last time I’d Googled him, he’d been in his early fifties but he looked like he could have been anything between thirty and about six thousand and nine.

“It has.” I was pretty sure Adam was hinting that I hadn’t stroked their egos enough recently so I fell back on the strategy of making an excuse that sounds like a compliment. “But now the franchise rollout is underway, I’ll be a lot less worried about bothering you. I hear it’s going well?”

Tamara, who was just enough younger than Adam that it came across as creepy but not so much younger than you didn’t feel judgmental for thinking it was creepy, pressed a hand coyly to what I strongly suspected was a chakra. “We’ve been very blessed.”

“If you put good energy in the universe,” Adam added, “good energy comes back to you.”

God. By the time this was over, I was going to have a near-fatal buildup of unused sarcasm. “I think that’s a really positive philosophy, and I know it’s one you’ve always lived by.”