Her Billionaire Toy Boy

Chapter 6

Mira woke up the next morning feeling lighter than she had in months. Not physically, but in a sort of ethereal, bubbly way, she made her way through her working hours with a half-smile on her face. Her coworkers, who were used to a more taciturn version of Mira, poked each other and giggled, as they were sure that Mira’s mood could only have been elevated as the result of a particularly good date. Of course, in this respect, they were completely correct.

Mira ate her sad desk lunch by herself, poking at the wilting lettuce. She then made a resolution to herself that she would take time that afternoon—she hadn’t had time over the weekend—to redo her kitchen and pick up proper food at the farmer’s market on her way home so that she could meal prep some interesting, healthy meals instead of the tasteless filling nonsense upon which she was currently subsisting. She’d done some research and found that the impact which delicious, properly prepared food had upon a person was almost as huge an effect as getting a promotion or falling in love. Plus, her pride demanded that she figure out how to saute asparagus just as well as Sam could. She wanted to get to a point where she could have him over for dinner without completely embarrassing herself. She knew she was not yet to that point, but she thought with a little determination that she’d be able to pull it off. After all, she’d completed law school and she worked as a high powered and very successful lawyer. Mira was well used to crushing any problem which came her way underneath her high stiletto heels.

Which was possibly one reason why Mira found herself completely overwhelmed when she showed up at her farmer’s market after work. Appropriately accessorized with a chic basket poised on her arm, she walked through the stalls, hoping for something which would – she didn’t know—call out to her as something that would be easily prepared and divinely delicious. Far from that. She didn’t know that she could have identified half the vegetables she saw if her life had depended upon it. At the end of an hour or two of picking over what she thought might be eggplant but then chickening out—she did not know how to cook eggplant—Mira picked up two heirloom tomatoes, the ugliest ones she could find and a huge bunch of fresh basil. That she knew what to do with, she thought.

She went home and carefully set out her pickings on her kitchen table, and then set about figuring out what to make with them.

Mira searched her pantry and found that she had a box of whole wheat pasta sitting on a shelf which she hadn’t remembered. A quick inspection of the expiry date revealed that she still had time to eat them. And, on the whole, she thought that dried pasta was a safe food for being potentially out of date.

She had just dunked the whole lot of it into a pot of salted boiling water when her cell rang. Without bothering to see who was calling, she swiped across her screen to accept—her gaze on her noodles; she was quite hungry—and wedged her phone between her ear and her shoulder.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hey, there,” said a manly voice. Mira started and almost dropped her phone into the boiling water. Flustered, she grinned. “Hey, Sam,” she said.

“What are you up to right now?”

“Cooking dinner,” Mira said. She picked up the box to see if it had any recommendation as to how long the pasta should be cooked. It did not. She bit her lip and prodded the mess in the boiling water with a wooden spoon she had fished up from a drawer. She very, very rarely cooked, and so even this simple meal was verging on being completely out of her depths.

“Ah, that’s exciting.” Mira knew that this statement would usually produce a sarcastic answer – particularly when the answer involved the word ‘exciting’, she thought, staring at her very pedestrian meal—but after their shared experience over the weekend at the cooking class, Mira knew that Sam took the entire culinary world, including the amateur side of its spectrum, with infinite seriousness.

“Sure,” said Mira.

“What are you making?”

“Um,” said Mira, scrambling for terms. “Pasta with a tomato-basil sauce?”

“That sounds fantastic,” Sam said. She could hear chopping noises in the background of the call. Doubtless, he had her on speakerphone and was, himself, preparing something ridiculously gourmet. To test her suspicions, she innocently asked, “What are you up to?”

“Just hanging out with one of my friends. Thought I’d check in,” said Sam. Mira smiled.

“Well, what are you guys up to tonight? What does a typical Tuesday night hold for you?”

“Um, I think we’re just going to be gaming,” said Sam. She heard him say—to someone ostensibly in the background—“Damien, what game are we going to play?”

There was a muffled mumbling sound.

“Oh, probably some first-person shooter, that’s what he’s into these days,” laughed Sam. Mira again heard the chopping sound.

“And you’re cooking dinner first,” she said.

“Well, of course,” said Sam. “You’ve got to get a healthy, filling dinner in you before you go to war, that’s the first step to success.”

“In war only?”

“In life. In everything.”

“Aha,” said Mira.

“So, after dinner—what does a normal Tuesday hold for you?”

Mira looked around her messy apartment and bit her lip. “Oh, I don’t know—I’ve got some home things to catch up on,” she said. “And I’ll probably turn in early. It was a long day at work.”

“Is everything okay?”

Mira instantly worked to make her voice sound more chipper. She didn’t want him thinking that she was all gloom and doom. And nothing really had gone wrong that day. “Oh, no, everything’s fine,” she said, brightly.

There were footsteps on the other end of the line. She heard an unfamiliar male voice asking about the status of the food.

“Is that Damien,” she said.

“Yeah! Hey, Mira,” she heard the voice which must have belonged to Damien say.

“Hey,” she said, shyly.

“Hey again,” Damien laughed. “Hey, look, I’ve gotta go, but make sure that this one invites you to Farrow Valley next weekend, okay? We should all meet and I’m bringing a date,” said Damien. “It’d be great to have you along!”

Mira heard the heavy footsteps stomp back out of the room.

There followed an embarrassing, very silent silence.

Both Mira and Sam spoke at the same time.

“You don’t have to invite me,” she said.

“That was an awkward way of inviting you,” he said.