"Is it possible for me to take two days off?" I pace in the kitchen, my phone to my ear.

"Next week?" asks Jaimie.

"This week."

"When?"

"The next two days."

"Oh." She pauses. "Is everything OK, Ben? Is there an emergency?" Her voice gets high-pitched, which tells me she's worried.

"Everything is OK. No emergency. Mo Ballerini wants us to film the episode."

"Hold on. What are we talking about?" She's back to her normal register.

"My video channel."

"Can't you do it on the weekend, like you always do?"

"No. He's in town the next two days. He can do it then, or the next time will be after Christmas. It's a great opportunity."

"Ben," she says, and even over the phone I recognize that as not a friendly tone of voice. It's the one she uses to reprimand people. "If you don't want to work for the company anymore, I understand. But I can't give you special treatment. I'm not your friend right now. I'm your boss and your last-minute change of plans will put a very important investment deal under unnecessary scrutiny for our client. Produce the risk assessment by the end of day Thursday and be here for the meeting with them on Friday. As long as you can deliver that, you know, I don't care what hours you work."

Not taking two days off then. I will have to do sixteen hours of work in addition to whatever time the filming takes. No gym. No cleaning. No dojang. No normal routine. It's two days. I can do two days.

***

"The light over there is too blue, let's make sure the food still looks good and add another reflector to the left side." The lighting guy tells me. Mo brought a lighting guy with him. And two camera operators. And a makeup artist. And Mo's personal assistant.

The contract with Mo Ballerini's company said one episode. It also said it would be recorded on a day that is mutually convenient for both parties at a mutually conviniet location. Both were untrue. The contract also didn't specify that Mo would turn my kitchen into a movie set.

"Let's move these vegetables off the counter." Mo motions to the mis-en-place for the Garganelli al Ragù Bolognese. I got out the pasta roller, the wooden dowel and my gnocchi board for the Garganelli. I also had every ingredient from Amelie's grandmother's recipe layed out and prepped. Amelie gave me the affirmative answer when I asked her to let me use it, but she didn't sound happy when I asked her permission to cook it without her. 

Mo's assistant carries in a crate and exchanges what I have with their items. No one asks me. The  people I haven't even been introduced to swarm the island. I'm a stranger in my kitchen and Mo's the queen bee in charge. Not what I was expecting from a guest on my channel.

"What is wrong with my ingredients?" I turn to Mo.

"Nothing, nothing at all. But we are making my recipe today and I brought my stuff. This"—he lifts a jar of what I assume is tomato passata—"is what you are after. Made at my farm in Italy from the San Marzano tomatoes in the middle of August and flown over here for exclusive use at my restaurants. And this"—he lifts a glass bottle with what I assume is milk—"is the milk from my dairy farm in Parma, and I age my own cheese there." He puts a head of cheese on my counter. Next is a bottle of white wine. "Also from a vineyard I own. The secret to my food are the ingredients. And I own a resort on Amalfi coast."

Not sure there is a link between the resort and the food. But I'm not going to ask. The ingredients are the priority.

"The ingredients." My attention is on the assistant manipulating the food. Mo gives me a stack of papers and climbs into the makeup chair set up in the middle of my living room, my coffee table moved to the side.

"This is the rough script for today based on our conversations last week. We'll improvise, of course, but this gives you an idea of what we can aim for."

"You cut out my explanations on the PH of the tomato sauces vs human stomachs, the testing of different sources to find the least and most acidic and how adding sugar to the sauce lessens the sourness but does not lower the acidity. There's nothing about the food science in this script."

My segments are twenty minutes long and a third of the time is spent on the food science side of the dish. What I'm reading has nothing to do with the version I emailed him.

"Well, you can skip it for this one time. My fans want to watch good Italian cooking and are not budding chemists. They won't see the appeal."

"My viewers expect the food science to be part of the episode. We have to add it back."

"You can make another episode later for the science part of it without it. Deal?"

"No." I fold the pages. "This is not going to work for me. This is not the deal. You are changing everything and this is not going to work for me. No deal." I hand them over to Mo, leave the makeup artist to powder his shiny head and escape to my backyard. No one is here. The screams of my neighbour's kids followed by laughter pierce the air. It doesn't bother me as much as the not-agreed-upon buzz of activity in my kitchen.

His passata recipe is not as appealing anymore. It's worth can not be equivalent to giving up the creative rights to this episode. My backyard is big and a couple of circles around the perimeter of the fence with deep breaths of fresh air settle down the boiling emotions inside back to simmer. Calmness doesn't come but until the filming is done and the people are out of my house, it's not going anywhere. I'm moving on with the filming then. But it has to be on my terms.

The French door to the patio opens and Mo peaks out, finds me by the bushes on the opposite side of the yard and sets his sleek leather shoes onto the pavers of my patio. I fixed it and there is no chance of Mo slipping and falling. He makes his way toward me as I walk back to the house. We meet in the middle of my lawn.

"Listen, Ben." His hands are in the pockets of his dark grey trousers and the unbuttoned suit jacket in the same fabric bunches up around them. "I have a brand. I like you and your food science stuff is fascinating. I've watched a lot of your episodes and I couldn't stop, so I wouldn't have agreed to come otherwise. But I have a brand. Expectations. For this to work you need to meet me in the middle."

"What you are proposing is not the middle. Filming it in my kitchen with your ingredients, your script, your crew and your recipe and removing the science part is not the middle."

"Fine. We can do both recipes. Your grandmother's and mine and we test the acidity in those two sauces. Would that be in the middle?"

"It's Amelie's grandmother's repice. And I cook hers, you cook yours. I use my ingredients and you use yours. We test both for PH at different stages of the cooking process. We provide both recipes to the viewers. That sounds like the middle to me."

"Bravo."

"What?"

"You are not afraid of me."

"Should I be?"

"I can pack up and leave and you'll have no episode." He takes one hand out of the pocket. "No support from me." He hacks his palm through the air. "My audience will have no idea about you. You'll lose your chance at your fifteen minutes of fame." His other hand joins the conversation. "That is scary to most who want to move up in this business."

"My goal is the passata recipe. People you work with must be less concerned with the food they make and more with the attention they get." The soles of my sneakers are sinking into the wet grass. I walk around Mo and head to the patio. "I'm willing to compromise to get it. But I don't care about the fame part. You can tell your crew to pack up and leave if my proposal doesn't work for you."

Mo follows behind. "It works. And what you said works even more. Too many people who approach me seek fame. It's not as great of a thing as they think it is."

"I didn't approach you. You proposed this." I wipe the grass and dirt off my shoes on the corners of the pavers, no need to drag it inside.

"Touché. I do really like you, Ben." He copies me and cleans up his loafers. Good. I'd hate to ask him to take them off, but I would've. 

"Let's get back inside," says Mo, "run through the new plan and get the crew ready to film. We have a long couple of days ahead of us."

***

Tall said to wait. Tall said to start from the beginning. Tall said to do things right this time. The plan was to take Amelie out to dinner last week, but not much of what I set out to do last week happened. I know things change and one has to adjust, but knowing it and dealing with it when it happens to you and not to the mythical 'one' is where the difficulties begin.

All was supposed to get back to normal when I returned from New York. I was supposed to help Tall, get back to my routine, and spend time with Amelie. Instead I was reprimanded at work for the first time in my life. I only visited Tall once last week and had no time to plan or execute a date with Amelie. My life no longer resembles my life. Running isn't helping anymore. The only thing I have under control is Tall's instructions. To wait. To start from the beginning. To do things right this time.

Amelie's body against mine is ruining that too. I hold her tight and I breathe in the now familiar new smell of her. Kissing her now is not right and goes against Tall's advice. Yet, giving in makes me less anxious than trying to behave like I don't want to do it. I bury my nose in her wavy-again hair and kiss it. It's not too much of a deviation. She raises her head and my next kiss lands on her forehead. Next-on the wrinkles between her eyebrows. When our lips touch we are not starting from the beginning. We are continuing from the end. The last salty kiss we shared in my bedroom. This one has less tears and my chest isn't torn apart by anger. This kiss is better. This is a kiss that comes after 'to be continued'.

Her lips are soft. They are warm. They are sticky. They are unfamiliar. They are a recollection. A memory. They open and let my tongue through. Tasting her is an experiment. I don't remember what running my teeth against her lips feels like, so I do it. I let her breathe out and catch the sound she ends it with. It is the first thing I recognize from before. Her audible breaths that move through me.

Her hands wrap around my neck and that is not new, but I prefer to focus on one thing at a time and this is becoming impossible. I take her hands off and she takes her lips off. Not my intent. I want the lips back.

"Ben." She moves a bit further away and I can feel her looking at me. I'm looking at her lips. That's what I'm after. "Am I pushing you out of your comfort zone again?"

The conversation is outside of my interest but I have to answer. "No." I go after what I want and our mouths are together again, like they should be. The words are not important. I much prefer the silence. Three knocks and a creak of the door ruin it.

"Oh, sorry," says a female voice behind my back.

Amelie jumps away from me. "Shelly, you're back." She walks to the door and I turn to see a girl I haven't noticed at the apartment before.

"Sorry, didn't know you had a boyfriend." Shelly waves at me. "Hi, I'm Shelly, the roommate."

"Ben," I say and rub Amelie's lipstick off my mouth. My fingers come off with sticky light pink goo on them.

"I wanted to officially welcome you to our place. Let me know if you need anything." She closes the door before Amelie or I can say anything back.

Amelie faces me. "That was unexpected."

"Shelly?"

"You kissing me. I thought you didn't like me anymore."

"I've always liked you. More than liked you."

"Huh." Her hands are on her hips and her eyes are on my feet again.

That is not helpful to me. She might be mad or happy and I need to know which one. I have to know if Tall was right and I ruined it.

"You can tell me if i shouldn't have kissed you. You know I prefer your honesty to me trying to guess what is going on in your head."

"Honesty." She crosses her hand over her chest. "Why did you kiss me?"

An excellent question. Not that I have a good answer. I go with the truth. "Because I wanted to."

"Right." Amelie rubs her arms from shoulder to elbow with the opposite hands.

"Are you cold?" I don't see any goosebumps on her skin and the air in the room is on the warmer side, but I want to be sure.

"Cold? No. I haven't been cold at all today."

Odd answer. She doesn't say anything further. I want to get back to where we were when Shelly interrupted us. We have to get back to it. I close the distance between us, take her face into my hands and lift it up. Eye contact first. "I want to kiss you again. Are you OK with that?" I don't want to ruin anything.

She nods and when she stares at my lips I get my signal. Whatever lipstick she had on before is gone and I taste her lips, not the artificial fruity flavor. They are not salty or sweet. I run my tongue along the upper, then the lower lip. They are smooth. Her tongue is as well. I glide mine against hers and it too feels new yet familiar. We've done this before. My inhalations are faster and I reach the point where my body is hard to ignore.

"I want you." My forehead against her I tell her what's on my mind. "Do you want me to take it slow or are we having sex now?"

She smiles. "I..."

"Inappropriate?" I'm ruining this for sure. Should've listened to Tall.

"Very and yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes. Sex now."

That's the perfect answer. The clarity makes my next decision easy. I let go of Amelie and walk over to the door.

February 14th, 2021: Happy Valentaine's Day to those who celebrate!

This week was busy with finishing up and releasing "For the Love of a Strawberry Valentaine" -  my collaboration with 

If you haven't read that series of short stories that follow Nick and Sarah - you can check it out while you are waiting on next week's installement of 'Love Graduate'.  Nick is Mike's brother and you might enjoy following his love story.

I don't say this enough, but thank you for reading and your support. Seeing the reads, comments and votes in the days after I post the new chapter is such huge motivation to keep writing, especially on the days when the imposter syndrom kicks in and this writing thing seems out of my league. Huge thank you!