Putting this party together on such short notice is insanity, but Angie'll appreciate how the decorations play along with the nursery's zoo animal theme. She will love it even if I have no clue what I'm doing. Job hunting and going through interviews is hard enough. And squatting at Mike and Angie's place is getting old fast. Mike's already looking at me as the enemy of the state, and he doesn't even know about the party games I came up with.

No, I'm getting into my negative headspace again: the party will be great, everyone will love it, Angie'll get to open tons of presents, and she can enjoy the event before she has to deal with a crying baby every day. Well, maybe as a future Godmother, I should believe Angie's gut feeling. She's adamant that her baby would be an angel who sleeps through the night and coos during the day. I keep telling her she's setting herself up for failure with those expectations.

I arrange the party favors and the prizes for the games on the sideboard that spans the back of one of the couches. Ben's place is beautiful, but I haven't seen a single picture on the walls, and even this spot didn't have any decorations. I place a cardboard giraffe in the middle and sprinkle a little confetti around it. It's cute.

Ben comes in through the patio door, and the sun hits his back in such a way that he reminds me of the sparkling vampires from the movies. The glitter shower coated him in sparkles while he was hanging up one of the garlands. Ben begins rubbing his hands on his jeans.

"Stop, no, don't do that. You'll get it everywhere."

He pauses and looks at his hands as if they don't belong to him.

"Do you have oil?"

"Olive oil or Safflower or Canola?"

"Any oil."

Ben heads into the kitchen. I follow.

"Let me get it, don't touch anything yet. I can grab it. Which cabinet is it in?"

"Top cabinet, third to the left of the oven."

I find a neat row of oil bottles and grab one.

"A rag or a towel?"

"Bottom most left drawer."

I find it full of what looks like cut-up t-shirts and grab a couple. I pour some oil and hand them to Ben.

"May be best if you rub the glitter off your skin in the bathroom or the shower even. Otherwise, you'll keep finding it in your kitchen for a while. I don't know why it sticks to the floor like it does but trust me, you don't want to deal with it."

"Static electricity, air viscosity, or surface tension would be my best guesses."

"You're probably right. My knowledge of glitter is purely practical. Don't let anyone tell you boys don't like glitter. My half-brothers once coated one of the race cars in glitter and adding glitter to slime's their favorite. Mom and I had to ban any glitter activity from the house, but they'd have glitter in their hair for days no matter how hard we scrubbed."

"How old are they now?"

"Ten and twelve. Basil is a copy of his dad. He got a phone for his birthday, and I now wake up to a new meme or joke from him every morning. Today's was: DD/MM/YY is better than MM/DD/YY."

Ben doesn't laugh.

"It's funnier when you see it written down. Anyway, go take your shower, and I'll show you the joke and a photo of the boys when you are not a hazard to your kitchen." I smile and want to nudge him along and push him on his chest to get him going but catch myself in time and pretend I wanted to wave him off, to begin with.

Ben leaves, and I can hear his sneakers squeak as he walks up the wooden stairs. We've never finished the tour of his house, and now I feel the moment has passed, and it's inappropriate to ask him to show me the upstairs. I don't need to know what his bedroom looks like.

I put away the bottle of oil and peek into the other cabinets. The food is in labeled containers or clear plastic tubs that I've seen him measure stuff out of on his videos before.

A shelf on the other end of the kitchen has a bunch of cookbooks, and I walk over there to peruse the titles: Good Eats, Cook's the Science of Cooking, The Food Lab, On Food and Cooking, NeuroGastronomy. I pull the last book out, and a spiral-bound printout that was wedged in between slides out.

'A cuore aperto' (An open heart, or a heart-to-heart), the name of my Nonna's restaurant is printed on the title page above the cover of her first menu. Nonna's signature phrase underneath it: parlare a cuore aperto è meglio del buon piatto. (A heart-to-heart is best over good food). Ben must have made a copy for himself as well, because I know that my copy, covered in tears and greasy fingerprints, is on the shelf in my kitchen in France. And on the back flap, mine has Ben's handwritten note that I've memorized:

When I was little, I got frustrated and threatened never to touch the cello or set foot into the dojang again, Mom would tell me:

Never give up because great things take time.

You are a great thing, Amélie, and you will do great things.

We are not giving up. We are taking the time.

I look at the back cover of the one in my hands, and it's blank.

I move over to the counter and place both books on the solid surface. The printout reminds me of our breakup and me running away from him. Should I put it back where I it belonged? But, it's not Ben's diary. It's not like he hasn't mailed me a copy. I thought mine was the only one in existence. I have to see what its twin has inside.

I struggle to control my shaking fingers as I flip through the book. Post-its covered in Ben's singular precise cursive are on every page. Questions, ingredients, markings that I don't understand—the mad scientist vibe Ben gives off on his show is evident in what I find inside. He's been modifying my Nonna's dishes. I don't remember seeing any episodes where he talked about her recipes, and I would've recognized them, of that I was certain.

I loved these recipes. Ben was the one who inspired me to start cooking when we met, but once he lit that fire in me, my Nonna's recipes kept me going. I haven't stopped until I mastered them. Mom said Nonna's italian blood is alive in me, and she would've been proud of my accomplishments as a scholar, as a cook, and as a person. Therapy helped with the last one, and after I restored my relationship with Mom, I focused on repairing the one with myself.

"You found it." Ben's voice startles me. How have I not heard him come down? His hair is wet, and apart from the absence of glitter, the clean grey t-shirt is a clone of the one he had on before. He's wearing black jeans instead of the blue ones, and he's barefoot, which might explain his stealth. A little piece of glitter winks at me from his foot.

"What do you think?" Ben asks.

"What do I think about what?"

"My take on your grandma's recipes? Did you read them?"

I don't want to offend Ben, but he's told me years ago that talking straight about things is easiest for him. I'm not the self-centered Amelie who found his confession about Asperger's endearing and went on to ignore it last time around. I've learned a lot about the Autism Spectrum and what I could do to make our interactions more meaningful for both of us. One day I can be completely honest with him, but today the least I can do is tell him what I think about his treatment of my heritage.

"I'm apprehensive. Why mess with perfection? Traditional Italian food is good for a reason, and my Nonna was an expert in it. These recipes were passed down from generation to generation of D'Amico and Salvia women, and we should preserve them, not modernize to make them socially relevant."

Ben walks over and picks up the other book I took off his shelf. He's now a couple of feet away, and I can feel the heat radiating off him. I'm waiting to hear what he has to say. Have I overstepped? Things change, and he might have changed his opinion on honesty.

"I understand your point," he says. "And that's not what I'm interested in doing with them. My question is: why is it so good? When I was trying to figure out the perfect pizza recipe for the Friday Gaming Nights with Mike, I was looking to understand why one version made people drool while the other one got a lukewarm reaction, and I found this book on neurogastronomy."

Ben faces the book's cover my way. "The guy who wrote it is a professor at the Northwestern, so I audited some of his lectures, and the whole science behind food and how humans process it was so intriguing that I dissected one of your grandmother's recipes. I made changes, and it became a science experiment. I haven't used it for my channel, but it has inspired me to do what I do. The science of food is fascinating, and I find ways to show people that. I was thinking of making it into a book, though, a real book, but I will need your permission to use the recipes."

Ben hasn't changed after all and I didn't upset him. The obsession over food was clear from his channel, but knowing Nonna's recipes were the turning point that got him there is heartwarming. I understand where he is coming from, but I'm not sure Nonna would've liked her recipes used that way. Although she was an innovator of sorts, adapting the traditional recipes to the ingredients she could find in the US, just giving Ben these, which were the only connection I had left with my grandmother, didn't sit right with me.

"Let me think about it. Ok?"

"Ok. Can I use your grandma's recipe for the 'Pallotte Acio e Uova' that Angie's requested?"

"Oh, yeah, Nonna's recipe for those is the best. Do you have stale bread? I can help prep it." I've made the gooey cheese balls many times, and even Mom, who despised fried anything, loved them.

"Do you have more things to set up for tomorrow?"

"No." I look around. "We're as ready as we can be. The food is the only thing left, and I have the rest of the afternoon free."

"Ok. Let me show you the bread and what I did, and you can help me film the closeups and the frying. Are you ok with me filming this? I won't do it if you are not."

"As long as I'm not in the shot."

We cook and any remaining strain in our conversation is gone. The house smells of herbs and cheese and tomato sauce and the feeling of Deja Vu is eery. We are cooking together again. We are alone at his place again.

This kitchen is big enough for ten people to stand around the island without touching, but we keep ending up close to each other. My skin is on fire and not from the several burners we have going but from failing to maintain the appropriate distance from Ben. Again.

We finish with the fried cheese balls, and I rush out of Ben's house before I make a very wrong move. Patient. I need to be patient because Ben was not available.

Linda is between us again. Even though she's not physically present, the fact that Ben and Linda are together hasn't changed. Yet. But soon.

Angie has been spying on Ben for me for years, telling me about his life, his involvement with Mike's business, his extreme dating phase, the first time she persuaded him to go to a hairdresser with Mike, the renovations and the move into this house... Even though I wish I, not Mike and Angie, were the one by his side, I had my own life to live on a different continent.

I was happy for Ben until Linda. I was jealous five years ago when they almost started to date, and I hated that the feeling of jealousy only grew in size when Angie told me they were seeing each other.

Linda succeeded in getting her hands on him. None of Ben's previous faceless dates bothered me—I was glad he didn't give up on dating after the mess I've made. But, his relationship with Linda is a different story.

She is not another date from an app who didn't have a clue about him. She's known Ben for way longer than I, and she made it clear from the beginning she was interested. If my information was correct, that was going to change soon. And I'm making sure this time I'm around and not across the ocean.

This was a rough chapter for me to write. I was trying to balance between the back story and the current events and I might have to revise this chapter on editing, but the goal is to keep moving forward this month. And we are very close to the baby shower. I'm looking forward to writing that part.

What are your feelings about Ben and Linda seeing each other?

Should Am let Ben use her grandma's recipes for a book?

What kind of content do you think Ben produces for his video channel?

NaNoWriMo: 8643 words do far. I have nothing started for the next chapter, so may not post another chapter until Thursday.