“Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer dinner parties where everyone wears pants.”
Matt laughed and then turned to me. Put his arms around my waist and rested his chin on my chest. “You are such a liar,” he said. “Because I happen to know that you like it best when no one’s wearing pants.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Really.” He kept looking right at me as he took his boxers off, then gave me a little grin before hooking his fingers in the elastic of my pajama shorts and pulling them down.
“I don’t know where you’d hear such a thing,” I said, as he climbed on top of me.
“Believe me,” he said, kissing my neck. “I have it on good authority.”
—
For the dinner, I decided to make Parmesan chicken over arugula with roasted tomatoes. I knew it was a mistake about ten minutes into prepping, when I realized I’d have to cook the chicken right before we were supposed to sit down. I’d spent most of the day cleaning, thinking that the dinner was so simple it would take no time at all. But before my cheese puffs even came out of the oven, the doorbell rang and all four of our guests were standing outside our door, holding bottles of wine.
The kitchen in our apartment was tiny, had almost no counter space, and was walled off from the rest of the downstairs. In our old place, when we had people over, I could chop vegetables in the open kitchen, while taking part in the conversation. Now I was stuck in the back like a servant, poking my head out when people laughed, to ask, “What’s so funny?”
Ash and Colleen came into the kitchen to talk to me, but there was nowhere for them to sit, and so they stood awkwardly in the middle of the room and had to keep moving out of the way as I grabbed things from the shelves. Cooking doesn’t come easily to me—I had to really concentrate on the recipe, talk out loud to make sure I was measuring correctly, and it was impossible for me to chat at the same time.
“Really, you guys. Go out in the other room,” I said. “You don’t need to keep me company, I’ll be out in a minute.” The oven was making the kitchen hot, so in addition to being flustered, I was also starting to get sweaty.
“Oh, we don’t mind,” Ash said. She leaned against the counter. “We’re happy to keep you company.”
She was blocking the area where I was planning to bread the chicken cutlets and I had to reach around her to grab my bowl of flour. Colleen was standing right in the middle of the kitchen, slowly turning around to take it all in. “I can’t believe they haven’t updated this,” she said.
I went to place the flour next to the stove, but tripped and spilled a little bit. I could hear Bruce laughing in the other room, loudly, saying something about golf. “Let’s just—you know what? Let’s go have a drink and some appetizers and I’ll come back in a few minutes to get the rest of it done,” I said and headed into the living room before they could argue.
Matt turned around, looking grateful to see us coming. “We’re going to take a break from the kitchen,” I told him.
“That sounds great. Can I help in there?” I shook my head. Matt was always happy to help, but he wasn’t any more gifted at cooking than I was. I took a glass of wine and sat on the floor. Colleen squeezed onto the couch next to Bruce, forcing him to shift over a little bit. As he did, he exhaled loudly. He always made a lot of noise—groaning when he moved, slurping when he drank. It’s possible they had something to do with his age, all the sounds he made. I tried to be gracious and ignore it, but a lot of the time, I felt like asking, “Everything okay?” when he squeaked and moaned.
Ash plopped herself on the floor next to me and grabbed a cheese puff. I took one too and popped it in my mouth, already filled with regret that I’d decided to have a dinner party.
“So, Jimmy,” Colleen said. “What is it that you do?” She leaned forward, as if she couldn’t wait to hear his answer, in what we called her Barbara Walters pose.
“I’m the director of the White House travel office,” Jimmy said.