Skinny Bitch in Love by Kim Barnouin

cynical,” Sara said to Eva. “I love that.”
    Eva stared at her and then belly laughed.
    Normally I would open the door and await him, the way I had for Alexander, nice British vegan chef, but Zach Jeffries, of the dead animal signage, could knock.
    I could hear him jogging up the five flights.
    Finally, the knock. A firm rap of the knuckles.
    I opened the door.
    Damn. He held a motorcycle helmet, and a black leather jacket was draped over his arm. In his other hand was a bottle of wine. Red and expensive.
    “So it’s just you four?” he asked. “That must mean you have room for one more student.”
    I stared at him. “Lady with the clipboard?”
    He smiled. “Me.”
    I laughed. “You? Right.”
    “I’m interested in all kinds of food, neighbor.”
    “So you want to take my class.”
    He put down his stuff and pulled out his wallet and a Skinny Bitch Cooking School flyer that he must have ripped off the light post on the corner. “Four hundred, right?” Hetook bills from the black wallet and handed me two hundreds and four fifties. Then he walked right in and sat down at the table. “I’d introduce myself,” he added, glancing at the laptop, open to his photo in the L.A. Times , “but I see you’ve met me.”
    Sara studied him, head to toe. “I’m Sara, teacher’s roommate, so, also a neighbor.”
    “Duncan Ridley, librarian,” Duncan said and we all waited. But Zach’s expression didn’t budge.
    Eva shook his hand. “Eva Ackerman. Single?”
    “I’m not married,” Zach said, his eyes on me. “So, by the amazing smell coming from the oven and this dressed salad, I assume I’ve missed most of class.”
    Sara started setting the table. “We get to eat our work. You’re just in time for the first course.”
    Definition of surreal: sitting at your thrift-store kitchen table, eating student-made leafy greens with miso-ginger dressing while Zach Jeffries poured the wine he brought, listening to him talk about the thousand-acre cattle ranch his family had owned for generations in northern California, where he grew up, not too far from Bluff Valley.
    “We seem to have more in common than not,” he said to me as he popped an olive into his mouth.
    “Really? Because I don’t drink wine made with red dye from crushed beetles.”
    Everyone pushed their glass away from them. Except Zach.
    “My motto is everything in moderation,” he said, taking a sip. “Mmm, that’s good.”
    Sara, Eva, and Duncan looked from Zach to me like we were at Wimbledon.
    My turn. “We have northern California in common, but you’re a leather-jacket-wearing carnivore and I’m a faux-suede-wearing vegan,” I said, extending one silver sandal for emphasis—and so he could get a glimpse of my yoga-toned leg.
    His eyes went up my leg, to my skirt, and finally landed on my face.
    Oh shit. My toes tingled. My toes .
    He’d taken one bite of the bruschetta and declared it “damned good” when his cell phone rang. He listened for a moment, then said, “On my way, Baby.”
    Oh. Deflated back to earth. I glanced at Sara. She looked disappointed, too.
    Of course, there was a Baby in his life. A supermodel, no doubt, that would blow even Laurel soon-to-be Frasier off the runway.
    But who cared? Zach Jeffries grew up slaughtering animals and thought nothing of selling twenty-seven-dollar burgers and spewing fuel emissions into the atmosphere. Being attracted to him was ridiculous.
    But I was. Very traitorously attracted.

Chapter 5
    The moment I opened my eyes the next morning, Zach Jeffries was the first thing on my mind. I was a traitor to my own self. Last night, as I’d peeled off my cotton tank top because it was so hot and the stupid fan was useless, I lay in my bed, staring outside at the sliver of moon and the twinkling stars, imagining Zach lying right next to me. On top of me. Under me.
    I did not have such thoughts about the cute vegan chef, whose name I kept forgetting.
    “Earth to Clementine,” my sister was