The Cooking Class Catastrophe
The PR team’s email arrived at 7:43 AM on a Tuesday, subject line: “Cute Couple Content #3.”
Mira read it while standing in her kitchen, still in her pajamas, a mug of black coffee growing cold in her hand. The email contained a detailed itinerary for what they called a “romantic cooking class” at a place called The Gilded Ladle in Pacific Heights. There were bullet points about lighting, wardrobe suggestions (“coordinated but not matching—think intentional effort”), and a list of hashtags to use when the official HeartSync Instagram account posted the photos.
She forwarded it to Leo with a single line: *They want us to make pasta.*
His reply came thirty seconds later: *I can barely make toast. This will be a disaster.*
*Good*, she typed. *Disasters look authentic.*
*You’re learning.*
She hated that he was right.
The Gilded Ladle was the kind of place that charged ninety dollars per person for the privilege of standing in a gleaming stainless-steel kitchen while a man in a chef’s coat told you that you were holding a knife wrong. The countertops were marble. The aprons were linen. The lighting was warm and golden, designed to make everything look like a commercial for expensive olive oil.
Mira arrived early, wearing a cream-colored sweater that the PR team had approved via a group chat she desperately wanted to leave. She’d tied her hair back in a low ponytail, which felt practical but also, according to the email, “approachable.”
Leo walked in five minutes late, wearing a dark gray Henley with the sleeves pushed up. His hair was slightly damp, like he’d just showered. He looked like he’d stepped out of a catalog for men who didn’t try but still managed to look like they’d tried.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I’m fashionably late.” He grabbed an apron from the rack. “There’s a difference.”
“There isn’t.”
“There is, and it’s entirely about confidence.”
The instructor, a man named Jean-Pierre with a French accent that seemed slightly exaggerated, clapped his hands and welcomed the class of twelve couples. Mira scanned the room. Two other pairs were clearly on real dates, holding hands and whispering. The rest were probably there for content, just like them.
“Today,” Jean-Pierre announced, “we will make tagliatelle from scratch. Then we will pair it with a simple pomodoro. Love is like pasta—it requires patience, the right ingredients, and a gentle touch.”
Leo leaned toward Mira. “I’m going to make a joke about gluten, and I need you to pretend it’s funny.”
“I will do no such thing.”
“That’s fair.”
They were assigned a workstation near the back, away from the windows where the natural light was best. Mira suspected the PR team had already tipped off the photographer, a young woman named Chloe who was currently pretending to be a student but kept aiming her camera at them.
“Smile,” Leo muttered, kneading a mound of flour and eggs. “She’s watching.”
Mira forced her mouth into something that approximated happiness. “This is humiliating.”
“It’s performance art.” He pressed his palms into the dough, his forearms flexing. She looked away. “We’re artists, Mira. Suffering for our craft.”
“Our craft is lying to investors.”
“Same thing.”
Jean-Pierre circulated, offering corrections and encouragement. When he reached their station, he frowned at Leo’s dough. “Too dry. You need more egg. The dough should feel like a lover’s skin—soft, but with resistance.”
Leo raised an eyebrow at Mira. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.
“Add another yolk,” Jean-Pierre instructed. “And use the heel of your hand. Press and fold. Press and fold. It is a rhythm.”
Leo cracked an egg with one hand, which was impressive and annoying. The yolk slid into the flour mixture, and he began working it in, his movements surprisingly competent.
“You’ve done this before,” Mira said.
“YouTube tutorials. I had a phase.”
“What phase?”
“The ‘I want to impress a date’ phase. It lasted about two weeks. I learned how to make three dishes, then I got bored and moved on.”
She handed him a bench scraper. “Did it work? The impressing?”
He paused, his hands still buried in the dough. “Sometimes. But I realized I was spending more time trying to be impressive than actually being present. So I stopped.”
The admission hung between them, unexpected and honest. Mira didn’t know what to do with it, so she focused on her own dough, which was coming together nicely. She’d always been good at following instructions.
“Yours looks better than mine,” Leo said.
“I’m a data scientist. Precision is my job.”
“You’re also a control freak.”
“That too.”
Chloe the photographer circled closer, her camera clicking. Mira instinctively stiffened, her shoulders hunching. Leo noticed and stepped behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders.
“Relax,” he murmured, his breath warm against her ear. “You look like you’re being held at gunpoint.”
“I feel like I’m being held at gunpoint.”
“Then pretend I’m the gunman and you’re trying to seduce me for the keys.”
She snorted. “That’s the worst advice I’ve ever heard.”
“Did it make you laugh?”
“No.”
“You’re smiling.”
She was. She stopped immediately.
Jean-Pierre returned with a pasta roller, a gleaming machine that clamped to the edge of the counter. “Now we roll. Thin, but not too thin. You want to see the light through it, but you do not want it to tear.”
Leo fed a strip of dough through the rollers while Mira caught it on the other side, guiding it flat. They worked in silence, finding a rhythm. Feed, crank, catch. Feed, crank, catch. The dough stretched and smoothed, becoming translucent.
“This is oddly satisfying,” Leo admitted.
“It’s repetitive. My brain likes repetitive.”
“Your brain likes a lot of things that are boring.”
“My brain likes efficiency.”
“Same thing.”
They passed the dough through narrower settings, each pass making it thinner. Mira’s fingers brushed Leo’s as she adjusted the strip. She didn’t pull away. Neither did he.
“Okay,” she said, her voice quieter than she intended. “I think it’s ready.”
Jean-Pierre appeared and inspected their work. He held the sheet of pasta up to the light, and Mira could see his face through the translucent dough. “Magnificent,” he declared. “You have the touch. Both of you. This is what happens when two people work together.”
Leo caught her eye. There was something in his expression she couldn’t read—amusement, maybe, but also something softer. She looked away first.
The next step was cutting the tagliatelle. Jean-Pierre demonstrated the technique: fold the sheet into a loose roll, then slice it into ribbons with a sharp knife. Mira watched carefully, then picked up her knife.
“Let me,” Leo said, reaching for the blade.
“I can do it.”
“I know you can. But the photographer is watching, and this looks more romantic if I’m doing the cutting while you supervise.”
She handed him the knife. “If you mess this up, I’m telling everyone you cried during the hike.”
“I didn’t cry. I expressed emotion.”
“You sniffled.”
“It was allergies.”
He began cutting, his movements careful and precise. The ribbons of pasta fell away from the blade, uniform and clean. Mira had to admit he was good at this. Annoyingly good.
“You’re staring,” he said without looking up.
“I’m monitoring.”
“Same thing.”
Chloe took a photo. The flash caught Mira off guard, and she blinked, her hand coming up to shield her eyes. Leo paused, the knife hovering mid-cut.
“Sorry,” Chloe said, lowering her camera. “The light was perfect. You two look so natural together.”
Natural. Right.
Leo resumed cutting, but his rhythm was off now. He nicked his finger on the blade, a thin line of blood welling up on his index finger.
“Ow,” he said flatly.
“You cut yourself.”
“I’m aware.”
Jean-Pierre rushed over with a first aid kit, clucking his tongue. “The knife is sharp. You must respect the blade.”
Leo wrapped his finger in a paper towel, his expression sheepish. “I respect it. It doesn’t respect me.”
Mira took over the cutting, her strokes efficient and precise. Leo stood beside her, holding his injured finger, watching her work. The photographer had moved on to another couple, drawn away by the promise of better lighting near the windows.
“You’re good at this,” Leo said.
“I told you. Precision.”
“No, I mean—” He paused. “You’re good at adapting. You hate this, but you’re doing it anyway. That takes a kind of strength most people don’t have.”
She didn’t look at him. “It’s called being a professional.”
“It’s called being brave.”
The word hit her somewhere unexpected, somewhere behind her ribs. She kept cutting, her hands steady, but her mind was a mess of static. Brave. No one had ever called her that before. Competent, yes. Efficient, absolutely. But brave was a word for people who jumped off cliffs and took risks. Brave was a word for people like Leo.
“I’m not brave,” she said finally. “I’m just too stubborn to quit.”
“Same thing.”
She finished the last strip of pasta and set down the knife. The ribbons lay in neat piles on the floured counter, ready for the pot of boiling water that Jean-Pierre had prepared at the front of the class.
“Now we cook,” Jean-Pierre announced. “Two minutes. No more. Al dente is the goal.”
The couples gathered around the large stove, each group taking turns dropping their pasta into the bubbling water. Mira and Leo stood shoulder to shoulder, watching their creation disappear beneath the surface.
“It’s weird,” Leo said quietly. “Making something together. I don’t do that often.”
“You work on a team.”
“That’s different. That’s code. This is—” He gestured at the pot. “This is physical. You can touch it. You can taste it. If it’s bad, you know immediately.”
“If code is bad, you also know immediately. It crashes.”
“But you can fix it. You can patch it. With food, once it’s overcooked, it’s ruined. There’s no undo button.”
Mira considered this. “That’s terrifying.”
“That’s life.”
Jean-Pierre signaled for them to retrieve their pasta. Leo grabbed a pair of tongs and lifted the ribbons out of the water, steam rising in a fragrant cloud. The pasta glistened, golden and perfect.
“It looks good,” Mira admitted.
“It looks great.”
They tossed it with the pomodoro sauce they’d made earlier—simple, just tomatoes, garlic, basil, and olive oil—and plated it on the white ceramic dishes provided by the class. The photographer returned, snapping photos of the finished product, of their hands reaching for the same fork, of their faces illuminated by the warm kitchen lights.
“Taste it,” Jean-Pierre urged. “You must taste your creation.”
Leo twirled a forkful of pasta and held it up. “Ladies first.”
Mira hesitated. There was something intimate about this, about eating from the same fork, about sharing a plate. But the photographer was watching, and the PR team would want a shot of them feeding each other.
She opened her mouth. Leo slid the fork in gently, his eyes on hers. The pasta was perfect—al dente, the sauce bright and acidic, the basil fragrant. She chewed, swallowed, and nodded.
“It’s good.”
“Just good?”
“It’s really good.”
He grinned, and for a moment, he looked younger, less like the smug rival who stole her thunder in board meetings and more like someone she might actually like. He took a bite himself, closing his eyes as he chewed.
“We made this,” he said. “Us. Together.”
“Don’t get emotional.”
“Too late. I’m naming our firstborn Tagliatelle.”
She laughed. It escaped before she could stop it, a genuine sound that surprised even her. Leo’s grin widened.
“There it is,” he said.
“There’s what?”
“The real you.”
She looked away, her face warming. The photographer captured the moment, the shutter clicking like a heartbeat.
The rest of the class passed in a blur of shared plates and stolen glances. They ate their pasta at a small table near the window, the city lights flickering to life outside as the evening settled in. Leo told her about his failed attempts at baking sourdough during the pandemic. She told him about the time she’d tried to make a soufflé and ended up with a dense, eggy pancake.
“You should have seen it,” she said. “It was a tragedy.”
“I would have eaten it.”
“You would have regretted it.”
“Probably. But I would have done it anyway.”
The words hung in the air, weighted with something neither of them was ready to name. Mira reached for her water glass, her fingers brushing against his on the table. She didn’t pull away.
Neither did he.
When the class ended, they walked out into the cool San Francisco night, the city humming around them. Chloe the photographer had already uploaded the photos to the cloud, and Mira’s phone buzzed with a notification from the PR team: *These are PERFECT. Great work, you two!*
“We survived,” Leo said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“Barely.”
“You almost enjoyed it.”
“I tolerated it.”
“Same thing.”
She stopped walking and turned to face him. The streetlight cast his features in sharp relief, shadows pooling under his cheekbones. He was looking at her with an expression she couldn’t parse—curious, maybe, or hopeful.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “Just—thanks. For not making it weird.”
“I made it weird. I always make it weird.”
“Your kind of weird is fine. I like it.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing. They stood there for a long moment, the city noise fading to a distant hum, and then Leo stepped back, breaking the spell.
“Same time tomorrow?” he asked. “The PR team has us scheduled for a couples’ pottery class.”
“I saw the email. I’m already dreading it.”
“Good. I’ll see you there.”
He turned and walked away, his silhouette growing smaller against the glowing storefronts. Mira watched him go, her hands cold in her pockets, her heart beating a rhythm she didn’t have a name for.
She pulled out her phone and opened the shared Google Doc, the one with their fake relationship timeline. She scrolled past the ridiculous details Leo had added—the fictional trip to a farmer’s market, the invented inside joke about a cat named Algorithm—and typed a single line at the bottom.
*Day 9: Cooking class. He cut his finger. I didn’t laugh. Mostly.*
She closed the document and started walking home, the taste of basil and tomatoes still on her lips.
Mira read it while standing in her kitchen, still in her pajamas, a mug of black coffee growing cold in her hand. The email contained a detailed itinerary for what they called a “romantic cooking class” at a place called The Gilded Ladle in Pacific Heights. There were bullet points about lighting, wardrobe suggestions (“coordinated but not matching—think intentional effort”), and a list of hashtags to use when the official HeartSync Instagram account posted the photos.
She forwarded it to Leo with a single line: *They want us to make pasta.*
His reply came thirty seconds later: *I can barely make toast. This will be a disaster.*
*Good*, she typed. *Disasters look authentic.*
*You’re learning.*
She hated that he was right.
The Gilded Ladle was the kind of place that charged ninety dollars per person for the privilege of standing in a gleaming stainless-steel kitchen while a man in a chef’s coat told you that you were holding a knife wrong. The countertops were marble. The aprons were linen. The lighting was warm and golden, designed to make everything look like a commercial for expensive olive oil.
Mira arrived early, wearing a cream-colored sweater that the PR team had approved via a group chat she desperately wanted to leave. She’d tied her hair back in a low ponytail, which felt practical but also, according to the email, “approachable.”
Leo walked in five minutes late, wearing a dark gray Henley with the sleeves pushed up. His hair was slightly damp, like he’d just showered. He looked like he’d stepped out of a catalog for men who didn’t try but still managed to look like they’d tried.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I’m fashionably late.” He grabbed an apron from the rack. “There’s a difference.”
“There isn’t.”
“There is, and it’s entirely about confidence.”
The instructor, a man named Jean-Pierre with a French accent that seemed slightly exaggerated, clapped his hands and welcomed the class of twelve couples. Mira scanned the room. Two other pairs were clearly on real dates, holding hands and whispering. The rest were probably there for content, just like them.
“Today,” Jean-Pierre announced, “we will make tagliatelle from scratch. Then we will pair it with a simple pomodoro. Love is like pasta—it requires patience, the right ingredients, and a gentle touch.”
Leo leaned toward Mira. “I’m going to make a joke about gluten, and I need you to pretend it’s funny.”
“I will do no such thing.”
“That’s fair.”
They were assigned a workstation near the back, away from the windows where the natural light was best. Mira suspected the PR team had already tipped off the photographer, a young woman named Chloe who was currently pretending to be a student but kept aiming her camera at them.
“Smile,” Leo muttered, kneading a mound of flour and eggs. “She’s watching.”
Mira forced her mouth into something that approximated happiness. “This is humiliating.”
“It’s performance art.” He pressed his palms into the dough, his forearms flexing. She looked away. “We’re artists, Mira. Suffering for our craft.”
“Our craft is lying to investors.”
“Same thing.”
Jean-Pierre circulated, offering corrections and encouragement. When he reached their station, he frowned at Leo’s dough. “Too dry. You need more egg. The dough should feel like a lover’s skin—soft, but with resistance.”
Leo raised an eyebrow at Mira. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.
“Add another yolk,” Jean-Pierre instructed. “And use the heel of your hand. Press and fold. Press and fold. It is a rhythm.”
Leo cracked an egg with one hand, which was impressive and annoying. The yolk slid into the flour mixture, and he began working it in, his movements surprisingly competent.
“You’ve done this before,” Mira said.
“YouTube tutorials. I had a phase.”
“What phase?”
“The ‘I want to impress a date’ phase. It lasted about two weeks. I learned how to make three dishes, then I got bored and moved on.”
She handed him a bench scraper. “Did it work? The impressing?”
He paused, his hands still buried in the dough. “Sometimes. But I realized I was spending more time trying to be impressive than actually being present. So I stopped.”
The admission hung between them, unexpected and honest. Mira didn’t know what to do with it, so she focused on her own dough, which was coming together nicely. She’d always been good at following instructions.
“Yours looks better than mine,” Leo said.
“I’m a data scientist. Precision is my job.”
“You’re also a control freak.”
“That too.”
Chloe the photographer circled closer, her camera clicking. Mira instinctively stiffened, her shoulders hunching. Leo noticed and stepped behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders.
“Relax,” he murmured, his breath warm against her ear. “You look like you’re being held at gunpoint.”
“I feel like I’m being held at gunpoint.”
“Then pretend I’m the gunman and you’re trying to seduce me for the keys.”
She snorted. “That’s the worst advice I’ve ever heard.”
“Did it make you laugh?”
“No.”
“You’re smiling.”
She was. She stopped immediately.
Jean-Pierre returned with a pasta roller, a gleaming machine that clamped to the edge of the counter. “Now we roll. Thin, but not too thin. You want to see the light through it, but you do not want it to tear.”
Leo fed a strip of dough through the rollers while Mira caught it on the other side, guiding it flat. They worked in silence, finding a rhythm. Feed, crank, catch. Feed, crank, catch. The dough stretched and smoothed, becoming translucent.
“This is oddly satisfying,” Leo admitted.
“It’s repetitive. My brain likes repetitive.”
“Your brain likes a lot of things that are boring.”
“My brain likes efficiency.”
“Same thing.”
They passed the dough through narrower settings, each pass making it thinner. Mira’s fingers brushed Leo’s as she adjusted the strip. She didn’t pull away. Neither did he.
“Okay,” she said, her voice quieter than she intended. “I think it’s ready.”
Jean-Pierre appeared and inspected their work. He held the sheet of pasta up to the light, and Mira could see his face through the translucent dough. “Magnificent,” he declared. “You have the touch. Both of you. This is what happens when two people work together.”
Leo caught her eye. There was something in his expression she couldn’t read—amusement, maybe, but also something softer. She looked away first.
The next step was cutting the tagliatelle. Jean-Pierre demonstrated the technique: fold the sheet into a loose roll, then slice it into ribbons with a sharp knife. Mira watched carefully, then picked up her knife.
“Let me,” Leo said, reaching for the blade.
“I can do it.”
“I know you can. But the photographer is watching, and this looks more romantic if I’m doing the cutting while you supervise.”
She handed him the knife. “If you mess this up, I’m telling everyone you cried during the hike.”
“I didn’t cry. I expressed emotion.”
“You sniffled.”
“It was allergies.”
He began cutting, his movements careful and precise. The ribbons of pasta fell away from the blade, uniform and clean. Mira had to admit he was good at this. Annoyingly good.
“You’re staring,” he said without looking up.
“I’m monitoring.”
“Same thing.”
Chloe took a photo. The flash caught Mira off guard, and she blinked, her hand coming up to shield her eyes. Leo paused, the knife hovering mid-cut.
“Sorry,” Chloe said, lowering her camera. “The light was perfect. You two look so natural together.”
Natural. Right.
Leo resumed cutting, but his rhythm was off now. He nicked his finger on the blade, a thin line of blood welling up on his index finger.
“Ow,” he said flatly.
“You cut yourself.”
“I’m aware.”
Jean-Pierre rushed over with a first aid kit, clucking his tongue. “The knife is sharp. You must respect the blade.”
Leo wrapped his finger in a paper towel, his expression sheepish. “I respect it. It doesn’t respect me.”
Mira took over the cutting, her strokes efficient and precise. Leo stood beside her, holding his injured finger, watching her work. The photographer had moved on to another couple, drawn away by the promise of better lighting near the windows.
“You’re good at this,” Leo said.
“I told you. Precision.”
“No, I mean—” He paused. “You’re good at adapting. You hate this, but you’re doing it anyway. That takes a kind of strength most people don’t have.”
She didn’t look at him. “It’s called being a professional.”
“It’s called being brave.”
The word hit her somewhere unexpected, somewhere behind her ribs. She kept cutting, her hands steady, but her mind was a mess of static. Brave. No one had ever called her that before. Competent, yes. Efficient, absolutely. But brave was a word for people who jumped off cliffs and took risks. Brave was a word for people like Leo.
“I’m not brave,” she said finally. “I’m just too stubborn to quit.”
“Same thing.”
She finished the last strip of pasta and set down the knife. The ribbons lay in neat piles on the floured counter, ready for the pot of boiling water that Jean-Pierre had prepared at the front of the class.
“Now we cook,” Jean-Pierre announced. “Two minutes. No more. Al dente is the goal.”
The couples gathered around the large stove, each group taking turns dropping their pasta into the bubbling water. Mira and Leo stood shoulder to shoulder, watching their creation disappear beneath the surface.
“It’s weird,” Leo said quietly. “Making something together. I don’t do that often.”
“You work on a team.”
“That’s different. That’s code. This is—” He gestured at the pot. “This is physical. You can touch it. You can taste it. If it’s bad, you know immediately.”
“If code is bad, you also know immediately. It crashes.”
“But you can fix it. You can patch it. With food, once it’s overcooked, it’s ruined. There’s no undo button.”
Mira considered this. “That’s terrifying.”
“That’s life.”
Jean-Pierre signaled for them to retrieve their pasta. Leo grabbed a pair of tongs and lifted the ribbons out of the water, steam rising in a fragrant cloud. The pasta glistened, golden and perfect.
“It looks good,” Mira admitted.
“It looks great.”
They tossed it with the pomodoro sauce they’d made earlier—simple, just tomatoes, garlic, basil, and olive oil—and plated it on the white ceramic dishes provided by the class. The photographer returned, snapping photos of the finished product, of their hands reaching for the same fork, of their faces illuminated by the warm kitchen lights.
“Taste it,” Jean-Pierre urged. “You must taste your creation.”
Leo twirled a forkful of pasta and held it up. “Ladies first.”
Mira hesitated. There was something intimate about this, about eating from the same fork, about sharing a plate. But the photographer was watching, and the PR team would want a shot of them feeding each other.
She opened her mouth. Leo slid the fork in gently, his eyes on hers. The pasta was perfect—al dente, the sauce bright and acidic, the basil fragrant. She chewed, swallowed, and nodded.
“It’s good.”
“Just good?”
“It’s really good.”
He grinned, and for a moment, he looked younger, less like the smug rival who stole her thunder in board meetings and more like someone she might actually like. He took a bite himself, closing his eyes as he chewed.
“We made this,” he said. “Us. Together.”
“Don’t get emotional.”
“Too late. I’m naming our firstborn Tagliatelle.”
She laughed. It escaped before she could stop it, a genuine sound that surprised even her. Leo’s grin widened.
“There it is,” he said.
“There’s what?”
“The real you.”
She looked away, her face warming. The photographer captured the moment, the shutter clicking like a heartbeat.
The rest of the class passed in a blur of shared plates and stolen glances. They ate their pasta at a small table near the window, the city lights flickering to life outside as the evening settled in. Leo told her about his failed attempts at baking sourdough during the pandemic. She told him about the time she’d tried to make a soufflé and ended up with a dense, eggy pancake.
“You should have seen it,” she said. “It was a tragedy.”
“I would have eaten it.”
“You would have regretted it.”
“Probably. But I would have done it anyway.”
The words hung in the air, weighted with something neither of them was ready to name. Mira reached for her water glass, her fingers brushing against his on the table. She didn’t pull away.
Neither did he.
When the class ended, they walked out into the cool San Francisco night, the city humming around them. Chloe the photographer had already uploaded the photos to the cloud, and Mira’s phone buzzed with a notification from the PR team: *These are PERFECT. Great work, you two!*
“We survived,” Leo said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“Barely.”
“You almost enjoyed it.”
“I tolerated it.”
“Same thing.”
She stopped walking and turned to face him. The streetlight cast his features in sharp relief, shadows pooling under his cheekbones. He was looking at her with an expression she couldn’t parse—curious, maybe, or hopeful.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “Just—thanks. For not making it weird.”
“I made it weird. I always make it weird.”
“Your kind of weird is fine. I like it.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing. They stood there for a long moment, the city noise fading to a distant hum, and then Leo stepped back, breaking the spell.
“Same time tomorrow?” he asked. “The PR team has us scheduled for a couples’ pottery class.”
“I saw the email. I’m already dreading it.”
“Good. I’ll see you there.”
He turned and walked away, his silhouette growing smaller against the glowing storefronts. Mira watched him go, her hands cold in her pockets, her heart beating a rhythm she didn’t have a name for.
She pulled out her phone and opened the shared Google Doc, the one with their fake relationship timeline. She scrolled past the ridiculous details Leo had added—the fictional trip to a farmer’s market, the invented inside joke about a cat named Algorithm—and typed a single line at the bottom.
*Day 9: Cooking class. He cut his finger. I didn’t laugh. Mostly.*
She closed the document and started walking home, the taste of basil and tomatoes still on her lips.