Page 31 of Back for Seconds

“No way.” I laughed, placing two dish towels down on the countertop and throwing another over my shoulder. “If you fall asleep, I’ll have to wash these all on my own.”

“C’mon.” He looked up, indignant, from his ladle. “Explain it to me like I’m twelve.”

“Oh, god,” I groaned. “Ok, so different companies and stuff—you know companies?”

“I can name at least three.”

“Perfect. So, you’re familiar with their work. Companies come to us with all their crazy data, and they say—hey, nerds, can you take this data and use it to tell us how likely someone is to buy a…I don’t know, wrench or, like, a spiral ham?”

“I’m always picking up a wrench when I get my spiral ham. Just in case.”

“I take a look at all the data, and I stitch it together, put it into an algorithm, and then—if I did my job right—I have a model that can predict with a very slim margin of error how frequently you’re picking up a classic wrench-and-spiral-ham combo meal.”

He grinned down at me. “That’s incredible. Like magic.”

“It’s really not,” I said, setting the dried baking sheet down carefully onto the towels I’d set out. “It’s just…math.”

“I make people jump rope for a living. What you’re doing is really cool.”

“You don’t make people. They pay you to sort of…supervise. But they really want to jump rope, I promise.”

He passed me another wet pan. “It’s definitely not as interesting or intellectually stimulating as what you do.”

“Maybe.” I rolled my eyes. “But at least you get to talk to people—walk around outside. Get your vitamin D. You have time to make videos and inspire people with food too.”

He gave me a long sideways look. “You think my food is inspiring?”

I grinned. I couldn’t help myself. “I think your nipples are inspiring. And when you finally go for the G-string? Mamma mia.”

Joey cut me off with a gentle flick of warm water that landed on my shirt. “You’re a bully.”

“I’m done, I swear,” I sputtered through laughter. “Did you ever want to have a desk job?”

“Nah,” he said quietly, passing me a fresh drying towel. “It always felt impossible. I’m one of four—four boys. And my younger brother has cerebral palsy, which puts a lot of financial strain on my parents. I always knew it would be too much to ask my parents to help me out with school, and I had a really hard time getting my shit together to apply for loans. Plus, I was kind of a lazy student…”

I looked up from the busyness of my hands, startled slightly by the depth of what he’d just shared. “I didn’t know about your little brother. I’m sorry.”

“Please.” He waved me off with a wet hand. “Isaac is totally fine. Dude’s living his best twenty-one-year-old college kid life. He works; he dates; he lifts heavy weights. He does everything. But growing up…yeah.” Joey cleared his throat. “It was touch and go for a moment.”

“It makes sense that you wanted to be a personal trainer, seeing your brother go through all the physical therapy and stuff.” I flashed him a smile. “You like to help people.”

“I like to think so.”

“And your ex…” I set aside the last baking sheet that had needed drying and began working on the wine glasses Joey had set gingerly in my workspace. “She wanted you to leave Evergreen?”

“How’d you guess?”

I winked at him and made a corresponding clicking noise with my tongue against my teeth. “You’re not as hard to read as you may think.”

“It wasn’t just that she wanted me to leave Evergreen. She wanted me to go to college—but I didn’t want to take out all the loans. She wanted me to propose—but I couldn’t afford it. She wanted me to cut my hair—”

“You were always falling short.” I let out a dry, terse chuckle. “See, Brian was the opposite with me. We met, and it was like—wow, pow, fireworks. You’re the greatest woman on earth. You’re the funniest person I’ve ever met. Let’s go to Paris because I need to see what you look like in a beret—”

“Gross.”

“I know! All of it was so gross. But it was also…” I rolled my eyes at myself. “Perfect. It seemed perfect. We rushed through everything. He moved in with me after six months. Then, after dating for a year, we got engaged. Flash forward to five years since I met the guy—” I held up my ringless fingers. “Divorced.”

“So.” Joey passed me another wine glass to dry. “What did your parents think?”