Chapter 1The Chrysalis Burns Twice

My girlfriend’s male best friend was a certified "dating coach."

Every romantic gesture Lauren made toward me had to pass his inspection first. Every touch, every word, every scrap of affection had to be audited, graded, and certified before she felt qualified to deliver it to me.

On my twenty-eighth birthday, Lauren insisted on taking me out to an upscale seafood bar downtown. She brought Derek along.

I ordered a platter of steamed Maine langoustines—my favorite, something I hadn’t eaten in months because I’d been working seventy-hour weeks in the kitchen. When the steaming metal tray hit the marble table, Lauren slid it straight in front of Derek.

Derek pulled out his phone, framing the shot. Lauren leaned over his shoulder, tilting the brass ramekin of clarified butter to catch the candlelight.

"Step one of dining with your man: photograph the memory," Derek said, tapping the shutter. "Approved."

I reached across the table to take one. Lauren’s hand came down hard across my wrist, the slap echoing against the glassware.

"Wait," she snapped. "I have to practice first."

She picked up the seafood shears, cracked the shell, and began extracting the delicate meat.

"Too jagged," Derek critiqued, leaning back in his booth. "Fails presentation."

She discarded that piece, cracked another, dipped it, and held it out.

"Forgot the sea salt," Derek muttered, shaking his head. "Fails flavor profile."

She tried a third time, carefully lifting the tail meat toward his mouth.

"Wrong angle," he murmured around a smirk. "Too aggressive. You’re feeding a lover, Lauren, not jamming a bit into a horse’s mouth. Fails."

Over the next sixty minutes, thirty langoustines disappeared one by one into Derek’s mouth. Thirty shells cracked; thirty delicate pieces fed to him; thirty times she reached across the table with a linen napkin to dab butter from the corners of his lips. At the very end, he leaned back, patted his flat stomach, and offered a careless shrug.

"Barely passing," he said.

I was the birthday boy. In an hour and a half, I hadn’t even received a glass of tap water.

I laid my silver fork down on the marble. It made a sharp, clean click. I stood up.

"I’m leaving."

Lauren didn’t even look up from cracking a snow crab claw. "Bennett, don't start. Once Derek certifies the drill, I’ll peel yours."

I stared down at the crown of her glossy dark hair, at the diamond earrings I’d bought her for our third anniversary. Four years together. Even our first kiss on the pier, our first embrace in the rain outside my bakery—she had practiced on Derek before bringing the finished product to me.

If love required remedial coaching from another man just to be tolerable, I didn't want it anymore.

I grabbed my coat and car keys from the hook and walked out into the winter chill.

As I pushed through the restaurant's heavy mahogany doors, a young couple passed me on the sidewalk. The guy glanced through the floor-to-ceiling plate glass and nudged his girlfriend. "Man, look at them. That’s real romance."

I followed his gaze. Framed by the frost-edged window, Lauren was spooning sweet crab meat into Derek’s mouth, her head tilted, laughing at something he whispered. Beautiful people, soft lighting, falling snow. It was a Ralph Lauren holiday ad.

The kid on the street wasn’t wrong. From the outside looking in, they were the couple. I was just the ghost who paid the tab.

I hailed a yellow cab at the curb. The driver was an older guy with a warm radio voice. "Sharp suit, kid. Hot date tonight?"

A dry, bitter laugh caught in my throat. I looked down at the charcoal Italian wool I’d had custom-tailored a month ago, the crisp spread collar, the silk tie I’d spent forty minutes knotting before a mirror. All of it for a dinner where I didn't even get a crumb of bread.

"Just my birthday," I said quietly.

"Hey, happy birthday!" The driver reached over, tapped the touchscreen on his dashboard, and queued up a scratchy brass version of Stevie Wonder’s "Happy Love."

Sitting in the back of that smelling-of-pine-sol sedan, watching the slush splash against the curb, it hit me: Lauren hadn't even said the words Happy Birthday to me all day. Four years of shared rent and tangled sheets, and an immigrant cabbie had offered me more warmth in thirty seconds than my girlfriend had in twelve hours.

My phone buzzed against my thigh.

Where did you go? Lauren’s text read. I ordered a cake for you.

I didn’t text back. A notification from Instagram popped up a second later. Derek had posted a high-res photo of the empty langoustine shells arranged neatly on the brass platter.

His caption: Trainee passed her sensory drills today.

The comments under his post were already rolling in: Coach Derek, take me on next!

Lauren had replied to them: Get in line, girls. He’s my exclusive life coach.

I shut the screen off. My stomach clenched—a white-hot, twisting cramp that made my vision blur. My chronic gastritis was flaring up again.

By eight o’clock, I was back in our brownstone apartment. I dragged myself to the stove and boiled a handful of plain egg noodles in salted water, forcing down a few flavorless bites just to line my stomach.

I was unscrewing the cap on my prescription omeprazole when the deadbolt clicked. Lauren walked in, carrying a pastel bakery box tied with satin ribbon.

Seeing the orange pill bottle on the coffee table, she set the box down. "Stomach acting up again?"

She leaned over, touched the side of the ceramic mug I’d left on the side table, and frowned at the cold ceramic. Without a word, she took the mug, carried it to the kitchen, and set the kettle to boil. Every movement was fluid, efficient, practiced.

Two years ago, watching her move through the kitchen like that would have made my chest ache with tenderness. Now, sitting on the sofa with my knees pulled toward my chest, all I could think was: How many times did Derek drill her on how to care for a sick boyfriend? How many points did she get deducted for the temperature of the water?

She came back, pressing the warm porcelain mug into my cold hands. "Why didn't you answer my text?"

I looked up into her gray eyes. "There was nothing to say."

A flicker of annoyance creased her brow. "What was that tantrum at the restaurant tonight? You embarrassed me in front of Derek. You ruined the entire mood."

My fingers tightened around the warm mug. "You think I threw a tantrum?"

She sighed, sitting down on the edge of the ottoman to untie the ribbon on the bakery box. "Bennett, be reasonable. Do we really have to do this on your birthday?"

"Oh. So you do remember it's my birthday."

"Why shouldn't I bring Derek?" she asked, pulling the cardboard tabs apart. "Derek has invested months trying to fix our communication. He’s helped me understand what men need. Including him in a celebration is the least I could do."

The lid came off. Inside sat a six-inch chiffon cake covered in pink buttercream, topped with glazed wild strawberries.

Derek’s absolute favorite. A fruit I was mildly allergic to, and a flavor I had detested since childhood.

"A strawberry cake," I whispered. "Lauren, you know I can't stand strawberries."

She froze for a fraction of a second, then her jaw set. Her voice took on that clipped, weary cadence she used when dealing with difficult clients at her PR firm. "It's just a cake, Bennett. Don't be dramatic. Derek came all the way downtown in the snow; we couldn't expect him to eat dark chocolate if he hates it."

I looked at her silk blouse. There was a smear of reddish-orange shell butter dried on her right cuff.

"So on my birthday, I'm the one who compromises?" I asked, my voice dangerously steady. "I sit there starving while you peel his food and dab his chin like a dutiful little wife?"

Her face went completely cold.

"Can you stop being disgusting?" she said, her voice dropping an octave. "Derek is my coach. It was a drill. We’ve known each other since we were seven years old—if anything were ever going to happen between us, it would have happened in college. He’s like my brother. Can you have a clean thought for once in your life?"

I didn't answer. I just watched her.

Lauren picked up the little plastic bag of wax candles. "Are we doing this or not?"

I swallowed the bitter pill dry. It scratched against the back of my throat, sending an ache all the way behind my eyes.

"No," I said. "We're not."

I pulled out my phone, opened my email, and clicked reply on the formal contract I’d received three days ago from the pastry director at L'Arpège in Paris.

I accept the position of Head Pastry Chef, I typed. I will be there by the end of the week.