Colder than Ice Read online

  Autumn

  Dinner Tasting Menu

  Prix Fixe

  Alaskan Halibut Amuse Bouche - Mango, coconut curry, rice, tortilla

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  Sweet Potato Ravioli - Cinnamon, lemon-sage brown butter

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  Roast Beef Heart - Baby squash & corn cous cous

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  Lamb Lollipop - Eggplant confit, anchovy gremolata, preserved lemon

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  Charcuterie and Market Board - Mortadella, Prosciutto, Taleggio, Hornbacher

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  Tangerine Creme Brûlée Tarts - Raspberries, champagne gelee

  The paparazzi had been a gauntlet. How to move her feet, where to step, where to put her hands. It was like the men behind the cameras were assuming she would stop and pose, stop and pose, give them what they wanted, right until she took some misstep that she hadn’t even been aware of, and then the chatter of camera shutters had gone into overdrive, everyone suddenly voracious for the ripe moment when she’d screw up and trip over her own feet.

  She had the vague thought as they made it safely through the door that there was no way Tristan would have subjected her to that on purpose—that Gabriella’s network of influence ran through the totality of Beverly Hills, all the way down to the waitstaff tattling passing along information about who had reservations when.

  It was fine. This was all fine. She’d never had a tasting menu before, let alone a six-course meal at any time in her life. Maybe a three-course dinner in college that was really meant for donors to feel good about paying for her scholarships.

  In fact, she hadn’t been out to eat in Los Angeles in several weeks; everything had been so busy with the script, and the prospect of trying to find a place and then go sit in traffic was just so nerve-wracking…

  But it was fine.

  No, not fine; it was very nice. He hadn’t lied: Tristan certainly did know a good place to have dinner.

  Acacia & Amaranth was a gorgeous restaurant; whoever had been tasked with the interior design had gone with an unexpected Pacific Northwest-Art Deco theme, with plenty of stained glass accents and angular geometry along with the whorled woods, all polished to a mirror finish. Whenever she looked toward the windows, Sophie kept expecting to see huge California Redwoods or giant evergreens instead of a hint of Beverly Hills traffic on the street outside.

  Light and sharp and heavy and portentous all at once, filled with lines and colors that melted one into the other. Demetrius would love putting it down into linework. Sophie made a mental note to get in touch with him and find some pictures of the interior—Morganna and Dirk Masterson deserved to have a private date in a place like this.

  She realized Tristan was watching her closely, head tilted a bit, and quickly set the menu on the table. She’d been over the descriptions about a dozen times, but all the food had already been selected, so there was no good reason for holding it except to busy her hands and put a neat wall between the two of them.

  And Sophie had firmly told herself in the mirror before leaving the house that a wall was precisely what was required. She could act her part, this would not result in another embarrassing episode to reflect on in guilt. He deserved that much, especially since she’d gotten them into this mess in the first place. And because he was smart enough to not only pick up on her disdain for him, but brave enough to bring it up in conversation and point-blank comment on it.

  No one did that in Omaha. You just sat with your repressed and unspoken feelings for years until someone died, and even then funerals mostly consisted of mayonnaise-based casseroles. Maybe someone used Miracle Whip if you were particularly disliked.

  And Tristan was British, which struck her as basically the ground zero of that strain of denatured displeasure, just with a fancier accent, so it was even weirder that he’d actually talk about either of their feelings, or anyone’s feelings, for that matter.

  She wasn’t sure she was quite there yet, frankly. Not with him, certainly. She was still trying to get past the shock that for all intents and purposes, in the eyes of the entire world, she was Tristan Eccleston’s girlfriend, a thought that alternately terrified her and made her want to laugh hysterically.

  There was never time to get all that attached to anyone, or meet anyone, in her life, and there was always that feeling from the background radiation of being in LA that no one was really together. That it was all a big political game, that no one genuinely settled down if they could increase their star power through another alliance of resources and fame. It reminded her of a tweet she’d seen once.

  “I will not be considering any marriage proposal unless it results in a military alliance with France.”

  Everybody in LA was waiting for their next upgrade, like a new cell phone. And this fake romance, this for-the-tabloids tryst, was only an extreme version of that—one that maybe Tristan had even played before. He was kind and sweet, but she couldn’t let herself get overly attached to any romantic ideas. For either of their sakes.

  And so, Sophie and Tristan sat at their lovely table with a candle in a geometric holder with brown and orange stained glass rectangles flickering softly and looked at each other in a long silence.

  Unable to take this open scrutiny for much longer without imploding from the intensity of his gaze, Sophie looked down the far end of the room where a group of older couples was seated at a half-moon shaped counter in front of the open kitchen.

  “I wonder what they’re doing over there. Critics?”

  “Chef’s Table,” he replied promptly, and she turned back to catch the hint of a frown before it dissolved back to his pleasantly neutral expression. “Oh, I should’ve asked if you’d prefer that instead,” said Tristan.

  “Chef’s Table,” Sophie murmured in reply. “I think my friend Ash and her husband did that on their honeymoon. The chef makes whatever they feel like, and you’re just supposed to go with it and embrace the adventure, right?”

  Tristan leaned forward to get a better view of the couples.

  “It’s a lot of fun if you’ve got some good friends with open minds,” he remarked. “I went in New York last year with Joanna, Victor LaMarge, and—”

  He cut himself off suddenly, swallowing, and she realized the next name out of his mouth was probably about to be Gabriella. Tristan blinked and recovered so quickly that Sophie didn’t even have a chance to think up some way to fill the strange and sad gap.

  “I think we had rabbit meatloaf.”

  “That actually sounds interesting,” Sophie admitted, and folded her elbows in front of her to look down at the list again. “I’m not much of a foodie, I have no idea what a gremolata is.”

  “A sauce, maybe?”

  “I’m gonna go with a mound of fish-flavored ice shavings,” she replied confidently, and Tristan’s face bloomed into a smile.

  “A hut-shaped structure formed from strands of sugared marzipan,” he said, warming to the game.

  “For the anchovy to lie under, of course.”

  “It’s their summer home, and this is a classic Nordic representation of the… seasonal… holiday that they take,” Tristan finished for her.

  Sophie giggled just as the waitress brought over the starter. Careful, Sophie, you’re just here to play a role. She snuck a glance at the waitress, but the young woman’s eyes definitely weren’t on Sophie.

  There was no question that the young woman recognized Tristan—it was all in her expression, trying hard to look innocent, but failing miserably from the way her mouth kept twitching and trying to twist into a grin. Sophie looked over at the waitstaff door leading behind the public view of the kitchen and saw a couple of other waitresses huddled together, whispering and trying to hide the fact that one of them was filming the dining room with her cell phone. The other girl held a hand up to her mouth to hide a grin when she saw Sophie watching them.

  Her pulse picked up, and not insignificantly.

  “Enjoy,” said the waitress at their table, but lingered f
or a moment like she was there to take in the exciting nightly performance of Tristan Eccleston himself eating fish. The man across the table looked up politely after a moment with an expectant expression.

  “Sorry, was there something else?”

  “Oh!” Replied the waitress without batting an eyelash, “We just want to make sure everything is to your satisfaction.”

  Tristan turned to Sophie with a broad expression, slightly widened eyes, that she could tell was dripping with subtle sarcasm.

  “Did you hear that?” He said to her. “Everything must be to our satisfaction. Well,” he said to the waitress, “we’ll let you know, won’t we?”

  But the redheaded young woman didn’t budge. She seemed to be caught up in a kind of hypnosis or ecstasy, and Sophie felt a sharp shot of annoyance drill through her—obviously it was because Tristan wouldn’t quit looking the poor thing right in the eyes and doing that I’m famous, please love me thing with his face.

  “Is that the manager over there?”

  The door to the waitstaff area was just swinging shut, the other two women having disappeared. Their waitress hesitated, and then began power-walking in that direction, obviously concerned that her friends were getting a chewing-out, with a worse one in her own future.

  “You didn’t have to keep encouraging her like that,” Sophie said to Tristan, giving him a wry look and tasting one of the bites of halibut, which was spicy but creamy. He leaned forward on his folded arms, and she watched the light catch one of the curls toward the front of his head.

  “I couldn’t imagine disappointing someone like that!”

  “Her friends were filming us,” Sophie replied. “I thought people who lived here were supposed to be used to seeing celebrities. And who knows who they’ll send that to,” she muttered to herself, suddenly picturing Gabriella stationed in the back of the restaurant watching security camera footage of them.

  Tristan considered a moment.

  “I can’t really tell someone no,” he mused. “Things like that get out, and it’s bad for—”

  “Don’t say it, don’t say your brand—”

  “Maybe not me, but for all these fashion companies who dress me and dictate my wardrobe,” he finished, not exactly sounding like a full-throated defense of said companies.

  Sophie considered this in the pause that followed.

  He was probably right—she’d seen plenty of AskReddit threads about which celebs were genuinely nice and which were secretly assholes, and it was funny how one bad anecdote always managed to spawn at least a dozen comments with people saying how their perceptions of the famous person were hereby changed forever. All it took was one bad day, or an accidental off-the-cuff remark, and it could have repercussions for years.

  Of course, Hollywood types were experts at deflecting that kind of thing, at hushing up and smoothing over scandals or even the smallest of spats.

  “I dunno,” said Sophie, spearing the last coconut-covered ball of fish on the plate in front of them before he could, “I think you do it because you enjoy it.”

  “Enjoy what?”

  “The attention. You like being the person everyone wants to talk to, you like—”

  Tristan seemed to be holding his breath all of a sudden. Sophie searched for the right word.

  “You like being seen,” she concluded.

  “Well, certainly. That’s the bulk of the job.” He shifted in his seat a little, and Tristan’s expression went a little sanctimonious, if she said so herself. “And really, if someone’s day is made, or uplifted a bit, then how am I supposed to help it if someone recognizes me—”

  “Oh, come on,” Sophie interrupted in a teasing voice. “You poor thing, people validating you and giving you exactly what you want most in life, it must be sooo haaard, being gorgeous and talented and kind like that.”

  Tristan smiled, apparently pleased with Sophie’s assessment of him, but he was gracious enough to find it charming instead of something to lord over her the way some asshole would. The way a lesser being would. Not Tristan Eccleston, the sweetest and most genuine man who’d ever thrown her off her stride. It was off-putting, but she’d spent enough time with him to see that it was either one hundred percent real, or he was a hyper-empathetic robot designed by an elite team of psychologists in an underground bunker.

  Goddamnit, he was nice, and he took things like being openly criticized so calmly. And he was good-looking, that was true, and he was patient and polite, even winning, if people still said that about other people, and he was more than she was really equipped to handle, and this was probably all a bad idea, and now her arms were starting to itch.

  Was everyone in here staring at them? It was hard to tell—all the seats in the restaurant were effectively private from the sheer height of the red velvet booth backs, but she was back in the anxiety spiral, glancing from the picture windows to the couples over at the Chef’s Table counter. What if the waitresses had sold their work to FB2 already? Cell phone images never turned out right for Sophie, she had the worst angles, and the lighting in here was romantic, which meant she’d look like a 5th grader at camp telling spooky stories with a flashlight under her chin. She hadn’t put on a dress slinky enough for any of this, her heels weren’t high enough to fit in. People online were probably angry with her for something she didn’t even know about.

  Sophie forced herself to take a deep breath, partly because her thoughts were getting too jumbled, but mostly because Tristan was staring at her, and his face was starting to show concern.

  And she hadn’t even finished her first glass of wine pairing, good God, Sophie.

  This time, a waiter brought the second course, and set it on the table before striding efficiently in the direction of the kitchen without a second glance.

  “I think he’s highly confident that we’ll enjoy this,” said Tristan, looking after the young man.

  Sophie peered at the ravioli, which the menu had described as a delectably spiced surprise, a turn from the ordinary of tomato umami. It was slightly orange, like it might taste like a pumpkin spiced latte. But it was… sweet, and then sharp and citrus, and warm, and even better than a PSL, not like a sticky syrupy dessert—she could close her eyes and think of flannel, chunky knit scarves, knee-high boots, college girls in quilted vests in the pumpkin patch. It wasn’t the cinnamon or sage, it was…

  “This is something else,” said Tristan, gesturing at it with his fork.

  “It’s so strange how Los Angeles doesn’t change seasons,” said Sophie. From his curious look, she went on: “I think this is making me miss Omaha a little. The leaves have probably already started changing colors.”

  “What’s it like there?”

  “Omaha?”

  “Mmm. Apart from not having spectacular views of mansions, hills, and palm trees.”

  “Why, you suddenly interested in taking a vacation to thrilling, exotic fly-over country? You could go see the butter sculpture at the state fair.” She didn’t know why, but her voice had gone almost hostile. Sophie took a breath and gave him a half-smile.

  Tristan set his fork down next to the empty bowl in front of him. They had both practically inhaled the ravioli, and Sophie was curious if they could replace all the other courses with more of the same.

  “Well, I have been meaning to ask you that, but I didn’t want this to turn into an interrogation,” he replied.

  Sophie felt the rush come back to her, that they were on a date, that this was what couples did. Eat fancy dinners and be on their best behavior while trying to get to know a complete stranger without revealing all the crazy parts of themselves underneath too soon. Social conventions conspired to put so many obstacles in front of such a simple goal.

  “Well, you know it’s very flat,” she said truthfully, “And not as big as LA, obviously, but when you’re from there and you know the streets and neighborhoods, and you know where everything is supposed to be, that’s reassuring.”

  Tristan leaned back in his ch
air and seemed to be mulling this over as the waiter from before began to clear away the plates. They had the roast beef heart—“I was going to dare you to try it, but I see you’re admirably halfway through,” said Tristan, to which Sophie replied that Nebraska had four times as many cattle as people, and this wasn’t even the most surprising part of the animal she’d ever eaten—and the lamb lollipop before a nondescript middle-aged man approached the table.

  “Tristan!” The man cried, “Sorry to interrupt your date, but I saw you from across the room and wanted to touch base, say hi.”

  Her date swallowed his wine very quickly, cleared his throat, and introduced her to Keith Haugerman, who was a producer—“And screenwriter, if I can ever get my ass in that office chair,” he said, laughing—for an indie film studio owned by one of the larger companies.

  “Mostly we specialize in those straitlaced stories that get circulated around art houses and film circuits. Women in corsets and big hats talking in hushed tones about restraint and dignity. Usually there’s a pond or something involved.”

  “Sounds like quite the production,” said Sophie.

  “The costuming is just incredible,” Keith replied, “And the dialogue has to be just pitch-perfect. In fact—”

  “Sophie is the writer of the comic book series that Card One is filming right now. She’s joined the crew to keep us all on task and accurate to her vision,” Tristan said, and Keith made an impressed sound and gestured back and forth between the two of them.

  “So you two must have a lot to talk about!” Both he and Tristan began chuckling.

  “No doubt, no doubt,” Tristan murmured. He tapped his fingers against the stem of his wine glass.

  “Well, I don’t suppose you’d have any time next week for a call,” Keith began again, wincing slightly like he was reluctant to put demands on Tristan’s time. Sophie suspected this man demanded a lot of people’s time whenever he felt like it.

  “We’ll talk,” her date replied. Keith jabbed one finger in the air toward Tristan.

  “He’s the best!” The man cried, and ambled off in another direction.