Read The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs Online
Authors: Dana Bate
The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs
The Girls’ Guide to Love and Supper Clubs
“Foodie fiction has a new it girl! Dana Bate’s debut,
The Girls’ Guide to Love and Supper Clubs
, is the kind of book you just devour. Hannah Sugarman is Bridget Jones with a killer cinnamon bun recipe, and you will cheer her triumphs in the kitchen while you suffer with her trials in love and life. A delicious read from appetizer to dessert.”
—Stacey Ballis, author of
Good Enough to Eat and Off the Menu
“Clever and charming.... The pages practically turn themselves—and thank goodness, because you’ll want both hands free to make Hannah’s mouthwatering carrot cake and other irresistible dishes. An absolute treat.”
—Jael McHenry, author of
The Kitchen Daughter
“Dana Bate’s delicious debut tells the story of Hannah Sugarman, whose passion for cooking is an escape from her pressure-filled life—until it causes more complications than ever. Hannah is the kind of heroine you'll root for, the descriptions of food are dangerously good, and Bate adds a healthy dash of humor to the mix.”
—Sarah Pekkanen, author of
These Girls
“Hannah is a girl I can relate to. She knows the value of a good carrot cake, and she’s sometimes the most awkward girl at the party. Hannah is like all of us: she has dreams that seem so right and yet, so terrifying. She reminds us that dreams are often chocolate frosted and hard fought, but the key ingredient is believing in yourself.”
—Joy Wilson, author of
Joy the Baker Cookbook
to my parents
Praise for The Girls’ Guide to Love and Supper Clubs
one
As soon as Adam pulls into his parents’ driveway, I panic: maybe the carrot cake was a mistake. Two days ago, it seemed like a great idea. Everyone loves my carrot cake. Everyone. Even my boss, Mark—a man who subsists on cheese sandwiches and hot dogs—even
he
loves my carrot cake. But the Prescotts aren’t like everyone else. They drive Lexuses and summer in Tuscany and keep a personal wine cellar at The Capital Grille. Adam’s mother will probably take one look at the cake and call it quaint. That’s what she called me once: quaint. A polite way of saying unsophisticated.
I should have made something fancier, like chocolate mousse. Or a Sacher torte. Why didn’t I listen to Adam when he said bringing dessert was a silly idea? Probably because “silly” has become his favorite word to describe my obsessive interest in food, followed immediately by “crazy.” His criticism functions as muddled background music, like when my parents talk about my “future” and “direction.” The words barely register anymore.
Adam parks the car along the cobblestone circular driveway in front of his parents’ Georgetown home, a pale yellow mansion that takes up the better part of a city block. Among the Federalist brick and clapboard town houses, all sandwiched together along the tree-lined streets, the Prescotts’ stand-alone home towers above the rest, with its creamy facade, jet-black shutters, and series of rectangular columns covered by tumbling sprays of wisteria and knotted ivy. It is one of the most beautiful homes I have ever seen. It is also one of the most intimidating.
Adam smoothes his gelled, chestnut hair with his hands and shoots me a sideways glance as he unbuckles his seat belt. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I say. But of course I’m not okay. Everything about this evening lies outside my comfort zone, and I wish Adam would turn the car around and drive the two miles back to our apartment in Logan Circle, a neighborhood whose character is more vintage thrift shop than vineyard vines. But we’re here, and I have a carrot cake in my lap. Turning around is not an option.
I throw off my seat belt and steal a glance in the car’s side mirror. Disaster. I spent an hour and a half grooming myself, but thanks to the July heat and humidity, my forehead glistens with sweat, and my wavy locks have swollen into a fluffy orange mass. One more thing for the Prescotts to love: their son is dating Carrot Top. Carrot Top with the carrot cake. Perfect.
Adam fumbles for the door handle as I shudder at my reflection. “Relax,” he says. “There’s nothing to be nervous about.”
“I know.” But that isn’t true. There’s plenty to be nervous about, and we both know it. It’s no accident that, in the fifteen months we’ve been dating, this is the first time his parents have invited me to their home, despite the fact that we live in the same city. I would say “better late than never,” but at the moment, the idea of “never” seems just fine.
“Oh, but could you not mention the apartment?” Adam asks. “I still haven’t told them.”
“We’ve been living together for three months.”
Adam scratches his square jawline and looks through the front windshield. “I’m waiting for the right time.”
Whatever that means. We dated for six months before he finally introduced me to his parents. Then, too, he was waiting for the “right time.” At this rate, it will probably be November before he tells them we moved in together. If we’re still together then. The way Adam has been acting lately, I don’t know what to think.
I hop out of the car and follow Adam as he makes his way to the front door, scrambling to keep up as I balance the carrot cake on my arms. “You know I’m the worst at keeping secrets,” I say.
“It’s just for tonight. Please? For me?”
I sigh. “Yeah, okay, whatever.”
“Thank you. We don’t need a repeat of The Capital Grille.”
That’s where his parents took us for lunch the first time they met me, and suffice it to say, the lunch did not go as planned. They immediately sniffed out my lack of good breeding, which came to a head when I accidentally spilled a glass of Martin Prescott’s 1996 Château Lafite in his lap and proceeded to wipe the area around his crotch with my napkin, while uttering a few words and thoughts I probably should have kept to myself. By the time lunch was over, the Prescotts had made up their minds: I lacked the poise and refinement required of a future First Lady, which meant I was an unsuitable match for their son. I can’t say I blame them.
Balancing the carrot cake on one hand, I smooth my navy sundress with the other, checking to make sure everything is in its right place. The dress’s bulk adequately disguises my curvy figure without looking like a nun’s habit—a strategic move on my part, because although Adam may enjoy staring at my ample bosom, I guarantee his mother will not. Adam is dressed in his typical uniform: navy polo shirt, khaki pants, and penny loafers. A generous squirt of gel holds his dark brown hair in place, and his skin is a toasty butterscotch, thanks to a few summer weekends on the tennis court.
I follow Adam up the broad front steps, past the potted boxwoods and hydrangea bushes, and as we reach the top, the front door swings open.
“Adam!”
Sandy Prescott bursts onto the front steps like a little hurricane of pastels and pearls and frosted hair. She wraps her arms around Adam and kisses him on the cheek, squeezing his shoulders with her bony hands. Martin stands with one hand tucked into the pocket of his salmon-colored chinos and extends the other toward me. Between his boat shoes and Sandy’s pastels, I feel like I interrupted a photo shoot for the Brooks Brothers summer catalog.
“Hannah,” Martin says, grabbing my right hand. He squeezes until I lose feeling in my fingers, the sort of crippling grip one might expect from a high-profile Washington lobbyist. “Good to see you again.”
“Likewise.”
Sandy nods and flashes a quick smile as she glances at my chest, which, apparently, I haven’t disguised well enough. “Hello, Hannah.”
She drags her eyes up and down the length of my figure and makes a light, almost imperceptible clucking sound with her tongue when she spies my faux-leather sandals. Strike one. Two, actually, if you count my unfortunate anatomy.
Sandy tears her eyes from my feet and motions toward the doorway. “Shall we?”
Adam pulls me through the front door into the foyer, a room roughly the size of Alaska with about as much warmth. The ceiling rises fifteen feet, with a crystal chandelier that descends from the top and sparkles like a mini-solar system in the summer sun. A curved staircase sweeps up to the second floor and envelops a round, Louis Quinze table, which sits atop the sleek white marble floor. The entire house reeks of money, even more money than I realized Adam’s family had, and I see now why his parents bristle at my blatant disinterest in Washington society.
“What do we have here?” Sandy asks, pointing to the crinkly mound of aluminum foil perched on my arms. I tried to cover the cake without letting the foil touch the cream cheese frosting—a goal easier in theory than in practice—which means the cake now resembles a fifth-grade science project.
“Dessert,” I say, pausing before mentioning the inevitable. “A carrot cake.”
Sandy smiles tightly. “Carrot cake,” she says, taking the cake from my hands. “How fun.”
Adam sighs. “It’s one of Hannah’s specialties. Making it is at least a two-day project. Quite the ordeal.”
Sandy stares at the mountain of foil and knits her brows together as she shakes her head. “That sounds like an
awful
lot of trouble for something like a carrot cake. I guess I’ve always figured that’s what bakeries are for.”