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If Ina Garten Were Your Best Friend
If Ina Garten were your best friend, you’d drink white wine inside the house, red wine outside, but only when Jeffrey was around. When he isn’t home, which is always, she’d offer you a big snifter of whiskey and you’d sit on top of her amazingly huge countertop while you drank, eating brownies and mac-and-cheese.
If Ina Garten were your best friend, she’d always ask you if the collar on her shirts were popped up properly. You’d always twiddle with the collar, even if it was fine, just to make sure she knew that you knew how seriously she took her collar game.
If Ina Garten were your best friend, you’d offer to cook for her at least once a month. She’d come to your house with Jeffrey and a nice bottle of wine and a nosegay of roses or hyacinths and hydrangeas. She’d ask really loudly, when she walked through the door, “What’s cooking?” and do her Betty Rubble-but-deeper-voiced laugh, and you’d laugh too. Jeffrey would pet your dogs, and then go take a nap on your sofa while the two of you would talk and laugh and cry in the kitchen. Jeffrey would always, miraculously, wake up right when dinner was finished. You’d laugh together about this, too.
If Ina Garten were your best friend, you’d go shopping at all the weird, cute, kitschy stores along the coast. She’d scrunch her nose up at you when you’d point to something really tacky, like a lighthouse wine bottle cooler, but you’d secretly buy it and give it to her for her birthday, just to get her to laugh. She would tell that story again and again at her parties, and TR would roll his eyes, but you wouldn’t mind.
If Ina Garten were your best friend, she’d ask you to come and sleep over on nights when Jeffrey was away. You’d stay in the guest house, and there’d be a pile of clean, fluffy towels on the bed next to a terrycloth robe. There’d be a monogrammed mug on the nightstand with your initials on it, and a copy of your favorite magazine under the mug. She’d leave you a note, “Call me at 10pm” and you would, and she’d say “Meet me in the kitchen,” and you would, and she’d give you a big hug and a kiss and then shove a plate of cookies and a glass of lactose-free milk in front of you. You’d eat and drink while she talked about her latest book project. Around 1am you’d prank call Jeffrey at whatever hotel he was staying at, pretending that…
