Chapter Text
oh, be my once in a lifetime
Allie spent the summer before her senior year of college in France. It was all she talked about for months. Her friends got sick of hearing about french accents and french boys and french pastries.
Really, everything starts for Allie in France. She can go back farther than that, back to Cassandra being sick, to the first time she made chocolate chip cookies, to college and every single meal she made in that tiny dorm kitchen.
France is bigger than all of that, though. France is everything.
And then Harry Bingham comes along, and suddenly he’s the start. Suddenly, he’s everything.
God, that sounds cheesy, and she hates that, but, fuck, he’s everything.
So, picture this, Allie Pressman, star of the hit Youtube show Gourmet Makes, sitting on her sale section Urban Outfitters white feather down comforter (the one that keeps leaking feathers onto her hoodies) crying very ugly tears of mascara down her face because the waterproof stuff leaves her looking like a raccoon when she tries to remove it.
She’s sitting on her bed and trying really hard not to think about how much she misses a purple fuzzy blanket and a harvard fuzzy blanket. She’s sitting on her bed and crying and thinking about too many things that remind her of him. (Chocolate Chip Cookies. Fuzzy blankets and neck pillows and cab rides. Blue Toyota Corollas and chocolate macarons and film cameras. Instagram and Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hawaii.
There are so many fucking things that make her think of him. Oh god, she’s in deep.)
So, there she is, crying way too much, way too hard, crying hard enough that she’s finding it difficult to breathe or see. And then there’s a figure in the door with blonde hair and what Allie hopes is a cup of tea.
It’s Elle because Elle is amazing and kind and caring and way too good for Allie. Elle is the perfect roommate. Allie is a crying mess that does not deserve to be comforted.
She met Elle in college, Freshman year. They were roommates and Elle was dating Allie’s cousin (the one who’s a complete and total asshole. Elle and Allie became better friends after Campbell was gone and Elle could breathe again) and everything was just a little bit easier. Elle was one of the few people who’d let Allie talk incessantly about France, and Elle’s the most constant figure in her life. Except for maybe Harry. Who she shouldn’t be thinking about (because she fucked everything up).
“You okay?” Elle asks softly, sitting down next to her on that stupid old comforter. She puts the cup of tea (everything’s coming into focus again. Allie’s hiccuping and afraid to look in a mirror, but also only barely crying) on the bedside table and stares at Allie.
“No.” Fuck, it feels really good to say that. No, everything is not okay. She has fucked up. She has messed things up and everything is very much not okay. She really wants to drink that tea right now. It’s steaming though, steaming just a little too much and probably too hot. Elle was probably just looking out for her by putting it on the table. God, Elle is too good to her.
“So everything went wrong?” Elle asks softly. Allie reasons that that’s one way to put it. Everything went wrong is definitely one way to put it.
Allie nods and waits for Elle to say I told you so.
The I told you so doesn’t come. Elle says “sorry” all soft and quiet and sympathetic and Allie cries some more.
She wishes she could take a self depricating seflie of her stupid mascara tears, but the only person she thinks she’d send it to is Harry and she’s got to get herself to stop thinking about him.
She wants to think of something that doesn’t feel tinged with Harry. She gives herself two seconds to come up with something. Nothing comes to mind. More tears. Fuck.
Elle gives her a moment to wallow before asking, softly again because she knows Allie could do with something soft, “What happened?”
And Allie pauses her crying and thinks. There are two ways she could go about telling Elle about what a mess she just made. One involves thinking about everything before tonight, about the very start and the end (the whole point to them was that the end wouldn’t feel like the end, that it would just become something new for both of them and it would be clean and simple and nothing like how this feels right now) and everything in between. The other, the easier option, the less tiring option, involves tonight and only tonight.
Guess which option she picks. (Number two. Obviously.)
“He got offered a job at the Times and didn’t tell me about it and I kinda freaked out at him and he reminded me that we decided to keep things casual and that,” she swallows a very quickly rising lump and tries to remain composed because that’s why she picked option number two, to remain composed and calm and attempt to regain some semblance of control. She’s failing at all of that.
“He reminded me that I decided we weren’t in a relationship and that because of that I had no right to be upset,” Allie finishes. She reaches for the cup of tea and takes a very long sip.
“And you played the ‘best friend’ card?” Elle asks because she knows Allie way too well.
The tea returns to the table. Allie falls backwards onto the bed, her stare fixed on the ceiling. “Yep.”
Elle lays down next to her. “How many times?”
Allie’s face scrunches up. “Twice.”
They lay in relative silence for a second. Allie sniffles rather loudly and Elle doesn’t laugh. Allie’s very thankful that Elle doesn’t laugh.
“I’m so stupid,” Allie finally says.
Elle sighs. “No you’re not.”
Allie sits up, fast enough that she might even call it a sit-up which she shouldn’t be able to do because she’s never had abs. It makes her dizzy but she thinks she deserves that. “Yes I am. It was-- it was stupid of me to even care about the job offer, but,” Oh my god she’s talking fast. She wonders if Elle is keeping up. Actually no, it doesn’t matter, this feels like something that’s more for herself than anyone else.
“But he told Grizz before he told me. Grizz! And it’s not like-- it’s not like he’s been fucking Grizz for the past almost year. God I just-- what if he’s right? What if we really are nothing? Or were nothing, now that it’s… now that it’s over.”
Elle sits up too, much more gracefully than Allie. “It’s not over.”
“Yeah it is.” Allie breathes the words out with just a bit of a cry. She doesn’t want to believe them so bad it hurts.
Elle moves to pull some of Allie’s hair from in front of her face, braiding it back in a way that’s calming, that reminds her of Cassandra and being in high school.
“No it’s not,” Elle continues. “It’s not over until you two talk. You two will talk, not tonight because you’re a bit of a mess and, knowing Harry he’s probably not much better, and then everything will be okay.”
She doesn’t say anything, but fuck, she really wants to belive Elle.
Allie wonders if she just got dumped, if she can call it that if they were never really together. She wonders if they were ever never really together.
She doesn’t know. That makes her cry harder.
She doesn’t remember the first time he flirted with her, and she doesn’t remember the first time she flirted back either. She doesn’t remember the moment in which they became friends.
She does, however, remember them meeting, her showing up late for the first day of work and him teasing her for it. And she remembers the first time they kissed and the first time they had sex as though it was all just one big moment punctuated by heavy rain outside and the lingering thought that what they’re doing isn’t exactly the definition of a good idea.
She thinks that there’s a million moments in which their casual friends with benefits thing became something more serious, that maybe it was when he learned how she took her tea, or when they started to coordinate days off. Maybe it was when they went home for Thanksgiving together, or maybe it was before that even, maybe it was at Kelly and Becca’s wedding way back at the start.
Or maybe it was never casual, because they were always complete shit at that anyway.
Elle tells her that it’s not just her fault, that Harry fucked up too, finishes the french braid and points to the clock before saying that Allie should try to sleep off all of the crying.
Allie nods because Elle is obviously in a better place mentally than she is right now and probably giving some good advice. It’d be really nice to sleep off all of the crying. Her face hurts.
Only Allie can’t sleep. Which sucks because she’d really like to be able to sleep. (It’s one AM and she’s exhausted, tired straight down to her bones.)
Instead of sleeping, she she washes the mascara tears off of her face with an overpriced Glossier cleanser that she’s kind of in love with, changes into a hoodie and leggings, and stares out the bathroom window at the puddles on the sidewalk and the street lamp and then at the moon because of course it’s full tonight.
All she wants is for everything to be alright. She just wants everything to be okay, and she wants to stop missing him like her life depends on it.
And so instead of sleeping and after she’s done staring at the street through her bathroom window, she puts in her earbuds, not her airpods, the ones that Harry made her buy that are at his place in a yellow case, and listens to her pity party playlist.
On her phone, with night mode turned on because Cassandra always says that blue light at night was bad for your eyes and Allie already feels a headache from all of the crying beginning to form, she makes a list of reasons why everything went wrong. She wishes she could pretend that everything going wrong tonight hadn’t been the culmination of a bunch of really shitty decisions but she can’t. So she tries to make a fucking list because why not.
She only gets two reasons in, one of them being an argument over chocolate chip cookies and the other on coffee versus tea, before giving up. Cassandra’s the one who makes lists. Cassandra makes lists and plans and has everything figured out. Cassandra is in control of her life and Allie is not.
Speaking of stupid Cassandra and her stupid well put together life, Allie can’t help but think of where her sister must be right now. Her phone screen is tinged orange as Allie searches the time in Belgium because she can’t stop thinking about the Belgium waffles Harry would make on weekend mornings and because she’s pretty sure Belgium is a European country that Cassandra could conceivably be in. The internet tells her that it’s 8 AM there right now. Allie doesn’t feel guilty calling.
She figures that at first it was just sex. That was how she convinced herself that it was casual, because everything stayed the same except for the fact that they’d go over to his place and fuck sometimes. That was it.
Only suddenly that wasn’t just it.
And maybe Allie’s complete shit with change. Maybe she likes things to stay the same for as long as humanly possible just to avoid it. Maybe she likes structure and stability and constants.
This all probably has something to do with Cassandra being sick, but she’s not going to get into that. Nope, not gonna get into that.
(Spending her entire childhood in waiting rooms and at her grandparents house and the smell of hospital soap and her mom telling her over and over that everything would be alright.)
In the beginning it was just sex, and by the end it’s two best friends living together and also having sex. Oh and also these two best friends work together, so that complicates things even further.
Fuck, Allie’s going to have to get a new job now.
The phone rings twice before Cassandra picks up.
“So did everything go wrong?” Cassandra asks, sounding way too smug. Allie thinks very briefly about hanging up. Or lying. How difficult would it be to lie to Cassandra and say some shit like nope, Harry and I are great. Just wanted to see how you’re doing’?
It’d be really difficult.
“Yeah, Cass, I think I fucked everything up.”
“I’m sorry.” Her sister sounds softer than before. Allie lays down on her bed, curled up on top of her comforter, phone pressed against her ear.
“I just don’t know what to do.” God, she sounds desperate right now. She sounds like a child, like a teenager with a broken heart. That’s so dramatic. She is being so fucking dramatic right now.
“Well it’s what-- three in the morning where you are? There’s not a lot you really can do.” Cassandra sounds like she’s just gotten her first caffeine hit of the day; light, casual, a little bit of humor. Allie wishes she could reach through the phone and punch her.
“I don’t know much about you and Harry, but from what I’ve gathered through the internet, he seems to really like you. Don’t worry.”
“But what if I fucked everything up?” Allie seems to be saying that a lot.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I was the one who didn’t want things to change, and I was the one who refused to acknowledge everything that was going on and how much I depend on him and--” Allie swallows, biting the inside of her mouth. “It’s just scary, the idea of him being there, and I just fucking realised that.”
“So you love him?
Allie pauses, stops breathing for a moment as she thinks about how this started so simply and how now she really can’t imagine a future, a good future, a solid future, a happy future, that doesn’t involve Harry.
Her screen is tinged orange and it’s two AM and fuck, she loves him. She loves a lot of things about him, and she’s known that for forever, but it’s never really hit her that she loves him, it never really hit her that that means something.
She takes a deep breath. “Yeah, I think so.”
“I just want you to be happy, Allie,” Cass says softly. Allie thought she was all cried out but fuck was she wrong.
“How do I fix everything?”
“Talk.” Cass says as though it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. Allie knows for a fact that it is not.
Soon after that, Cassandra says a soft goodbye and Allie pulls the covers over top of her. In her head, she makes a plan to rush to Harry’s as soon as the sun comes up. She’ll bring him a coffee, that fancy turkish coffee with the thick foam that’s mostly sweet and only slightly bitter, and maybe he’ll forgive her.
They were always at his place because it was larger. Only barely, but he also didn’t have a roommate, and all of his appliances were brand new, and he had roof access so they could go up there and stare at the city.
Allie swears that the city looks the best from his rooftop.
She has never been one for slow move-ins, for taking over someone’s closet and kitchen and bookshelves, but she realizes now that that’s what happened with Harry. It started with a change of clothes so they could go straight from his place to work. Then she has a shelf in his bathroom cabinet and a drawer in his dresser. The drawer became half his closet and neither said anything.
Harry must’ve known what was happening. He encouraged it even, making space and telling her to spend the night over and over again. She hadn’t thought anything of it. She’d gone along with it, texting Elle that she wasn’t going to be home, cuddling up against him on the couch while they watched cooking shows, eating Belgium waffles on the weekends and making cherry pie while wearing just his old Harvard shirt.
She started buying groceries for him, taking the produce she’d bought back to his place in the reusable cloth bags he kept in a drawer in his kitchen. Allie thinks that that’s when she should have realized what was going on.
She didn’t, though. Instead, she kept pretending like nothing had changed, like everything was the same as it had been at the start.
And he pretended with her. That’s why everything was able to go so incredibly wrong.
She wakes up to someone knocking on the door.
This is all her fault, all on her for choosing the room closest to the front door. Maybe if she hadn’t she wouldn’t be stuck trying to cover her ears with the singular pillow on her bed (yep, that’s right, the rest of them are at Harry’s. Good guess).
Fuck, she is so tired. Her eyes feel puffy and everything is a little bit hazier than it should be. It’s bright outside, surprisingly, the sun out and the sky blue. It looks warm, though Allie knows it must be freezing out.
Even with the pillow over her ears, she can hear Elle moving to unlock the door. The knocking stops. Allie thinks she hears him.
Harry Bingham.
She throws the pillow off of her way too quickly for someone who has gotten as little sleep as she has and strains to hear his voice again because there is a very solid chance that it’s not him at the door, that she’s going crazy or maybe just dreaming. There’s a good chance that she’s hearing things, or convincing herself that he’s there so she doesn’t have to walk in the cold over to his place later to apologize.
“Just let me talk to her, Elle.” Nope, definitely him. She sits up so fast that her head spins little. She doesn't care. He’s at her fucking door and oh my god does she deserve any of the people in her life? No, the answer is no.
It’s nine in the morning the day after their big fight and he’s here to… fuck, maybe he’s here to officially end it. Maybe this is Harry breaking up with her. Maybe he has a box of her things, and maybe she’s going to have to quit Bon Appetit.
She really hopes he’s not.
“She’s not even awake yet, Harry.” The floor is very cold. Her slippers are at his place. She really did do this to herself.
"I'll wait." He sounds determined and Allie is really starting to think about crying all over again because, fuck, she was the one who messed up and she’s the one who should be out on his doorstep begging to talk to him.
He beat her to it. The audacity.
"Harry..."
"I just need to talk to her, alright?" Now he sounds a little desperate. He doesn’t sound like someone who’s about to break her heart. Which is good. She’s not sure if she can handle much more crying.
Allie stands on the way too cold hardwood floor and looks towards the door, imagining him, hair all over the place, tired. She's still tired. And then suddenly, quite possibly because she’s stupid and tired and wanting to see if it’s really him, she's going towards it, nudging Elle away with a half shrug.
"Hey Harry."
Something much like relief flashes across his face. His eyes light up just a little. She gets shaky. It was one night, one fight, and fuck, she missed him. "I'm sorry. I should've told you."
She pushes them out into the hallway, shutting the door behind her. "I just..." She leans against the wall, arms crossed. She thinks that her hair is one big knot, not that that’s important right now. He takes a step towards her. "I want to be a part of your life, someone you factor into these decisions, not some afterthought who doesn't even get to hear the news straight from you."
"Allie--"
"And I was wrong trying to pretend nothing was changing and I fucked up and I played the best friend card twice which isn’t surprising but also not okay, and I hope it’s not too late because I don't know if just friends is enough anymore. You were right; this is starting to feel a lot more personal than just two friends who sleep together."
He's right there, standing close enough that she has to tilt her head back to look him in the eyes.
"And I think I live at your place," she says quietly, nervously, as though saying it is the final nail in the coffin of everything changing. Only, then there's a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth; and then hers too. "Did you know that?"
"Yeah." She sighs, soft and heavy. Of course that asshole knew. God, is she really that oblivious?
Doesn’t matter. Allie laughs, laughs while staring up at him, laughs while kissing him, laughs while wondering if she's the last one to realize any of this.
She is. That doesn’t matter much anymore either.
They drink the turkish coffee, with it’s foam and sweetness and tiny bitter tinge at the very end, at her kitchen island. Elle tells them that they’re both idiots. Neither disagree.
Six Months Later
Harry and Allie Make Bread Part one: “Is it supposed to look like that?” | Bon Appetit
Bon Appetit • 2.5M view • 3 days ago
Allie pulls a bowl full of flour closer to her. Her apron strings aren’t tied but it looks like she thinks they are. Everyone behind the camera is waiting for a certain someone to come up and tie them. “Harry forces me to bake bread in the kitchen so that it’ll smell good.”
Harry walks into the shot. “It was one time, Pressman.”
Allie turns to him and makes some sort of mocking face. He grins back and moves to tie her apron strings. Someone behind the camera, most likely Becca, snorts.
“I feel like I’m being used for my bread baking abilities. Is that the only reason why you want to hang out with me?” Allie jokes. They are yet to begin the recipe. No one tells them off for wasting time.
Harry grins at her, completely ignoring the camera. “Definitely not the only reason why I want to hang out with you.”
“Oh yeah? What’s the reason?”
“I think you know the reason, Pressman.”
Allie turns to face the camera. She very dramatically rolls her eyes. “Today we’re baking bread.”
Harry moves to focus on the camera too. “It’ll make your kitchen smell good.
Lolquarentine 1 day ago
the kitchen. imagine this: allie and harry baking bread in their kitchen like a fucking couple
View 1 reply v
iwoulddieforhallie 2 days ago
they really do be living together doe
View 3 replies v
2020themovie 2 days ago
I would make allie pressman bake bread in my kitchen to make it smell nice too.
They take the subway to work. It’s early, too early and she’s nearly asleep beside him, leaning on his shoulder. She almost spills her coffee. Harry laughs at her. It is still too early.
They had to tell HR about their relationship because that’s the courteous and professional thing to do. Allie writes an email that’s a bit too long explaining their dynamic and how this won’t affect our work as though she hadn’t been strongly considering quitting if Harry broke up with her. Harry proofreads the email because he was an english major in college. Otherwise, she would’ve had Helena read it over for her.
Allie thinks it’s a good thing that they don’t work for Buzzfeed because Bon Appetit does not once ask to monetize their relationship. At least not directly. They definitely don’t forbid Allie and Harry from filming together or even attempt to edit out any flirting, but that’s just the same as before so it doesn’t really count.
“I can’t believe you two thought everyone didn’t know,” Helena says to them when they come out and say hey, we’re dating.
And Grizz is right there too, nodding his head in agreement with Helena. “You guys are not subtle at all.”
Harry scoffs. “Well I mean-”
“Hawaii. Thanksgiving. The fact that you two would walk in here together every morning and that you also never stop flirting,” Grizz lists.
Bean, somewhere across the room shouts, “I fucking called it.” Allie swears that her and Harry were the last to admit that something was going on between them.
They make two different batches of chocolate chip cookies because they still can’t agree on who's cookie is better. Harry sets up three polling locations to reduce voter suppression. Allie tells him not to joke about that because Cassandra might kill him.
His rooftop-- no, their, their rooftop because they live together now and are in a well defined and healthy relationship instead of some friends with benefits type deal-- is filled with people. The whole dinner party is completely random, which is exactly how Harry likes to host them. He likes to have dinner parties for absolutely no reason. And it’s on his roof, because he also likes to show off that he has roof access. God, that they have roof access.
Is she going to become one of those people who shows off the fact that they have roof access?
Doesn’t matter. Nope. It does not matter who she becomes in the future because she lives in the now and the now has a full spread of food made by very talented chefs. At least Harry had the sense to force everyone to bring a dish. She’s pretty sure Grizz made macaroni and cheese.
“Do you think there’s anyway for us to keep the leftovers?” Harry asks and, god, they really do be on the same wavelength. It’s like he’s in her head. Did he see her eyeing the mac n cheese, or was it the second slice of chocolate cake that gave her away?
“We could sneak it inside and if anybody asks just tell them that it fell off the roof,” she offers and he nods.
“Genius idea, Pressman.”
She looks around the roof, spots Helena with her husband Luke next to the ricotta dumplings Harry always makes, Sam and Grizz sitting on some outdoor chairs talking with Becca and Kelly, Will standing with Bean and Jason and Gwen. And she spots Cassandra eating a chocolate chip cookie. Allie calls her over.
“Who’d you vote for, cookie A or cookie B?” Allie asks. Her and Harry had fought over who’d get to be cookie A and who’d get to be cookie B which is the stupidest thing to fight about. They had to flip a coin to decide. She’s cookie A which was the goal, but, again, the stupidest thing to fight about.
She thinks they might be a bit too competitive.
“B,” Cassandra answers, taking the last bite of the cookie. “I liked the texture better, and the other one was a little too sweet.”
Allie gasps. That was not the right answer.
And Harry turns to her, nudges her with his elbow and says, “I told you that an extra thirty seconds in the oven would make a difference.”
Allie makes a face at him before focusing on her sister. “How could you, Cass,” she jokes, and Cassandra shrugs. It takes all the restrain Allie has to not remind her sister of the time she burned water.
“She can’t help that she has working tastebuds, Allie,” Harry says, and she strongly considers packing up her stuff and moving back in with Elle. Just kidding. Elle doesn’t have roof access.
“I’m glad you two worked out,” Cassandra says, and Allie forgets for a second about her sister's betrayal.
Harry wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his side. She leans in a little closer. “Me too.”
Later, after everyone’s left and they’re cleaning up, Harry kisses her while they do the dishes. She’s drying plates as he finishes washing cups, and it’s so extremely reminiscent of how everything started that it makes her smile, wide and bright. It’s just a little crazy to think about how far they’ve come.
“I love you,” Allie says softly because it feels like something that’s supposed to be soft. “You know that, right?” And she wonders if she’s told him that before, because she’s known it for a little while now, probably since the very beginning, at least in some way.
And he grins at her. “I love you too.”
Grizz Makes Kimchi | It’s Alive | Bon Appetit
Bon Appetit • 4.5M view • 23 hours ago
For the first ten seconds of the video, the camera is focused on a jar of kimchi. Grizz is slightly out of focus in the background.
Harry and Allie are in the unfocused background too. They’re standing close near the door. They look like they’re talking, maybe about something serious. It’s blurry, but it looks like Harry's hand is resting against her cheek. It looks like, for a half a second, his lips are pressed against her’s.
The camera shifts and the focus settles on Grizz. He turns around and spots them, rolls his eyes. “PDA. Might have to report them to HR.” Behind the camera, Becca can be heard laughing.
“Forget about hallie,” Grizz says, pushing the jar closer to the camera. “Let’s make some kimchi.”
bonappletitbitch 20 hours ago
So they’re like a real real thing. Woah. They like, kiss and shit. Woah. Grizz is like, let’s give the people what they want. Thanks.
View 3 replies v
guessibetter 18 hours ago
THEY DID NOT JUST KISS WTF
View 5 replies v
you’reastar 22 hours ago
hi grizz i can’t just “forget about hallie”
View 2 replies v
HarryBingham posted a picture
HarryBingham happy to have you, pressman
Comments:
allie.pressman:
happy to have you too