Cole and Laila Are Just Friends

Chapter Eight

Cole

“See . . . I don’t care what you say . . .” Laila barely slowed down as she stuffed chocolate-chip pancakes into her mouth. “I could never make something this good. It’s not as simple as you like to pretend it is.”

How had they been having this same argument since they were teenagers? While she was in the bathroom washing her face and putting in her contacts, he had made an earnest attempt to covertly track down ingredients to make literally anything else. Maybe not instead of, since the least he owed her was her favorite breakfast food, but in addition to. He was a trained chef with more than a decade of experience creating recipes and stretching inventory as far as it could go. If he’d found so much as a potato, he would have been off to the races. But he had found absolutely nothing else to work with. Cole found that to be equal parts frustrating and endearing.

“Pancake mix. Water. Chocolate chips. Heat. Spatula. I’m not downplaying my talents here, Lai. That’s legitimately all there is to it.”

“Sure. Those are the components. But, I mean, using your own logic, water should be even easier to make. Two simple ingredients, right? But you wouldn’t be all shocked and dismayed if I wasn’t able to pull hydrogen and oxygen out of my cabinet and make water, would you?”

The corner of Cole’s lips tightened as he watched her and attempted to keep the smile from appearing too soon. The familiar back-and-forth banter was something he counted on, and the moment he appeared to relent and give up the fight, they would dissolve into laughter and move on to something else. And today, especially, he knew the something else was going to be a bit less carefree than their recurring flapjack feud.

He nodded and took a sip of his coffee. Thank goodness she at least kept coffee in stock. “Truthfully, yes. I think I would.”

“Oh, come on, Cole. How in the world could you expect me to know how to make H2O? Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

He contorted his face in offense as a dramatic gasp escaped. “I beg your pardon? I am not being ridiculous. For one thing, you’re smart enough to figure out whatever you want to figure out, and I really wish you would stop selling yourself short. But perhaps just as important, while we’re being scientific and all, are you forgetting that you are the one who just threw out a hypothesis”—Or theory? No . . . some other science-y word. How was he supposed to know? He’d mostly cheated off of Laila in science class—“and in this hypothesis, you store hydrogen and oxygen in your kitchen cabinets. I believe it’s reasonable to believe, by this same logic, that you would have some sort of idea what to do with them.”

She pointed her fork at him, three layers of pancake on the end. “Aha! See? You just inadvertently argued against yourself. I have pancake mix and chocolate chips in my cabinets, and yet I have no idea what to do with those ingredients.”

“Exactly, Laila. I made exactly the point I meant to make. You have pancake mix and chocolate chips in your cabinets, and I stand by my assertion that it’s completely reasonable to believe you would know what to do with them.”

She paused for a moment and then slumped back in her chair. “Oh.” She stuffed the three layers into her mouth and chewed. “Well, be that as it may, this,my friend, is not science. It’s art. You are an artist. And . . .” Her eyes suddenly took on a sparkling quality as she sat up straight again. She knew she had him beat. Actually, Cole saw, in the moment before she voiced her new argument, where she was going with it, and the smile finally overtook his face. Yep, she was right. She had him beat. “If I had some finger paints and a canvas board in my cabinet, you wouldn’t expect me to be able to paint the Mona Lisa.”

Boy, she sure was smug when she knew she was right.

“Touché.” He raised his hands in surrender. Although, considering what an artistic freak of nature Laila could be, he wouldn’t put it past her to do more with those simple components than what da Vinci had pulled together. Nevertheless, point well made.

How was it possible that they’d been having this argument since they were teenagers, and he never seemed to get tired of it?

He also never seemed to win.

He stood as she slid her final bite around in the syrup on her plate, stuffed it into her mouth, and set the fork down on the plate with a satisfied sigh. Cole took her plate along with his own and walked them over to the sink. She had a dishwasher—an extremely underutilized dishwasher—but he chose to run some hot water in the sink and wash the sticky plates by hand. He needed a moment with his back turned to her to prepare himself for the conversation they were about to have. He knew Laila well enough to know that right now, in the next few moments, was his best possible time to broach a difficult topic. She was riding a chocolate-chip pancake high. A chocolate-chip pancake high of his making. He could do no wrong in her eyes right now.

“So, um, I did come over to apologize, of course, but there’s something else I was hoping to talk to you about. Do you have a few minutes?” He knew she did. He’d canceled their ten o’clock.

“Sure. What’s up?”

As if he had just received a cue that his human was going to be hurt if this other human who gave off definite “dog person” vibes wasn’t careful, Cocaine Bear chose that moment to swirl his massive Ragdoll body between Cole’s ankles in a way that always reminded Cole of “Figure Eight,” clearly the creepiest of all Schoolhouse Rock songs.

He gently nudged the cat away—as gently as a cat that weighed the same as a seven-month-old human could be nudged if you hoped to get your point across—and cleared his throat. “I decided to close Cassidy’s.”

Laila was silent, and he almost turned to face her to try to interpret her thoughts, but he was pretty sure he already knew them. Or at least the “Goonies never say die” spirit behind whatever her thoughts might be at that moment. He wasn’t really any more interested in talking through all of that than he had been the night before.

“What do you mean you decided to close Cassidy’s?” Her voice was soft and shaky. “You mean you’re not even going to try to hang on to it?”

Alright. Here we go.

He set the two clean plates in the rack and rinsed off his hands—meticulously, stalling as much as he could—before drying them off and turning to face her. He didn’t want to fight with her, and if it was up to him, he wouldn’t. He hated disappointing her. He’d always hated disappointing her. The worst part about it was always the way she would insist he could never disappoint her. But he could. He had. And he was about to again.

“No. I’m not. But what I mean is I’m closed. Now. It’s over, so there’s no point trying to talk me out of it. I got in touch with the new owners—”

“Hang on.” Laila stood up and took a step toward him and then stopped and turned back. Ultimately she spoke from exactly where she had been standing to begin with. “You went from finding out this huge, life-altering news to ‘I’m done. Who do I need to talk to?’ in . . . what?” She glanced at her wrist and then realized she wasn’t wearing her watch yet. “Twelve hours? Without thinking it through? You just . . . made that decision?”

“In case you’ve forgotten, the decision was made for me. And if there were further decisions up for grabs, they were mine to make. And of course I thought it through. Have you ever known me not to think things through, Laila? But it didn’t take me twelve hours. I was on the phone with Alpine Ventures about an hour after you guys left last night.”

And then he was on the phone with Sebastian, canceling brunch and taking the first step toward what came next about twenty minutes after that.

She gasped. “Cole, what did you do?”

He threw his hands up in the air. It’s not as if he had expected anything other than this exact reaction, but for some reason he’d still rushed over there this morning excited. Excited that something in his life was about to change. Excited that a new path had popped up in front of him like one of those secret pipes to Bowser’s castle he used to lose his mind over when he was playing Super Mario Bros. Excited to bring her in on the decisions he had made, because the truth was it had felt wrong not to talk it through with her. Or if not wrong, weird. Super weird.

“I made sure I ended up in the best possible place I could with the hand I was dealt. That’s what I did. I convinced him to buy the appliances—”

“Oh, Cole . . .”

There it was. There was her disappointed voice. But it was the only thing that had made sense. He knew that.

The appliances were his. Four years ago, he’d completely modernized the kitchen, and foolishly thinking that Cassidy’s would someday be his, he hadn’t wanted to rely on his grandfather for anything else. He’d gotten the loan in his name, using his Jeep Wrangler as collateral. It hadn’t been enough collateral, of course, but a flawless relationship with the bank, a loan officer who had gone to prom with Cole’s mother back in the day, a down payment that he scraped together in part by selling all those now-valuable Nintendo gaming systems that had taught him to look for secret pipes, and a nearly suffocating interest rate had come together to get it done. And then he’d paid the loan off in forty-two months instead of sixty when Cassidy’s began turning into exactly what he always knew it could be.

“What else was I going to do? At least now I have something to live on while I figure out where I’m going to go.”

She clutched her stomach and sank back into her chair. “You mean while you figure out what you’re going to do.”

He’d known last night. When he’d flipped through the stack of bereavement cards in the back seat of his vehicle to find the business card he’d received and rather carelessly dismissed after Brynn and Seb’s wedding, he’d known. When he’d hurt her feelings by giving her the brush-off, he’d known. When he’d called Sebastian and asked if he could be a tagalong, he’d known. Maybe it hadn’t really cemented in his mind until this morning—this morning when he woke up and everything felt different, and it dawned on him that the thought of different was causing everything in him to speed up rather than slow down—but he’d known.

“No, Lai.” He shook his head, and he wanted nothing more than to tear his eyes away from hers so he wouldn’t have to witness the pain and confusion he was inflicting on her, but as she’d reminded him, that wasn’t who they were. “There’s nothing for me here anymore.”

It would have been so much easier to avoid eye contact. To not say the real things. To let the pain lie there until it didn’t matter so much that it was worth talking about. That’s what other people did, right?

Not Laila. And not Cole when Laila had anything to say about it.

“You’re not really going to make me say it, are you?” She was refusing to so much as blink and break the eye contact between them. “You’re not actually going to make me say what should only ever be said in a Reese Witherspoon movie. Are you?”

“Look, I know what you’re—”

“I’m here, Cole. I am. And, okay . . . maybe I’m not enough—”

“Lai, I didn’t mean—”

“But how dare you?” She stood from her chair again, and there was such passion and pain in her words. She was gearing up for the fight. She was there for it. But the way she stood so gingerly, clearly proceeding with caution to keep her sore back in check, made Cole want nothing more than to somehow make the fight go away. “How dare you say there’s nothing here for you?”

The fight had left his own voice, but none of the circumstances he was facing had changed. “What am I supposed to do? Cooking is all I know—”

“So cook.” She crossed her arms and said it as if it was the most obvious solution in the world. Easy. What’s the problem?

“Oh. Okay. Thanks. Hadn’t thought of that. Why didn’t you say so sooner?”

She rolled her eyes. “Sarcasm is such a good look on you, Cole.”

“About as good as blind, cheerful, oblivious optimism is on you, I’d imagine.”

Nope. When it was just the two of them, they certainly weren’t those people who avoided saying the hard things in order to avoid conflict.

Cole took a step toward her. “There is one other restaurant in town, and it’s currently closed. And even if it weren’t, after Andi gets back, you know that wouldn’t work either. She does the cooking at the Bean, and she’s not going to give up her kitchen. Nor would I want her to.”

“Why not? Apparently giving up kitchens isn’t any big thing. Takes less than an hour to decide to do it, right?” Laila took a step away from him. Not to put distance between them, it was immediately revealed, but to lean back against the kitchen wall for support. “I think she’d be happy to have you.”

Cole sighed. “Laila, would you please go sit down on the couch and relax? I’ll bring you some aspirin—”

“Once Andi gets back to town,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken at all, “you know she’s going to need some help getting things going again. And with Sebastian not working at Valet Forge anymore, she’s probably going to be spread pretty thin anyway. I’m sure she would be thrilled if—”

“You’re not listening to me!”

Cole had raised his voice for the first time, and Laila took note. That much was obvious. She may have remained unmoving against the wall, but her eyebrows darted up and stayed up. And her cheeks appeared to be on fire.

The cats had taken note, too, it seemed. Well, Cocaine Bear had. Gilbert Grape remained unaffected on his perch directly across from the open door of the kitchen, next to the east window in the living room where he was soaking in the morning sun, in the middle of the most thorough bath that any cat’s toes had ever received. But Cocaine Bear was definitely staring at him as if deciding whether to go straight for the eyes or if it would be better to slip something in his drink when he wasn’t looking.

Thatwas why he’d suggested naming him Cocaine Bear last year when Laila adopted him from the shelter in Grand Junction. Laila thought he was just trying to be funny, but no. It was this. The way the animal always seemed to have drug-fueled rage and murder in his eyes whenever he looked at Cole. Of course the cat loved Laila, so the version of him that she saw made even Shang-Chi—the former valet parking attendant / reluctant superhero—seem a bit too edgy.

Anyway, duplicitous felines aside, Cole had raised his voice, and Laila looked none too pleased about the fact.

“How many times do I have to tell you I’m fine? Stop babying me, Cole. This is about you, and you don’t get to yell at me because I’m not taking your expert advice when you are clearly not listening to anyone about anything. There isn’t a single person who knows you and loves you who would think this is a good idea. Not even one. Not that you asked anyone, I’m sure.” And then she added in a grumble under her breath, “Stubby McStubbornson.”

He would almost be amused if he wasn’t currently so frustrated with her. “I actually meant you weren’t listening to what I was trying to tell you about me.”

His voice was soft now, but her cheeks hadn’t gotten any less red. It would have been nice to think the anger had been replaced by embarrassment—not that he relished the thought of embarrassing her, even if right now maybe she sort of deserved it—but he figured nothing had been replaced. Nothing was gone. All of the emotions were just piling up and compounding on top of each other.

“Okay,” she responded, sitting back down in her chair—and working harder to cover up the grimace that resulted. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

She was the most important person in the world to him. He couldn’t remember far enough back to know if there had ever been a time when that wasn’t the case, but he felt fairly confident that a deep search through the archives would have come up empty anyway. There wasn’t a particular moment that he remembered. There wasn’t a singular moment when something had shifted and somewhere deep in his subconscious his soul had whispered, “She matters more than the rest.” It had just always been. He’d always known.

There were five of them who’d been born within ten months of each other in this tiny, insignificant town with—until the past couple years—an ever-shrinking population and shockingly few opportunities to meet anyone new. But he loved those other four, and apart from a few rebellious moments that he assumed weren’t all that different from what every other teenager experienced, he’d always been okay with his small but perfect circle, with Laila at the center of it. At least from his perspective. That hadn’t changed when Wes and Addie fell in love, and it hadn’t changed when Cole and Brynn tried dating each other for a few disastrous—and in retrospect, hilarious—weeks in high school. When Brynn left after graduation and Wes took off a few months later, and then ultimately Addie joined the air force, it was just the two of them after a lifetime of five. And they were devastated.

But it was somehow still okay.

“That was a crappy thing I said. Sorry.”

“Which thing? You’ve said a lot of crappy things today.” She huffed and crossed her arms, which just made him smile. Apparently he was done fighting.

“The Reese Witherspoon movie thing. Of course you’re here. And of course that’s important. But . . .” He pushed himself off from the counter behind him and ran his fingers through his hair before sitting down next to her at the table. “I don’t know what to do with this, Lai. I don’t know how I’m supposed to drive by Cassidy’s—heaven forbid anyone I know ever wants to meet there for dinner—and just be okay with it.”

She leaned in and placed her hands on his on the table. “Then why not fight to hold on to it? I know you don’t want to accept any charity or anything. I get that. But it’s Brynn and Sebastian. They could pay whatever the new owners wanted, and what’s more, you know how happy it would make them to do it.”

He knew she was right. Seb had tried to sell him on the idea last night when they spoke on the phone. But Seb’s thinking, even being the good guy and supportive friend that he was, wasn’t clouded by the glass-half-full outlook on life the way Laila’s was. It had been easy to make him understand why he couldn’t accept his generosity, no matter how much a part of him wanted to. Laila was going to be a tougher sell.

Cole studied her hands on his until he intuitively sensed that he was about to lose the silence. If he didn’t speak soon, she was going to mistake his silence for contemplation. But he was done thinking it through. The decision was made. “Cassidy’s isn’t really the problem though, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

He squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could, but he couldn’t block out the moment he’d never be able to escape. He tilted his head upward and peeked at her with one eye. “It doesn’t matter what happens now. Even if the new owner called me today and offered to cancel the whole deal, how would I ever get over the fact that this happened at all? How am I ever supposed to forgive him for this?”

“I know.” Her voice was soft. As much as his dismissal last night had hurt her, he figured her compassion for the pain she knew he was feeling and refusing to talk about was actually the primary culprit of the long night written across every inch of her face. “But isn’t that going to be the case whether you stay in Adelaide Springs or not? Isn’t it always going to suck?”

He chuckled painfully. “Now there’s that legendary Laila Olivet optimism I was counting on.”

“I’m just saying—”

“No, I know.” Cole nodded. “And you’re probably right. But I feel like right now I have to get away from here. I feel like if at least I’m not living in a house where his things are still everywhere, unable to avoid Cassidy’s, unable to avoid memories and dreams I’ve had for the future assaulting me on literally every corner . . .”

“Yeah.”

“I think it’s better to at least start trying to find an existence a little less saturated in torture and misery, you know?”

They sat unmoving and silent until Cole turned his hand under hers palm up so their fingers could intertwine. “But seriously, ignore that crappy straight-out-of-a-badly-written-movie stuff I said earlier.” He tapped the side of her hand with his thumb. “Being away from you is going to be its own brand of torture and misery.”

“Thank you! That’s all I wanted to hear you say. Was that so hard?”

He smiled at her and savored the comfort of just being with her. Just for an extra second. If he’d had any idea just how quickly everything would change, he would have grabbed a lot of extra seconds along the way. Every chance he had.

But with a sigh he acknowledged the end of the painfully short extra second. Just rip off the Band-Aid, Cole. “I met this chef at the wedding. A friend of Seb’s. Or the wife of a friend . . . something. Anyway, she really liked my food.”

Laila beamed at him. “Of course she did.”

“She offered me a job.”

Cole watched her take in a sharp breath and put in the necessary effort to lock her supportive smile and wide, interested eyes back in place in the same instant as that breath. “Oh.” Her eyes were growing wider and wider. Not in wonder or excitement, he knew, but because she was putting every effort into stabilization rather than allowing her features and her emotions to crash to the floor. “Um, well, of course anyone would be lucky to have you. Um . . . where is her . . . Where does she—”

“Williamsburg.” In his haste to rip off the Band-Aid, he’d been a little careless. He quickly realized his mistake as her shoulders relaxed and unmistakable relief softened every shadow across her face. “In Brooklyn. New York.”

Laila’s hand rolled out of his, landing with a thud as her knuckles hit the table. Along with her smile. His heart. So many different thuds all tied up in one woman’s sadness. “Oh, sure. Of course. That makes more sense. Are there even any restaurants in Williamsburg, Colorado? Is anything there apart from the prison museum?”

Cole hadn’t thought about that prison museum in a long time, but it had been a highlight of one of his favorite Colorado exploration trips with Laila. They’d been in their late twenties and endlessly amused by the department store mannequins, with their lipstick smiles and their “Trust me . . . you’ll look as good in these prison stripes as I do” poses playing the parts of incarcerated prisoners.

“I think Williamsburg is technically a little bigger than Adelaide Springs.”

“Then go there. Start over. Do for Williamsburg, Colorado, what Cassidy’s has done for Adelaide Springs. Or go work in some trendy place in Pueblo. Denver. Whatever.” She began running her finger across her bottom lip, maybe in an attempt to keep from chewing it to pieces. “If you really have to leave home, there are tons of options closer to—”

“I haven’t committed to anything yet, but I think it would be foolish not to at least—”

“Hang on.” She raised her hands in the space between them as her feet pushed back and the legs of her old wooden chair groaned in squeaky compliance with her desire to add to the space. “You’re actually considering this.”

“I texted her this morning. Set up a meeting for next Monday.”

“As in a week from tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” Cole tilted his head and spoke softly, still confident in his decision but feeling every last ounce of excitement he’d awakened with that morning dripping out of him. “I’m going to New York with Seb and Brynn. Just to familiarize myself with the place for a few days. And then in a week I’ll meet with her—”

“You’ve lost your mind!” Laila bolted from her chair but instantly seemed to realize she shouldn’t have. Her hand flew to her lower back as a jolt of pain resulted in a groan and tightly squeezed eyes, and Cole stood in response to her obvious discomfort. He tried to usher her back to her seat, but of course she wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of her telling him off. “You just went from zero to sixty on the road to a midlife crisis, and—”

“Lai, sit down.” His arms were outstretched to her, but she ignored them.

“Don’t you think this is just a little bit hasty, Cole? Are you seriously going to up and leave home the moment things get a little tricky?”

He wasn’t sure if it was her words or the fact she was no longer ignoring his attempts to aid her and had begun swatting at his arms instead, but he felt his adrenaline begin to pump.

“Seriously, Laila? A little tricky? You think this is the moment that things got ‘a little tricky’? From my perspective, I’m up and leaving home because it’s the only option I have right now, having been betrayed by the man who raised me. I have no choice but to leave home because everything I had planned for my future—everything—has been ripped out from under me. You understand that, right? ‘A little tricky.’” He collapsed onto the edge of the chair and muttered under his breath, “Potato, potahto.”

They stared at each other, and as her furrowed brow smoothed, Cole felt his pulse regulate again.

“I know,” she muttered. “Sorry. I’m being selfish.”

He shook his head. “No. It’s not that.”

“Well . . .” She sat back down in her chair and scooted it up to the table again. “It’s a little bit that. So I’ll try not to be. Selfish, I mean. But I need you to understand that from my perspective this is—”

“Coming from nowhere. I know.”

“Heartbreaking. I was going to say heartbreaking.” She looked down at her hands, resting in her lap, and then raised them to the table and lifted her eyes back to his, which were studying her with concern. “So tell me about this chef. She was at the wedding?”

“Yeah. I guess her husband and Seb were in the field together, in Syria or somewhere, years ago.” Cole settled back into his seat. “She said my baby quiches are better than the ones Wolfgang Puck makes for the Vanity Fair Oscar party. She used to work for Wolfgang Puck, I guess. And she called my Monte Cristos ‘le dernier cri,’ and I’m not entirely sure what that means, but she definitely said it like it was a good thing.”

Laila chuckled. “Oh, come on. Don’t act like you didn’t look it up first chance you had.”

“It’s French for ‘fashionable,’ basically. Which I found a little ironic since that obnoxious wedding planner Brynn consulted with in the beginning called the idea of mini Monte Cristos ‘gauche.’” He shrugged. “I think this chef—Sylvia Garos is her name—tried every single thing I made for the wedding, and she loved it all. She’s opening her own restaurant, and she offered me a job on the spot. I mean, not to be the head chef or anything. Obviously. She’s the head chef. But just to go and be a cook, I think.”

Laila squinted her eyes and studied him until Cole asked, “What?”

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

Finally. An easy question.

“Because, first of all, by the end of the night, Grandpa was gone. Lots of things went by the wayside. But even more than that . . .” How had all that hope and all that potentialbeen so real just a few days ago? “It didn’t seem urgent to tell you about it because there was zero chance I was even going to consider taking the job. The truth is, as she praised my quiches and Monte Cristos and some of these other foods that I had so little experience with, compared to steak and burgers and everything . . . That’s when I really started thinking seriously about opening Cassidy’s for breakfast and lunch. I thought maybe I could do it. Maybe I was good enough. And the first chance we had to talk, that was what I needed to talk to you about. I needed to know if you thought I could handle it.” He cleared his throat. “If you thought I was good enough.”

Cole didn’t have crises of confidence very often. Not when it came to his cooking, anyway. He knew what he was doing in the kitchen, and he got better all the time. Prior to culinary school, everything he’d learned had been taught by his grandmother. She’d taught him how to crack eggs with one hand and how to properly whisk, and by the age of ten he’d known every possible way to prepare a chili pepper. He could take those babies from the garden to any southwestern dish you were craving, by way of roasting, blistering, pickling . . . you name it.

But the most important thing she’d taught him was to trust his instincts. She’d told him that some people had the intuition needed to cook that way—to not be reliant on recipes and precise measurements—and some people simply didn’t. His mother and grandfather didn’t, Grandma had informed him. But she had also instructed him that anytime they went to the effort of cooking for him, he was to rave about whatever they prepared and finish off every last bite. For Cole and his grandmother, cooking was fun. For his mother and grandfather, it was work. But they put just as much love into that work as he and his grandmother put into their fun.

The results of that sort of love sometimes just didn’t taste as good, but he was never to tell them that.

“You know I think you’re good enough,” Laila whispered and then cleared her throat, and her voice grew stronger. “You know I think you’re the best. And that’s part of the reason I think it’s such a mistake to go to New York. You could do anything. Cook anywhere. And I think you’re selling yourself short. I think it’s a mistake to accept the first thing that came along—”

“I haven’t accepted it. Not yet. But I think it would be a mistake not to meet with her.” He really wished he could stay with Laila forever in the land of Yet to Fully Grasp the Situation. “But regardless, I am leaving, Lai. I’m not staying in Adelaide Springs. I’m going to New York with Brynn and Seb just to figure out if I could stand to live there, and to meet with Sylvia, but . . .” He leaned in and looped her index finger, which was nervously tapping on the table, in his. “It’s difficult to imagine I won’t take this job.”

“But what if a better offer comes along?”

“Better than an up-and-coming, James Beard Award–winning chef whose mentor is Wolfgang Puck and who already loves my food offering me a job in the kitchen of a restaurant in one of the trendiest neighborhoods in America, where there’s already an eight-month waiting list?”

A frown overtook her lips. Well, Laila’s version of a frown, anyway. She’d never really mastered the expression. Whenever she attempted it, it always ended up looking like she’d had a bad Botox experience. And somehow it was still adorable.

“Okay . . . I didn’t know any of that. But still. You know you’re going to miss being in charge of your own place. Don’t take this sitting down, Cole. Open up a restaurant in Williamsburg, Colorado, instead,” she pleaded. “Whoever’s in charge of dressing and posing the mannequins at the prison museum has to eat somewhere.”

He laughed and released her finger. “You know, you could always come with me.” Laila smiled in the exact same instant that the laughter fell from Cole’s face. “You should come with me. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.”

She quirked up her face and studied him and then rolled her eyes. “Be serious.”

“Don’t I look serious?”

This was the answer. He was sure of it.

“You need sleep.” She gathered the silverware from the table and stood to take it all to the sink. “I’m supposed to be the one who wears my heart on my sleeve and acts out of emotion and all of that. You’re the one who keeps us all from making really stupid decisions like this one.”

“This isn’t stupid.”

She dropped the utensils in the soapy water he had left in the sink and then turned to face him as they plopped. “My life is here, Cole.”

“I know I haven’t had the heart to officially lay you off yet, but you’ve been able to connect the dots and realize you’re currently as unemployed and destitute as I am. Right?”

“I’m not destitute. I just inherited some money, it seems. That will get me through for a while.” She shrugged. “And I’m only unemployed until the Bean reopens. If I have to, I’ll pick up odd jobs. I’m not picky.”

“If that’s the case, you can pick up odd jobs anywhere.”

“But that doesn’t change the fact that this is home. And I have a house I love. And cats. And I couldn’t possibly leave my dad and Melinda right now. Not with . . .” She swallowed hard as her entire face tightened. Cole understood every single thing she was feeling and opened his arms to her, and she accepted his offer.

“Of course. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

He laid his cheek on the top of her head as she rested hers against his chest. “I could go with you, you know. I mean, just for this little trip with Brynn and Seb. If you want me to.”

Well, that was just the most unnecessary sentence anyone had ever spoken.

“Of course I want you to!” He pulled back from her, beaming from ear to ear—an expression of joy that was not mirrored in front of him. “I’m sorry I didn’t think of that. I was just so busy—”

“Having a midlife crisis and resisting the urge to buy a sports car? Yeah, I know.”

Cole laughed and released her from his arms. “Seriously, Lai, this will be fun.”

“I have to be back before Melinda’s appointment next week.”

He nodded. “Definitely. And if you want, we can even pretend the plane is a boat and the clouds are water.” That had almost worked the first time they flew on a plane, when they unearthed Laila’s crippling fear of flying approximately five seconds after takeoff. But they’d been in second grade then. Cole wasn’t too convinced the tactic would work this time.

“Or we could take a train to New York. That could be fun.”

Cole chuckled. “Yeah, and we might even get there before it’s time to come back.”

She swallowed hard. “No, it will be fine. We’ll do the pretending-it’s-a-boat thing. But I do have one more favor to ask of you.”

He smiled and reached down to grab her hand. “Name it.”

“Can we also pretend that at some point throughout the course of this nightmare of a morning I went to the trouble to turn my pants the right way?”

He chuckled, tilted his head around to survey the flap on the back of her pajama bottoms, and shook his head. “Oh no. I’d sooner walk to New York than play along on that one.”