Chapter 6
Early on Sunday morning there’s a knock on my bedroom door. At my feet, Thisbe lifts her head, grunts, and then nestles back
into the covers.
“Yeah?” I croak.
It’s Mom. She’s still in her pajamas and she’s got a steaming mug of coffee with her. “Is it okay if I come in?”
“Yeah.”
I sit up as she hands the coffee to me. It’s got a foamy milk top dusted with cinnamon sugar.
“Is this a pumpkin spice latte?” I ask after I’ve taken a sip.
“Yes. With the homemade syrup and everything. Is it good?”
“Very,” I say, although I’m immediately suspicious. The pumpkin syrup is a huge pain to make. I know because I’ve been asking
her to make a batch every day since the calendar ticked over from August to September.
She perches on the edge of my bed and rubs Thisbe’s pale stomach. I watch her, waiting for her to get on with whatever favor
she’s about to ask me.
“So what’s up?” I prod.
“It’s about the event today.”
Sometimes she needs an extra pair of hands for her catering events if they’re understaffed, which is where I come in.
It’s usually easy stuff—pulling trays in and out of the warming ovens, refilling platters, that sort of thing—and she and Johnny pay well.
So I take as many shifts as they’re willing to give me.
I knew I was working today, so it’s not like she’s springing it on me.
“Okay. And . . . ?”
“I meant to mention this last night, but we won the contract for all the preproduction craft services. So the event today
is catering for the movie crew.”
“For the movie crew? As in, Luke’s movie?” I put the latte down on my nightstand. “No. If that’s the case, I reject your bribe,
because I would really, really like to not go.”
“We’re short-staffed as it is. If this is about running into Luke, there’s no way he’ll be there, honey. If he’s one of the
leads, he probably won’t even be in town until production starts, and by then our contract will be over. They’re bringing
in a caterer from the city for the actual filming.”
“He’s here already,” I tell her. “In town, I mean.”
She looks surprised. “He is? Have you talked to him?”
“No. Evie saw it online. Luke and I don’t talk anymore.”
Thisbe has wiggled herself around and has her head settled in Mom’s lap. Mom is playing with her ears. “Sure, but once upon
a time, you two were close. If he is there today, which I doubt he will be, I bet he’d be thrilled to see you.”
“That’s not the point. I’m not looking to be known as CeCe Lafayette ever again. As you know.”
“Of course,” Mom says. “And your secret is safe with me, you know that.”
I hate that she called it that—my secret. It makes it sound like my decision to keep my past private is somehow illicit. Whereas I prefer to think about it like shedding
a skin. Like I stepped out of who I was so I could move on in peace.
“But we’re down to the wire here,” she adds. “Will you still come?”
“Can Nicky do it?”
“He already went back to school. He has practice today. Please, Claire?”
I don’t want to leave her and Johnny in the lurch. And unless he’s an executive producer or something, the odds of Luke being
at a preproduction meeting are super low—although not impossible. I’ll just have to white-knuckle through today, pray he’s
not there, and then I won’t sign up to help with a single other crafty gig.
“Fine. I’ll come.” I take a long sip of my pumpkin latte. “But I want a refill.”
On the drive over, I put my window down.
It’s a perfect October day, with a crisp blue sky and a chill in the air, the kind of sweater weather that Connecticut is famous for.
Soon we pull into a small parking lot in front of an old-fashioned, imposing brick building, right on the border between Westbury and Glenridge.
It used to be a boarding school for “troubled boys” through the early 1980s, before it was shut down.
Since then it’s been a bunch of things, most recently a coworking space that went out of business during Covid.
It’s been vacant since then. This must be where they’re setting up “camp” for production, and I bet it’s where they’ll be doing the bulk of their interior filming.
Everything is mostly set up and ready to go when Mom and I arrive. Because of the building’s past lives, it has a functional
industrial kitchen, which is a way better setup than most catering gigs I’ve helped them with. Most of the food was pre-prepped,
as usual, but it’s nice to have an actual kitchen as our command center.
“Yo, Claire,” Johnny says when he sees me. Though because of his thick Boston accent it comes out as “Yo, Clayh.” He’s wearing
a black chef’s coat with Nina’s Catering stitched on the chest in white thread and a backward Red Sox hat. “I forgot you were staffed today. I would have saved you
some of my burrito.”
“You finished it already?” Johnny always gives me at least half of whatever he made himself for breakfast. His breakfast burritos
could win awards. Inspire armies. I tuck my coat on the lower level of the steel island at the center of the kitchen and hold
my hands to my heart in mock anguish. “How could you?”
“I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”
Johnny’s the best. He was the one with the start-up capital for the company, but he wanted Mom to be the “face” of it, which is why it’s called Nina’s Catering.
Faded tattoos cover his arms. He’s got an enormous Irish Catholic family spread out across Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey.
He could run a Michelin three-star restaurant in New York City if he wanted, but he’s always said he wants his life to have lower-key vibes.
“Need coffee?” I ask.
“Please. My empty’s right there,” he says, nodding at a plastic quart container. I will never understand why he doesn’t use
a mug or a thermos like a normal person. He says it’s an old habit from his restaurant days.
“Four hours, team, and then we’re done,” Johnny announces after I give him his refill—just me, Mom, Johnny, and an older woman
named Keira. “Let’s keep the coffee hot and the bagels rolling!”
“Roger that,” Mom says, giving him two thumbs-up like a dork.
I look between them. If only. Johnny is the kind of guy I wish Mom would date, instead of Todd; too bad he’s been dating the
same woman ever since we moved here.
Most of what we’re doing today is portable breakfast goods: bagels, scones, muffins, hard-boiled eggs, fruit, coffee and tea,
that sort of thing. The bulk of the work will be running the food upstairs, where the crew is using one of the larger coworking
“offices” as their main meeting room.
When we’re about to run up the first round of food, my phone buzzes. Three, four, then five rapid-fire texts from Evie show up on my screen.
EVIE:
The extras casting call is a mob scene
Everyone and their mothers are here
(Except you)
Chelsea Adler got a blowout and is wearing fake eyelashes lmfao
Sadly no Lucas Cordova sighting . . . yet
I text her back: I’m working, have fun, love u! and put my phone on Do Not Disturb.
But before I click out of my messages entirely, I see that I have one from Ben Wilson, too.
BEN:
It was good to see you Friday. I know u aren’t exactly a party person, but I’m having people over next Friday and was hoping
you might want to come
I smile, reading it more than once. Chelsea is still a factor. But I want to text him back, and I want him to keep texting me. I already know I can’t go to the party, that I’ll be babysitting for the Miller twins, but he doesn’t have to know that.
ME:
Hmm. Maybe if you’re extra nice to me
Upstairs, there are people milling around, talking, writing things out on giant whiteboards set up along the far side of the
room. I inspect every person, search every face, but none of them belong to Luke.
As we set up the breakfast spread on a folding table in the corner, I see notes about shot lists and storyboards. It makes
me feel nostalgic. As an actor, a child actor at that, I was never a part of these production meetings, but there’s a similar
energy here to being on set, a creative buzz that’s almost electric. I wish I could just stand here for the rest of the day
and soak it in.
The next few hours are spent running between the kitchen and the spread upstairs, refilling and freshening it up. I stay in
the kitchen as much as possible, but Keira has to leave early, so toward the end of the shift, helping bring things up and
down is unavoidable. By noon, the vibe upstairs has changed; the number of people has dwindled, the food’s been forgotten
after the initial rush. I’ve relaxed, too, and stopped searching faces. This time, none of the food needs replenishing. Johnny
and I are heading back down the hallway toward the stairs when someone calls out, “Hey, sorry, excuse me?”
I turn, and there he is. Of course.
Luke.
He’s taller and leaner, sinewy almost, as if the goofy, hyper little boy I used to know stretched and made way for this new
almost-man. Even from fifteen feet away, I can see the angle of his cheekbones, his freckles, his light brown eyes, and that
small silver scar above his left eyebrow. His brown hair is messier and longer than he used to wear it, and it curls slightly
around his ears. He’s got tattoos peeking out from beneath the wrists of his long-sleeved Carhartt shirt, and he’s wearing
a small silver hoop in one ear.
What springs to mind is the Photoshop 101 class I took last year as my art credit. In Photoshop, you work in layers, and often
our final images were composites, layers on top of layers. Looking at Luke now, it’s like that: I see the boy I knew—the boy
I once loved, desperately—the person he’s grown into, and the celebrity he’s become, all at once.
“Hi,” I manage to get out.
“Sorry,” he says again. He lifts a hand, and only now do I realize he’s holding a stainless-steel milk pitcher. “Do you guys
have more oat milk? This one’s cashed.”
When he looks at me, his eyes do not even flash with the slightest bit of recognition.
“Of course, we’ll get that for you right away,” Johnny says, swooping in front of me to take the pitcher.