Chapter 1 #2
I was Sous-Chef de Cuisine at the Gault Millau Restaurant inside The Vance, one of Boston’s most prestigious hotels, right until I traded my station for hospital corridors and Mom’s pill schedule.
Spencer, my ex, was Chef de Partie then.
The second I was gone, he slid into my position and acted as if it had always been waiting for him.
They promised I could come back when, well…
now, but I’d have to start back at the bottom and claw my way back up from nothing.
I’ve rebuilt myself from scratch too many damn times already.
At some point, it stops feeling brave and starts feeling ridiculous.
My father died when I was in culinary school. I dropped out and worked my way back up through whatever kitchen would have me—breakfast diners, hotel banquets, anyone willing to let me prove myself on a line that didn’t care about my diploma.
I burned through kitchens like some people burn through relationships.
I took the worst shifts, the stations nobody wanted, stayed after to watch, learn, and fix things that weren’t mine to fix.
It turns out, if you’re stubborn enough and don’t mind bleeding a little, people eventually stop asking where you trained.
I became someone worth keeping, and then I left again for my mother, and now I’m supposed to do it one more time from nothing in a state where I don’t know anyone.
I’m starting to wonder if this is just what my life looks like, or if there’s a version where I get to stay somewhere long enough to stop having to introduce myself.
I huff because that’s what this road trip is starting to feel like. Sitting at a diner in a town I can’t name, on the way to one I haven’t been to in years, with no idea what my next move will be.
So, maybe I’m a hypocrite, or maybe there’s a difference between being buried and choosing to dig.
The familiar sounds, the warmth, and the comforting smells make my shoulders sag, and my eyelids droop. Just when I’m about to pass out, a tray clatters, and I jerk upright so fast my neck pops.
“It’s nice here!” I blurt out so loudly and abruptly that I even surprise myself.
The guy next to me shifts enough to side-eye me.
I wave a hand vaguely at the peeling linoleum and the flickering neon beer sign. “I mean, you know… for a gas station.”
He still doesn’t make a sound. Not even a grunt.
The silence sits there between us, and I feel it in my bones. Then, without permission, Spencer’s voice surfaces.
“You done talking?”
He used to say it when he was tired or when I’d been going for too long. After a while, I learned to hear it before he said it. I learned to catch myself mid-sentence and swallow the rest. Somewhere along the line, the catching became automatic and became its own kind of quiet I carried everywhere.
I’m so sick of being quiet.
I didn’t use to be. I used to talk through entire meals, commercials, and family walks. My dad called it lovingly “my running commentary.”
Somewhere along the way, it turned into something I had to apologize for.
I tug at my purse’s zipper, opening and closing a small section over and over. “Are you from here?”
I don’t expect him to engage in small talk with me, but I’m afraid if I stop talking, I’ll literally pass out right here on this stool.
I could crawl back into my car for a nap like I’ve been doing, but my existence already feels a little less heavy simply by speaking out loud to someone.
Even if that someone is very aggressively pretending I don’t exist.
“I’m from Boston. Or, well, I was. Been on the road for a few days now. I took some naps and breaks, but it’s mostly been… driving.”
He sips his water.
“My car’s small. It’s a yellow Beetle. She’s my little Bumble Bitch.
” His eyes flick toward me, and I grin at him.
Score. “I love it. It’s cute as hell, not a great car for long hauls, though.
Definitely not comfortable. Do you drive a truck?
You seem like you could be a truck driver.
Those are comfy, right? Big seats, cup holders the size of my head? ”
He’s a stubborn one, remaining silent.
A better woman would take the hint.
“It’s pretty here in Oregon, or I guess it’s pretty.
” I glance out the window, even though I know it’s pitch-black, at the parking lot washed in harsh yellow light.
“I looked up places to stay this morning, but apparently, the Oregon Coast is like fall-tourism central. Everything is booked solid. The internet says people come in flocks to watch whales and see the leaves change.”
I let out a breathy laugh. “I’ve only seen gas stations and bad coffee since I’ve gotten here.”
His eyes are on his water again.
Okay. Apparently, some people simply aren’t talkers.
I dig my phone out of my purse, telling myself I’m checking the time or maybe scrolling through something mindless to keep my eyes open, but my thumb finds the voicemail app before I can stop it, and there it is, paused right where I left it.
I should delete it. Should have deleted it days ago. Instead, I hit play and press the phone to my ear.
Static crackles through the speaker, then Spencer’s voice cuts in—he was still my boyfriend at the time—slightly muffled as if he’s holding the phone away from his mouth.
“She’s not picking up. Where the hell did she run off to?”
A pause, then rustling fabric. He clearly thought he’d hung up when he shoved the phone in his pocket, but the call kept recording.
“She’s probably talking to the pastor,” Sienna, my former coworker and former friend, huffs out. I know that tone. I’ve heard it across stainless-steel counters and half-drunk staff meetings for years. “I’m so glad the funeral is over. Six months in the making, finally. I mean… right?”
Six months.
That’s how long it took pancreatic cancer to hollow my mother out from the inside. Six months of watching her shrink into hospital gowns, learning which veins would still take an IV, and pretending lemon cake could fix anything when we both knew it couldn’t.
Six months of cooking for her, even when she couldn’t eat. Of making things just in case, small portions, soft textures, whatever might tempt her. Of standing at her stove, doing the only thing I knew how to do, even when it didn’t help, because doing nothing felt like giving up.
I didn’t blame my friends or my boyfriend for pulling away while I poured everything I had into my mom.
I had nothing left to give anyone else. But that day, when they showed up in black clothes and polite sympathy, I thought maybe that was it.
The first careful stitch in repairing what had torn open between us. The beginning of fixing things.
When Spencer held my hand, I thought I could fix my relationship.
When they hugged me, I thought I hadn’t lost my friends.
My life wasn’t over.
“God, yes.” Aubrey laughs in her practiced corporate way, clearer through the voicemail than the others. “She’s been such a downer. I know it’s been hard for her, obviously,” she adds quickly. “But she’s so self-centered now. She never has time for anything.”
“Right? She’s not like she used to be,” Sienna agrees.
“I asked her to be a bridesmaid for a reason, you know? Support? Fun?” Aubrey says, continuing her complaints. “I can’t even get her to commit to a dress fitting. Honestly, I’m regretting it.”
My free hand drifts across my stomach, where the fabric is pulled even tighter now that I’m sitting.
Bridesmaid. I’ve been agonizing over that stupid dress for weeks, already picturing myself in a fluorescent fitting-room light, turning sideways, and tugging at seams that won’t cooperate.
I would’ve done it for her. I would have gone to the fitting, but her wedding is next summer, still months to go. I thought I’d have time.
“Then kick her out of the bridal party.” Sienna’s voice is bored. “One less dress to find that looks decent on her.”
“I can’t kick her out. She’s doing the cake.”
“Guys.” Spencer scolds my so-called friends in the recording.
The first time I listened to it, hope sparked stupidly in my chest, even though I knew it should have come sooner. But I thought he was finally about to shut them down, defend me, and love me out loud for the first time ever.
Yeah. That hope is dead and gone.
“Come on, Spence. You saw it too.” Sienna sighs. “When she moves in with you, you’ll have to watch what she eats. It’s not good for her health. We worry.”
“We do,” Aubrey agrees. “It’s unfortunate that you both cook so well.”
There’s a brief pause, too brief, before Spencer replies.
“Yeah, I… noticed. I figured it was… fine while she was dealing with her mom. I thought she’d, I don’t know… lose it once she started grieving properly.”
Grieving properly. As if I’m even failing at that.
“Do you even still find her attractive?” Sienna asks.
My eyes start to sting as I lift my hand from my roiling stomach and slide my thumbnail under the edge of a grinning citrus slice until the polish lifts.
“You know I was never with her because of looks.”
Every time I get to this part of the recording, my throat tightens so hard it burns.
Spencer never called me beautiful. Not once in the year and a half that we’ve been together. I told myself he just wasn’t wired that way, that love didn’t always sound like anything, and that some people showed it differently, quietly, in ways I hadn’t figured out how to read yet.
The truth is, I always knew, somewhere underneath all that convincing, that he only tolerated me.
The sprinkles I put on everything I bake, the lemon-themed everything, my nail art, my sweaters that look as if they belong in a children’s book, and my inability to resist glittery mugs, fairy lights, or a pillow shaped like a pastry.
He hated all those things. Everything that makes me me.
He used to joke that I was like a unicorn throwing up sugar and sunshine across every surface. And what grown man wants that?