Chapter Two Madison #2
My eyes slide to the surface in question. “None.” My response is smug.
“Bullshit. I’m guessing . . .” He sounds like he’s squinting and, knowing James, cupping the bill of his hat. “Four?”
“You couldn’t be more wrong.”
“Six?” He pauses.
“I would never.”
“Seven?!” he adds with surprised delight.
I let out a theatrical sigh. “Fine. Six glasses . . . and two old coffee mugs.”
“I knew it. Your roommate must be absolutely nasty.”
“She is!” I roll onto my stomach, feet swinging back and forth in the air behind me.
“Yes, I’m messy. And chaotic. But James, she is dirty.
Like leaving spaghetti sauce caked onto the countertop until it either rots and grows something fuzzy or I clean it.
And don’t even get me started about all the used condoms in the trash can that she never takes out. ”
“That’s criminal.” I hear him slide the barn doors closed and then his feet crunching over the gravel and dirt path. “Here’s what you do. Tomorrow, take the trash can and set it on her bed. Better yet, empty it out onto her bed.”
“I can’t do that! I still have to live with her until—”
In my silence, James asks, “Until when?”
“I actually don’t know,” I say in barely a whisper as I remember the reason for this phone call.
“Madison?” James prompts when I don’t speak again for a while. “What’s going on?”
I swallow and, for once, don’t hide the truth. “I graduated today.” There’s a heavy silence on his end of the phone. I don’t wait for him to fill it. “I graduated, and I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t feel like making a big fuss.”
“Why? You like a big fuss.”
This makes me smile. “I do. But only when it’s for something I love, and .
. . I don’t love anything about my life here.
It’s not what I thought it would be—my career included.
” My smile fades. “And today . . . today was an especially bad day.” I keep Chef Davis’s words from my shift this afternoon before graduation to myself: I have let you stay on here too long, and I can’t deal with your incompetence anymore. Get out of my kitchen. You’re fired.
“I wish . . . I wish I could come home and—I don’t know—move at a slower pace until I figure it all out. But everything here feels so urgent and overwhelming.” I have the honesty of an intoxicated person but the depression of a fully sober one.
“Why can’t you? Come home?” His voice is a soft, low rumble, and something about it has me all too aware that this is officially the longest one-on-one, genuine conversation I’ve ever had with James.
I open my eyes, and the white and yellow stained ceiling blots out the sparkling stars of my imagination. “Because there’re no entry-level kitchen jobs available in Rome. Or even near it.”
I’ve only been searching for entry level since I have no illusions that Chef Davis will recommend me for anything beyond scrubbing dishes, but I haven’t even found a single prep cook or porter job listed either.
And even if there was a position available, I don’t know if I’d want to take it.
I used to love being in a kitchen, experimenting with recipes and forcing my family and friends to taste test everything.
But after this year, I can hardly stand inside the threshold of one without having a negative physical reaction.
I should probably scurry back to Rome and live on Emily’s couch while she makes me hot chocolate and picks up the pieces of my life yet again. But I’m tired of that pattern. I want to go home—but not as The Failure.
“If I come back, I need to have a secure job to return for, or I’m not sure I’ll be able to face everyone.” I immediately regret voicing that thought. Who’s to say I can even trust James with it?
There’s such a long pause that I think maybe he hung up. “James?”
“Sorry. I’m here. I just got inside the house and . . . was thinking about something.”
“Oh, yeah! Sorry!” I say, embarrassed that I’ve been boring him enough to lose his attention. This is a new level of pathetic. “I’ve taken up too much of your—”
“No, I was thinking about something that might help.”
“Oh.”
I hear him take in a long breath. “What if I were to tell you I was opening a restaurant on the farm, and . . . I want you to be the chef?”
A laugh jumps out. “I would say you’ve lost your mind. Starting a restaurant is a huge endeavor and you definitely don’t want me at the helm of that ship.”
“So that’s your answer?”
I laugh again, still thinking this is some weird joke, but when he doesn’t join me, I swallow. “What do you mean?”
“Is that your official answer to the job offer? A no?” He sounds resigned.
“James . . .” I sit up slowly. “Are you serious? Are you opening a restaurant?”
There is the longest pause in the history of long pauses before he answers.
“Yes.” But he says it in such an odd tone.
Almost like a question. But I don’t have time to consider it before he’s continuing with a more confident air.
“Yes, I’m serious. I am opening a restaurant.
With . . . Tommy.” Wait. There it is again.
He said Tommy slowly, like I’ve never heard the name before.
“We’re working together to open a restaurant on the property . . . to modernize the farm.”
Has James been drinking? The way he’s talking paired with how out of left field this news is makes me think he’s two sheets to the wind. Then again, I haven’t lived in Rome for two years. Maybe it’s not a surprise to anyone who lives there and my family has all forgotten to mention it to me.
“How come I didn’t know about this?”
“Well . . . it’s still in the building phase right now.
And I didn’t originally offer the job to you because I knew how much you didn’t want to live in Rome.
I didn’t want you to feel pressured to take it.
But now . . . you know, if you need somewhere to find your footing after graduation, maybe it would be the perfect option for you.
A place where you can have full control over the menu and the kitchen and figure everything out. ”
I can’t lie—this offer is more than intriguing. But I have concerns . . .
“And what if I come home and realize I don’t want to be there after all?”
I hear him inhale as he takes the time to consider my question. “Then . . . once the kitchen is up and running, if you’re not happy, you’ll have something great for your résumé that could hopefully help you get any job you want somewhere else.”
My résumé! Meaning, if all goes well, I can completely bypass using Chef Davis for a recommendation. If I can make this job work, maybe I can salvage my culinary career. Maybe I can also find my way back to loving it. I get to go home to Rome, Kentucky . . . but with my chin held high.
I have zero reasons to turn this down. Well, other than the glaringly obvious one where I’m not at all qualified.
“You’re actually serious, James? Like serious-serious?”
“So serious I could cry,” he says again in that weird resigned voice. But maybe I’m reading too much into it and he’s tired. Or wants to be off the phone with me by now. “So . . . what do you say? Will you come be our chef?”
I’m in shock. I know I should jump at the chance, but still my mouth opens and closes like a fish until finally I find a few words to toss out. “Just for my peace of mind, you do know it’s me—Madison Walker—that you’re talking to, right?”
A soft, short laugh cuts through the line. “The five-foot-tall brunette with dark brown eyes who once crashed a tractor into my pond after promising me she was a great driver?”
“Yes . . .”
“The repeat offender of stinking up my kitchen with roasted Brussels sprouts and force-feeding them to me even though I hate them?”
“They’re good for you.”
“The girl Noah and I had to pick up from the sheriff’s office her freshman year of college for a public indecency offense after she went skinny-dipping in the lake with her boyfriend?”
“Technically, yes, but he wasn’t my boyfriend. We only saw each other like two times after—You know what? Never mind.” Best to let that one go unsaid.
Despite all of this, with absolute certainty in his voice, James says, “Yep. You’re the one.”
“James . . .”
He chuckles. “Madison, if you don’t want the job, just say so.
You won’t hurt my feelings. But if you do want it, I want you to have it.
I can’t think of a better person to run my restaurant.
You know this town. You’re a hell of a cook, and you also know all the trendy dishes from the city that could bring people in. So if you want this job, it’s yours.”
My heart is racing. I shouldn’t take the position for several reasons. What I really should do is tell him the truth right now. But once again, life is handing me extra credit, and since I’m Madison Walker, I have to take it.
“Okay. When do I start?”