Chapter Twenty-Two Madison
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Madison
NEW YORK
“And you voluntarily went back?” Josie asks, aghast, after hearing how tiny Rome, Kentucky, is.
“I know. I never thought I’d go back either. But . . .” My eyes slide to James, sitting easily in the booth beside me, where he’s been contentedly listening to Josie and me blabber on for the last hour. “I missed home.”
“Couldn’t be me!” she says with glittering eyes. “Someone would have to literally drag me back to my hometown kicking and screaming.” Her braids are out today, and she flicks her long, dark auburn hair over her shoulder.
“Where are you from?” James asks.
“A little town in North Carolina. But believe me, it’s not idyllic. It’s got a run-down Dollar General, lots of discarded tires on the side of the road, and a Sonic that doubles as an illegal dispensary. There’s not a single charming establishment in the whole place. Anymore, at least.”
Now I’m the one gaping. “I had no idea. I thought you were a native New Yorker.” The double nose ring does not scream small town.
“How could you know? You never hung out with me when I asked!” she says with emphasis but no malice.
“I’m sorry.” I wince. “I was in a weird place when I lived here.”
“You mean Caden’s place?” Her eyes glitter, then slide to James and dim. “Oh, sorry.”
James and I quickly share a look.
“Oh. No. We’re . . . not together,” I say, as James echoes something similar in a chaotic overlap.
As if to question our statement, Josie’s mouth quirks up and her eyes flick to where James’s arm is lying behind the back of my seat. He clocks this at the same moment she does and gently pulls it away.
“I’m just a friend,” he says, and for the first time hearing him make that statement drops a sharp rock into the pit of my stomach.
“I want to hear about Caden.”
“He was no one important.”
Josie gives a mocking laugh. “Could’ve fooled me! Every time I texted you or called to hang out, you were at his place. I thought you two were serious.”
“Nope,” I say, trying not to betray too much with that one word. “Just a casual thing to pass the time.” I resituate myself in my seat.
I can feel James’s eyes on my face, but I refuse to look. He knows I’m lying.
“Can you let me out? I need to use the bathroom.” I scoot out, but before he passes me James leans close to my ear and whispers, “You have three minutes to tell her everything you won’t say around me.”
My toes curl. Only James would intentionally leave to give me privacy.
As soon as he’s gone, I can sense Josie is going to ask for more details about Caden, but he’s the last person I want to talk about. So I immediately change the subject.
“Hey . . . you never told me, how did you get connected with Chef Brookes? Did you interview with her?”
“God, no—” She sips her Diet Coke, a laugh rolling from her chest. “Zora is my mom.”
“Your—what? Sorry . . .” I shake my head in disbelief. “Chef Brookes is your mom?”
“Yeeeeep.”
“I need you to say a lot more than that.”
She laughs and sits back. “Okay, here’s the story.
My strong, creative mom met my quiet, redheaded dad in college, and they fell in love and had me.
” She frames her face with her hands, warm brown skin kissed by the sun and dotted with freckles, tight long auburn-tinted curls draping over her shoulders.
I’ve only seen her hair in braids, so I love getting to witness it natural now.
She blinks a million cute times. “In her words, she moved with him to his hometown in North Carolina and really tried her best to find happiness there. But she was so restless and needed more out of life—while my dad was utterly content, never wanting to move. She tried to make it work and opened her own restaurant there in town, which is the one you’ve probably heard about that launched her career.
But in the end, it wasn’t enough. She wasn’t happy there.
So they split about fifteen years ago—pretty amicably—and Mom moved here to New York.
She worked her way up in the culinary world and eventually reopened her restaurant, but here in New York. ”
“And now it’s thriving,” I say, in awe of this history. I’d forgotten that Zora never went to culinary school—a fact that makes her story even more impressive.
Josie smiles, and it’s clear she has a lot of love for her mom. “It really is. I lived with my mom full time in high school and visited my dad on the weekends now and then. Mom made me fall in love with cooking—and New York too.”
I lean my elbows on the table. “But you didn’t want to work in her kitchen?”
Josie removes an elastic band from her wrist and tugs her curls away from her face, wrapping them in a low, loose bun. “My mom and I are best friends, which is why I could never work with her. We’d kill each other.”
I can understand the sentiment, but as someone who’s lost her mom and feels an acute stab of longing to spend even one more minute with her, it’s hard not to correct Josie. To tell her to soak up every chance she gets—especially if they have a good relationship.
But as someone who’s lived with grief for more years than without it, I’ve learned that projecting it onto someone else isn’t helpful. Better to text my siblings later and commiserate.
“Plus, you didn’t need to work with her. You were so great in school and had all those awesome options right out of graduation, right?”
“Stop!” she says with a laugh, smacking her palms flat on the table. “We really know less about each other than I thought. Madison,” she whines my name, “I was so bad at school.”
“No.” I shake my head, unwilling to believe what I’m hearing. “You were the golden student. All the teachers loved you. You had so many interviews right after graduation!”
“Because of my mom!”
“But you just said—”
“I wanted to do it without her name. I never said I did, though.” She scrunches her nose.
“About two weeks in, I realized I wasn’t the natural I thought I’d be—so I started name-dropping to get better treatment.
And it absolutely worked. Lady, it’s a miracle I made it through school.
” She gives me jazz hands. “Nepo baby all the way!” Then she pops a fry.
“It’s really great. You should try it sometime. ”
“I would, but my parents are dead, so I can’t.” I toss out that little gem as the true test of whether we’re compatible friends or not.
Josie pauses, mid-fry-to-mouth. Then she coughs a laugh. “Okay, you win the sympathy award! Dead parents get it every time.”
I smile, thrilled by this response. “I could start dropping your mom’s name after tomorrow though. Nepotism by association?”
“Perfect! Okay, but quick, before he comes back . . . what’s the deal with James?” She hunches over the table to say this quietly, amber eyes sparkling. “Is he single?”
My gut twists. “Why are you asking? Do you want his number?”
She rockets back against the bench and points at me. Josie and her demonstrative actions somehow make me look tame. “Look at your face! No way would I get in the middle of all that.”
“There’s no face. He’s just my friend.”
Her finger twirls in the air in front of my nose. “So much face. Do you love him? Are you two sleeping together? And why are his hands so big? My god, maybe I am changing my mind. I think I do want his number.”
I fold my arms. “You can’t have it.”
“Because you love your friend?”
I don’t answer. Just stare a hole through Josie’s face as James returns to the table. She raises and lowers her eyebrows.
“I like her,” James says as soon as we leave the restaurant.
“I do too. I wish I’d spent more time with her while I was here.”
James abruptly stops walking. I turn and see he’s fallen a few steps behind. “What’s wrong?”
That protective look is back on his face. “Madison. What did a typical day look like for you here in New York? You never talk about it back home.”
“Because there isn’t much to tell.”
“Tell me anyway.”
I sigh, turning to face the street, letting my mind rewind.
“Okay, um . . . I’d wake up around 5:50, maybe six.
Get ready. Grab a breakfast sandwich and coffee by the train station.
I’d be at school by eight for my first block, then classes and labs until lunch.
Then more classes. Service simulation after that. ”
I cringe. That part was a huge struggle approaching graduation. “Classes ended around six, and then Monday through Friday I had my internship at Chambre Blanche until midnight. Sometimes on the weekend too.”
A man in a suit rushes past and clips James’s shoulder, but he doesn’t even flinch. He’s locked in on me. “What about the days you didn’t have your internship? Did you go out?”
“Move, please!” a woman snaps as she breezes past in a white silk blouse and running shoes, phone pressed to her ear.
I grab James by the wrist and pull him off to the side, out of everyone’s way. “Define ‘out.’ ”
“Did you date?”
“Define ‘date’ . . . ?”
He scoffs, rolling his eyes. “So you worked yourself to the bone every day, lived in a permanent state of sleep deprivation, and had booty calls on the weekends? Did I miss anything?”
I blink, trying to read his tone. “You forgot tortoise rehab. His shell had to be retaped every weekend. And I took him to the park for sunlight. What’s this about?”
His jaw tightens as he looks away, then he meets my eyes again. “You didn’t live at all while you were here, Madison.”
That fact hits me square in the chest. “Why do you sound upset about it?”
“Because I am,” he says. Then his expression softens. “Upset at myself, I mean. For not seeing it sooner.”
“Seeing what?”
“You were basically sealed up in here with no air.” He echoes what I unearthed on the plane.
“No wonder you hated it. No wonder you had constant anxiety and came back to Rome completely burned-out. You didn’t have a single moment to feed the best parts of yourself.
The messy parts,” he adds with a smile, like that’s a compliment.
“Your adventurousness. Your laughter. I haven’t been able to figure it out, but ever since you’ve been home, you’ve seemed .
. . off. Like you’re still wearing that lid. ”
I huff a confused laugh. “I’m not following, James.”
He steps closer, eyes scanning mine. “What if you needed more of New York—not less? What if you came home too early? What if . . . without the brutal schedule and the chef from hell”—he shrugs, helpless—“you actually love it here?”
I narrow my eyes. “Are you trying to fire me?”
“No. Not at all. But I am changing my terms. You can’t have the job at the Greenhouse unless you give New York a real shot before we go home.”
I lean in, stage-whispering, “Hate to break it to you, Cowboy, but I already signed a contract.”
He smirks. “Then humor me.”
I shift, thinking. Then stomp my foot once. A petty outburst. “Why can’t we go back and watch a movie? I really do hate this city. I don’t want to go out and explore it.”
“Are you sure you hate it?” he asks, gently. “Or were you just lonely here before?”
I shrug, suddenly feeling raw. “Maybe.”
His fingers brush mine, and my skin prickles. “Well, you’re not lonely now. You have me. And together, we’re going to do the most Madison Walker shit anyone has ever seen tonight.”
I search his eyes and take a deep breath. “This is important to you?”
“It’s important to me that you’re making the right choice about coming home.”
The way he says it . . . it makes me think he overheard my conversation with Josie. Is he worried I’ll grow restless again, just like her mom? That in a few years I’ll want to run?
Maybe he’s not wrong.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it.”