Chapter 22
MELODY
‘Melody! It’s been a while,’ Sanjeev calls from his food truck as she arrives at the Waterford Whiskey festival. All the food trucks at the whiskey distillery are connected by festive string lights, and in the centre are long picnic tables with benches ready for seven hundred people to tuck in.
‘It smells good, Sanjeev, what are you guys cooking up in there?’
He holds up a finger for her to wait, finishes frying something in batter. Drains crispy, delicious popcorn-like nuggets on paper towels then tips them into a small tin bucket, with a sauce on the side. ‘Pakora. Potato, onion, cauliflower and a special whiskey sauce.’
There’s not enough time to let it cool because he’s watching her eagerly. Melody blows on it quickly, dips it in the sauce and bites.
‘Oh my god. It’s amazing.’ She quickly chews because it’s burning her mouth but it’s delicious.
‘Take the lot,’ Sanjeev says.
‘Stuffed’, her and Sam’s food truck, is the job today, and she plans to visit her mum afterwards.
She can take care of her business and her family and it has nothing to do with the fact that she has to give her agent an answer about the podcast and she’s running away.
It suits her to be out of town, busy, busy, busy.
Once upon a time, Melody and Sam had a food dream together.
Sam is a trained chef and worked in an upscale fine-dining Dublin restaurant but he always had dreams to start his own business.
They’d talked about combining her love of music with a restaurant, but they couldn’t afford the grand plan, so instead dreamed up pop-up ideas, checked out venues, drew up budgets, Sam played with menus, spent his free hours and rare days off in the kitchen trying new dishes and Melody had the joyful experience of tasting everything.
What food would he make for this song? What flavour does this track evoke?
It was a mixing of the senses. Again for Melody, it was like mixing music, how to take two different things and blend them.
They enjoyed the planning and the dreaming.
And then they broke up. All the problem-solving and mash-ups that fill her thoughts, and she had failed to figure out how to combine herself and Sam.
Despite their romantic relationship failures surely she could deliver her best self as a business partner and so she went to him with the foodtruck investment proposal.
She’d been worried about him, friends said he’d taken their recent break-up terribly and he was sliding.
She felt she owed him. Melody hadn’t known but by that time Louise was in the early stages of pregnancy.
Sam had definitely not been planning to get involved and start a family so quickly, which he’d confided to Melody, so his head was really all over the place.
She felt getting into business together could be good for him.
In hindsight, her actions may not have been entirely selfless and perhaps it wasn’t the best time to insert herself back into his life, with a new partner and a baby on the way. But Sam was in.
Sam planned the menu and made the food. Melody knew summer festivals around the country like the back of her hand and knew which would be a success.
It had taken them a few months to get started but they’d had a successful summer trade, and a surprisingly successful autumn and winter with private parties, weddings, birthdays and events.
Sam ran the truck, and if Melody wasn’t DJing at the event, she tried to show up whenever she could because she wanted to experience serving in the truck too.
As an accountant Louise started looking at their books, then she stepped in on the days that Melody was gigging or presenting her radio show, and then stepped in on days when Melody wasn’t busy so Melody had to make herself busy and all of a sudden, without a formal conversation, Louise seemed to be part of the business.
On a food high, Melody takes the small tin bucket with her to the Stuffed truck, which is beside ‘Little Dumplings’, run by husband and wife Wei and Yan. The door to Stuffed’s food truck is closed, but the front is open, and she hears Louise and Sam arguing. Melody listens outside.
‘But why is she here, Sam? Why? I don’t get it. Did you invite her?’
Sam’s response is less audible, just a deep stressed mumble in response, a response that Louise is not happy with.
‘But she can’t just pop up when she feels like it. Surprise us with her mere presence as if it’s some kind of treat. It’s not professional! We need somebody who knows what she’s doing – actual help – not a novelty act for the customers!’
Melody steps away from the door and hides behind the food truck where no one can see her. Her heart is pounding and aching with humiliation. Should she leave? Louise doesn’t want her here, but why should she be forced out of her own business?
The truck door opens. ‘I’m going to the jeep for more drinks,’ Louise says snappily. As soon as Melody spies Louise weaving her way through the picnic tables and out of sight, she steps out from her hiding place. She takes a deep breath and steps up into the food truck.
‘Good morning, Sam,’ she says chirpily, as if she hasn’t just heard what she heard. ‘I take it we have to do something whiskey-related, what’s our dish?’
He looks at her in surprise. ‘We’re serving whiskey-maple-glazed baked sweet potato.’
‘Yum,’ she says, looking inside the oven at the trays of potatoes. ‘Nice. What can I do … to help?’
‘So you are here. Louise said she saw you arrive, but I wasn’t sure because you didn’t let us know you were coming.’
He’s polite but as forward as Sam can be.
‘Why should I let you know? It’s my food truck too. Plus I wanted to visit Mum. Belinda and Derek broke up.’
He flinches, he hates conflict. ‘Sorry to hear that, that’s crazy. Of all the people …’ Then he shrugs and hardens. ‘But you never know, do you, what’s going on in people’s heads.’
Jab taken.
‘You don’t need to be here. We have it under control.’
‘But I want to be here. Look,’ she looks out to make sure Louise isn’t back. The car park is quite a walk away. ‘I know that Louise is annoyed with me. I’m annoyed with me too, I made a stupid mistake on the podcast, and now I’ve quit so nobody needs to worry anymore.’
She’s honestly expecting him to react positively to that. I can’t believe you did that for us, Melody, you’re so amazing. That kind of thing.
‘We didn’t ask you to quit.’ He frowns.
‘No, but it was the best thing to do.’
‘So you did that for us, did you? Quit?’
She hears the sarcasm in his voice.
‘There were a few reasons.’
He finishes chopping, flicks a tea towel over his shoulder and turns to her, giving her his full attention now. The look on his face makes her nervous.
‘So you backed out of it.’ He gives a little shrug. ‘You weren’t feeling it. Got bored?’ He folds his arms. ‘Or was it too much of a commitment for you?’
Are they talking about the podcast or their relationship? ‘I didn’t want to do it anymore,’ she says bluntly.
‘So what am I supposed to do now? Tell my wife that she’s fired, that she can go home, because you quit something else and graced us with your presence today?’
‘It’s my business too!’ Melody finally explodes. ‘And we never even hired Louise. She started off checking our accounts as a help and all of a sudden she’s taken my place!’
Her face feels red and hot.
Sam stares at her, when he speaks his tone is so quiet. ‘She’s here because you weren’t. She stepped up because you disappeared.’
‘I have another job, Sam, we both agreed that was okay.’
‘That’s not what I mean.’
Oh god.
‘I don’t know what you want,’ he says quietly. ‘You want to work here when you want but not when you don’t want to. You can’t have it both ways, Melody. You need to commit.’
She closes her eyes. Not this again. She feels dizzy, the truck is too small. She’d closed the door behind her, why did she do that? Her body starts to sweat.
‘First of all, there’s not enough room in here for three people.
It doesn’t physically work and secondly …
’ He doesn’t finish but he has somehow, while talking, managed to move so much closer to her and it’s tight in the truck.
He lowers his voice. ‘When it’s just me, in here, I have to fill the space that you leave.
I can’t do it on my own. Louise wants to do it. ’
‘I understand,’ she says, swallowing.
‘You should just leave me to take care of this now.’
‘I can’t,’ she says, tears surprisingly pricking in her eyes.
‘I care about this truck. I don’t want it to not be in my life.
’ She knows she’s not just talking about the truck.
When she broke up with Sam she missed her best friend.
There was a big gaping hole in her life and she needed him back but not in the way he wanted.
The food truck was the perfect excuse, it was a shared dream.
It was selfish of her to bring him back on her terms.
His eyes run over her and she feels goosebumps rise. The old familiar feeling. ‘But you don’t want it to be the only thing in your life either. You can’t have it both ways, Melody.’
‘You keep saying that.’
‘Because you don’t get it. You have your music. You should focus on your life. You make it harder for me, having one foot in and one foot out.’
‘But I like working with you and this was our dream,’ she whispers. Her heart beats dangerously.
‘It can’t be ours anymore.’
The penny finally drops. Sam doesn’t just want her to leave today. ‘You’re asking me to leave the business?’
He softens. ‘We could buy you out. Louise and I are planning to someday open our own bricks-and-mortar Stuffed.’
It’s like a punch in the stomach. She steps back.
He reaches out to catch her elbow as if she’s falling.
Maybe she is. Is this how Al felt when his best friend and fiancée sat him down and told him they were moving on without him?
Worse of course, but the feeling of rejection is overwhelming.
She started this and now she’s being left behind.
‘When are you going to let her go?’ Louise had asked him when they were in their kitchen, the tabloid newspaper spread open in front of them. Melody is thinking that moment is now.
‘Louise wants me out,’ she says, unable to hold back on the bitterness.
‘It’s my idea,’ he says firmly. ‘I’m doing it for Louise, for our family. For Faith. She has been nothing but patient and understanding in this weird situation.’
‘What weird situation?’
‘This. Us.’
‘What’s weird about us?’ Melody asks, getting vexed and flustered. This is not going her way. First the podcast, then the truck. What next? Her music?
‘Things have been difficult for me and Louise lately,’ he says quietly.
‘It would be healthier for all of us, for me and Louise especially, if you move on. If we move on. Because I have. I really have. I took my time. It took longer than it should have, but Louise had patience and when Faith was born I copped the hell on. I shouldn’t have done this business venture with you, but I wanted you back in my life.
I should have let you go when you let me go.
But, did you, Melody? Did you let me go? ’
Her defences go up. She’s being rejected. ‘Do you think I’m here because I’m still in love with you?’
He stares at her hard.
‘I got into this, because my conscience was eating me alive. I felt like I’d destroyed your life because that’s how everybody made me feel. I felt like I owed you.’
He looks amused, why is he amused? He takes a step towards her.
‘So you did this all for me? Because you felt guilty.’ He stands so close to her, inches away. Eye-level.
‘Not just that.’ She swallows. ‘Because you’re my friend.’ Her voice is just above a whisper. ‘Because I care about you.’
The energy is radiating from him. He’s so close she can feel his warmth.
He always made her feel safe. He always made her laugh uncontrollably.
He always had her back. They weren’t wildly passionate or romantic but they were best friends and she’d lost him because she couldn’t promise forever. But not forever doesn’t mean never.
She thinks he’s going to kiss her. Her heart pounds.
What’s going on? Louise could return at any moment.
Does Melody want this? He leans in, his rough stubble brushing against her cheek as he moves his lips to her ear.
She likes being kissed there. She feels his lips on her ear, which tickles, and instead of the kiss, he whispers in her ear, ‘You see?’
He pulls back.
‘You don’t know what you want, Melody. And you shouldn’t be around people you can hurt, until you figure it out.’
He walks away from her without another look and opens the oven door. Slides out a tray of potatoes. Louise chooses that moment to return to the truck. She looks at both of them, from one to the other, alert, wife antenna trying to figure out what happened.
‘Don’t worry, Louise, I’m leaving,’ Melody snaps, feeling utterly humiliated and filled with rage. ‘You can have him. You can have the truck. You can have fucking everything now, okay? Everyone happy?’ she yells.
They both look at her in surprise. She storms out of the truck, her rage and humiliation so great she works hard not to flip the picnic tables and everything in her path.