Nine
NINE
TAYLOR
T he town nearest Storybook Endings is called Calico, like the cat.
On calls with Ethan, Samara chatters while Taylor half listens in, sending e-mails from the island in their kitchen. Sometimes she says things like, “How’s life in Cat Town?” And then she laughs like she’s watching her latest comedy-obsession on Netflix.
The name is not the only thing catlike about this town, Taylor observes, as he strolls down the slightly curved sidewalk, like that of a tail, between the florist and the bakery. The pace of life here seems leisurely. Meandering, maybe, is more like it. Matching the speed of the Delaware River flowing right beside the main shopping district and the pace of the few people ambling past him.
This morning, Ethan gave Taylor one of the old quarter-zip Storybook Endings employee fleeces to wear. Taylor’s grateful for it now as he moves closer to the water and a chill whips up. The weather is as unpredictable as everything that has happened here thus far.
He passes a bustling antique shop, a vintage-looking movie theater, and a brewery that appears to have been a firehouse in a past life. He can’t help but be utterly charmed and wonder why Amy made this place feel like an inescapable prison when the West Coast is overrun with fitness nuts and woo-woo cult crazes. This is slow yet simple. No shine. No gloss. Just natural beauty.
Not thinking too hard about all that, he enters the bakery and is greeted by the alluring scent of powdered sugar underpinned by chocolate. Dangling down from the front window is a pride flag, which puts Taylor at ease. This isn’t one of those bakeries he’s constantly reading about in the news.
The baker is a short, brown-skinned, balding man who, when told who the cake is for, beams. “Sixteen? Already? I remember when Samara was no more than five. She had a penchant for my sugar cookies. Where has the time gone?”
A warmth seeps through Taylor’s chest. It must be nice to have a small community like this. To watch the local children grow up from behind a display case filled with the sweetest treats.
When Taylor’s finished his delicious complementary cake samples and they’ve completed the order form, he snaps a picture and texts it to Samara. Strawberry filling still?
Samara instantly responds. Can we do chocolate mousse instead? Just found out Maya’s allergic
You got it! I’ll make sure there aren’t any strawberries in the breakfast selections either at the resort while you’re all here, Taylor writes back after making the change and exiting the bakery.
Ur the best! 3 Have you heard the new Billie Eilish song???
Taylor hadn’t realized she’d dropped one as a surprise. Popping in my earbuds now!
Let me know what you think! Hope ur enjoying *cat emoji* town
The rest of his day is busy. He collects decorations, party supplies, props for the photo booth and local artisan goods for the welcome baskets he’s going to place in each of the cabins the girls will be sharing. His bags hang heavy with rose petal soaps and homemade popping candies in all the colors of the rainbow.
By the time he’s checked off his to-do list, he’s starved. He completely forgot about lunch. The cake samples must’ve been enough to tide him over, but now he’s hankering for a real meal.
On his way back to the rental car, he passes a Vietnamese restaurant. A man hurries through the door with a container of takeout, and Taylor gets a waft of peanuts and spices. One sniff is enough to make his stomach sing. His feet perform a sharp U-turn.
Inside at the counter, he’s delighted to find this place is run by a Vietnamese immigrant who moved from New York City with her husband. Food with a history and a story is always so much tastier. Maybe that’s the same way he feels about Storybook Endings. A resort with a lore is more comfortable than a chain hotel with no hallmarks in a major city. The more personal an experience, the more memorable it is. At least to him. And boy, has his stay at Storybook Endings Catskills already gotten personal .
As he looks over the menu, he decides he should grab food for Ethan as well, but he doesn’t have Ethan’s private number. He doesn’t want to call the resort to find him, so he uses his personal assistant skills to make his best guess at what meal Ethan would enjoy.
Upon returning to Ethan’s house, he finds Ethan hunched over in the door of the fridge, searching for something. There is a Jack and the Beanstalk comicality to the sight. Appliances appear minuscule compared to Ethan’s enticing, towering stature. Taylor’s gaze lands squarely on Ethan’s round, perky backside tucked into light-wash jeans as he bends to inspect a low shelf. Assumedly tantalized by the scent, Ethan straightens up and peers over to where Taylor stands.
“I come bearing gifts,” Taylor says, pretending he hadn’t just been drooling over his boss’s ex-husband’s ample ass. “And by gifts I mean Vietnamese food.”
“From Nga’s place?” Ethan asks, his misty blue eyes brightening. There’s a ring of darker blue around the edges that Taylor is becoming fast familiar with.
“Yes, she’s lovely, and if the food is half as good as it smells, I’m going to be in heaven.”
Taylor quickly helps Ethan set the table. They sit opposite each other like they did last night and unpack the brown paper bag together. Ethan freezes when he pulls out his pho noodle with braised chicken bowl. “How did you know my order?”
“As a personal assistant, you take note of things. Last night, your burger was basically a hockey puck, not even a hint of red in that thing, so I figured the rare beef was not the right choice, and Samara has a mild soy allergy so I figured there’s enough of a chance you would too so that ruled out tofu. This was the last option,” Taylor says, overly pleased that he’s surprised Ethan like this.
“Wow. You’re good,” he says, popping the top off the bowl.
“I also asked Nga,” he says quickly under his breath and then fills his mouth with jasmine rice. He doesn’t need to see Ethan’s smile because he senses it radiate from across the circular slab of wood between them.
“Honesty is a rare quality these days.” Ethan’s a master with chopsticks, using them to pick up some noodles. Somehow, he makes slurping look sexy. Taylor gazes down at his own meal to avoid looking too long at Ethan’s lips that are perfectly framed by his beard. The fantasy of those dark blond hairs brushing across his smooth skin. Ooh. There are few greater pleasures in this life than kissing a man with a soft, supple beard.
Not this man, though, of course. This man is someone to share a roof and meals with. Nothing more or his career is as good as toast. Burned toast at that.
“Were you a personal assistant before you became Amy’s?” Ethan asks.
“No, I was looking for jobs in hospitality. The opportunity opened up to be Amy’s assistant, and I figured it was as good a way as any to learn about the business from the inside while picking Amy’s brain,” he says. “I’ve been following her career for a while now.”
A puckering overtakes Ethan’s face. Taylor fears he’s said the wrong thing, but then Ethan says, “She’s built quite the empire.”
“Not without help she hasn’t,” he says to spread the compliment out a bit more without naming Ethan directly. From the conversations he’s had with Amy, she painted Ethan as “stubborn.” She said, “He wanted nothing to do with success or franchising because ‘uprooting was out of the question for him.’”
It makes sense now that Taylor has seen Ethan in action. But he doesn’t think stubbornness is the heart of it. Ethan is a necessary resource in the habitat he’s built here. Ethan’s arms are like sturdy, strong tree branches and his torso is a generous, aged trunk. It’s as if the ground here has claimed him as part of the ecosystem. Digging him up and trying to replant him somewhere else probably wouldn’t work.
“Why hospitality?” Ethan asks, seemingly ignoring Taylor’s previous statement.
“Similar reasons to yours,” Taylor says, adding more house dressing to his bowl.
“Oh, I never wanted to go into hospitality,” Ethan says, face all serious.
Puzzled, Taylor says, “But you did all those interviews with Amy back…” He doesn’t really know where he was going to go with that sentence, only that this doesn’t jive with the Ethan from the magazines and the photo essays. He definitely won’t bring up how attractive he found Ethan in all those spreads.
“I always wanted to own a business—that much is true. Amy and I cycled through many ideas over the years we were together. It wasn’t until we had Samara that opening something fairy-tale-themed came to us,” he says. It’s as if a curtain of memory falls over his face, like Taylor is looking at him through a lacy pattern. “Samara was ravenous for Disney movies and picture books about princesses. We couldn’t keep up. Every day she was obsessing over a different princess.”
“I can relate,” Taylor says, reminiscing upon his childhood fascination with the illustrations in the Grimm’s complete story collection his parents kept around the house.
“We floated taking her to Disney World, but she’s never liked rides. They always make her sick. We figured that would be a waste of money. We kept saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we had some place close that’s magical but more outdoorsy?’ This land had been in my family for a while. I think my grandfather always had dreams of starting a farm, but when he passed, he left the deed to my dad and—”
So enrapt, Taylor barely registers that his phone is ringing. It’s not until Ethan says, “Are you going to get that?” that he looks down and sees Amy’s photo taking up half the screen. The peaceful hold this conversation and meal had on Taylor shatters instantly.
“Gosh, I’m sorry. Yes, I should. Hold that thought.”
Taylor races away from the table and into Samara’s old room. Why’s he breathing so hard?
Standing in the midst of the princess-y pinkness, he wonders how much he should divulge to his boss. Does she need to know he’s staying here and why? Amy is big on allegiances. As a woman in business, she kind of has to be. To her, you’re either with her or against her. Ethan’s position on that continuum vacillates day by day. If she learned of Taylor’s newfound connection with her ex-husband, she might get the wrong idea. Which is maybe also the right idea given how intimate their conversations have felt?
He doesn’t have enough time to figure this out because there’s nothing Amy hates more than being sent to voicemail. Except maybe idle pleasantries.
Prime example: “Taylor, they’re sublime! The photos are everything I’ve been dreaming of,” she says, not stopping for a breath between sentences. She possesses too much control to need to.
“That’s fantastic,” he says, sounding perhaps too chipper.
“Am I catching you at a bad time?” she asks.
His stomach growls, angry he had to leave behind that delicious food, now growing cold. His mind growls as well, upset to have lost the pleasurable stimulation that is listening to Ethan’s deep bass voice regale him about his career.
“Did I lose you?” Amy asks. “I know the service can be spotty up there.”
“No, I’m here. You were saying about the photos?” His mind flashes to Ethan’s headshot from the Storybook Endings website, counts the number of times he mooned over it. He still can’t wrap his head around how much more attractive Ethan is in person. Ethan’s good looks have regressed Taylor’s hormones to puberty levels of wonkiness.
“Oh, not just the photos, but the progress. Taylor, buying a legacy resort was the right move. Given the existing structures, the facades and frames have been much easier and quicker to install. Everything is way more on track than I ever expected,” she says.
Taylor matches her enthusiasm as he says, “I’m glad to hear it’s all going well.”
“I’m sending you the picture proofs now. Just keep them between us until we’ve got the new test site up and running. Don’t say anything to Ethan,” she says pointedly.
“Ethan? Why would I say anything to Ethan?” The reverb of his voice has a distinctly defensive tone to it. As if he could broadcast his attraction to her ex-husband more.
“Because you’re staying at the resort he manages?” she says slowly and cuttingly.
“Right,” he says, palming his forehead. “Of course. Mum’s the word.”
There’s a tenuous silence. “Are you sure everything is all right over there? You don’t need me to fly out, do you? I’m entrusting you with this.” That shiny promise of advancement from his first interview with Amy dangles in the balance of what he does and says next.
“No! I have everything under control. I just spent all day so focused on Samara’s party preparations that I needed a second to reset and eat is all,” he says, evening out his tone.
“Eat? Oh, with the time difference, I didn’t even realize. It’s dinner. Taylor, you should’ve said something. You really need to be more assertive. Go eat. Be on the lookout for my e-mail,” she says.
Taylor’s relieved to be off the line, but annoyed with himself for not speaking up about his new sleeping situation. It would mean little to Amy if he charged a few nights’ stay at the Calico Inn on his business card if he explained. He’s almost positive it would be preferable to shacking up with her ex, but…
Well, the roof and window will likely be fixed way before Amy and Samara’s plane even touches the ground. There’s no reason she needs to know about this temporary arrangement. Why upset her? That upset could blow back right onto Ethan for his carelessness regarding the tree limbs. He’s not in the business of getting anyone in trouble.
Besides, he’s selfishly enjoying Ethan’s company, which is what makes him leave his phone in the bedroom and return to the kitchen to continue their meal. Only, when he arrives, Ethan is gone. His food has been cleared, and his utensils are sitting in the sink.
So much for hearing the rest of that story.
Taylor gloomily finishes his lukewarm dinner alone.