Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
The three of us load the truck, sweating in the setting sun as we work.
“What does a consultant even do ?” Cami asks, passing a plastic bin over to Will. “Okay, wait, I know that sounded accusatory—”
“No, it’s fine,” Will says, looking like he’d laugh if he wasn’t weighed down by a box of jeans. “It’s a valid question. The best way to describe my job is I’m a fixer, or a troubleshooter. You could come to me with any problem you don’t have time to solve, and it would be my job to help you figure out a solution.”
“So, anything goes.” Cami pops a hip and rests her hand on it, gazing up at Will in the truck.
“Within reason,” he says, warily.
Cami smirks. “Are you billing us for this manual labor?”
“No.” Will stacks the box, then turns back to grab the next one I offer him. “We can call this a free bonus service.”
“What about for calling the Nashville clubs?” I ask.
“That,” Will says, lifting my box of hangers, “was just because I’m nice.” He throws me a look, challenging me to refute it.
“And?” I ask.
“ And I booked you a new reservation on Broadway. It’s at this place called Wagon Wheel. Based on the website, it looks like a rootin’ tootin’ good time.”
“But really,” Cami says, “how high-class were we hoping to get on this stereotypical bachelorette trip, anyway?”
“I’ll be in Nashville next weekend, too,” Will says, his voice strained as he pulls down the overhead truck door. “Visiting my mom.”
I frown. Just his mom? Not his dad, too?
“Be honest, Will Grant,” Cami says. “Are you the double-booking that got our first reservation canceled?”
“You caught me.”
“Maybe we’ll see you around the mechanical bull.” She winks at him.
Will turns to me, looking disturbed. “Make sure every bridesmaid wears pants that night.”
“You sound like you’re giving advice from a traumatic past experience,” I say.
His face stays neutral. “Yes.”
“Let’s go to Agricole,” Cami says. “I want free food.”
Will shakes his head. “I’ve been trying to eat at that restaurant for months, every time I visit Austin. It’s impossible to get in without a reservation. Also, it’s impossible to get a reservation.”
“My fiancé is the sous chef.” Cami snags the truck keys from Will’s hand. “We’ll get in.”
He stares at her. “Your fiancé is David Ortega?”
Cami grins. “The one and only. Are you a foodie?”
Will blinks. “In a sense.”
“In what sense?”
He rubs the back of his neck. That tell again. “I like… to cook.”
She laughs. “Him, too. Want to meet us there?”
Will nods, his stoic, surly masculine aura temporarily deserting him, replaced with a boyish curiosity. He disappears to his car. I smile and take my final swig of prosecco, then shove the empty bottle into my purse. Cami and I climb into the high seats of the rental truck and thunder our way down the road toward Agricole in East Austin. It’s just about the only meal in the world that could make this terrible day any better.
David’s been working here for five years—about the same length of time he and Camila have been together. They met during his first month on the job when he was fresh out of culinary school and newly returned to the Austin restaurant scene from New York.
When the three of us walk in, Cami makes pleading eyes at the host. He throws her a stern look and a muttered Could’ve warned me, but then he sets us up at the chef’s bar on stools that materialize out of a secret closet. We’ve got a view of half the kitchen—the salsa station, the garnishing station, a wood-fired oven for meats and breads.
Cami leans over me to shout at Will above the clank of hot pans. “This is the best seat in the house!”
“Camila!” One of the staging chefs blinks at her. “What the fuck you doing here?”
“I had a bad day.”
“David!” the chef shouts toward the back of the kitchen.
“WHAT!”
“Your fiancée is here!”
“Did she have a bad day?”
“David!” Cami shouts, leaning onto the bar top. “I’m up here!”
David Ortega materializes from around the corner in his chef whites, eyes locked on his fiancée. In Spanish he says to her, “You’re still so pretty even when you’re sad.”
“Make me happy again.”
He smirks, something romantic and just for them behind his eyes, and then turns to me and Will. “Hey, J.”
“Hey,” I say. “This is Will Grant.”
David reaches across the bar to shake Will’s hand, just as the chef at the garnish station shouts, “Will fucking Grant?!” He’s a man roughly our age with a very petite beer belly and short red hair.
“Brooks?” Will says.
“Yeah, it’s fucking Brooks!” says fucking Brooks. He’s holding a pair of tongs toward the sky, a stem of cilantro still in its claws. “We went to high school together!” Brooks says to David. Then to Will: “You still living in New York, man?”
“Yep. It’s great to see you.”
The staging chef sets warm tortillas, mole, and corn salsa in front of us. Will looks overwhelmed. His eyes are darting between the food, his old friend, David, and me.
“Eat,” Brooks says. “We’ll catch up later!” He turns back to his garnishes, smiling to himself as he shakes his head. “Will fucking Grant!”
David leans his elbows against the bar. “Any dietary restrictions?” he asks Will.
“I’ll eat anything you put in front of me.”
David grins. “My kind of customer.” He slides down toward Camila, and the two of them switch back to Spanish again, their voices dropping low.
“Were you and Brooks close?” I ask Will.
His voice goes soft as he watches Brooks’s back. “We were best friends in high school.”
“You didn’t keep in touch?”
Will shakes his head. He says nothing for several seconds. Then he rubs a thumb over his lower lip and murmurs, “He’s the one my high school girlfriend dumped me for.”
My eyebrows jump into my hairline. “The girlfriend you long-distance dated when we were seniors? The girlfriend who kept you so damn moody all the time?”
Will shoots me a look. “I wasn’t moody all the time.”
“You were. Do you want me to break out the references you won’t understand again?”
He shrugs, lips quirking. “Sure, why not.”
“You were James from folklore. You were Kylo Ren when he could see Rey through the force bond but couldn’t touch her. You were Zayn right before he left One Direction. You were—”
“I changed my mind,” Will interrupts.
I move on without a hitch. “I wonder if she and Brooks are still together.”
“They’re not,” Will says.
“You know this…”
“Because I have Instagram, Josie, you should try it sometime. It’s the perfect way to sate your curiosity about a person without having to speak to them.”
“I sometimes like speaking to people,” I inform him.
“From high school?” He shoots me a disbelieving look.
I ignore this and shift the conversation back to him. “So does that mean you’ve forgiven Brooks? For making a move on your girlfriend once you went to Nashville?”
“Of course I forgive him.” Will grabs a tortilla. “It’s been ten years since we were seventeen-year-olds. And anyway, it would be good to catch up with Brooks. I’m trying to…” He drifts off, ripping the tortilla in half.
“What?” I probe. Will aims a wary look at me. I flush. “Sorry. You don’t have to—”
Quickly, he says, voice ragged, “I’m trying to get back to the man I used to be. Actively trying. Every day, all the time.”
The man I used to be. It implies he wants to get away from the man he became.
I have so many follow-up questions, all of which, I’m pretty sure, are too personal for the relationship we’ve established.
Yesterday, while Will was “picking my brain” in one of the Revenant conference rooms, we buried our admissions from the Eberly dinner the night before and focused on work. On strategy. On Will becoming my professional fixer. But now, two nights later, we’re right back to it. Big questions with vulnerable answers.
“Is it working?” I ask softly. “Getting back to your old self?”
His blue eyes slant in my direction, cascading up and down my face. “Yes and no. I feel more centered than I have in a long time. But I don’t think it’s possible to go back. You have to grab the pieces of yourself you want to hang on to and let go of the rest of it, then move forward anyway, the best you can.”
My lips pull up as his wisdom settles over me. “Will Grant,” I say. “You’re nothing at all like the other finance bros of my acquaintance.”
He smiles back, dimples flashing, eyes dancing. “That’s the point, Josie.” He turns back to the food in front of us, dipping his tortilla into the mole. “That’s the whole entire point.”
When we finish dinner, Cami heads home in our U-Haul to her and David’s house in North Loop after we relocate my bike to Will’s rental car. He drives me home, where my newly repaired SUV waits in the driveway.
“It’s like you were never there,” I joke, gesturing at the bumper. “I can’t believe you wanted to get rid of the imprint of your face on my car’s ass.”
I can tell Will’s fighting a smirk as he gets out to help with my bike. Every time I make him battle a smile, I add a tally mark in my head.
I meet him in the driveway and grab the handlebars from him. “You’re headed back to Manhattan in the morning?”
Will clears his throat in a semblance of a confirmation, backing away. “First thing.”
The question launches out of me before I can rethink it: “What are you going to tell Zoe?”
“The truth,” he says. I dig my fingernails into the handlebar tape. “Did you want me to pass on a message?”
“No,” I say quickly.
Will frowns. “She’d be happy to hear from you.”
He says it the way two people often promise to get together for lunch but never do. Like he means well but isn’t positive on the follow-through.
“Zoe made it clear she didn’t want to hear from me,” I say. “It may have been a long time ago, but I want to respect her boundaries.”
His frown deepens.
“You’ll be back in two weeks?” I hate the anxious note in my voice. He signed a contract. He’s not going to abandon me.
Will’s frown lapses into a gentle smile. “Next time you see me, I’ll be the walking encyclopedia of B Corp.”
I tilt my head. “Was that a joke?”
“No,” he clarifies.
“Oh, good. It wasn’t funny.”
Will laughs. Out loud.
“Did I just get you to laugh ?” I ask. “By saying you aren’t funny?”
“I’ve never claimed to be funny.”
“Just moody.”
“I’ve never claimed to be moody, either. And anyway, it’s not exactly a fair comparison, you to me.” He gestures between us.
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because anyone compared to you would seem moody. You’re…”
“Chipper?”
“I was going to go with uplifting .”
“Madison Greenberg once told me I was aloof.”
“You can’t be aloof and uplifting?”
“Now or then?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you think I was uplifting then, or do you think I’m uplifting now?”
“Why not always?” he asks.
I shrug. “So you think I’m the same as I used to be.”
Will considers, scratching at his elbow. “To be honest, I’ve never known what to think of you, Josephine. You’ve always been a riddle to me.”
His words land like warm rays on my skin, easing my senses from head to toe. Here I’d thought Will had found some sort of key to figuring me out. That years ago, he’d unlocked the answer and decided it wasn’t very interesting.
“I could never figure you out either,” I say.
Will sighs, backing toward his car. “It’s a shame neither of us tried very hard. Until now.”