Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
For as long as Camila and I have known David Ortega, he and his chef friends have hosted Garlic Fest.
The first time we attended was five years ago, back when Cami and David were in a simple flirtationship, having just met at Container Bar the night before. We were twenty-two and understandably confuddled anyone would willingly show up to a party where garlic is the star of the show, but He was the cutest, Cami had said, and maybe these chef types know something about garlic we don’t?
Spoiler: chefs know something about garlic we don’t.
Five years later, it’s one of my favorite traditions, and now that she’s David’s fiancée, Cami has joined the fray as a partial hostess, though I’m pretty sure the most she accomplished today was a single wildflower arrangement. She’s still fiddling with it when I walk into her kitchen, her hair in a messy updo, her white T-shirt smeared with dirt.
“Are these too wilted?” she asks, catching my eye.
“Yes,” I say. They’re drooping in all directions, the stems hugging the lip of the vase.
Cami huffs and turns around, opening the fridge. “Beer?”
“What about a shot?” Giovanna proposes, passing me by to refill her water bottle in the kitchen sink. After fifteen miles, she still hasn’t broken a sweat. I swear she’s poreless.
“ Ohmygod. ” Leonie pushes her palms against her knees, doubling over. Her blond hair nearly touches the floor as Giovanna rubs her back soothingly. “Can you give us, like, five minutes to recover before proposing shots at four o’clock in the afternoon?”
Camila looks between us with revulsion. We’re all in athletic gear, our cheeks in various states of blush, our hair matted from helmets. “Not my journey,” she mutters to herself, cracking the tab of an Austin Eastciders can.
In the backyard, situated between a handful of ash trees and a few dogs rolling on their backs, ten professional chefs are prepping their mise en place at foldout tables. Chopping fennel, deseeding lemons, spatchcocking chickens. Beyond them are three Big Green Eggs, one coal fire, a gas grill, a smoker, and a stone pizza oven David had installed when Cami moved in.
Giovanna and Leonie shower in the guest room while I help Camila pick sturdier flowers from the garden. The others join us to set the picnic tables, working around towering piles of marinated meats and garlic cloves doused with olive oil, wrapped in foil sachets.
“We can finish this, J,” Giovanna says, ripping open the plastic on a stack of paper cups. Her hair is still damp, but there’s a slight touch of makeup on her cheeks and she’s dressed now in a simple sundress. “Go shower.”
“I don’t need to shower,” I say.
I’m still readjusting Gio’s utensil placement (to the societally correct arrangement: fork left, spoon and knife right, blade facing inward) on all the place settings when I glance up and notice my friends staring at me.
“ What did you just say?” Camila snaps.
I look down at myself in bike shorts, an athletic tank top. A variation of what I wore last night with Will.
“I’ll put on the jean shorts and a T-shirt I brought, but I think I smell fine,” I say.
Gio rubs at the hair just above my ear, pulled into a low ponytail. “Stiff. From sweat. ”
“It’s not that bad,” I protest. “Do women always have to show up to a function with perfectly clean hair and a face full of makeup?”
“ Women don’t,” Camila retorts. “But Josephine Davis does. The only way I see you willingly choosing not to take a shower, blow out your hair, and do your makeup is if you’re terminally ill, or under duress.”
I shrug. “I forgot to bring my makeup bag.”
“Between the three of us, we’ve got you covered.”
“Guys!” Leonie cries. “If Josie wants to keep it casual, let her! We’re at a backyard cookout, not a black-tie wedding.”
Camila ignores this, narrowing her eyes at me. She drops the paper napkins onto the table and stomps over, grabbing me by the wrist.
“Ow!” I whine as she pulls me into the house with her.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks.
“Nothing!”
“In the nine years I’ve known you, I have never, and I mean never, seen you show up to a social function—personal, professional, familial, or otherwise—without at least fixing your hair into a slicked-back bun with your cute scrunchie and using that three-way makeup thingy for your lips, eyes, and cheeks.”
“The Ilia Multi-Stick.”
“Beside! The! Point!”
“I’m…” With my arms, I gesture in each direction, at nothing. “Mellowing out.”
“That’s the biggest fucking lie you’ve ever told me, Josephine. Are we lying to each other now?”
My eyes narrow back. I cross my arms over my chest, anger flaring at the memory of her words: I’m leaving Revenant.
“I don’t know, Cami! Are we lying to each other now?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think it’s supposed to mean?”
“Okay,” she says, holding up a palm, “now I have to know what that is supposed to mean?”
“All of those chefs,” I say, pointing out the window, “are going to be sweating their balls off when they light the grills in fifteen minutes!”
Camila groans. “Just tell me what’s wrong!”
“Nothing’s wrong!”
She leans a hand on the counter, studying me. “Are you mad I invited Will Grant?”
“Mad?” I laugh, sounding unhinged. “I’m thrilled he’s coming!”
“If you’re really so thrilled he’s coming,” she articulates, “why aren’t you going to take a fucking shower, babe?”
“Because I need us to stop being attracted to each other!” I scream. Irrevocably.
That’s when a throat clears over by the front door, and we turn to see the man of the hour frozen in the living room.
Will is dressed in a white brewery T-shirt and loose jeans. He’s holding a bouquet of yellow sunflowers in one hand and a six-pack in the other. His wavy brown hair is loose, disheveled. His mouth parts a fraction as his eyes center on the dead space between Cami’s body and mine.
Beside him is Brooks, Will’s friend from high school.
There’s a toddler and a beagle peeking out from under Brooks’s legs.
My face flames in embarrassment as I swear beneath my breath. I dart through the opposite end of the kitchen, sprint down the hall, and shut myself in the guest bedroom.
My friends’ soiled athleticwear is stuffed in their lightweight backpacks, lined up along the far wall. I go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror.
Exactly how I looked last night—and even then, Will and I had been halfway to a date.
I can’t dress up knowing I’d be doing it for him. Every dab of makeup, every swipe of soap across my skin. It wouldn’t be for anyone else at this party. All for him.
Camila is right, though; I almost never let people see me like this.
My skin is splotchy, red stains patchworked across my face, my neck, my chest. A third from blushing, a third from the bike ride, a third from digging around in the garden. I lift my nails; they’re caked with dirt. When I glance back at my reflection, I can see the oily shine of my hair near my temple. I smell like sweat and soil. A few strands of hair are stuck to my neck.
And even though this was my exact intention, now that I know Will Grant has seen me like this, I start to hyperventilate.
It isn’t based on a desire to be the prettiest person in the room. Only a desire to be the most put together. I’ve always had this meticulous, obsessive compulsion to look fixed up, to appear curated. So when people see me—when they form opinions of me—they never think to themselves, That girl’s life must be on fire.
I push both palms against the countertop, centering my breath before panic sets in. There’s a soft rap on the door.
“Come in,” I say, expecting Camila.
I glance over as Will enters the guest room, my heart rate jackhammering again.
The flowers and beer are gone now. He closes the door behind him, looking at me with sharp eyes. I fight internally with myself. Wanting him to see me. Wishing he wouldn’t look.
After my second online class finished up last night, Will followed me all the way home. For safety, he insisted, and even though it was a personal favor, another rule broken, I didn’t argue. Because last night I let myself be selfish with Will. Selfish with his time, with mine. But when I got inside my house and watched him bike away, the spell broke, and I felt mortified I’d gone searching for him at all.
Now he’s cataloging me. His left hand clenches tightly onto the doorknob and his right forms a fist by his side. His chest expands and contracts with even breaths as his eyes mark a path down my body.
I hold still as a statue under the harsh lights of the bathroom.
After twenty seconds of this, Will sighs and walks toward me. He leans a shoulder against the restroom doorframe. “Let the record show I tried,” he rasps.
“You tried?” I repeat.
“I tried to accomplish what you want from me. I tried not to be attracted to you. It doesn’t work. Never has. Not last night, not today. I want you just the same.”
“It doesn’t work for me either,” I say spitefully.
His eyes darken. Sapphire blue.
“I would have you,” he says, voice hoarse, “like this, just as quickly as I would if you were in a ball gown. I think I might prefer this, to be honest.”
His words sink in, then pulse through me, concentrating in my core. The aloneness of us, in this very private bedroom, is erasing my “reasons.” I resist the urge to thrust myself against his body and let him lift me off the ground, like I know he could. Would.
We breathe too heavily, lean too close.
“Josie,” Will mutters, sounding wounded.
His hand moves toward me, but I grab him by the wrist.
I repeat his words back from Andalo: “It’s not that I don’t want to.”
He repeats mine: “Want to what?”
I release his wrist. “A shower first,” I say.
Will wets his lips. “You or us?”
“Me.”
“I’ll leave.”
“No,” I say. Last night when Will offered to leave me alone, I couldn’t look him in the eye when I asked him not to, but I do now. He looks as lost as I feel.
“I want to talk,” I explain. “I just need to be clean first.”
He nods. “Take your time.”
I close the door to the bathroom and turn on the shower, stepping under the spray. All the while I strategize how to explain myself to Will. He already occupies too many of my thoughts. Everything lately has been recontextualized around him. If I go to New York for work, would he want to see me? Would Zoe? If he likes Austin so much, why doesn’t he just…
Move here?
Stop. I have to stop this. It isn’t fair to him. I’m not being fair to him, making these internal assumptions that he could change his life to accommodate mine. That’s no way to build a relationship.
I wash my hair, my body, quickly change into the spare clothes I brought, and dab sunscreen on my face. When I open the door and steam from the shower pours into the bedroom, I find Will sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees. He stands when he sees me.
“Feeling better?” he asks.
“In a sense.”
Will scratches at his arm as he studies me. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”
“The price of tea in China.”
He smirks, stepping toward me. “You wanted me with you last night, Josie. You told me to stay the weekend, to come to this party today. I was doing my best to respect your boundaries, but now I’m just really confused.”
Be fair to him, my brain whispers to my heart.
I sigh wistfully. “I had this whole scheme.”
He asks, “What scheme?”
“To be a huge turnoff all night long.”
Despite my tone, Will’s smile grows. “Josephine, I am on the edge of my seat waiting to hear what you think would have turned me off.”
I raise a challenging eyebrow, crossing my arms. “I was going to be very patronizing every time I saw you eating meat.”
A divot on his forehead. “You didn’t mind last night. I would have known you were playacting. And besides, you’re not even a purist, you said so yourself.”
“Well, for your information, I’m an aspiring vegetarian.”
“How does that work?” he asks.
“I’m always aspiring. Never vegetarian,” I answer.
He laughs. It sounds like music. “What else?” he asks, prepared for further absurdity.
“Garlic. Lots of garlic on my plate.”
“From what I understand about this event,” Will says, “that’s not specific to you. ”
“I was going to talk about myself endlessly.”
“A counterintuitive tactic, considering I’ve been desperate to get inside your head.”
“And now we’re right back to the beginning!” I cry. “Because if you stopped finding me attractive, maybe you’d stop wanting to get inside my head!”
“If that were true, it would make me an asshole,” Will points out.
“Well, you were a finance bro!”
I’m losing it, and Will Grant can tell. His dimples have entered the room. But at least the sexual tension between us has mostly dissipated, replaced by a comedic warmth I’m not sure is any less dangerous.
“The entire crux of this issue,” Will says, rolling the words, “is your rigid belief that we should not be involved in any way, shape, or form. When it comes to the professional aspect of our coworking relationship, I won’t argue that point. It’s naughty.”
Good fuck, the way he says naughty is—
“But if this is about Zoe—”
“It’s not. I believed you when you said she wouldn’t care.”
He cocks his head. “Then what?”
I inhale deeply and subsequently word vomit: “I can’t let anything become more important to me than Revenant. I can’t give room to anything else in my life, can’t give space to anything else in my head. And if you and I… if we were to…” I hug myself and Will frowns. “I think you would become very important to me,” I whisper, looking at his shoes.
“Which can’t happen,” Will concludes. “Because I would be distracting you from what’s most important.”
I flinch but don’t deny it.
Revenant is just a business, sure. But maybe my entire self-worth is wrapped up in it, and maybe I don’t know how to backpedal, seven years later.
When I look back up, Will is nodding to himself, like he’s internalizing this, accepting it. He bites his lower lip. “I want to make a deal with you. Are you game?”
“What kind of deal?”
Will drums his fingers on his biceps. “Tonight, we’ll be friends. We’ll talk. Hang out. I know this party means a lot to you and Camila. I want you to always have fond memories of it. You shouldn’t feel tortured by my presence here. You should enjoy yourself.”
I offer him a small smile, touched. His thoughtfulness is unbounded.
Will rolls out his neck. “But at the end of the night, I’m going to tell you the five worst things about me.”
It’s like a gear clicks into place, and I suddenly understand.
Instead of curbing his attraction toward me, he’s going to curb my attraction toward him.
There’s some serious appeal to this, I won’t deny it. Getting Will off my mind would free up a hefty amount of mental capacity I could repurpose to focus on work.
The question is: Are the five worst things about Will Grant enough to permanently squash my feelings for him?
“How do I know you’re going to give me the true worst?” I ask.
“Here’s a teaser,” Will says. “I’ll give you the first one right now as an advance. When I was a senior in college, I cheated on my corporate finance final.”
Cheating. That’s pretty bad. It signifies a weak moral compass. Already, the questions are internally swirling as I study him.
It doesn’t line up, if I’m honest. Will doesn’t scream cheater to me. On women. On tests.
I mentally berate myself when I realize I’m already trying to rationalize this “worst thing” away, to diminish its significance on my opinion of him.
Will looks back at me. He’s no less attractive than he was one sentence ago, but some of the mystery behind his time in New York has been eliminated.
I stick out my hand. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”