Chapter 12
REESE
TRACK: Dolly Parton, “Jolene”
The next week is a blur of Chef’s Apprentice and L’Aubergine trying to operate normally around it.
I won’t say it’s not stressful—I prepared as best I could with scheduling and menus and shooting times, but by Wednesday of the first week of shooting, it feels like everything that could have gone wrong has.
But when I finally get a moment to myself, Jacques bursts into my office.
He scares me so badly my hand flies out, knocking over my nearly full cup of coffee in my hand and soaking my shirt. “Jesus!” I exclaim. Thankfully the coffee’s only lukewarm.
Then I see the glimmer of liquid across the screen of my laptop.
“Shit!” I wipe the screen and keys with my sleeve.
But doing this somehow activates an audible chat box on the webpage I was on, and a cartoon woman pops up on screen. “Hey! I’m Olivia!” she practically shouts.
My stomach drops—my computer is hooked up to a Bluetooth speaker as I was using it to play music earlier. “I’d love to talk with you about NorCal real estate!” Olivia screams.
I slam the laptop shut.
“What kind of questions do you have?” Olivia’s muffled voice continues through the closed laptop, which hasn’t shut down properly.
I look at Jacques, who’s standing with his hands on his hips. I stab the disconnect button on my Bluetooth speaker and thankfully, Olivia remains quiet.
Luckily Jacques is too absorbed in his own anger to pay attention to what my computer was saying. I hope.
“Therese! Do you even care about me? Or is it all this ridiculous show?!”
Jacques and my mother are the only two people in the universe who call me by my given name.
“Of course I care about you, Jacques. Tell me what’s going on—I’m all ears.”
Even though I’m not really, not today. Today I woke up praying everything would be good with the show.
That Marcel, the contestant who won’t stop bursting into tears and leaving perishables lying around the kitchen might get his shit together.
That Augusta won’t smack Todd for following her around like a puppy dog.
And mostly, that Neil will drop the suggestion that Eli and I go out on another date with him and Kelly.
For a moment, I drift into the memory of Eli’s lips against mine, his hands spreading across my thighs.
“It’s not acceptable,” Jacques seethes.
I bite my cheek to bring myself back to the present, hard enough to send a spasm of pain through me, effectively knocking me out of the dangerously warm glow I’d fallen into.
I focus on Jacques, who’s pacing the tiny space between my desk and the little love seat on the back wall.
I sigh, patting my chest with a napkin from my half-eaten lunch I was trying to scarf down while perusing California real estate.
But I can feel that the T-shirt underneath my button-down is soaked too and I groan inwardly.
I desperately want to change. I know Jacques would be more likely to critique my muffin top than care about seeing me in my sports bra, but it’s still not exactly professional for me to whip off my shirt in the same room as him.
I pull out the drawer I keep my spare shirts in.
“Dammit,” I curse under my breath.
“Exactly,” Jacques says.
“No, my drawer is empty,” I say, remembering I changed into my spare one for the show yesterday when I found a missing button on the one I’d come in wearing. “Never mind. What are you upset about?”
“I told you—disarray!”
“You’ll have to give me a bit more context, Jacques.” I don’t bother keeping the exhaustion out of my voice, knowing I’m going to be sitting in a wet shirt until I can get Jacques to calm down.
“The walk-in, it is in disarray! The onions—they’ve been moved, and that child has stolen my knife!”
I’ve learned that I need to let Jacques have his requisite complaining time—he needs to get stuff out of his head before I can get new information in. I also know I need to time his unloading so it doesn’t spin off, so I pick up my phone, hoping it’s finally charged.
It has. And there’s another text message from Eli on the screen.
My stomach does a little somersault. I pinch my lips between my teeth to keep from smiling, knowing that will only make Jacques explode.
Then I turn the phone upside down to avoid me staring.
Eli and I haven’t seen each other in the days since the completely illegal kiss—at least, not up close.
He came down yesterday morning with Cassandra to be interviewed for the show, and I watched him from the other side of the camera, laughing along with him and his twin’s back and forth.
For all their bickering, I know they care about each other deeply.
Anyone would know that just looking at the way they listen to each other, build off of what their sibling says instead of knocking it down.
All the Kelly family is like that, and it makes something in my heart ache.
Part of it is missing my own siblings. But part of it is thinking about Shannon Kelly, Eli’s mom.
A woman I never even knew. Eli told me back when we were in New York and his mom had just passed that it had been her dream to have her kids take over the hotel.
That she’d even written it into her will. And here it was, her dream come true.
Her not here to see it.
It all felt so tragic, having your dreams come true when you’re already gone. Like a painter who becomes famous after they die.
At least she got to have the family she wanted.
I look up at the picture of my sister and her family now, a familiar ache of love and longing in my chest knowing children aren’t in the cards for me.
I always wanted kids, but my ex—the one before Eli, who I’d been tangled up in for years—looked repulsed every time the topic came up.
He had me convinced my life would be better without them.
After we split up for the last time and I reconnected with Michelle—who I realized Simon had effectively kept me from by putting up a stink every time I wanted to visit them, and never wanting them to stay with us—I fell in love with my nieces all over again. I miss them terribly.
The person I fell for after Simon was Eli, and that went nowhere.
My eyes go back to my phone.
Jacques gasps, bringing my attention back to him. “Are you even listening, Reese?” He’s looking at my hand, reaching for my phone.
“Yes. You’re disgusted with Marcel. You can’t stand how he leaves things lying around and doesn’t appreciate the flow of your kitchen.” I’m impressed with how much I retained while my mind wandered.
“I did not say that.”
I blink. Maybe I shouldn’t be impressed. “I heard—”
“Disgust. I did not say I was disgusted by him.”
Jacques is insulted. No…I squint. My lips turn up as I realize what’s really going on.
“Jacques, you like him.”
“I did not say that! The man is from Montreal.”
I have to bite my cheek not to laugh out loud.
My chef has a crush. I tap my chin. “I thought you said you wanted to go to Montreal last week. You said you needed to speak French and you would even stoop to going to French Canada to do it.” I seem to remember him saying that quite loudly, in the presence of Marcel.
I should have picked up on the crush earlier.
Jacques folds his arms and taps his fingers on his tiny bicep. “Perhaps. One day.”
“Listen, the first step to having someone consider having the same feelings for you might be not to insult him by claiming he’s sabotaging your kitchen. Besides, he’s as meticulous as you are. I’ve seen the way he wipes down his station even when the cameras aren’t on him.
The door opens then, and Rufus pops his head in. “Jacques, we need you.”
“Rufus!” Jacques says. “Who is the TV person leaving the mess in the walk-in? Why aren’t you keeping watch on this disarray?”
Rufus gives him a strange look and shoots a glance to me. “No one goes in there during shooting.”
Jacques huffs. “Find out. Let me know.”
Then he shoves past Rufus. I shrug, grinning, before pointing to my shirt. “I’m going to do my lunchtime rounds a few minutes late.”
I should get up and get a new shirt right away; I know we have some in the storeroom, down in the basement. But with my door shut again, the first thing I do is pick up my phone.
I’m not sure what I expected. Eli and I have been texting since the other night at the bar, but we’ve thoroughly avoided talking about that kiss.
I think both of us are hoping we can blame it on the alcohol, though neither of us was properly drunk.
The texts, instead, have been mostly about how the show is going.
But not this one. This one is a shot of Quince Valley, a gorgeous spread of orange sunrise bathing the hill opposite Rolling Hills in a brilliant orange-pink light.
Sunsets over the valley are spectacular, with the sun setting behind the hill on the opposite side of the river.
But I’ve forgotten how beautiful the sunrise can be too.
The text under the picture says Morning, sunshine.
My heart does a little skip. Did he mean for there to be a comma there? Is it just supposed to be a caption of the photo, or is he calling me sunshine?
Though I smile, I text back the first thing I think.
REESE: It’s not morning, buddy.
Then I drop my phone down. My insides are flickering like ripples on the Quince. What is this? Eli and I don’t do this. We don’t text pleasantries.
We don’t kiss, either. Yet here we are.
ELI: It was when I sent that. You ignoring me again?
Leave it to Eli to bring up the awkwardness of how, up until this whole thing, I did ignore him, as best I could.
REESE: It’s insanely busy down here.
ELI: Can I do anything? I do owe you for coming out last week.
REESE: No. I’m saving that favor for when I really need it.
ELI: I’m going to owe you my firstborn before this thing is over.
I laugh at Eli’s ridiculousness. But the next text from him comes through before I can respond.