Chapter 13
ELI
TRACK: Joan Baez, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
I’m startled from my spreadsheet by the muffled sounds of Joan Baez. My heart leaps—it’s the ringtone I set for Reese. One that never goes off.
I pat my breast pocket, then remember I threw my phone in my desk drawer an hour ago after I was sick of staring at it, checking for texts from her.
I swipe the answer button, my heart thumping like a teenager getting a call from a girl for the first time.
“Hey,” I say, casual. I think. The fuck is wrong with me?
“Eli. What are you doing right now?”
The truth—Making a deathly boring spreadsheet to track expenditures across the hotel’s departments to distract myself from thinking about you—isn’t exactly a casual answer, so I clear my throat and say, “You know. Work.”
“So you’re upstairs?”
I stand up. “Yes. Why? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. But there’s a woman here who isn’t.”
My first thought is Kelly, and that sends a confusing jumble of thoughts through me. But there’s something about Reese’s tone. It almost sounds like she’s smiling.
“What’s going on, Reese?” I get nervous about being kept in the dark.
It reminds me of when I was a kid and my siblings would make plans without me, because they said I’d make them too elaborate and get us caught.
I wasn’t the daredevil like Jude, but I’d definitely get too into things.
Spend all day building an elaborate command fort in the woods when all the rest of them wanted to do was play hide-and-seek.
It also reminds me of when Kelly used to come home with her lips pinched tight, playing this excruciating game where I had to guess what the hell I’d done wrong, feeling like an idiot for not already knowing.
“Remember Cindy?” Reese says, sparing me.
“Cindy?” It takes me a minute, then it comes back to me. Cindy Harkness, from Ohio, one of the Chef’s Apprentice contestants.
“Thank You Mom,” I say. Cindy is a single mom from Ohio, who goes out of her way to thank everyone and everything. As in everyone she meets. And everything she touches. She says she does it to teach her daughter about gratitude.
“Yes. She just got eliminated.”
“Oh shit.” We’re only a couple weeks into filming, and I’ve been keeping my distance so as not to get in the way. But even though we know two people have to go each week, it’s always a shock when it happens.
I’m not surprised Cindy’s one of the early ones though.
I met her that first day of filming, when they shot Cass’s, Jude’s, and my intros—the only time we were on screen.
When they introduced me to her, she was whispering it to the colander next to her.
I heard her say it again after someone bonked into her by one of the prep stations.
Like Reese said after we met her, gratitude is important. But Cindy is gratitude on steroids.
“What did Jacques do?” I asked, grimacing, even as I felt the laughter bubbling up my chest picturing how it went down.
“He told her to quote ‘thank his Parisian ass’ for allowing her to stay on the show until episode two.”
I bite my cheek.
“She said thank you, of course.”
This time, I laugh, hard.
“Jacques lost it of course,” Reese says. I can hear her trying to keep it together. “But Eli, hang on, calm down.”
I catch my breath.
“They’re going to do her exit interview in a few minutes and…well, she’s asking for you.”
I sober. “She’s what?”
“She said please can I speak with Mr. Eli Dunham.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
I run my hand over my face. She wants to thank me. “No.”
“I guess she got wind that the show is here because of you.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah she thanked Him, too.”
I crack up again. I can’t keep it down. “God, poor Cindy.”
“Okay, so…can you come down please?”
The last thing I want to do is come down and be awkwardly thanked by Cindy. But going down there means I get to see Reese. And I haven’t seen her in days. I feel like a fucking dying man without her. “I’ll be right there.”
It’s only when I get downstairs and I’m immediately accosted by a pretty, bubbly woman wearing hairspray on a holster that I realize I might have wanted to stick with the spreadsheet. “Sit down,” she says in a more commanding voice than I would have expected from her.
“What? No, I’m just here to talk to someone.”
“Yeah, and I’m here to make you look good doing it.”
“Sit down, Mr. Kelly,” Nancy the director says, breezing by and not even looking my way.
It’s then that it dawns on me. Cindy doesn’t just want to thank me. She wants to do it on air.
“It’s Dunham,” I say. “Do I have any say in this?”
“Nope,” Nancy says, her back already to me.
I know I do, I’m the fucking boss. But then I spot Reese, standing at the prep table next to Rufus, her eyes on me, dancing with a smile.
God she looks fucking beautiful.
I sit down, helpless.
The makeup person smiles and snaps her gum. “Turn this way.”
I look back at her. Her name tag says Dijon. Like the mustard.
“I won’t have to do too much, honey,” Dijon says. “Just a little shine here—” She attacks my forehead with a poufy brush.
I give up. Mostly because it’s then I spot Cindy, red-cheeked and teary-eyed, working her way through the whole crew, shaking each of their hands, no doubt thanking them profusely for…I’m not sure what.
I narrow my eyes at Reese, pulling out my phone.
ELI: Funny you left a kind of important part out.
I watch as Reese looks down at her phone, then looks up at me and smiles mischievously. My insides go fucking gooey at that, and I force my mouth into a frown.
REESE: Don’t you remember what Neil said? Presume everything you do in the vicinity of TV people is on TV?
ELI: I’ll get back at you somehow, Franco.
REESE: How about we call it even for the bar the other night.
ELI: Which part?
She snaps her gaze up at me.
ELI: Just coming? Or you kissing me?
Reese glances down at her phone and I get the pleasure of watching her jaw drop open. Maybe—just maybe—that kiss has had the same effect on her that it did on me. Because fuck if it’s the only thing I’ve been able to think about for a whole week straight.
REESE: Me kissing you!
But I don’t respond. I just grin and pocket my phone. Now we’re even.
She pockets her phone too, and even from way over here I can see her cheeks have turned a fierce shade of pink. For a moment I picture her cheeks turning that color as I bury my face between her legs, her hair spread out across the pillow of my bed like a fan.
“Listen, you look sexy as hell when you do it, but please don’t lick your lips, sir,” Dijon says. “I just put on balm.”
“Sorry,” I mumble, with a tongue that now tastes like waxy cherry. I wish it tasted like something else.
I clear my throat, because having a boner on TV would be a terrible look and shift my attention to the person in front of me. “Is your name really Dijon?”
“Sure isn’t.”
“Then why—”
“Because I’m tangy with a little bite,” she says, winking.
I smile awkwardly. Oh fuck.
Thank God Reese isn’t here. She’d be back on top laughing at me.
“Eli, mate!” Neil’s booming voice cuts across the room. “You made it!” He gives a broad smile to Dijon. “Come on, love. He’s all done now.”
He jerks his chin at me, and I almost want to do a full Cindy on him, I’m so grateful to get out of that seat.
Neil’s leading me to the tiny stage setup by the back area of the kitchen, built a foot off the ground on a raised few sheets of plywood, enclosed with a black curtain.
“I can’t believe Reese talked you in to coming down here for this. I was going to call your brother.”
Of course. Jude would have done this and probably charmed the pants off of Cindy while he was at it.
“Well, I’m here now.” I move my jaw around, wanting badly to wipe the caked-feeling powder off my face.
“Good man. It’ll be great. Cindy’s a real sweetheart, and she asked for you specifically.”
I raise an eyebrow. The woman said she was going to get “thank you, God, for letting me live” etched on her gravestone. Then I register the other part.
“Why me?”
“She said you seemed like a gentleman—someone who’d appreciate a proper thank you.”
I grimace. “I don’t even know what that means.” But I can’t help but be a little touched that she wanted me, and not Jude, a natural on TV and with an ego the size of a hot air balloon.
But ten minutes later, with the TV lights searing heat into my face, I deeply regret feeling this way. Cindy sits next to me, clasping her hands under her chin. “Thank you, sir, for creating this beautiful hotel and this beautiful restaurant.”
“Oh well, I didn’t build it,” I say, and I swear I feel Reese laughing somewhere behind all those lights.
“But most of all,” Cindy says, looking earnestly into my eyes. “Thank you for not cleansing the kitchen of the spirits before we got here.”
My jaw drops.
On her other side, Neil’s eyeballs have sprung wide. “Spirits?!” he exclaims.
I groan. This is what I was afraid of the other night at the bar. Only this time, it’s happening far too close to the TV cameras for my liking.
“Yes,” Cindy turns to Neil. “There’s a ghost here, don’t you know?”
Neil’s looking at Cindy like she’s lost her last marble, though the look is mixed with a kind of delight I recognize.
He’s going to throw her under the bus.
I don’t like that look. It’s not fair to Cindy.
I make a snap decision—one I know I’m going to regret.
“Cindy’s right,” I say, though I can’t believe I’m doing it.
“Not that we’re actually haunted, of course, but people like to make up stories about old buildings.
And the story about the ghost at Rolling Hills is a fun one for people to keep alive. As it were.”
“CUT!” Nancy calls.
“Thank you!” Cindy exclaims, before squeezing me like a stuffed animal and disappearing off stage.
“Oh ho ho!” Neil says to me, rubbing his hands together.