Chapter 18
REESE
TRACK: Andrea von Kampen, “Of Him I Love Both Day and Night”
“Reese, save me,” Michelle says, her voice muffled over the phone.
I sink into my office chair, holding my arm over my forehead.
“I could say the same to you!” I sit up to take a swig of my rapidly cooling coffee.
Outside, Nancy yells CUT! “Do you know this morning I started fantasizing about answering Mom’s questions about my future?
” It’s true, and though I’m exhausted from being here since five, at Neil’s request, it’s been good to be distracted.
Because every moment I’m not working, I’m obsessing about Eli. The memory of that night—of every moment between us over the past three weeks—has consumed me.
My sister snort-laughs on the other end of the line. “Don’t fantasize about that,” she says. “Did you know she asked Will tonight when we’re going to have babies of our own?”
I nearly choke on my coffee. “Again?! Does she not notice you have four kids between the two of you already?”
“‘But none of them are babies, Michelle!’” My sister does an impeccable imitation of our mom, and now we’re both laughing.
“I’m glad you called, Mich,” I say, once we’ve both taken a breath. “You’re the perfect antidote to my completely shit morning.”
“Tell me.”
I explain to my sister how I don’t normally come in when they start filming anymore, since I have to be there to manage the transition into our regular restaurant operations.
But last night, two nights after I made out with Eli in his truck (I carefully skip over that part—our first very-much-not-part-of-the-plan date—and simultaneously try to squash down the warm tingling bubbling up again at the memory), Jacques called me.
He was pissed and threatened to quit. Neither of these last two things were out of the ordinary for Jacques Leclerc, but him calling to tell me was.
“Jacques has a bee in his beret about one of our contestants.”
If Michelle notices how I use the word our, like the show is now mine too, she doesn’t say anything.
“It’s that Augusta woman,” Jacques shouted at me the minute I walked in the door this morning. Except his thick French accent, which sometimes fades, was back in full force, so it sounded more like EET EEZ THAT AUGUSTA WOOMAN!
“She’s on my last nerve!” He’d made a fist and plopped it on his hip.
“His mustache was trembling he was so upset, Mich.”
“Jacques, you’re in charge of who stays and goes,” I said, exasperated. I hadn’t even had more than a few sips of my giant thermos of coffee, the one I was still nursing.
“But she cannot go!”
It was then I had to hide my smile, because suddenly I understood.
Augusta was one of the few contestants who wasn’t terrified of our chef—the other being Marcel, who Jacques had suspiciously let stay on, despite somehow several of Marcel’s dishes turning out charred thanks to his distracted flirting with said chef.
Not only that, but Augusta pushed back when Jacques was being an ass, which honestly, he needed.
And he quietly respected. It’s why I knew I’d made the right decision in hiring Sophie, who tossed Jacques a very specific glare when he got testy.
She and Rufus were the only people here besides me at the restaurant who weren’t terrified of him.
I lean back in my chair now. “He had to admit to himself he couldn’t vote her off the show because she’s the best.”
“This is the woman all the men are mildly obsessed with, right?” Michelle asks.
“Yes. The women, too,” I say. “She has the personality of a winner. But it’s not bravado. It’s like…charisma. When you talk to her, you feel like you’ve picked up some of her shine, honestly. It’s weird.”
There’s a pause, then Michelle says, “You used to have that.”
Now I really do choke on my coffee. “What?!” I exclaim, half laughing, dabbing at my mouth with a napkin from my desk drawer.
“You did,” Michelle insists.
“You’re nuts.”
“Back when you used to do shows, you’d come off the stage glowing. People would talk to you, and when you’d move onto the next, they’d be glowing too.”
Something strange ticks over inside of me. Some flash-in-the-pan memory of a feeling—a high—I used to get up there on stage, the lights searing into my skin, my voice spent, yet still ready for more.
“Those were coffee shop gigs,” I say softly. But even as I say it, I want to admonish myself. Those gigs were everything. I loved those cozy places, snow sticking to the window outside, the crowd clinking glasses and murmuring then going quiet as I got onstage.
“You know I’m right,” Michelle says.
I swallow. “Those were the days,” I say. Whisper, more like.
Then there’s a crash outside, and I hear Jacques hollering at someone, and the memory is snapped, going up like smoke on a pinched candlewick.
“Is that Jacques?” Michelle asks.
“Yeah, taking his anger out on some poor other contestant.” I grimace. I’d stepped in when he’d done that earlier, but Nancy had informed me when the cameras were rolling, he wasn’t my responsibility.
In other words, back off, this is good for TV.
There’s the sound of rustling on the other end of the line, then a thud and a curse under my sister’s breath. “Dammit, I can’t see anything.”
“Where are you?” I ask, checking the time. I can’t hide in my office forever. Even if I’m not supposed to stop Jacques on air, Neil asked me to calm him down between takes. “Riled up is good, storming off set, not so much,” he’d told me.
“Can’t you guess?” Michelle asks. “Our favorite hiding spot from Mom.”
I grin. “My closet. Of course.” We used to tuck ourselves in one of our closets when Mom had her work friends over to avoid being paraded out for them.
“It’s a lot harder to do as a full-sized adult,” Michelle confesses. “Plus, I can’t exactly hide in mine now that Mom made my room her craft emporium.”
I take a swig of coffee. “Guess we know who her favorite is.”
“Sometimes I wonder why I still talk to you.”
I laugh, standing up. I need to get back out there. Plus, we’ve managed to get through this whole call without me having to say anything about Eli. But despite the risk of her asking, I stay on the line a moment longer, growing serious when I say, “I miss you, Mich.”
“Me too,” she says. “So much. I’m sorry I’ve been consumed with life stuff.”
“I get it, Michelle.” Besides the business of being a mom of four, Michelle ran the restaurant I used to work in back in Jewel Lakes.
Although she was the owner, and wisely hired someone else to manage it.
Plus, her husband Will was mayor of the town they live in.
“Your life is already insane, and now you’re taking Mom to London over Thanksgiving—I’m surprised you found time to call at all. ”
“You’re right. I get a get-out-of-jail-free card for life for that.”
We love our mom dearly, but since she retired from her job, she’s turned all her energy on her three kids. That and whatever her craft du jour is. Michelle’s taking the brunt of it given she’s the only one with a family—and she moved Mom and Dad to her town.
“So…Reese…”
I sense Michelle gearing up for a question that I can’t brush off, so I cut her off. “Gosh, look at the time. I better go, Mich.”
“Look at the time, seriously?”
“Sorry, that was weak. But I really do have to get back to work.”
“You can go in a minute,” Michelle says, like she’s the older sister. Which she kind of is in our relationship, having been married and widowed while I wasted a whole decade with a man who slowly eroded my life’s dreams without me even seeing it.
“Tell me what’s going on with you, Reese. You sound tired. But there’s something else, too.”
Sometimes it’s deeply annoying.
“Well the show is…intense.” As if to make my point, there’s another crash outside my office, and I hear Nancy shout “CUT!” again.
I get up out of my chair as much to stall talking as to see what’s going on.
But of course, all I see is the backs of crew members and TV lights.
“No first aid kid,” someone yells. “Just a bonk.”
“Come on, Reese.”
I sigh, closing the door and leaning against the doorframe.
My stomach twists as the image of Eli under me the other night pops to mind. I squeeze my eyes shut—Michelle will see right through me.
“I’m seeing someone,” I say softly.
“Oh shit,” she exclaims. “You know, I knew that might be it. I’ve seen you on the video calls. You’re tired, yes, but you also look happier than I’ve seen you in a long time. And it’s different than that chipper put-on happiness you were wearing when you were living out here with me.”
I swallow. I can’t deny it. I am happy. And it scares the shit out of me.
“So, you going to tell me who it is?”
I grimace. She’s not going to like this part.
“It’s not just that making me happy,” I say. “Work’s going well too.”
Michelle makes a sound. “Really, Ms. I’m never working in restaurants again?”
I scowl. “I should have never told you that.”
“Of course you should have. I know you’re doing great at work, and there’s nothing wrong with working in restaurants, you know.”
For some reason, that irritates me. “I know there isn’t. You just know…”
“That it’s not what you always dreamed of.”
Shit. I’ve talked myself into a corner. Because the thing I always dreamed of was singing, and Michelle knows it. And I’m not ready to talk about that yet.
“I’m looking at real estate in California,” I say, hoping it’ll throw her off.
“You told me that last time we talked. And I told you running away isn’t a plan.”
Dammit.
“Reese, come on. Who is he?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “It’s Eli, Mich.”
For a moment, there’s nothing but silence and the muffled noise of the kitchen on the other side of my door. “Reese,” Michelle says finally. “I don’t know what to say.”
Michelle’s was the shoulder I cried on when things ended badly with Eli last time. And I cried a lot.