Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
“We managed to hire two servers yesterday.” Hope reiterated that fact to Elsie, who already knew, but so that the camera could be sure to catch the moment. The repetitive exposition was sometimes annoying, but it was all part of the process.
“We did,” Elsie answered dutifully, though Hope could still detect the annoyance with the process in her voice. “I’m still worried we won’t have the money for it.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Hope tapped her fingers against the prep table. “They’ll train tonight when we open the restaurant for full service. All right?”
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Hope ignored it.
“I’ll help you in the kitchen with prep and you can take the reins on the meals.
” Hope’s phone buzzed again. She tried her damnedest to focus on what she was supposed to be doing, but it was like her phone had a mind of its own.
“Let’s get started on the prep now, so we can be ready when it’s time to open those doors. ”
Elsie tapped her palm against the counter and then walked away, saying nothing.
That had become her norm, more shut off each passing day, more skeptical of how all of this was going to work.
Hope couldn’t blame her. They were taking huge risks with this place, setting them up for an even bigger failure if it didn’t work out in the end.
Hope nodded toward Cadence and slipped her phone out of her pocket.
“Jesus,” she mumbled under her breath. There were missed calls, missed texts, everything under the sun that she could imagine. Unlocking the phone, she scrolled through them. Each one of her sisters, all three of them had sent her texts, including Rachel, whose last one jarred Hope’s heart.
Rachel
I’m so sorry. I tried to convince them to leave you alone, but they think you need an intervention.
Intervention? What the hell for? Hope tapped Rachel’s name on her phone and scrolled up to where the texts started.
Rachel
Mom saw the Instagram photo and announcement.
She’s not happy.
You could have at least told her you were a lesbian now before doing this.
Hope sighed heavily and clenched her jaw. She wasn’t a lesbian, something she’d maintain until the day she died. She still very much appreciated men and was sexually attracted to them. But she didn’t have time or energy to dive into that one with Rachel. Not right now anyway.
She clearly had bigger fish to fry.
Rachel
Ugh, now she’s calling me to see what I know. I’m not going to tell her anything, but she knows I know.
I told her you were in love and that she’d just have to get over it.
Hope’s lips quirked slightly at that. In the end, she’d known somewhere in the back of her mind that Rachel would have her back no matter what.
But this only confirmed the fact that she’d made the right choice in trying to reconcile with her over the season break.
It’d been slow and tenuous at first, but then again, that wasn’t surprising.
“What is it?” Cadence came over and stared down at Hope’s phone.
“My family saw the Instagram post, and probably all the tabloid crap after that.” Hope sighed heavily and ran her fingers through her hair.
She hadn’t fully thought this one through.
She’d just been elated that they were finally not going to be hiding in secret anymore, that their love could be celebrated rather than shamed.
Except it was being shamed.
“They’re not exactly happy about it.” Hope tapped on her second sister’s name and scrolled those texts.
Lydia
You’re a lesbian!
That’s a mortal sin, you know. I can’t believe this.
Is this why Rex divorced you?
Hope’s heart sank with each passing text. This was worse than when she’d told them about the divorce, that was for certain. They hadn’t attacked her then. They’d simply withdrawn. Cadence put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed tightly.
“Now probably isn’t a good time to tell them about the ENM thing.” Cadence sniffled and tensed.
“The what?” Hope furrowed her brow and turned her head to look into Cadence’s eyes.
“Ethical non-monogamy. Don’t worry, we’ll educate you on all the lingo the deeper you get into our community.” Chuckling, Cadence clapped her on the back with enough force that Hope’s body jerked. “Come on, we’ve got to get some filming done.”
“Yeah, right, we do.” Hope sighed again, tapping her mother’s name.
Mom
I want to love you, I really do, but you make it so hard sometimes, and I’m not sure how I can love you through this. The cheating and the divorce was bad enough, but now you’re with her?
Hope paused. With her. Had her mother known this entire time?
Lifting her hand, Hope rubbed the back of her thumb in the center of her forehead where the headache was hitting the hardest. God, this was a nightmare, and Rachel was right, she probably should have done a little more background work with her family before this hit the press.
But she hadn’t thought about that.
All she’d wanted was to stop hiding.
“Hope!”
Vaguely aware of her name being called, Hope still focused on her phone in her hand, scrolling through the abundance of texts until she got to the only one from her father.
Daddy
I love you, stinker. Don’t forget that. Just give them time.
Her heart melted a little more. She closed her eyes as tears brimmed. He always did have a way with the few words that he said. But at least she had one person still on her side in her family. Well, two, if she counted Rachel, which seemed more and more likely by the texts that kept coming in.
“Chef!” Cadence’s voice charged through the room.
“Uh, yeah, right.” Hope straightened up her back, put her phone in Do Not Disturb mode and slipped it back into her pocket. She had a whole day’s worth of work she needed to get done and now wasn’t the time to be pining away over something that she couldn’t actually fix right this very moment.
Even though she wished she could.
Looking around the kitchen, Hope worked to still her mind and focus on what needed to get done.
The marketing team was already working its magic outside to get people into the restaurant that day.
They paid them, so that should get at least a good chunk of the seats filled for a couple hours.
And there was no way that she and Elsie were prepared for that.
Hope had stuck someone on training the servers, though Cadence would film a scene with both her and Elsie working on training, so it looked like they were doing it together.
Probably easier that way since Elsie seemed to hate her guts.
It was so rare that she came into a situation like this and couldn’t break through the walls of the other person to be at least a little liked.
But Elsie seemed to just create more walls each passing day rather than breaking any down.
She decided to start with the chopping. That would be enough to get her hands and body moving and give her time to spin through the what-ifs of all those texts and missed phone calls.
Hope was halfway through the mid-morning prep when her phone rang again.
Furrowing her brow, she stopped what she was doing and slid it out.
There were only a handful of people who were on her approved list that could call through the Do Not Disturb.
And even Angelica wasn’t one of them yet. She really should change that.
Her heart dropped at the name on her screen.
Mary.
“Perfect,” Hope mumbled. “Cadence, I need to take this.”
Hope pulled the microphone from her waistband and turned it off as she walked out of the kitchen and put her phone to her ear. She wasn’t going to give Cadence an option at this point. Rolling her shoulders, Hope stepped into the hallway since she couldn’t exactly escape outside right now.
“Mary?” she said into the phone, hoping this was about something different than the obvious.
“You should have told me,” Mary scolded.
Hope’s heart sank. She should have. But they had to act immediately, and they hadn’t had much time to think. And yet, she should have relied on the one person who had been with her from the beginning.
“I know.”
“This is…” Mary paused and sighed heavily. Hope had only heard her sigh like that when she’d told her that she was getting a divorce. And Mary had been right. They’d narrowly avoided a disaster from that. “This is bad, Hope.”
“Bad? It can’t be that bad.” Hope gnawed on her lower lip, trying to find the good in the situation. She needed it to be better than it was. Something had to give, right?
“Hope… this is… the majority of the reactions are good, I’ll give you that.
But I can already see the turning and the questions that are being asked about you and Rex, and it will get uglier before it gets better.
” Mary sounded nervous now. For the first since Hope had known her, she wasn’t sure what Mary felt about the situation at all.
“But there are people who are supportive?” Hope asked, needing someone outside of the little circle of filming to tell her that this would be okay.
“There are, but once they catch wind of timelines and questions, it might make them doubt. For the moment most of the queer community seems elated. But again, once questions start…”
“They might not like the answers that they find,” Hope finished for her. That had been part of her fear, but she still hadn’t wanted to wait. And she wasn’t sure that even the dramatics following this would make her regret the decision of taking the opportunity when it arose.
“They might not. Answers that you haven’t even told me.”
Hope’s lips thinned, and she looked down at her toes with a little bit of shame. She did feel bad about that one. But she and Angelica couldn’t have happened any other way. She never would have allowed herself to, otherwise. Hope rolled her shoulders. “So what do we do?”
“I think for right now we monitor. We see if Josef launches a new attack against the two of you now that everything has been put out into the open. And we also plan for potential outcomes that we know we can predict. That’ll help us lay plans for the problems that we can’t predict.
” Mary sounded so confident, sure that she knew what she was doing in a way that Hope had never quite mastered when it came to this end of the business.
That was why she kept Mary so close and wouldn’t ever give her up.
Angelica was also damn good at it.
Mostly.
“What do you mean plan for potential outcomes?”
“I want to hire a crisis PR group to handle this. I think it’s going to bring everything up from the divorce again, only worse, and I want to protect you and Eva as much as possible before it gets bad.” Mary always sounded so confident.
“You really think they’d attack Eva?”
“Yes. No one is safe, you know that.”
Hope hated that. As much as she wanted this career, Eva hadn’t had a choice in it, so to thrust her into the spotlight wouldn’t be for the best. It was the only part of her job that she hated. “Have you seen what Josef’s done?”
“Yes, all of it,” Mary answered. “And I have to say, Hope, it doesn’t look good. If he has more—”
“I’m sure he has more. I’m sure he has just about everything.
” Hope hated to think about that. There were so many ways that she and Angelica had snuck around that he could have video of, and then this last year?
When they hadn’t even bothered during the break to try and hide their relationship? He could have so much from that.
“How bad does it get?” Mary asked.
“It could get bad. I don’t know what he has. We thought we were being careful…”
“But you never really are.”
“No,” Hope agreed. “No, we could have been more careful than we were.”
“Right. So I’d like to hire a crisis PR team to help us work through this.”
“Okay. Let’s do it.” Hope tensed, her entire body just waiting for the next battle to start.
Cold rushed through her. They just had to get through this and then maybe they’d be able to find a sense of calm and happiness.
She just had to get through every single battle, and then she could win the war.
And then maybe, she and Angelica could be tighter without the problems of the world weighing down on them.
Maybe.
But for right now, life was going to suck.