Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
S omehow, in between haunting his dreams and painting his daughter’s room, Iris had convinced Archer to attend a Dream Harbor town meeting. He didn’t believe it would help, but he’d been the head chef at the diner for three weeks now, and he was still getting complaints about the pancakes. And even though some of his other menu options, like the veggie sandwich and the French onion soup, had taken off, he couldn’t get what Iris had said out of his head. The people came to the diner for comfort. Not elevated comfort food, just the comfort of a familiar place with familiar food. And maybe that was something worth giving them.
‘No, no, no. We can’t sit there.’ Iris tugged on his arm and led him away from where he was about to take a seat.
‘Why not?’
‘That’s where the book club sits.’
‘So?’
Iris looked at him with an exasperated sigh. ‘We can’t just steal their seats.’
‘But they’re not even here.’
‘Oh, they’ll be here, and I’m not about to be the one to take their seats.’
‘Are they assigned or something?’
Another sigh and an added eyeroll. ‘No. It’s just … it’s just how it is. That’s where they sit.’
Of course. That was just the way it was. Same seats. Same pancakes. Archer was suddenly feeling less positive about this plan. He had a feeling the residents of Dream Harbor were about to eat him alive.
‘Hey!’ A dark-haired woman who Archer recognized from the farmers’ market rushed up to Iris and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. They hadn’t really had time to meet that day; Iris had suddenly been in a rush to get home. ‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ she said to Iris.
‘We decided at the last minute.’
‘Oh.’ The woman turned her shrewd gaze to Archer’s face. ‘Hello, there.’
‘Kira, this is Archer. Archer, this is my friend, Kira.’
‘I remember. You’re the reason my kid wants a dog now.’
A slow smile spread across Kira’s face. ‘Sorry about that, but it’s nice to officially meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.’
‘No, she hasn’t,’ Iris hastily cut in. ‘What are you doing here, anyway? Is Bennett here, too?’
‘He’s over there saving our seats. Come on.’
Iris followed Kira through the crowd, and Archer followed behind. He’d never imagined a small-town biweekly meeting would have a turn out like this, but maybe he should have known. If they cared that much about their diner offerings, they must care about everything else, too. Again, he questioned the sanity of throwing himself at the mercy of this crowd.
It was his kitchen, his menu, his reputation on the line. And if his old dreams were dead, he wasn’t about to fail at this new one. He’d never once crowd-sourced a recipe before. But ever since Iris had called him out for being a cocky bastard, he’d been trying to adjust. He thought Cyrus was going to tip over when he asked for his opinion on the new egg dishes he was working on. Thanks to Maribel’s recommendation, they’d hired a culinary student to help prep in the mornings, and their breakfast service had gone much smoother because of it.
The women stopped in front of a row of folding chairs on the side of the meeting space. A dark-haired man with a striking resemblance to Superman stood up to greet them.
‘Hey, Iris.’
‘Hi, Bennett. This is Archer.’ She gestured to where he loomed behind her.
‘Hey, man, nice to meet you.’ Bennett stuck out his hand and Archer shook it. ‘Welcome to the town meeting.’
‘Yeah, thanks. I didn’t realize it would be this … well-attended,’ Archer said, glancing around as people started taking their seats.
Bennett chuckled. ‘Oh, it’s a whole thing.’
‘So why are you here?’ Kira asked as they slid down the row into their seats.
‘Archer is going to ask for pancake suggestions,’ said Iris.
Kira’s brows rose until they were hidden under her bangs. ‘Yikes.’
‘Yikes?’ Archer queried, and she smiled at him in a rather ominous way.
‘Just, I’m sure they’ll have a lot of suggestions for you.’
Iris shot her a glare. ‘Exactly. That’s the point. It’ll be good.’ She patted his knee in a way he guessed was supposed to be comforting, but all that registered in his brain was that Iris was touching his leg. ‘You’ll get lots of new ideas to try and I’m sure one of them will be the right one.’
‘The old one,’ he muttered.
‘The one everyone wants,’ she shot back with a little smirk when he looked at her. She had her hair in her usual braid, cinnamon-laced with ginger that somehow looked beautiful even under the garish lights of the meeting hall. Little wisps of hair had escaped it and framed her face, her eyes twinkling and mischievous, her lips tipped into a playful smile. Like she was always teasing him about something.
The past few days had been awkward between them, neither knowing how to behave. The easy comfort they’d been starting to fall into had been broken by his actions and his subpar apology, and now they spent most of their time keeping Olive as a barrier between them.
But right now, Olive was home with Kimmy reading in the blanket fort she’d set up with Iris earlier in the day. And there was nothing between him and Iris. Nothing between her hand and his knee.
‘Let’s get started.’ A man spoke into the microphone behind the podium and the feedback squealed through the room. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said with a wince. ‘But at least I got your attention.’
He smiled through the groans in the room.
Archer recognized him as the mayor. He’d been back into the diner several times since Archer started, always tried the latest pancake iteration, and always found it lacking.
‘We have something exciting on the docket this evening,’ the mayor went on.
‘Is it about no-mow May?’ someone shouted from the audience. ‘Because I don’t understand it.’
‘Well, no…’
‘It’s for the pollinators!’ someone else shouted back, ignoring the mayor’s protests.
‘I have to have a mess of a lawn for a month for the bees?’ The first voice did not seem pleased with this idea.
‘Yes, for the bees! No pollinators, no food,’ an older lady in a floral top countered.
‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration,’ a gruff old man added.
‘If we could just get back on track…’ The mayor attempted to get the meeting in order, but the room had descended into an argument about, from what Archer could gather, whether or not dandelions were weeds or flowers and if not mowing your lawn for a month really did anything helpful for the earth.
Iris leaned into his side. ‘This is pretty typical. Don’t worry, they’ll tire themselves out in a minute or two.’
‘Hmm.’ He frowned, and to his shock, Iris reached up and pressed two fingers between his eyebrows. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m smoothing out these aggressive forehead lines.’
‘Why?’
‘I think this will go better if you look less like you’re going to murder everyone.’ She took her fingers away and he wanted them back. He wanted them tugging on his hair, he wanted them digging into his back.
‘This is just my face.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’ve seen you with different faces. Like when you look at Olive and you get all soft and gooey.’
‘I don’t get gooey.’
‘Oh, you definitely do. You may not know it yet, but that kid’s totally got you wrapped around her little finger.’
‘Me? You’re the one repainting her room and building forts all day.’
‘It’s all just part of my job.’
‘Okay, sure.’ Who were they kidding? Olive had them both wrapped around her finger. How could she not? She needed them. And Archer had never been needed before. Not like that.
The commotion around them had died down, bringing Archer’s thoughts back to the meeting.
‘What I was actually going to say,’ Mayor Kelly said, with a pointed look to the crowd, ‘is that we need to discuss the brand new, upcoming Strawberry Festival. We don’t even have a name for it yet.’
‘Isn’t the “Strawberry Festival” a name for it?’ Archer whispered to Iris.
She rolled her eyes at him like that was an absurd thing to say. ‘Not here it’s not. Dream Harbor likes a more … elaborate name.’
‘But,’ the mayor went on, ‘before we get to that, we have our very own world-renowned chef here tonight and he has something to say.’
‘Is it an apology for that travesty of a short stack he served me the other day?’ A man down front called out.
‘Less of the murder face,’ Iris whispered and Archer tried his best to decrease the level of his scowl.
‘Archer, why don’t you come up here?’ The mayor gestured enthusiastically to the podium.
‘Good luck,’ Kira whispered as Archer shuffled out of their row.
Judging by the disapproving faces he passed on his way to the front, he was going to need it.
‘Welcome, chef,’ the mayor said with a smile and a handshake. ‘The floor is yours.’
Archer looked out at the eclectic crowd. It seemed that representatives from every age bracket and cultural community were present this evening, and they were all staring at him in expectation. He rolled his shoulders back. He could do this. He’d handled the dinner rush at more restaurants than he could remember at this point. Surely, a little town meeting wouldn’t be too bad.
If he was stuck here in this town, at this diner, he was going to give it everything he had, just like he always did.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’m aware of people’s feelings about the pancakes.’
‘They stink!’ a little old lady yelled from the back. Probably a friend of Iris’s.
Archer cleared his throat and went on. ‘I’m aware they are not what you are accustomed to and I’m working on the recipe.’ Here’s where he needed to swallow every urge in his body to say ‘fuck it’ and do what he thought was best. ‘I thought I would check in and see if you had any input on what the original pancakes tasted like. Anything that might help me get the recipe right.’
Kaori Kim stood up. ‘Hello, chef. Kaori, book-club president.’
A few people groaned but Kaori just shushed them.
‘We already know each other,’ Archer reminded her, waiting for her suggestion.
‘Has anyone tried calling Martha?’ she asked, ignoring Archer’s comment. ‘Wouldn’t she have the recipe?’
‘I—’
‘She’s off the grid,’ Noah chimed in, with a nod of acknowledgement to Archer. ‘And I think the pancakes should have blueberries.’
‘Don’t listen to him,’ a grizzled old man said. ‘He’s not even from around here. And we’re trying to get the old pancakes back, not add new ones with fruit in them!’
Noah laughed. ‘Thanks for clearing that up for me, Norm.’
The old man scowled in his direction.
‘If we’re adding new ideas, I want chocolate chips,’ a woman in the third row added. Archer recognized her as the woman who’d found him his house. Barbara something.
Archer ran a frustrated hand through his hair. He didn’t need people to tell him that blueberries and chocolate chips were popular add-ins for pancakes! What part of chef were these people confused about? He knew how to cook, for Christ’s sake. He just needed to figure out what the hell was in the elusive original diner pancakes.
‘I think cinnamon would be nice,’ another woman, Jeanie, whom he knew from the cafe, added in.
‘The originals definitely had more vanilla,’ Annie argued.
‘Wait, can we circle back to Martha?’ the woman seated next to Kaori asked. ‘What do you mean “off the grid”?’
‘Oh, hey, Isabel,’ Noah said. ‘She ran off with a Brazilian helicopter pilot. Most of the time she’s completely out of cell reach.’
‘How do you know that?’ Kaori asked.
Noah shrugged. ‘Gladys told me.’
Gladys stood up from the back of the room. ‘It’s true. And he’s only forty-five. Can you imagine? Martha’s nearly seventy.’
‘Good for her!’ someone shouted, and Archer lost the room again. The debate this time ranged in topic from what was an appropriate age gap in a relationship to the safety of helicopter travel to whether or not fruit had any place in a pancake.
Archer was helpless to intervene.
He found Iris in the crowd. She was laughing, her face lit up in amusement. He felt his own lips tip up. It was all just too absurd not to laugh at. And compared to the pressure of plating the perfect dish, of impressing the critics, of keeping the kitchen running night after night, it was kinda nice for things to be … silly … for a while. It was like the lid had been lifted off the pressure cooker that was his life and the steam was slowly seeping out. He felt the tension leaving his body with every absurd comment and joke from the audience.
Eventually, the chatter about Martha’s love life and cell reception died down and Archer did get some suggestions for the recipe. Most residents agreed that the pancakes should be more dense than fluffy, probably cooked in butter not oil, and definitely didn’t contain Greek yogurt, ricotta cheese, or anything fancier (not his word) than buttermilk. Apparently, the closest he’d come was the batch he’d made last Tuesday, so he’d have to check his notes on what he’d done that day.
By the time he’d walked back to his seat, the crowd was mostly filled with smiles and nods in his direction. Even if he never found the recipe, maybe this wasn’t a bad idea. At least everyone had gotten a chance to have their pancake-related feelings heard. Something Archer had never thought he would care about.
But here he was. In his new life, in his new town. And for the first time since arriving, he didn’t feel totally devastated about that. As a chef, it was his job to feed people and these people wanted pancakes.
He slid into his seat next to Iris and she gave him a big smile.
‘Good job,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve appeased the mob. They’ll probably be nicer to you now.’
‘Probably?’ he whispered back, taking the opportunity to lean closer to her.
‘I can’t make any promises. If you serve those buckwheat pancakes again, they’ll string you up in the town square.’
He laughed louder than he meant to, but luckily he was drowned out by whatever the crowd was debating now, something about a Strawberry Queen and whether or not beauty pageants were empowering or a relic from a highly patriarchal past and if they needed one for the Strawberry Festival. Iris smiled at him, her eyes dancing.
‘You should come out for drinks with us,’ she said, still holding his gaze.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘I won’t tell HR, I promise.’ Her smile was all teasing mischief and he wanted to kiss it. How did she do that? How did she make everything a game?
‘Iris…’
‘Archer, come on. You’ve been living the dad life for three whole weeks now.’
‘Four, actually. Since I moved here.’
‘Four! That’s a whole month. See, you deserve a night out.’
‘We can’t go out together, Iris. That’s just going to confuse things even more.’
She shook her head, her braid slipping over her shoulder. He wanted to pull out the elastic and run his fingers through the rose-gold waves, wrap them around his hands and tug her close. Which was exactly why he should go straight home and take a cold shower.
‘No, this is fine,’ she insisted. ‘There will be a bunch of us going. It’s just a night out with some friends. Don’t you want friends here, Archer?’
Did he want friends here? Did he have friends in Paris? He’d worked such long hours, the only people he ever saw were staff from the restaurant. Sure, plenty of nights they’d go out for drinks after work and that was why so many of them ended up sleeping together, but that was what made it all a bit toxic, too.
What would it be like to have regular friends? Friends he just hung out with when he wanted to, not people he was forced to be in a hot kitchen with for fourteen hours a day and then drank with because there was literally no one else in his life?
Might be nice.
‘Fine,’ he agreed and Iris whisper-squealed.
Kira craned her neck around Iris and grinned at him. ‘This is going to be fun,’ Kira said and Bennett just shook his head.
It was possible he’d made a mistake.