Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
A knock sounded against the office door, followed by a drawled “Hey, boss,” and Ford looked up from his desk to find Miller standing over the threshold.
Miller, who owned the building they were in and the majority stake in Chess.
And yet insisted on calling Ford boss.
“How many times—” Ford started, but when a wide grin broke out across Miller’s face, he “Hey, boss”-ed the head chef right back and relaxed in his chair. “What’s up?”
“Freezer two is down, the elevator doors are stuck, and we need more avocados.”
“Eighty-six the avocados,” Ford said as he shot off texts on the first two items. “There aren’t enough workers to pick them here, and it’s too expensive to import them from Mexico.”
“I’ll adjust,” Miller said with a nod. “We’re going to need a grits and grains reorder too at the rate we’re going through stock.”
Ford raked a hand through his hair, spreadsheets of red dancing in his head. “Things were running so smoothly before Memorial Day.”
“Welcome to seasonal chaos,” Miller said with a flick of his hand as if he were sprinkling anti-pixie dust. “Until Labor Day, we fix what we have to, Band-Aid what we can’t, then do a full patch up after the rush is over. Life in a tourist trap.”
“Atlanta was more of a steady chaos.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Miller said. “Oh! Ada needs more butter too.”
Ford focused on the surprise, not the sting in Miller’s addendum. “She should have two more weeks’ worth.”
Miller shrugged. “Colby’s better at making it stretch.”
And there was the sting, his gaze flitting to the cell phone he’d laid facedown on his desk.
“How’s she doing?” Miller asked.
“Busy.” He could say that much. Any more would be a lie.
Clancy, thankfully, saved him from having to do so. “Babe! Your daughter is eating cheese and pie again.”
Ford couldn’t help but laugh. “She’s definitely y’all’s kid.” Holland loved pie as much as her father, cheese as much as her other father, and tiny-terror epicurean that she already was, she’d figured out how to combine the two, usually on the kitchen floor.
“One hundred percent,” Miller said with a laugh. “Tell Col it’ll be good to have her back but to take the weekend off if she needs it.” He spun out the door, leaving Ford to nurse the sting that still lingered.
He stared out the window at the sailboats dotting the sound, hoping they might distract him, but he barely lasted a minute before grabbing his phone and opening his texts with Colby.
His mood darkened with each short, terse exchange he reread.
All of them restaurant related. Except the daily excuses Colby had given him for not hopping on a call.
Those made him look away from the bright outside altogether.
Hell, he’d talked to CC more over the past ten days than the Clarke sister he was sleeping with.
Was he still?
Those couple of weeks before Colby had left for her photoshoots had been incredible, the best Ford had had in years.
Days at work with Colby, nights in his or her bed, breakfast together each morning.
It had been easy, a natural extension of their friendship, of the something more they’d been dancing around since New Year’s Eve.
Had it just been a matter of proximity? The two of them in the same place, trapped on this tiny island, in each other’s orbits. Had proximity led to the expectations they’d promised not to make?
Each day, each night, he’d always felt he had a choice, and he’d chosen to spend that time with Colby. To see where another day together took them. Without any weight of expectation. Had she felt differently? Was she making a different choice now? A choice distance was making easier?
His stomach did that plummeting thing he’d enjoyed living without for a few weeks. It plummeted again when the phone in his hand vibrated, his brother’s name on-screen.
Unfortunately, he had been expecting this call.
“Hi, Coop—”
“How dare you go behind my back and convince Meemaw to—”
“She called me, Cooper, because none of you would listen to her.”
There’d been another incident, and she’d scared herself enough to go to Coop and Josh, who’d brushed it off as just another confusing moment.
She’d called him the next day after Griff had missed a shift at work to stay with her.
“She knows she needs help, she wants help, and she wants Griff to go to school in the fall and not spend every waking hour worried about her.”
“You lost your right to make decisions—”
“When I what, Cooper?” He stood and crossed the office to the door, shutting it before everyone in the kitchen got an earful of his sordid family drama. “I’m not the one who fucking cheated.”
“You left, and now you’re dumping—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” he seethed, uncharacteristically angry but tired of being the one expected to bite his tongue and take their reproach. “That woman raised you better than that.”
He had the decency to take a moment before diving right back into selfish brat territory. “There’s an opening for her at one of those places you and Griff found. She can move in June fifteenth. But Josh and I will be on our honeymoon, and Mom and Dad will be in Sedona.”
June fifteenth.
Why did that date ring a bell?
He shoved purchase orders and spreadsheets toward the edge of his desk, knocking over his jar of peanut butter in the process, but finally managed to uncover his desk calendar beneath the mess.
And scribbled on the square for June fifteenth, in Colby’s handwriting, was Beard—Chicago.
Shit, June fifteenth was the date of the awards ceremony in Chicago that he’d hoped to attend with Colby. Would she even want him to now? Would she expect him to? Would she ever forgive him that he couldn’t?
Because he didn’t have a choice.
Josephine Rafferty had raised him too.
“I’ll come down and move her in.”
“Fine,” Cooper huffed like that hadn’t been the answer he’d wanted when it had clearly been the entire point of this phone call. “Thank you.”
“I’m not doing it for you.”
“You didn’t have to leave,” he replied, readying the familiar gas and lighter, twisting this into being his fault.
Ford wasn’t having any of it. He was tired of this routine where Cooper, his older brother, was always the victim. “You expected me to stay? To watch you and my husband live happily ever after?”
“You’re still angry.”
“A little, yeah,” Ford admitted. “But mostly I just want to move on with my life without being reminded daily that the two people in the world I loved the most hurt me. I don’t have to live with that hurt.
” No matter what happened with Colby, he’d earned a good job, a good family, a chance at a good life. “Goodbye, Cooper.”
He hung up over Cooper’s shouts, so he wasn’t surprised when the phone almost immediately rang again. He smashed Accept and lifted the phone back to his ear. “What do you want to blame me for now?”
“For not returning my earlier text.” Not the answer—or voice—he expected.
He pulled the phone from his ear and stared at Dr. Silver Fox lighting up the screen. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Miles,” Ford said with a sigh. “Day got away from me, and you caught me right after a rough family call.”
“I know about those. Also know I’m gonna be at MVH tomorrow and wanted to see if I could talk you into a drink after I’m done?”
“Miles—”
“As a friend, Ford. Sounds like you could use one.”
He wasn’t wrong, especially with his best friend MIA. “I could. Thanks.”