Chapter 19
CALLUM
She showed up with her canvas tote over one shoulder and her hair loose.
I stood at the front door and watched her walk up.
When I had texted her the invitation to come over for dinner, I didn’t think she would.
Last night when I walked her to her car, I felt a shift.
Not huge, but I could feel her pulling back.
I figured it was probably because I had just bent her over a couch.
I hadn’t planned on doing any of that, but damn, I couldn’t not do it. I had to have her.
I stepped back and gestured for her to walk in. All day I’d been lecturing myself. Do not fuck her against the door and don’t bend her over the couch. Definitely don’t spread her out on the center island.
I would behave.
She followed me through the living room and into the dining room where I had my laptop set up. I invited her over because we were going to be working on the charity runway idea. To pitch the idea to my aunt and cousins, I wanted to get organized first.
But I was also going to serve Victoria a real meal that didn’t come out of a paper bag.
“Can I get you a drink?” I asked. “I was going to make myself a vodka soda.”
“Sure,” she said. She unpacked her bag and sat down. I made us drinks and carried them to the table. “Okay. Walk me through what you have.”
I started talking through the framework I’d sketched out the night before. The runway structure, the auction component. She listened and made small notes in the margins of her own pages.
“Are you sure I need to be there for the pitch?” she asked. “I think this is more your thing.”
“You explain it so much better,” I said. “And if they have questions about the charity side of things, I’ll be looking to you for answers.”
“But that’s your world. Your family.”
“Chairty is your world.”
We continued talking, ironing out the details and creating a pitch I knew was going to sell the plan. Not that it needed a lot of selling. It was a good idea and I knew Mimi was going to be all over it. We just needed to show them it would work.
“I think they might even consider making it an annual thing,” I said.
“You could pick a different charity for every season,” she said.
“See! This is why I need you. You have all the ideas.”
She laughed.
We worked for another hour before I closed my laptop. “I’ll start dinner.”
She looked over at me. “What? Start dinner? You mean order dinner.”
“No, I mean cook dinner. Come on, you can sit at the island while I cook.”
“Cook? With the oven? And food?”
I laughed. “That’s usually how that works.”
“You cook?”
“Don’t sound so shocked.”
“Don’t you have a chef or a housekeeper?”
“I have a meal prep service.”
I pulled the chicken breasts from the refrigerator and set them on the cutting board while Victoria settled onto the barstool across the island. I could feel her watching me with open skepticism, like she was waiting for me to pull out a phone and dial for delivery.
“You’re really going to cook,” she said. It wasn’t quite a question anymore.
“I really am.” I pulled out the breadcrumbs, the eggs, the flour. Set them up in three shallow bowls the way my mother had taught me when I was about twelve and decided I wanted to learn. “Breaded chicken. Rice. Vegetables. Nothing fancy.”
“That’s actually fancy compared to what I was going to eat tonight.”
“The sad salad again?”
“Leftover rice from a takeout container.”
I shook my head and started pounding the chicken flat between two sheets of plastic wrap.
There was something about the physical repetition of it that I genuinely liked.
Cooking was one of the few things in my life where the process mattered as much as the result.
And maybe I did like whacking things. I made a mean pork chop as well.
“You look like you know what you’re doing,” she said, sounding genuinely surprised.
“My mother taught me.” I moved the flattened chicken to the flour bowl and started dredging. “She made all of us learn. She learned from a chef she hired to come into the house and teach her. She had this glamorous public image, but at home, she was all about being a mom.”
“All of you?” Victoria propped her elbow on the island and rested her chin in her hand. “How many kids are there?”
“Enough that dinner was always loud.” I dipped the floured chicken into the beaten egg and then pressed it into the breadcrumbs. “Drew burns everything he touches. Cleo is actually pretty good. The others—Hollis, Micah, Beau, and Jeremy—are somewhere in between.”
“Where do you fall on the spectrum?”
“Somewhere above Cleo and below my mother.” I set the first piece aside and started on the second. “Mom could cook for twenty people without breaking a sweat and make it look like she’d been doing nothing all day.”
Victoria smiled. “My mother couldn’t boil water. We had a chef. Two of them, actually. One for weekdays and one for weekends because apparently they had different specialties. And if she was hosting a party, there was another chef.”
She talked about everything from her former life with a matter-of-fact tone. There was no nostalgia or bitterness. Just an old life.
While I waited for the pan to warm up, I got the rice started in the pot beside it. The vegetables were already washed and waiting in a colander in the sink.
“Does it bother you?” I asked. “Talking about it?”
She looked up from her notebook. “Talking about what?”
“Where you came from.” I kept my eyes on the oil in the pan. “Your family.”
She shrugged. “No,” she said finally. “It used to. Someone would mention a restaurant I used to go to all the time and I’d feel this weird grief that I couldn’t explain.
But it wasn’t like I missed the restaurant.
It was a version of me I missed, but I wasn’t sad about it.
” She paused. “But that version of me wasn’t actually happy.
So the grief was always a little hollow. ”
I laid the first piece of chicken in the pan. “That makes sense,” I said.
“I think I miss my closet the most,” she said.
“You didn’t take your wardrobe with you?”
“Not all of it. It wasn’t a pleasant separation.”
I turned the chicken and checked the rice. Cooking really did relax me. The rest of my life was based on everyone judging my success. But when I was cooking, it wasn’t about measurable outcomes. It was either good or bad and learning from the mistakes.
“You seem like you’re having a good time,” Victoria said.
“I like cooking.” I checked the chicken again. “I just usually don’t bother. It’s only me, so it always felt like a lot of effort for one person.”
I immediately wanted to take it back. Not because it wasn’t true. But it sounded pathetic out loud. Like I was a lonely bachelor.
I hadn’t wanted this. I’d been so determined to keep my life uncomplicated.
Relationships were messy and always included way more drama than I wanted to deal with.
I didn’t mind a few nights with the same woman.
Enjoyable and temporary, like a good bottle of wine.
I didn’t just wake up and decide I wanted to be single.
It was a learned reaction. The kind of women who circulated in my world wanted things from me that had nothing to do with who I actually was.
They were either aspiring actresses or socialites that wanted to mingle with A-list celebrities.
Even the ones that pretended they were normal and didn’t want anything were totally lying.
Victoria didn’t want anything from me. She walked away from the social circles I didn’t enjoy. She’d come tonight because what I was asking her to do was important. She was here for Mimi’s foundation because she had a charitable heart. I happened to be attached to all of it.
Or at least, that was what I kept telling myself.
While I cooked, she scribbled in her notebook. I wondered why she didn’t use a laptop or iPad like every other normal person. I supposed it was endearing. She had made columns and there were arrows pointing to words that crisscrossed the page.
I plated our meals and we decided to eat at the bar.
I waited for her to take her first bite. “Wow,” she said with a nod. “Really good. I might have to take cooking lessons from you.”
I laughed. “I’d love to do that.”
We talked a bit about local news. Basic gossip. It was easy. Again, I noticed she didn’t ask me about a project my dad was working on or if I could get her into a party or whatever. She truly didn’t care about that world.
After dinner, I poured two glasses of a good Barolo I’d been saving and gave her a tour of the house. We ended up on my upstairs balcony that had an even better view of the city and the ocean. It was a clear night.
She leaned on the railing with her wine glass in both hands and looked out at the view. She let out a long sigh.
“Everything okay?”
“Just thinking,” she said.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked.
She was quiet for another moment. She turned her wine glass slowly in her hands, watching the city lights below us.
“I grew up in Calabasas,” she said finally. “Big house. Massive, actually. My bedroom was on the second floor with a balcony that overlooked the grounds.” She paused. “It sounds like a dream, right? Little girl with her own balcony in a mansion.”
“Sounds like it,” I said carefully.
“I used to stand out there at night, exactly like this.” She gestured vaguely at the view in front of us.
“Looking out at everything. The gardens, the pool, the guest house. We had a tennis court we never used. My father had it installed because the neighbors had one. They made me take lessons. I’m five-foot nothing and maybe one of the least athletic people you’ll ever meet.
” A small, dry laugh. “I’d stand there and watch the lights in the houses beyond our property.
Other people’s houses. Normal-sized ones.
And I’d wonder what was happening inside them. ”
I didn’t say anything. I just listened.
“I was completely alone up there,” she said.
“There was nobody to talk to. My parents were always entertaining or traveling or both. My mother had her friends and her committees and her charity lunches where nobody actually cared about the charity. My father had his business dinners.” She took a sip of wine.
“I had a very nice balcony and nobody to stand on it with.”
I looked at the side of her face.
“That’s the thing nobody tells you about growing up with money,” she said softly. “The loneliness is very well appointed but no one is going to feel sorry for a princess.”
I thought about my own childhood. The constant, chaotic, suffocating noise of brothers and a sister and parents who were always present even when they were driving me completely insane.
Sunday dinners that lasted three hours. Even with Mom’s crazy schedule and having to leave for film shoots weeks at a time, it never felt like I was alone.
I had never once stood on a balcony alone and wondered what was happening in other people’s houses.
“I used to wish for a quiet house,” I said. “Growing up, I mean. I fantasized about it. My own space. Nobody in my business. I’d go to friends’ houses sometimes. Only children, or just one sibling. I loved the silence, but I did miss my family after a while.”
She looked back out at the city. I thought about leaving a life of luxury behind for one that mattered to her. That was brave. Principled. I didn’t know if I had that kind of courage.