Chapter Seven
Jamie's restaurant was called The Oakhaven Table, and it was everything Julia's bakery wasn't: calm, organized, and notably free of smoke damage.
Julia slid into a booth near the back, still wearing flour in her hair and what she suspected was chocolate under her fingernails.
At least she hoped it was chocolate. She'd meant to change before coming over, but after her second day of culinary disasters, she'd barely had the energy to lock the bakery door. And when Jamie had popped in before closing offering wine, she’d almost bitten his hand off with eagerness.
"You look like you've been in the wars," Jamie said, appearing with two glasses of wine. He set one in front of her without asking. "Red okay? You seem like you need red."
"I need something stronger than red." Julia took a grateful sip anyway. "But this is a start."
Jamie slid into the seat across from her, his expression warm with sympathy. "Bad day?"
"Bad day doesn’t begin to describe it." Julia rubbed her eyes, remembered the chocolate under her nails, and hoped that it wasn’t now smeared over her face. "I burned four batches of scones. Four. Tara had to physically remove me from the oven."
"Tara's good. Reliable."
"Tara is the only reason I haven't been run out of town yet." Julia took another sip of wine. "She's doing all the actual baking while I smile at customers and pretend I know what I'm doing. Which, for the record, I absolutely do not. Nor, for that matter, do I have many customers."
Jamie leaned back, studying her. "Can I give you some advice? From one business owner to another?"
"Please. I'll take anything at this point. Tea leaves. Fortune cookies. Interpretive dance."
He laughed. "Nothing that creative, I'm afraid. Just practical stuff." He pulled out his phone and started scrolling. "First, suppliers. You're probably still using whoever Milly had contracts with, yeah?"
Julia nodded. She hadn't even thought about suppliers. There were suppliers?
"Right, so Michael′s is good for dairy, but their delivery times are rubbish.
Switch to Rose Farm, they're new but they’re local, they're reliable, and they'll actually show up when they say they will.
" He turned his phone toward her, showing a contact.
"Tell Sarah that Jamie sent you. She'll sort you out. "
Julia fumbled for her own phone, typing frantically. "Rose Farm. Sarah. Got it."
"For flour, stay with your current lot, Barton′s is the best in the county, and Milly had a good relationship with them.
Don't mess with that." Jamie continued scrolling.
"Eggs, same thing. But for specialty ingredients, fancy chocolate, unusual extracts, that sort of thing, there's a place in Bath that does mail order. I'll text you the details."
"You're a lifesaver." Julia meant it. This was more useful information than she'd gathered in two days of panicked Googling about running a bakery. "Seriously, Jamie. Thank you."
"That's what neighbors are for." He grinned. "Also, I have selfish motives. If your bakery fails, someone worse might move in. Like a chain coffee shop. Or a vegan restaurant."
"What's wrong with vegan restaurants?"
"Nothing, in theory. But I've seen what happens when they open next to established places. Suddenly everyone's asking why I don't have more plant-based options, and I have to pretend I know what jackfruit is."
Julia laughed, and it felt like the first real laugh she'd had in days. "Fair enough."
They talked for another hour, Jamie offering tips about everything from the local newspaper's food critic (avoid her) to the best time to put out fresh pastries (early, before the school run). Julia found herself relaxing, the tension in her shoulders slowly unwinding.
"Can I ask you something?" she said finally, when the wine was nearly gone and the restaurant had emptied around them.
"Of course."
"How do you do it? Make it look so easy?" She gestured vaguely at the restaurant, at his calm competence, at the general state of having his life together. "I feel like I'm drowning, and you're just… floating."
Jamie was quiet for a moment. "I've been doing this for eight years," he said. "It didn't look easy at the start. Trust me. There were nights I slept on the floor because I couldn't afford to go home, and days I seriously considered setting the place on fire for the insurance money."
"Really?"
"Really." He smiled. "But don’t you go getting any ideas. It gets better. Or you get better at pretending it's not terrible. Either way, eventually you stop feeling like you're about to die every five minutes."
"That's… oddly comforting."
"I'm an oddly comforting person." He stood up and collected their glasses.
"Now go home. Get some sleep. Tomorrow's another day of burning things and terrorizing the local flour supply.
Maybe see if Tara wants to come on full time.
Or think about hiring another baker while you concentrate on front of house. "
Julia groaned but got to her feet. So many ideas. "Thanks, Jamie. For everything."
"Anytime." He paused at the kitchen door. "And Julia? The grumpy one upstairs? Elliott?"
"What about her?"
"She's not as scary as she seems. Give her time."
Julia wasn't sure she believed that, but she nodded anyway.
THE FLAT WAS dark when Julia let herself in, which she took as a good sign. Maybe Elliott had gone to bed early. Maybe she could have a peaceful evening for once, just her and her medical dramas and the uncomfortable couch that was slowly destroying her spine.
She tiptoed through the sitting room, found the lamp, and…
"Do you mind?"
Julia shrieked and spun around. Elliott was sitting in the single comfortable chair, a book in her lap and an irritated expression on her face.
"You scared me!"
"You interrupted my reading."
"You were reading in the dark?"
"I was resting my eyes." Elliott closed the book with a snap. "Some of us have been working all day."
"I've been working all day, too."
"Mmm." Elliott's tone suggested she had serious doubts about Julia's definition of work.
Julia counted to five. It didn't help. "I'm going to take a shower."
"Bathroom's occupied."
"By whom? You're sitting right here."
"My things are in there. I'm in the middle of a skincare routine."
"You can't occupy a bathroom with your things!"
"I can and I have." Elliott picked up her book again. "Wait your turn."
Julia opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. She didn't have the energy. She would sit on the couch, wait for Elliott to finish whatever elaborate beauty ritual required claiming an entire bathroom, and then she would take the longest, hottest shower of her life.
She sat.
The couch was somehow even more uncomfortable than she remembered.
Elliott turned a page.
The silence stretched.
"So," Julia said, because she was physically incapable of letting silences stretch, "how was your day?"
Elliott looked at her over the top of her book. "Fine. Other than the fire alarm."
"Good. That's good." Julia nodded. "Mine was… well, yeah, fire alarms.."
"Mmmhmm."
"Right. Yes. So, that was me." Julia picked at a thread on the couch cushion. "Scones, this afternoon. They're trickier than they look."
Elliott said nothing.
"Tara's been really helpful, though. She's doing most of the actual baking, obviously, since I'm…" Julia gestured vaguely at herself. "You know. Terrible."
"Mmm."
"Jamie gave me some tips today. About suppliers and things. He's been really kind."
"Jamie's kind to everyone." Elliott turned another page. "It's annoying."
"You find kindness annoying?"
"I find performative niceness annoying. It's exhausting to watch." Elliott finally looked up properly. "Don't you ever get tired of it? Smiling at everyone, pretending everything's fine when it clearly isn't?"
Julia blinked. "I'm not pretending." Was she? Well, maybe she was. Sometimes. To some people. To her mother, quite a lot, actually, now that she thought about it.
"You've spent two days failing spectacularly at something you hate, and you're still acting like it's a wonderful adventure." Elliott's voice was flat. "That's either delusion or performance. Neither is particularly appealing."
The words hurt, but she was used to Gabby’s pokes. "Maybe I'm just trying to stay positive."
"Maybe you're just afraid to admit you're in over your head."
They stared at each other. Julia felt something hot and uncomfortable building in her chest. Anger, maybe, or embarrassment, or some toxic combination of both.
"The bathroom's free now," Elliott said, standing. "Since you've clearly been waiting."
She disappeared into her bedroom and closed the door with a definitive click.
Julia sat on the couch for a long moment, trying to figure out what had just happened. Whatever Elliott’s skin routine was, she hadn’t even set foot in the bathroom. Then she gave up, grabbed her things and went to take that shower.
AT TWO A.M, Julia was deep into her third episode of Emergency Room: Critical Care when the bedroom door opened.
"What," Elliott said, squinting against the glow of the laptop screen, "are you doing?"
"Watching television."
"At two in the morning?"
"I couldn't sleep." Julia paused the video. "The couch is uncomfortable."
Elliott stood in the doorway, wearing an oversized t-shirt and an expression of profound irritation. "The light is keeping me awake."
"I'll turn the brightness down."
"You'll turn it off."
"I'm in the middle of an episode."
"I don't care."
Julia looked at the screen, where a very handsome doctor was about to perform emergency surgery on a very ill patient. She looked at Elliott, who was clearly about to perform emergency surgery on Julia's laptop. "Five more minutes?"
"No."
Julia sighed and closed the laptop. The room plunged into darkness.
"Thank you," Elliott said, and the bedroom door closed again.
Julia lay on the uncomfortable couch, staring at the ceiling, and tried to remember why she'd thought this arrangement was a good idea.
Oh, right. Because she was incapable of asking Elliott to leave. Despite the fact that Elliott clearly couldn't stand her, criticized everything she did, had claimed the only comfortable chair and the entire bathroom and apparently also the right to dictate Julia's viewing schedule.
This couldn't continue. Something had to change.
Tomorrow, Julia promised herself. Tomorrow I'll talk to her. I'll be firm. I'll be direct. I'll explain that this living situation isn't working, and that she needs to find somewhere else to stay.
She rehearsed the conversation in her head, trying out different phrasings, imagining Elliott's responses. In her imagination, Elliott was reasonable and understanding. In her imagination, the conversation went smoothly and they parted on good terms.
In reality, Julia knew, it would be a disaster.
But she had to try. She couldn't spend the next twelve months sleeping on a couch that was slowly fusing her vertebrae together, tiptoeing around someone who seemed to actively dislike her existence.
Before the end of the week, she told herself firmly. I'll ask her to leave before the end of the week.
The ceiling offered no response.
Julia pulled the thin blanket over her shoulders, tried to find a position that didn't make her back scream, and eventually fell into an uneasy sleep.
In her dreams, she was baking the perfect scone, golden and flaky and beautiful. Elliott was there, watching with something that might have been approval.
Then the fire alarm went off, and Julia woke up to discover the alarm was ringing, it was morning, she'd overslept, and the whole thing started all over again.