Chapter Thirty-One
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I show up on the doorstep of Will’s East Austin Airbnb with one bottle of Tylenol and one bottle of red wine. He rented the fifth town house of a ten-unit complex that can’t have been built more than a few years ago. It’s not far from an outdoor wine bar I visit with my biker gang sometimes.
He swings open the front door, then points to the Tylenol. “You feeling okay?”
“It’s this weird tradition my friends and I formed back in college,” I explain. “People always bring alcohol to stock your bar, but never pills to stock your medicine cabinet.”
“That is weird,” he says.
“Yeah.” I grin.
He accepts the Tylenol. “You know this place is a rental, right?”
“A two-week rental!” I say excitedly.
He got permission to work remote for a while and focus on his three Austin clients. I’m over-the-moon thrilled to see him—to have him here for days on end—but my guilt is still clawing at me, bruising my insides, scraping at my peace of mind.
Here we are again. Will bending for me, me letting him. It isn’t fair, and sooner rather than later, something has got to give.
When I step inside, I’m not sure what I’m expecting. Maybe slate-gray walls and steel furniture? A desk with three monitors, a bare-bones kitchen?
Instead, when I look right, I’m greeted by the largest, deepest beige couch I’ve ever seen, in a sunny living room. There’s an olive tree in one corner and surround sound music playing softly. The scent coming off the kitchen is delectable.
I’ve barely deposited the wine on the entryway table when Will hooks his arms around me, his hand cupping the back of my head. He crushes our lips together like it’s the only natural greeting. Hello. I missed you. I want you. I’m happy to see you. I move my mouth against his, repeating the unspoken words right back.
He pulls away, eyes dancing, and twirls a lock of my hair around his finger.
“Did you cook?” I ask, nodding toward the kitchen. I can just make out a grater from here on the visible part of the countertop. “When you suggested dinner in, I assumed we were ordering takeout.”
Will’s dimple flashes. His eyes move from my face to my outfit, an oversized T-shirt dress and old white sneakers. “I cooked.” He shrugs. “I cook.”
“So that’s what sets you apart from the other Equinox men in the West Village.”
“I live in Tribeca.”
“Close enough. Did you cook for the women you thoroughly dated?”
“Not a single one,” he says, grabbing the wine and turning toward the kitchen. “I don’t have the setup for it in my tiny apartment.”
It’s a hilariously juxtaposed comment as I follow him to this kitchen, which might be the most stunning thing I’ve ever laid eyes on. The cabinetry is a forest-green color, the countertops a beautifully marbled off-white. He’s even got a range hood for his stovetop and an overhead cookware holder hanging above the kitchen island.
“This place is for sale,” Will comments innocently.
I raise my eyebrows as his implication lands. “That so?”
Will sets the wine beside a cutting board piled with soft, springy herbs. He stares at me, expression calculating. “Want to know a secret?”
I nod.
Will steps away from the counter and pulls open a drawer. I circle around the island until I’m beside him, eyeing a thick piece of paper he places on the counter.
“Is that a… culinary school diploma ?”
“Mm,” he says.
“With your name on it?”
“Looks that way.”
Gaping, I turn my face up to his. “Explain!”
Instead, he hauls me into another kiss.
I melt against Will’s body as I remember the feel of him. It’s been a week since we returned from Bangalore, and with all the catching up we both had to do at work, neither of us has caught a break until tonight. Every atom in my body heats up to a boiling point at the physical contact. I want to fuse myself to his body, recycle his air through my lungs.
“I’m so confused,” I whisper when I pull away.
“You’re the only person from my personal life besides my family I’ve ever told,” he whispers against my lips.
“That you went to culinary school? ” I ask through the haze of digesting what else he said: the only person from my personal life.
I am planted in Will Grant’s personal life.
Will pulls away, looking back at the diploma. “A couple years ago. I took night classes. It was around the time things at work started to get bad. I was miserable, and wondering if I was going to feel that way for the rest of my life,” he says. “I applied on a whim. But when I got accepted and started learning…” He looks back at me, his eyes feverishly bright. “I loved it. I used most of my consulting salary to pay off the tuition, so I’m debt free. I completed my credentials by working as a late-night line cook for a while, and even that was exhilarating.”
“I—” I glance around the kitchen. There are finished entrées warming on the stovetop, something baking in the oven. “Just for fun? Or do you want this as a career?”
“I didn’t know the answer to that when I signed up for culinary school,” Will says. “Part of me convinced myself I was only doing it for fun, as a hobby. But the point is, now I have the option to just…” His words fade off.
“Drop everything,” I whisper. “And change your mind.”
Will’s expression clears.
“You didn’t say a word,” I say. “I never would have known.”
But the way he picked restaurants abroad. The fact that he hates leftovers, that he can usually tell the quality of a dish’s freshness. His obsession over meeting David Ortega, a lauded local chef. This explains why Will almost failed a class in his major so he could focus on his nutrition elective, why he stayed at his day job even when he was miserable—so he could pay for culinary school.
All the signs were there.
“I chose the career I chose,” Will explains, his gaze intense, “because there were a few years after my parents got divorced when our financial situation was precarious. We’d never been well off, but after, it got worse. My mom didn’t make much money, between her pottery job and my dad’s alimony payments. Zoe and I assumed all our own debt with our college educations. A high-paying job in investment banking was the safe bet, and when that didn’t work out, consulting was a natural transition. It’s not even that I hate my career anymore. But I’ve been disappointed by a lot of the people in my industry, and I hate the way it’s made me feel about myself. The things I’ve done being a part of it.”
His words wash over me like a dense, calming fog.
“I’m telling you all this,” Will whispers, one hand snaking around my waist while the other pushes hair out of my eyes, “because I don’t want you to freak out when I say what I’m about to say.”
“You’re moving to Austin,” I guess. Wish. Hope. Pray.
He nods, a tiny smile breaking through his solemn expression. “Already put in an offer on this place. I hope you like it.”
I try to inhale, but it feels like sucking cotton down my windpipe. My muscles are locking up.
“I am freaking out a little bit,” I admit.
Will pulls me against his chest. His hands skate up and down my back. “Talk me through it,” he murmurs.
“I’m, like, really happy about this,” I say. “It feels like the biggest present in the world, a present I don’t deserve and haven’t earned yet.”
“Josie. You are certainly part of the equation, but I didn’t make this decision just for you. I want this for myself. I’ve wanted it for a while now, even before we found each other.” Will’s fingers leave my hair, dance along my knuckles. He likes to absently touch me, I’ve noticed. “Zoe and my mom both think it’s a good idea. I have enough savings at this point to buy this place and even take some time off, figure out what I want to do next.”
Time off. What a beautiful, terrifying concept.
“Won’t Zoe miss having you around?” I ask.
I recall what he said at Zilker Park: New York became our place. Will Zoe hate me for taking Will away from their place?
“She’s got the New York dream job, a tight friend group, and a boyfriend who worships at her altar. I can’t fault him,” Will says with a wry laugh. “And not for lack of trying. They’ve been together for two years now, and I think they’ll be together forever. My mom is happy and healthy with Doug in Nashville. And you—” His hand tightens on mine. “You don’t need me either.”
“That’s not true,” I protest.
Will shakes his head. “I mean that in a good way, Josie. All the women I thoroughly dated in New York were people I thought I could take care of, and I basically encouraged them to play into it. Hell, I even thought of you that way, in the beginning. I thought if you hired me, I could take care of all your problems for you.” His voice lowers, his mouth at my hair. “But I was never meant to be your hero. I honestly think you were meant to be mine.”
I swallow a lump in my throat. “I don’t always ask for help when I need it. I could be stronger in that way.”
“I know,” Will says, his smile catching near his cheeks. “I was there in Peru when I had to convince you to open the door.”
I laugh through a swollen throat. “ You didn’t even tell me you were sick.”
He shakes his head. “We’re going to argue about that forever, aren’t we?”
“Forever,” I agree, and it feels like a dangerous promise. “The truth is, Will, I want to be with you all the time. Every day, every hour. So I do need you, just so we’re clear.”
“It’s mutual. Even if I tried to explain it to you,” Will whispers, his hands on my face now, “I don’t think you could ever know how badly I ache for you. The way you feel to me is like an inevitable rightness. Like I’m finally trusting my fucking instincts.”
His words unfurl along the back of my neck and spread across my skin underneath my clothes, dissipating every feverish shiver.
“I think about the day we reconnected—how I ran into the back of your car, but it felt more like you crashing your way into the rest of my life—and I work myself into a panic, imagining all the other scenarios of that morning where it didn’t happen. Where we never saw each other. It’s not real, because we did see each other, but somehow, I give myself a small heart attack at least once a day picturing a possibility where we might not have.
“Everything I think about is in reference to you. Would you wear this? Have you seen this movie? How many of those vacuum cleaner attachments have you tried so far?”
“Nine,” I whisper.
“I want to be there while you test each one and pick your favorites. I want to carry you around in my arms and then put you down and let you stand on your own two feet while you build something out loud that used to live inside your head. I want to stand on the sidelines and clap for you and then take you somewhere private and fuck you. But mostly, Josie, I want to be a good person with you. Because you make me feel better about myself, just by being you.”
All I manage for a very long time is one single, shaky breath.
His hands drop from my hands to my waist, and in a quick movement, he lifts me onto the kitchen counter and steps between my legs. “Back to the culinary school diploma,” he rumbles. “Do you think I’d be crazy to do that? Give up the past six years of my career to pursue something completely different?”
“Would you leave Revenant in the lurch?” I joke.
“You know me better than that.”
“I do,” I agree, my palms on his chest.
Will pushes a lock of hair behind my ear. “I would wait until your B Corp Certification came through and then set you up with the second-best consultant you’ll ever have.”
I smile and say, “I don’t think it’s crazy. I think it’s miraculous. I sometimes wonder how much of myself I let corporate America take. How much I could take back if I stopped participating.”
“I know what you mean,” Will murmurs.
“You always know what I mean.”
It’s quiet for a moment. A string of Grace Jones lyrics floods the empty space. The longer whatever is in the oven bakes, the more sugared and perfect the kitchen smells. Will noses along my jawline, kissing lightly.
“Have you ever seen those soft living videos on TikTok?” I ask.
Will’s eyes narrow as he pulls back. “Wait a minute. Do you have burner accounts ?”
“No, but sometimes the social team lets the password slip, and I scroll!”
He blinks. “No shot. Admit you have burner accounts.”
“I swear I don’t,” I say. “If I did, I’d never get anything done. You can check my phone.”
Will eyes me suspiciously. “Well, regardless, I don’t know about the soft living videos.”
“It’s these people who live in quaint houses overlooking the ocean or the middle of a mountain range and they just…” I gesticulate with my hands. “Pick lavender and bake sourdough and write a novel on a typewriter and bird-watch! Or crack open coconuts they drink on the beach while watching the sunset. Or build furniture with their bare hands!”
“Baking sourdough,” Will says, wincing, “is really fucking hard. The rest of it sounds all right. Are you interested in soft living?”
“I think about it sometimes,” I admit. “When I’m stressed out. Or second-guessing myself, or wondering if this is all worth how much it drains me.”
Will rubs a thumb along my jawline, his eyes absorbing the planes of my face. “How often does that happen?”
“Not very.”
“And now?”
I smile, meeting his eyes. “Camila finally told me she’s leaving.”
His face morphs from curious to concerned. “She did?”
I nod. “She’s moving to New York so David can open a restaurant he gets full creative control over, and she can go to graduate school.”
Will’s hands drop to my bare thighs, where he rubs soothingly. “Looks like we aren’t the only ones with these kinds of thoughts.”
“Burnout avoidance,” I suggest.
After a moment of consideration Will says, in a gruff voice, “I already burned out, Josie. That happened a couple years back.”
“I think I did, too,” I whisper. “But I only just noticed.”
He presses his lips against my forehead. “I want to make you a deal,” he whispers.
“What deal?”
“If you wake up one morning and decide you want to try out soft living,” he says, breath dancing along the wisps at my hairline, “we do it together. Even if it’s only for a little while. If you want to drop everything, then I will, too.”
It’s an idea that stuffs me with anxiety just as much as it thrills me. Revenant is my proudest accomplishment. I don’t want to abandon it, not now that things are just starting to calm down. Reminiscing with Camila about how far we’ve come only reminded me of how much passion went into building that company.
But I’m not the same girl I was when I was twenty-one.
I’m tired.
I’ve got two years left of my twenties.
And I think I’m falling in love.
“Deal,” I say. “But I hope you won’t wait on me if you already know what you want.”
“I won’t wait,” he promises. “I can be your private chef, and you can be my CEO. I will have dinner on the table when you get home, on one condition.”
I bite my lip as he tilts my chin up. “What condition?”
“Josephine.” He steps in closer, drowning me in the cinnamon scent of him. His hands weave back into my hair. His face hovers centimeters above mine. “Will you please, please be my girlfriend?”
My heart stutters, leaping out of rhythm. I let our lips graze. “Can I taste dinner first?”
A noise of displeasure lodges in his throat. He crushes our mouths together. Kisses me harshly, teeth nipping at my lips. “Sorry. Did you think it was for you ?”
“What other… aspiring vegetarians do you know?” I gasp between kisses.
“This meal is for real vegetarians.”
“I could be one of those.”
“You can be anything you want.”
Will pushes me to lie flat against the countertop and leans on his elbows, bracketing my upper body. His hair falls over his eyes, which are shining with that flinty, concentrated azure color.
“I’ll be your girlfriend, Will Grant,” I say.
He has wiped away all my holdouts. He showed up, and showed up, and showed up. I cannot go back to the Josie I was before he found me, even if I wanted to.
“Thank you,” Will says. “I did wrong by you then. Thank you for giving me the chance to get it right now.”