2. Vivienne
CHAPTER TWO
Vivienne
Iwake to my phone vibrating.
For a moment, I don’t know where I am. The room is dim, just the last dregs of twilight coming through the window, and my body feels like it’s been filled with concrete. My mouth tastes like stale coffee and brown sugar.
The phone keeps buzzing.
I reach for it and squint at the screen.
I sigh loudly in the empty room and hit accept. And I immediately regret it when both my parents’ faces fill the screen, talking over each other before I can even say hello.
“Finally! We’ve been trying to reach you for —”
“Twelve hours, Vivienne! Twelve hours without —”
“We thought you drove into a ditch somewhere!”
“Hi,” I croak, my voice rough from sleep. “I’m alive.”
“Oh, thank God,” my mom exhales, pressing one hand to her chest. She’s in the kitchen. I can see the marble countertops behind her and the bowl of lemons she keeps on the island because she saw it in a magazine once. “We were starting to worry.”
“You always worry,” I push myself up to sit, which turns out to be more of a project than it should be. My head is lobbying hard to go back horizontal. I swing my legs off the bed anyway.
I shuffle to the open window while they’re still talking, suddenly needing fresh air.
“Because you drive across the coast by yourself without telling us when you’ve arrived safely,” my dad chimes in. He’s wearing his reading glasses, which means we’ve interrupted his nightly ritual of doing the crossword puzzle while pretending he’s not looking up half the answers on his phone.
“I texted you that I was leaving San Diego.”
“At the crack of dawn!”
“I’m a morning person.”
“You’re a person who doesn’t sleep,” my mom corrects, and she’s not wrong.
Through the window, I can see the ocean, dark now except for the white caps of waves catching the moonlight. I press my palm against the glass, feeling the cold seep through.
“I’m fine,” I watch my breath fog the window. “I got here safe. The place is cute. You’d love it, Mom.”
“Where is ‘here’ exactly?” My dad’s voice cuts in, a little aggrieved. “You never told us where this job even is.”
“Oh, uh —” I glance around like the name of the town might be written on the walls. “Westerly Point. It’s a coastal town, a couple of hours north of … somewhere.” I shrug, hoping my lack of preparation doesn’t come across.
There’s a long pause.
“Westerly Point?” my mom repeats with a small frown.
“Yeah, why?”
“Isn’t that —” She looks at my dad, then back at me, her eyes lighting up the way they do when she’s about to remind me of some mom-memory where she can recall every detail of every conversation we’ve ever had. “Isn’t that where that boy you had a thing for in Paris was from?”
The bottom falls out of my stomach.
I turn away from the window, then pace to the dresser, then back to the bed.
“What?”
“You know,” she continues, oblivious to my spiraling, “the one you were always talking about. He was at the top of the class with you or something. You said he was obsessed with his hometown. He wouldn’t stop talking about some little coastal town in — was it Oregon? California?”
“Mom —”
“What was his name? Colin? Carter?”
“Callum,” I whisper, the name slipping out before I can stop myself.
And just like that, each piece of the puzzle falls together.
The fishing docks. The lighthouse. The way this town felt familiar the moment I drove through it.
Callum wouldn’t shut up about Westerly Point.
We’d be in the middle of a brutal eighteen-hour day at Le Cordon Bleu, and he’d find a way to bring it up.
The best fish tacos were at some place on the pier.
His brother’s boat was called The Daily Catch.
There was a bakery downtown that made sourdough better than anything in Paris.
Which was sacrilege to say out loud, but he said it anyway, always grinning like he was so proud of himself.
He’d described this place so many times I could see it in my head. And now I’m here.
Now I’m here.
“That’s — that’s just a coincidence.” I’m pacing now, back and forth in the small space between the bed and the dresser.
“A coincidence?” My mom’s eyebrows go up. “Vivienne, you haven’t mentioned that boy in years, and suddenly you’re working in his hometown?”
“I don’t even know if he’s still here. He could be anywhere by now.”
But even as I say it, I know that’s not true.
“Honey,” My dad leans forward a little, his crossword forgotten. “Are you okay? You look pale.”
“I’m fine. I just — I forgot something. In the car. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Vivienne —”
“I’ll call you tomorrow, I promise. Love you!”
I hang up before they can argue.
For a moment, I just stand there, phone in hand, heart hammering.
Then I’m moving.
Back down the hallway, my feet hit the floorboards harder than necessary. Through the living room. Out the front door into the cold night air.
The manila envelope is still sitting on the passenger seat where I left it, smug and unopened and about to ruin my entire life.
I grab it with shaking hands and march back inside, slamming the car door shut behind me.
In the kitchen, I drop the envelope on the counter and stare at it as if it might bite me.
This can’t be a coincidence. It can’t be. Westerly Point isn’t exactly a major city. People don’t just end up here.
I tear open the envelope and papers spill out onto the butcher block. Financial reports. Menu copies. Staff rosters. I flip through them too fast, pages catching and folding at the corners, scanning for a name. Just a single name.
A photo slides out from between two pages and skids across the counter. It’s an exterior shot. A newer building right on the waterfront. The evening sun is hitting it just right, the ocean stretched out behind it, and even in a photograph it’s unmistakably beautiful.
And below it, typed in neat font:
Neap & Spring.
Chef/Owner: Callum Reid.
The photo drops from my hands and floats across the counter.
Callum.
I’m here to save Callum’s restaurant.
“Oh my God,” I say out loud, to no one, to the room, to the universe that clearly has a sick sense of humor.
I need — I don’t know what I need.
Wine. That’s what I need.
My hands are trembling so badly it takes three tries to twist the corkscrew into the bottle from Margo’s basket. The cork comes out with a pop that’s too loud in the quiet kitchen. I don’t bother with a glass. I drink straight from the bottle. The wine’s terrible, but I don’t care.
I move to the sink and grip the edge of the counter, staring out the window at the dark ocean. The wine bottle dangles from my other hand.
Tomorrow morning, I have to walk into his restaurant and face him for the first time in five years.
And he’s going to know I’m coming. The investors would have told him. He’ll have seen my name in the consultation files. Has he been dreading this as much as I am right now? Or does he not care anymore?
He’s had time to prepare. Time to decide how he feels about seeing me again.
I’ve had ten seconds.
I set the wine bottle down and walk back through the cottage, out the front door, and onto the porch. The cold air hits me, and I welcome it, needing something to cut through the panic rising in my chest.
The ocean is loud and relentless out here. The waves crash and retreat and crash again, over and over like they don’t know how to stop.
I sink down onto the porch steps and pull my knees to my chest.
The wooden steps are cold and slightly damp. The string lights overhead sway in the wind, their glow shifting and dancing across the porch. From here, I can see a few scattered lights from other houses down the beach. People inside living their normal lives.
I should call the investors and tell them I can’t do this. Tell them to send someone else.
But I know I won’t.
I signed a contract. I’ve built my entire reputation on being the person who shows up and fixes things, no matter how impossible it seems.
And some small, stupid part of me needs to see him. I need to know if he’s okay.
Is he happy? Does he hate me?
I need to know.
“This is fine,” I say out loud. The wind tears the words away as soon as they leave my mouth. “This is totally fine.”
But it’s not fine.
Nothing about this is fine.
I wrap my arms tighter around my knees and let myself sit there in the cold, watching the dark water, knowing that tomorrow morning, ready or not, I have to walk through those doors and pretend like my heart isn’t trying to beat its way out of my chest.
A gull cries somewhere in the darkness. The string lights flicker in the breeze.
And I stay there, on those porch steps, until the cold drives me back inside and I can’t avoid sleep anymore. Until there’s nothing left to do but face what’s coming.
Shit.