8. Vivienne
CHAPTER EIGHT
Vivienne
Ididn’t go to the restaurant this morning.
I told myself it was because I needed a day to work from the cottage to organize my notes, compile data, and start drafting the preliminary report for the investors. All true. All very professional reasons to stay away.
The real reason was that I couldn’t face another morning of Callum pretending I don’t exist.
So I stayed in the cottage and made coffee in the little kitchen with the mint green stove I still haven’t used for actual cooking. I carried my mug to the small table by the window, my laptop already open, spreadsheets glowing on the screen, and tried to make sense of numbers that didn’t add up.
My back ached from yesterday’s service and hours of sitting at that corner table pretending I wasn’t watching Callum move through his kitchen. It was so achingly familiar, I had to keep looking away. But my eyes kept drifting back to him anyway. I guess they hadn’t gotten the message.
The weekend had been long. And lonely.
Saturday, I’d driven into the larger town an hour north, Crescent Bay, just to be around people who didn’t know me and didn’t know Callum.
I’d walked through a bookstore and ended up leaving with two books I didn’t need: a cookbook I’d probably never use but couldn’t stop myself from buying, and a romance novel that would definitely make me cry.
I sat in a coffee shop and pretended to work while really just watching strangers live their normal lives.
A couple sharing a muffin. A teenager doing homework.
An old man reading the newspaper with reading glasses perched on his nose.
All of them so settled, like they’d never once considered that anywhere else might exist.
Sunday, I unpacked exactly nothing. My suitcase still sits open on the floor of the bedroom, clothes spilling out in a mess that would horrify my mother. I’ve been living out of it for two weeks now, and I desperately need to do laundry, but unpacking feels like admitting I’m staying.
And I don’t know if I’m staying.
I’d almost left. Sunday morning, I’d sat on the edge of the bed with my phone in my hand, the investor’s number pulled up, ready to call and tell them I couldn’t do this. That there was a conflict of interest and they needed to send someone else immediately.
My thumb had been a millimeter from the call button.
But then my mom called.
Our regular Sunday call, right on schedule.
I answered with a shaky breath, pressing the phone to my ear maybe a little too hard. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetheart. How are you?”
How was I? I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten a dinner that wasn't takeout. Or the last time I'd turned the stove on for anything at all. But that wasn't what she was asking.
“I’m okay,” I said instead.
She asked how the job was going, and I almost told her the truth — that I was barely holding it together. Sleeping in three-minute chunks. Dreading every morning because it meant another day of Callum’s cold silence.
Instead, I said, “It’s complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
“Just — the owner. It’s Callum’s restaurant, Mom. Callum. From Paris.”
There was a pause. A long one. I could hear her breathing. I could picture her sitting in her favorite chair in the living room, processing, probably waving my father over before putting me on speaker.
My mother knew about Callum. Both my parents did.
I’d talked about him constantly during culinary school.
He was my rival and my competition but also the one person who could match me in the kitchen and drive me crazy doing it.
They’d heard stories for months after graduation too, back when we were still talking and I’d tell them about his texts from Westerly Point and the restaurant he wanted to open someday.
How different our lives were becoming but how we stayed close anyway.
What they didn’t know was why we stopped talking and why I’d suddenly stopped mentioning his name.
That whole part of my life just disappeared, and they never really asked.
That’s just how my family works. We love each other.
We show up for each other, but we don’t dig.
We don’t ask the hard questions or push on the tender spots.
We keep things light and easy. And somewhere along the way, I think we all just decided that was enough.
“Oh, honey,” my mom said finally. “That must be hard.”
“It is.” My voice cracked slightly.
“Do you want to come home?”
God, I wanted to say yes. I wanted to pack my bag and drive back to Chicago and hide in my childhood bedroom and pretend none of this was happening.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Vivienne.” My mom’s voice was firm but kind. “You’re good at your job. One of the best. And you don’t run from hard things.”
Except I do. I’ve been running for years.
But I didn’t say that.
“The circumstances don’t change your ability,” she continued. “You can do this. Even if it’s hard. Especially if it’s hard.”
My dad chimed in from the background. “Tell her we believe in her.”
“Your father says he believes in you. And so do I.”
I sat there, phone pressed to my ear, listening to the ocean outside the window.
“Okay,” I said finally.
“That’s my girl.”
We talked for another twenty minutes about nothing important — her book club, Dad’s golf game, the neighbor’s new dog. Normal things. Safe things.
So I didn’t leave. I stayed in the cottage.
And today, I worked on my report and tried not to think about the fact that I still haven’t unpacked, even though I decided I am staying.
But by five o’clock, I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I needed to see dinner service. I needed to observe how the kitchen handled the rush. It was part of my job, and I’d already skipped the morning.
So, I changed into clean clothes — the last clean clothes I have, which means laundry is officially unavoidable — and drove to Neap & Spring.
The sun was starting to set when I arrived.
The restaurant looked beautiful in the evening light, and for a second I let myself imagine what it would be like to just be a customer.
To walk in and have dinner and not carry the weight of everything that’s broken between me and the person who built this place.
But I’m not a customer. I never get to be just a customer. I always have to be the person who sees what’s wrong. And this time, what’s wrong goes a whole lot deeper than the menu.
I grab my bag and get out of the car. I can hear music playing inside. Voices. The sound of silverware being set on tables.
Frannie’s at the hostess stand, and her face lights up when she sees me. Over the past two weeks, she’s become the closest thing I have to a friend here.
“Viv! I didn’t think you were coming in today.”
“I worked from the cottage this morning.” I shift my bag higher on my shoulder. “But I’m here for dinner service.”
“Your table’s open.” She grabs a menu out of habit, even though I never order. “Want me to have Roman send out some things for you to try?”
“That’d be great, thanks.”
She walks me to my corner table, and I settle in, setting my iPad and notebook down, arranging them just so. The table is by the window, close enough to see the ocean but angled so I can watch the open kitchen without being obvious about it.
The dining room is starting to fill up. Couples, families, a group of women celebrating something that involves a lot of laughter and a bottle of wine. The atmosphere is warm, and comfortable. People are happy to be here.
I pull up my notes, scrolling through pages of observations, data points, and financial breakdowns.
Before long, I let my eyes wander around the dining room.
The couples leaning close over candlelight.
The family with two kids, the mom cutting food into small pieces, and the dad making the toddler laugh.
The group of women laughing over wine, their glasses catching the light.
The exposed beams overhead. The way the last of the sunset catches the ocean through those massive windows.
It all leads back to the open kitchen.
Callum’s in his element. He’s calling out orders, his voice carrying over the noise of pans and timers.
He’s plating dishes with the kind of perfection that comes from years of practice, his hands moving with absolute certainty.
He moves through the space like he was born there and the kitchen is an extension of his body.
His chef’s whites are pristine despite the chaos of service, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing those tattooed forearms. His hair is pushed back under that same worn gray baseball hat from Paris, turned backward, a few dark strands escaping to curl at his neck.
The mustache I wasn’t sure about when I first saw him, but watching him now, confident and focused, I have to admit it works on him.
There’s an intensity to the way he moves. He’s economical and purposeful. No wasted motion. When he plates, his hands are steady and confident.
He’s beautiful when he cooks.
I look away quickly, back down at my notes, but I can still see him when I close my eyes. Callum’s hands. The concentration on his face. The way he tastes something and adjusts the seasoning without even thinking about it, his whole body attuned to the food and to the rhythm of cooking.
It’s the same way he cooked in Paris.
In a raw, honest way that made me fall a little bit in love with cooking in the first place. Watching someone do what they were meant to do.
I’d forgotten that. Or maybe I’d forced myself to forget.
In school, watching him work was one of my favorite things. He had this way of making everything look effortless, even when we were both dead on our feet. He’d crack jokes with the other students, tease me about my obsessive note-taking, and somehow still turn out perfect dishes every single time.
He made cooking look like love.
Now, he makes it look like survival.
I force myself to type something — anything — into my notes. My fingers feel clumsy on the screen.