by Lucy Kevin
“How did you guess?” Julie asked.
“You’re practically glowing, and you obviously haven’t been home to change, because that dress is far too formal for work.”
That was from a woman who was currently wearing a floral number that fell down past her knees and looked like it had come out of the nineteen-fifties. Julie raised an eyebrow, but Phoebe shrugged the unspoken point off.
“This is retro-chic. That,” she said as she gestured to Julie’s outfit, “is an impromptu sleepover. I know the difference. Now, are you going to tell me who it was, or am I going to have to guess?”
When Julie didn’t answer immediately, Phoebe turned thoughtful, leaning her head on one hand while she ran through the possibilities and dismissed them.
“Let’s see, it has to be someone you’ve been spending a lot of time with. Good looking, obviously. Someone who—” Her eyes grew big. “Oh my God, you didn’t! Andrew Kyle?”
Not knowing what else to do, and frankly quite grateful to finally be able to tell someone, Julie nodded, a smile she couldn’t contain curving up her lips.
“Lucky you! He’s gorgeous. How did it happen? Details, I demand details.”
For a second or so, Julie blushed hot enough that she could probably have used her own face to cook with in place of a stove top. Still, she had to talk this over with somebody, or she would probably explode.
After a quick look around to ensure that they were all alone, she gave a quick explanation of the highlights of her relationship with Andrew. Still, regardless of how encouraging Phoebe was about it, Julie knew not everyone would feel the same way.
“I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t mention any of this to Rose. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be very happy if she heard that I was involved with a client. Especially one I have a history with.”
It wasn’t that the Rose Chalet’s owner was some fun-hating boss from hell, but Rose was running a business, and had to hope for the least amount of interpersonal complications between employees and clients.
“Don’t worry, I won’t say a word,” Phoebe said, but before Julie could get back to the kitchen, her friend put a hand on her arm. “I’m really happy for you, but with a guy like Andrew Kyle—”
“I know, be careful,” Julie said. “Thanks, Phoebe.”
Phoebe headed back out into the garden and Julie was just reaching for a baking pan when she turned and ran straight into Rose.
The owner of the Rose Chalet did not look happy. Actually, Julie quickly realized, it was more like her face had shut down so that she didn’t have to show what she really felt. It was, strangely, worse than as if she had been shouting.
“Julie, I’d like to see you in my office, please.” Rose walked off, not waiting for Julie.
Oh God, she’d obviously heard.
If talking to Phoebe had been like being back in high school, then this was like being summoned to the principal’s office. It wasn’t a question of whether Julie was in trouble.
It was simply a question of how much trouble?
Rose was sitting behind her desk by the time Julie caught up with her. It wasn’t a neat desk. There were far too many pieces of paper scattered over it for that, arranged in an order that presumably made sense to her boss, but wouldn’t to anyone else.
Rose gestured to one of the chairs for clients in front of the desk. Julie hadn’t sat there even when she’d been interviewing for the temporary job, because they’d done that in the kitchen. Things suddenly felt horribly formal.
“Please sit down, Julie.”
Julie sat. “Rose, I can explain this.”
“I heard most of what you said to Phoebe,” Rose said. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t even sound angry. If anything, she sounded disappointed. “You’re dating Andrew Kyle?”
Julie hesitated, but then nodded. There wasn’t much point in trying to deny it. “Yes.”
“Do you know how complicated that makes things?”
“I’m sorry,” Julie said, but a small spark of defiance leapt up in her. “To be fair, things were already pretty complicated between him and me.”
“You mean because he gave you a bad review for your restaurant?” Rose looked at Julie pointedly. “One that you didn’t mention to me after you learned he was the client’s brother?”
Julie hung her head. She’d messed up. She knew she had. “I thought that if I told you about Andrew’s review of my restaurant, then you wouldn’t have let me work on this wedding.”
“So, instead, you lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie, exactly. I just didn’t tell you.” Julie winced as she heard what she’d just said. “Not that it makes a difference, I know.”
“It sounds like there were quite a few things you didn’t tell me,” Rose continued. “First there was the role Andrew played in the collapse of your restaurant, there’s you somehow ending up on screen with him during the filming of his new show—”
“That was an accident,” Julie protested, although she suspected it probably didn’t help.
“—then there’s you kissing him a few days ago, you going to his house for dinner with his family, you spending the night with him…I don’t know what to say to all this, Julie.”
“I didn’t plan any of this. I thought I could ignore Andrew’s review.” Julie squirmed in her seat. “I thought he and I could both be professional about it.”
Rose pressed her lips together, obviously not saying the first thing that came into her head. “Yes, professional would have been good,” she said after a second or two, “but that’s clearly not how things have worked out.”
Julie nodded. “I’m sorry about this. Really.” She briefly wondered exactly how many times one person could say sorry in a day. Although, the truth was she would apologize as many times as she needed to, just so long as she got to keep her—
“Julie, I’m going to have to let you go.”
—job.
“Let me go?” For a second or two, she could barely take the words in. “You’re firing me?”
Rose nodded. “I don’t have a choice.”
“But the Kyles’ wedding…”
“I’ll have to find someone else to do it. I would have needed to find someone else afterwards, anyway. This just brings things forward a little. Look, I’ll be happy to offer you a reference. The food I tasted was good. It’s just all the rest of it that’s a problem.”
Julie brought her hands up to her face. She could feel the beginnings of tears in her eyes, but she was determined not to cry. Not here, not like this.
“But I—”
To Julie’s surprise, Rose got up and moved around the desk. Briefly, Julie wondered if the other woman was going to throw her out physically. That would be the perfect ending to her day.
Instead, Rose did something even more surprising. She put a comforting hand on Julie’s shoulder. “I know it’s hard, but I think this is the best thing. When you have time to think about it, you might even agree. I need someone here who can commit to doing this job long term, and I think you’ve never really been that interested in it, Julie.”
“That’s not true,” Julie tried to argue, but Rose stopped her.
“You had your own restaurant. Working here, putting on food for weddings, was always going to be second best. Even Andrew said that your heart didn’t seem to be in it back at the tasting.”
How, Julie wondered, had things fallen apart so quickly, from a perfect morning to a miserable afternoon? What would Evie say when Julie told her that she’d managed to lose the job her aunt had more or less handed to her?
“I’m not going to make you work out the rest of the day,” Rose said, “and I want you to know that this isn’t anything personal. I just don’t think that you’re a good fit for the Rose Chalet. I’m sorry. Obviously, you’ll be paid for the work you’ve done so far.”
Julie nodded and stood. She had to get out of Rose’s office before she broke down and cried. She mumbled something about being grate
ful for the opportunity and made it as far as the parking lot before she stopped, the reality of it finally sinking in.
She’d been fired.
The only job she’d been able to get after the demise of her restaurant was gone, just like that…all because she’d been stupid enough to let her life get tangled up with Andrew Kyle’s again.
Chapter Thirteen
Julie walked back to her aunt’s house with her breath coming short and her gut clenching. She didn’t even try to catch the bus home, passing it in a daze as she tried to make some sense of everything that had just happened.
Her phone rang as the first drops of rain started to fall. The thought of actually having to talk to someone was too much to bear. But she couldn’t resist checking the message. What if it was Rose calling to say she’d reconsidered?
Phoebe’s voice rang out on voice mail: “I just heard what happened and that you won’t be working here anymore.” Her new friend paused as if she only just realized that had come out wrong. “I hope you’re okay. I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have started asking about Andrew. I shouldn’t have even gone near that whole conversation. I feel so bad about everything. Please let me know you’re all right when you get the chance.”
Julie hesitated, finger poised over the call button. She didn’t blame Phoebe for anything. She even thought it was sweet of her to check in. But she still couldn’t face the thought of talking. Especially not to tell someone she was all right.
She wasn’t all right. She was a long, long way from that.
Tucking the phone back into her pocket, Julie made her way back to her aunt’s house, not bothering to dodge the puddles that had started to form on the sidewalk. All she wanted was to curl up on the sofa and pretend for a little while that none of it mattered. Even though it mattered so very much.
Julie walked past a food truck at the end of her block, keeping going without even pausing to wonder what it served. Just the thought of food made her stomach knot.
By the time Julie got back to Aunt Evie’s place, the rain had worked its way through her clothes. Oh, how Julie wished her aunt were home, rather than out with her friends for the evening, to hug her and tell her that everything would be all right, even if it was a lie.
Then again, all the work Evie had put into cooking for the wedding venue, and Julie had lost it, just like that. Would her aunt be angry? Disappointed? The stress of trying to keep up with multiple weddings had been bad for the older woman’s health. What would the news of just how badly her niece had messed up this time do to her?
Julie went to her room, picking up the small notebook she had originally intended to write recipes in, but which sat largely blank in one of her drawers. She pulled out a piece of paper tucked in between the cover and the first page and unfolded it, re-reading the familiar words of Andrew’s review: Delgado’s: 2 out of 5 stars
Why had she printed out the review and put it there? She could hardly remember now. Maybe she’d thought to use it as a spur to action, a source of inspiration. Maybe she’d wanted it as a reminder of how easily things could go wrong. All Julie had known at the time was that she needed to keep a copy, that she wasn’t going to let the couple of brief paragraphs that had ruined her life simply float off into the electronic ether.
Restaurants should offer more than bland food....
That passion for food didn’t come across at Delgado’s.
She’d had visions of one day being able to force Andrew Kyle to eat his words. Julie smiled grimly at that as she read the piece over again, her eyes skimming the words that she could have recited from memory.
Judging by the many empty seats all around me, the other customers felt the same way.
Such simple phrases, but they had done so much damage. When she got to the end of the review, she went back to the beginning to read it again.
Perhaps in future, the owner will couple her obvious skills with a more imaginative menu.
Strangely, two things jumped out at her from the sentence for the very first time. Obvious skills was an actual compliment. And future...well, it seemed to imply that Andrew thought she had one.
She didn’t know how long she’d sat there, with the world closed in around her and Andrew’s old words in front of her. It would be easier to tell herself that, once again, her life had gone from almost being okay to falling apart the moment he had come into it.
But she couldn’t lie to herself about his motives. He hadn’t been trying to hurt her, hadn’t been deliberately trying to rip her life to shreds.
It was simply that he couldn’t understand that the way he threw himself at the world simply didn’t work for everyone else. He acted and never thought about the consequences, because there never were any consequences for him.
Yet for Julie, life seemed to be nothing but consequences. Rotten ones.
She knew she was wallowing and forced herself to put the review back in the notebook, though by then, it didn’t make much difference. The words were still playing on repeat in her head.
A minute later, Julie stood under the jets of the shower, turning the water as hot as she could bear and squeezing her eyes shut. It didn’t make any difference. She could still the see Andrew’s final pronouncement on her restaurant–unmemorable–in her mind’s eye, as if it had been typed into her brain in indelible ink.
She opened her eyes again to find that she was on the floor of the shower, her arms wrapped around her knees, hugging them close. As much as she wanted to deny it, Delgado’s had been heading downhill for months before it closed. The two star review was just the last nail in the coffin. And last night with Andrew, this morning’s breakfast and sweet kisses…it had been her choice to stay. Her choice to take that risk.
Her choice to try for happiness.
In the end, Julie was left with one simple truth: she was the one responsible for messing up her own life. Not Andrew.
Out on the bathroom counter, her phone started ringing again. She ignored it, sitting in the shower until the water ran cold. It didn’t achieve much–it certainly didn’t get rid of unmemorable circling in her head–but by the time she dried off, at least she could think a little again by then. She changed into a combination of jeans and a dark sweater before checking her phone.
Call Missed: Andrew Kyle.
Julie couldn’t possibly call him back. Even if she didn’t blame him for all that had happened, she wasn’t sure she could be around him, either.
Not after she’d found out the hard way that the risk simply wasn’t worth it.
A quick stab of hunger told Julie how late it was getting even before she looked at her watch. She wasn’t deluded enough to think that a mess on this scale would look any better after food, but starving herself wouldn’t achieve anything. However, for the first time ever, Julie simply couldn’t face cooking. Even when the restaurant went under, there had been something soothing about picking out a recipe and following it.
Julie thought back to the food truck she’d passed on the way home. Would it still be there? She found an old umbrella and huddled under it as she walked down the empty sidewalk.
Fortunately, the truck was still there, being run by a man in his fifties, whose apron had the obligatory grease stains and whose hair had long since given up any pretense of covering the full surface of his skull.
He beamed as Julie approached. “A customer! I was beginning to think that the rain had chased you all off. What can I get you?”
The menu was a relatively simple one. Steak sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, sausages, burgers, fries. It was exactly the comfort food Julie needed right then. She ordered a chicken sandwich, and though her original intention had been to take it back to the apartment, she stayed outside by the truck instead. Better to be out in the drizzling rain than all alone with her misery.
For his part, the truck owner, whose name turned out to be Frank, was happy to have her there. He told her he hadn’t had any customers there almost since the rain started. The only reason he didn’
t move locations was because it would be raining just as hard anywhere else. All part of the marvelous life of the traveling food vendor, as he cheerfully put it. When a couple of new customers showed up despite the rain, Frank declared Julie to be a good luck charm.
“That’s pretty much the opposite of what I am right now,” Julie informed him.
That was when she noticed the small ‘help wanted’ sign stuck to the side of the truck. Part of her dismissed the thought immediately. Even the Rose Chalet had been a step down for her. Something like this was so many steps down that it might as well be a ladder. She’d owned her own restaurant. She shouldn’t even think about something like—
“What kind of help do you want?” Julie asked before she could stop herself.
The truth was that she was currently jobless, and unlikely to get anything else, given what had happened with her last two jobs. Besides, given everything that had happened, did she really think that she deserved anything better?
“Oh, I’m looking for a general helper,” Frank said. “Washing up. Some fry cooking. Do you know someone who’d be interested?”
Julie knew she ought to say no. Andrew would have been angry with her for doing anything else. Even Aunt Evie would have told her that she was selling herself short.
Right then though, Julie just needed something real. Something solid. Something she knew she could do and do well.
“Yes,” she said, quickly, before she could change her mind. “Me.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Cut! Get ready for the basic skills section.”
After the cameras turned off, Andrew shook the hand of the local chef he was cooking with, whose name he frankly couldn’t remember, and moved off to the side of the set. He checked his phone as discretely as he could.
Nothing.
Just like the last three times he’d checked.
He put the phone away as Sandy brought over a couple of women in their early twenties who proclaimed themselves his biggest fans and asked if they could get a photo with him. For the first time in a long time, Andrew had to force himself to go through with the whole thing, standing there while Sandy took their picture. One of them slipped a piece of paper into his hand and when Andrew looked, he found that it had a phone number on it.
