by Lucy Kevin
Sandy saw the two young women off and then turned back to Andrew, just as he was throwing the telephone number away.
“What’s up with you today?”
“Leave it alone, Sandy. In fact, why don’t you go find something useful to do. Go get me a coffee, or something.”
She simply raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms over her chest.
“I’m sorry,” he immediately said, knowing he was being the worst boss on the planet. “I’m just a bit—”
“Pig headed? Idiotic? Monumentally—”
“I could still fire you, you know.”
Sandy rolled her eyes. “So are you going to tell your long suffering assistant what’s wrong, or do I have to guess?”
Andrew smiled at that. It was about the first time he’d smiled all day, except on camera, and that didn’t count.
“It’s that chef down at the Rose Chalet, isn't it? The one you’re so gooey-eyed over.”
“Sandy, I’m a full grown man. I don’t get gooey-eyed.”
Another eye roll came his way. “You’ve been checking your cell phone more than a teenage girl praying the star quarterback will call her again after their hour together in the backseat of his car.”
He hadn’t realized that it was that obvious. It was embarrassing. Sandy had hit that nail on the head: he was acting like a jilted teenager.
Why hadn’t Julie called? He had thought that things were going great. The night they’d spent together had been amazing, but it was more than that. The morning after—that had been the really special part. They’d solidified their connection then, he’d been sure of it.
Yet here they were again with Julie ignoring his messages. It was as bad as it was after they kissed for the first time. Worse, actually. Avoiding him after their kiss had been nerves, a bump in the road.
Whereas this felt more like a full-on retreat.
“Why don’t you go see her?” Sandy asked. “Talk things through, or whatever it is the magazines always say is supposed to be so much better than getting drunk and sleeping with someone on the rebound.”
Sandy was right. Talking things over with Julie had worked before, and besides, he probably needed to go down to the Rose Chalet anyway.
Not that he needed any excuses. Andrew had said it to Julie the last time they’d seen one another; if she didn’t return his calls, he was coming to get answers.
“You know, Sandy, sometimes you have good ideas.”
“Finally, what I’ve been waiting so long to hear,” she said in a sarcastic voice. “Hey, while you’re at it, tell her what the producers have planned for the finale. They want her in on it, boss.”
Andrew drove like a mad-man over to the Rose Chalet, but Julie wasn’t there. Rose wasn’t in, either. The only person Andrew could find was Phoebe, the florist.
“Have you seen Julie?”
“She doesn’t work here anymore, thanks to you.”
“What—fired? Thanks to me?”
“Who else do you think got her fired?”
He ran his hand through his hair, already planning to tell Rose he’d cancel the wedding if she didn’t take Julie back. “She hasn’t been answering my calls. I didn’t know.”
The florist’s eyes were narrowed. “Look, I get that this is what always happens to relationships, but Julie is my friend and I hate knowing she’s hurt over this. Over you.”
“Tell me where she is, Phoebe. I need to talk to her.”
“I don’t know. But I think you should just leave her alone and let her get on with her life.”
Why hadn’t she told him any of this? What reason could Rose have had to fire her? He didn’t know the answers to either of those questions, but he was going to find out.
He sped back across town to Julie’s house, only to have her aunt tell him, “Oh, she’s gone off to work at the Rose Chalet,” as if everything was perfectly fine.
“But I’ve just been to the—” Andrew realized that he was starting to raise his voice. He never did that. Never. “Please let Julie know I was here to see her. That I'd like to talk to her.”
He got out of there as quickly as he could, trying to work out what was going on when even Evie didn't seem to know Julie had been fired.
He wasn’t sure how he spotted Julie a few seconds later, except that perhaps he would have spotted her anywhere, simply because she mattered so much to him…and he wanted to talk to her so badly.
But he certainly would never have thought to look for her in a food truck like the one parked at the end of the block.
He pulled into the first spot he could find, ignoring the fact that it was a no parking zone. Julie was serving a customer a burger, and it was all Andrew could do to keep from pushing the guy out of the way.
“Julie, what are you doing in a place like this? And why haven’t you answered any of my messages? Phoebe told me what happened. I'm going to tell Rose we're going to cancel the wedding unless she—”
“No!”
The force of the word took Andrew by surprise even as he continued with, “Why have you been avoiding me? Why didn’t you call to give me the news about your job? You promised you wouldn’t pull away like this.”
“And you told me everything would be all right if I only trusted you.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry I didn’t return your calls. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about losing my job at the Rose Chalet. But you should go. I don’t want to lose this job over you too.”
“Julie,” he said gently, “I get that what’s happened has been pretty rough, but if you’ll just come out of there and talk to me—”
She shook her head. “I can’t. I just…can’t anymore. Please, we tried things your way before, but now, I need to try them my way.”
“And what exactly is your way?” he demanded, all gentleness disappearing in the face of his frustration. “Not calling? Not speaking to me? Not letting me know when you’re hurting?”
Didn’t she care that it hurt him, too, not hearing from her like that? Being cut off as though he didn’t matter to her at all?
“We were good together,” he reminded her. “You were happy.”
“For one night. And one morning.” She looked away. “It cost me too much. Everything I’d worked for.”
He could hardly believe that. And, God, he hated the way her voice was so calm. Almost lifeless. “So you’re going to let getting fired from one little job ruin everything we might have? You aren’t even going to take that tiny risk to be happy?”
“Why should I?” she demanded, her voice finally rising again. “Every risk I take, there’s something waiting around the corner to squash me. I know you don’t understand, that you will never understand, but that’s just part of the reason I haven’t been calling.” She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t want to fight.”
She sounded more sad than angry, and that was enough to send Andrew’s emotions spiraling the same way. He stood there for several seconds, staring at her standing in the food truck, a stained white apron on over her jeans and t-shirt.
“At least let me help you out of here.”
Julie was shaking her head before he’d even finished the sentence. “No, please. I don’t want any more of your help.”
Andrew winced. He forced himself to try to treat the next part the way he would if he had just run into an old friend when he had news for them, rather than…whatever she was now.
“The producers of my show want you back on,” he informed her.
“Andrew—”
“They liked having you on the show, and now they want you as part of their live grand cook-off. Come on, Julie. You know you deserve that much.”
She shrugged. “I know as well as anyone that people don’t get what they deserve.”
“So you’re not going to do it?” Somehow, that made him angrier than all the rest of it put together. “One or two things go wrong—”
“Not one or two things,” she pointed out. “Pretty much everything.”
“�
��and now you won’t even take what could be a great chance for you? I don’t understand you, Julie. I just don’t.”
She went back to her grill for a moment, flipping a few pieces of chicken and a hot dog. To his eye, it all looked far too easy.
“Maybe you don’t have to understand it,” she said. “The important thing is that I do, and I can’t go on your show again.”
“Am I supposed to believe that this is enough for you?”
She shrugged again. “It’s going to have to be, at least for now. I didn’t mean for things to work out this way.” She was looking at him again, and the pain on her face was obvious. “I’m sorry that I’ve hurt you. I’m sorry I can’t do the show. I’m sorry I can’t be the person you want me to be.”
He shook his head. “I can’t accept your apology. I won’t accept it. You say you’re sorry, but you’re still giving up on what we could have. On what we had. What good is an apology without—”
Without you.
He didn’t say the words, but they hung in the air anyway.
“I’m sorry,” Julie said again.
Andrew knew it was all he was going to get out of her. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.
He would have turned everything upside down for her without even hesitating...but she was still too frightened to admit how she truly felt about him. She wasn’t going to take the risk of opening her heart.
And it seemed pretty damn clear that she never would.
He stalked to his car without a backward glance, threw it into gear, and set off for the studio. He was, he told himself, better off without Julie Delgado.
If only he actually believed it.
Chapter Fifteen
“Here you go, Betty.” Julie handed over a grilled tuna and egg salad sandwich. “We’ll see you again tomorrow, I hope?”
“Oh no. I couldn’t possibly eat here two days in a row.”
Julie smiled to herself. That was what the woman had said the last three days running. She served the next customer, while Frank conducted a conversation with an elderly man over whose baseball team was going to win that season. Without being asked, Julie put together Alvin’s order and passed it over to him.
“You’re looking good today, Alvin. Does this mean things are going well with Ethel?”
She grilled up several orders during their long and winding conversation. After Alvin left, Frank said, “You know, you really shouldn’t talk to the customers so long, Julie.”
She laughed out loud at that, if only because every time Frank said it, he would immediately spend a good ten minutes talking to the next person to come along.
“I’ll stop when you do.”
He spread his hands. “This is my own personal soap opera. I can’t stop now.” He paused for a second or two. “Julie, could I ask you something?”
That sounded a little ominous. “I guess so.”
“What are you doing working in a job like this? I pay you less than minimum wage, you haven’t gone home before dark once this week, and you obviously know how to cook well enough that you could get a job somewhere else if you wanted it. Why stay here?”
“I’m happy here.” She was surprised to find that, for once, things really were that simple. “Besides, what would you do without me now that you’ve got a bunch of new customers?”
He acknowledged her comment with a nod before saying, “Even so, I worry.”
She smiled at the man she’d really come to enjoy working with. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“At the very least, I’m going to give you a raise, because that way I get to feel better about completely exploiting you.” He looked a little sheepish. “As soon as I can afford it, anyway.”
“Sounds great, Frank.”
For all that her boss liked to talk with his customers about their lives, he hadn’t asked how Julie’s was faring too much in the first few days. Likely because it had been painfully obvious that she needed space.
Telling her aunt what she was doing hadn’t been easy, though the hardest part had been plucking up the courage. When Julie had finally done it, Aunt Evie had hugged her and told Julie that she was sure things would work out. Her aunt had popped by the truck the next day and she and Frank had gotten on far too well for Julie’s liking, given that it meant they both then spent their time asking her whether she was eating properly.
And then, five days, three hours and forty-eight minutes after Andrew had walked away from the food truck and out of her life, Julie’s phone rang. It was Sandy, Andrew’s assistant.
It was a slow period on the burners, so Julie took it behind the truck. “Hello?”
“I’m phoning to ask whether you’d given any thought to appearing on the finale of Edgy Eats in our cook-off.”
“I—” Julie couldn’t stop herself from asking, “How is Andrew?”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” The harsh tone reminded Julie just how protective Andrew’s assistant was toward her boss. “Now, do you want to be on the program or not?”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
She gave a second call that came about an hour later, from the producers, the same answer.
Of course, Andrew was the only one who didn’t call to talk to her about being on the show again. It hurt, but she told herself it was better that way. This was what she’d asked for, after all. To be left alone. She could hardly complain, could she? Even though most nights, Julie still found herself thinking of him, and when Aunt Evie had carefully turned off his show on TV, Julie had turned it back on and told her that it was okay.
Apart from her feelings for Andrew, and the fact that she hadn’t stopped wanting him for one single second since she’d sent him away from the food truck, amazingly, everything else did feel okay.
Working on the truck, there wasn’t much pressure. Occasionally, people would ask how they managed to get the food there tasting so good, and Frank would always reply that it was just good, simple food to feed hungry people.
More and more, Julie was starting to see that he was right. There wasn’t any pressure on her to be staggeringly different and precise. Nor were there any real “rules.” People were only too happy to try the things she put together, even when they were just that little bit different. Without any pressure, and with her new boss happy to let her cook how she liked, she could simply relax, cook good food.
After all these years of trying to fit herself into one box after another, she was amazed to realize she could finally be herself.
“Hey Frank,” a muscular young guy who worked on local construction sites asked, “What’s in this hot dog?”
“Why?” Frank asked. “Is there a problem?”
“No, no problem. It’s good. Really good. Reminds me of the way my grandmother used to make sausages from scratch when I was a kid.”
“It’s Julie’s special recipe,” Frank said, with enough obvious pride to make Julie smile.
Of course, she still knew that there were things bubbling away in the background for her like the tomato sauce she’d thrown together with a few extra spices for the meatball sandwiches on the menu today. Because even though Julie found herself smiling on the way to work for the first time in a long while, there were things she knew she needed to deal with.
Soon.
She took a deep breath and wiped her hands off on her apron.
Now.
* * *
After Frank graciously agreed to give Julie an hour off, she quickly made her preparations and then headed for the Rose Chalet. Rose, Phoebe, and RJ were all in the main dining hall, discussing where to put a gazebo. At least, Rose was discussing it, while Phoebe was tactfully trying to point out a better spot for it. RJ seemed to be ignoring the pair of them to fit it in the one place where it wouldn’t fall down.
Julie briefly smiled at the way they all worked together.
“Hi, everyone.”
“Julie! What are you doing here?” Phoebe hugged her as she said it.
> To Julie’s surprise, so did Rose. “Hi Julie. Is everything going okay with you?”
A few days ago, Julie wouldn’t have been able to nod. Today, despite her nerves, she was smiling as she hefted the hamper she’d packed up on the truck. “I brought food. I know you’re all too busy here to remember to eat lunch half the time.” When Rose eyed the basket slightly suspiciously, Julie laughed. “Don’t worry, this isn’t some ploy to get my old job back. I have a job, and I’m really enjoying it. This is…it just felt right to come and say hello.”
And it really did feel right, especially when they opened up the hamper and started to eat. RJ devoured a couple of chicken sandwiches, before starting work on a hot dog. Phoebe made her way through a full plate of blue cheese French fries before she even looked around to see if anyone else wanted some. Even Rose tried a meatball.
“This is good,” she said, then looked at the other two as they finished up their meals. “Just remember that you have to finish that gazebo. Julie, why don’t you come through to my office and we can talk.”
The only memories she had of Rose’s office were of getting fired, but right then, that didn’t matter anywhere near as much as she’d thought it might have. She took one of the client chairs, and to Julie’s surprise, Rose took the other rather than seating herself behind her desk.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Rose said. “When I let you go, I could see how upset you were.”
“It was rough, but I understand why you had to do it. Really.”
“With the upcoming wedding, and everything that had happened, I didn’t really have much of a choice,” Rose explained. “I probably overreacted a bit, but when I heard that you had spent the night with Andrew, I couldn’t see what else to do.”
Julie nodded. “As I said, I get it. I didn’t come by to blame you for that.”
