Julius watched me eat with glowing pride.
“So, I thought you hated the French Quarter. I could never get you to come down here. Especially on a chilly night.”
“I don’t hate it,” I said. “I just hate finding parking here.”
He was smiling that smile, the one he used to wear when I caught him watching me sing in those clubs all those years ago.
“This all looks great, Jules. I mean it. A classy food truck. Traditional food done up a little different. Healthy. Good idea. Great idea.”
“Thanks. That means a lot coming from you,” he said, sounding a little sheepish, his shoulders back, chest all puffed out.
How many times had I told this man to stand up straighter, not just physically but in every way? Nagging him all those years, I had turned myself into his mother. Instead of growing, the man had shrunk.
“You know, if it takes off, I’m going to franchise this.”
“I hope it works,” I said. “Sure looks like it will … Well, Merry Christmas, Jules. I gotta get up early, so … I’ll pick up Gus tomorrow? Noon, your place, right?”
“Yes.”
As I reached for an awkward hug, Julius leaned in and kissed me on the cheek and we smashed into each other. Could he smell sex on me?
“We should do a catch-up dinner soon,” he said. “Make sure we’re on the same page with Gus for the new year.”
“Yeah, for sure,” I said, adjusting my hat, which had been knocked askew during our awkward clutch. “I’ll set something up.”
“No, I will. I’ll figure something out in the next couple weeks.”
“Okay,” I said, almost as a question. Julius initiating a parenting meeting? Wow.
“It’s good to see you outside of your usual comfort zone, Solange.”
You have no idea, Jules, I wanted to reply. No idea.
CASSIE
Staff had been hired, invitations sent, and most people were responding with a resounding “yes.” It had been a while since a brand-new restaurant opened on Frenchmen Street. Establishments often changed names, but Cassie’s was a whole new space and place. People were curious.
I no longer choked on the name, now that I was an equal partner. Also, as an equal partner I had fifty percent say in whom we hired, and when it came to hiring a chef, I felt there really was no other choice but Dell.
Will balked.
“She doesn’t have the training.”
“Pfft, training. She tested every recipe. She practically designed the menu.”
“We’d be fools to lose her at the Café.”
“Her waitressing skills are replaceable. Her cooking isn’t. In fact, her cooking brings people in. It’s her waitressing that chases them away.”
“Good point.”
It took a day for Will to relent, on the condition we hire an assistant chef to help with the more delicate dishes.
“No problem,” I said. “You know how amenable Dell is to advice in the kitchen. Especially when it comes from young know-it-alls right out of cooking school.”
Dell nearly broke down in tears when I offered her the chef hat and more than doubled her pay, but she didn’t thank me. One of the things I admired the most about Dell was her knowledge that she was doing us a bigger favor by saying yes than we were by offering her the job.
“I have so many ideas!” she said, placing the hat on her head and admiring herself in the mirror. “So many.”
My investment also meant Cassie’s was opening with zero debt, a rarity for a restaurant. And I had some money left over for a splurge at Saks, because, like a lot of women, I still believe that deep superstition that the right dress can make or break a night. In my case, a lot of pressure was placed on a short little crimson cocktail number with long sheer sleeves.
Fifteen minutes before we opened the doors, I stood in front of the full-length mirror in the staff washroom taking in my transformation. Almost two years ago I was a shy, depressed waitress, resigned to a life of routine smallness. Today I was a confident entrepreneur, a vivacious single woman who had a lover and a business partner, who was wearing a sexy little red dress on New Year’s Eve for the opening of a restaurant named after her. And yet, despite my accomplishments, I had to admit the heels, the makeup, the matching lipstick, my hair a tumble of dark curls—all of it still felt like a layer on top of me, not quite a part of me.
Passing through the kitchen on my way up the service stairs to the new restaurant, I heard a long, slow whistle that stopped me in my tracks.
“Look at you, boss lady,” said Dell, beaming—at me. It almost brought me to tears. “What happened to that little mousy waitress?”
S.E.C.R.E.T. did this, I wanted to say, my hand clutching my noisy charm bracelet. I rarely wore it to work, not wanting to answer questions about it, but tonight the gold shimmer set off the outfit perfectly.
“Thanks,” I said, tugging at the dress. “You don’t think it’s too much?”
“Too much what?”
“I don’t know. I feel like the dress is wearing me.”
Dell blinked in sheer incomprehension. Even if she understood my insecurity, she was refusing to address it, a policy I would do well to mirror.
“I said a prayer for good business,” she said, turning back around to stir something that smelled incredible.
I could have kissed her. She may not consider me a friend, but I hoped she’d come to respect me.
Just then Claire and Maureen came bounding into the kitchen from the Café, dropping dirty dishes on the conveyor belt.
“Frick and Frack. I told you to leave the bins on the floor!” Dell yelled. They had yet to earn anything but her approbation. “We have a dishwasher coming in at night who’ll do the unloading!”
“Sorry, um, but we have to clean up the Café, and I have a party to go to,” Claire said, reaching into her pouch to check her smart phone.
She did it so absently, so automatically, I wasn’t even sure she was aware of her own actions. I winced: the wired generation.
Claire had offered to help upstairs for opening night, but when she was invited to a party, Will insisted she be a normal teenager and go. A party meant she might still have some friends out there.
“Is Will here?” I asked, as nonchalantly as possible, to no one in particular.
“Upstairs,” Dell said. “Ice machine’s not working. He just took a big tray up.”
“Like we don’t need ice down here,” said Maureen.
I scrammed, leaving Dell to deal with the tensions that sharing a kitchen between two restaurants with overlapping shifts was already causing.
The new service staircase that led to Cassie’s upstairs still smelled like freshly oiled wood. Tonight signaled another new beginning, I thought: the start of a career rather than a job. Since making the investment, I had been given a crash course in entrepreneurship, and I deemed myself a natural. About money and business, I could make decisions. Sex, too, possibly. Love, not so much. I hadn’t seen Jesse since Boxing Day, when he left me in Jackson Square to help facilitate a fantasy. My focus since then had been work, opening the restaurant, making this place a success. And truthfully, when Jesse had told me he had his son tonight and couldn’t make the opening, I was relieved. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing how Jesse and Will interacted, and I didn’t need any drama or distractions.
The dining area was empty except for Will, his back to me as he adjusted the sparkling place settings. I’d never seen this suit on him: dark blue, expensive-looking, made from the kind of material you wanted to put your hands on. He appeared leaner from behind, too, more spry. The last time I saw him in a suit we were heading to Latrobe’s that fateful night. Had he ever looked sexier than that night?
Maybe tonight, maybe right now.
“There you are,” I said.
Will whipped around, and my heart caught at the sight of his face—happy, open, yet registering nothing about how I looked in this dress.
“Hey, Cassie. Can you
believe it? Opening night,” he said, blithely going back to his place-setting adjustments. “Oh, and happy new year.”
“Yeah. Right back at you.”
Is that all you’re going to say? I wanted to scream, my heels digging into the distressed barn-board floors.
“You look really nice, Will.”
“Thanks. Claire picked out the suit. Turns out she has very expensive taste,” he said, turning towards me again and smoothing down the lapels.
I tried conjuring some of the powers from my charms: Bravery. Exuberance. Confidence. I needed all of them tonight.
“Well … here we go!” I said, placing my hands on my hips. Enticing smells wafted up the stairs from the kitchen: Dell’s buttery chicken and creole sauce, her mini chicken pies, cushaw casserole tasting spoons, spicy shrimp skewers, cornbread stuffing with pecans and roux, her Cajun sticky-rice balls.
“Smell that?” he asked.
“Heavenly.”
I took a step towards him. I could have sworn he flinched when I stuck out my hand and said, “Congratulations on tonight. On the opening.”
His eyes darted to my bracelet before he took my hand, shaking it once, twice. Pull him in for a kiss. End this standoff, this nonsense. Before I could muster the courage, a burly soundman walked in carrying a giant boom mike and recording equipment.
“This Cassie’s?” he asked, breathless.
“Yes,” Will and I said in unison.
“I’m from Action News Nightly.”
“Excellent,” Will said, impressed.
Matilda had told me she was going to ask Solange to send a producer and a crew for some visuals of our opening night, and here they were!
“I just need to know where I can plug in my lights,” the crew guy said, impatient with us, probably pissed he was working New Years’ Eve.
Will pointed to an outlet by the bar.
I looked at my watch. “Holy shit! It’s time! I’ll go unlock the front doors.”
“It’s time. Wow,” Will said. “Oh, and Cassie?”
At the top of the stairs, I turned to face Will.
“You look … spectacular,” he said, placing a hand over his heart, feigning weak knees.
My smile was involuntary, and probably so goofily big it undid everything sexy about my outfit. But there you go. I’d wanted and needed to hear that, and he’d come through.
I headed downstairs with renewed vigor and propped open the main door. Within a minute, the first guests arrived, mostly local restaurateurs here to check out the competition, try Dell’s food. Between bites and small talk, I kept an eye on Will, who was never very good at the meet-and-greet. But tonight, there was something new about him, a swagger, a determined pride. We both had it, I think, and we worked the room separately, coming together after the first hour of schmoozing to give a brief report.
“I think it’s going well,” he said, nodding.
“Yes. And the food? The shrimp skewers are flying off the platters.”
“I knew they’d be a hit.”
“Dell’s a genius.”
“No, you are for insisting we make her lead chef.”
I smiled at him again, instinctively wanting to reach out for his hand, when his face went from looking at me adoringly to slack at the sight of something over my left shoulder. I turned around to see Tracina enter, holding baby Neko, followed by her fiancé, the one and only Carruthers Johnstone.
Here we go.
“Go. Say hi, Will. Get it over with.”
“Gimme a second,” he said, turning away from them.
He hadn’t seen either Carruthers or Tracina since the night their daughter, Neko, was born. Inviting her hadn’t been a new idea. I’d brought it up months ago, back when we were in the throes of our own reunion, while in bed one night, our legs and arms entwined.
Will was unequivocal. “No. Can’t we just have our own fresh start without the past coming in to haunt us? Why does our future have to involve forgiving Tracina?”
“You don’t have to forgive her, but you do have to be okay with her coming to the Café. We all want to see the baby. After all, she’s named after the place!”
The baby’s name was Rose Nicaud, like the Café, which itself was named after the first African-American female entrepreneur in New Orleans, a slave who sold coffee from a cart she pushed up and down Frenchmen Street. She saved enough money eventually to buy her freedom. The story of her feat was on the back of every menu.
“The Café matters to Tracina. Her friends work here, Will. It’s time to make amends. Then we can all move forward.”
“Since when do you care about Tracina? When did she become your friend?”
It was a good question, and one I had a hard time answering. “I don’t know. It just happened.”
It was true. We were friends. It started with checking in on her right after the baby was born. Babies are magnets; they pull people to them, and this little girl had a particularly strong pull. Tracina and I had gone for walks in Audubon Park, chatting like girlfriends do, and no one was happier than Tracina when I told her Will and I were finally together, in no small part because it assuaged some of her guilt about leaving him for the man she really loved, the father of her child.
But when I told her a short while later that Will and I had broken up, she was angry. Angier still when I told her why.
“What double-standard man bullshit is that? That you can’t have a bunch of sex without making him feel all threatened? If he didn’t hate my guts, I’d march over there and hit him over the head with my grandma’s cast-iron fry pan.”
Tracina had long guessed at my involvement in this “sexy little group” to which her best friends Kit and Angela belonged.
“Why else would Kit and Ange hang out with y’all?” she said with no malice, just pure Tracina-style bluntness. Tracina also admitted that after Kit and Angela told her about their participation in S.E.C.R.E.T., she begged to be included, at least in the fantasy parts.
They told her she didn’t qualify.
“When it comes to sex, apparently my shit is too together. Is that a bad thing?”
I told her it wasn’t; she was the kind of woman we all wanted to be like, at least when it came to her relationship with sex and her own body, which looked incredible tonight with a new lush layer of baby weight softening her edges. Watching her hoist and pat Neko, while teetering in heels and wearing a short, sparkly dress, I marveled at how sexy motherhood looked on her.
“Go,” I said now, gently prodding Will to greet her, the baby and her beau.
After pulling in a deep breath, Will crossed the room and gamely stuck out his hand to Carruthers, not like they were old friends or would ever become new ones, but with a kind of familiarity, like they’d fought on opposite sides of a fierce skirmish, neither truly coming out a victor. Will then turned to Tracina and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, his eyes glued to the bundle she carried. When Tracina opened the little flap on baby Neko, Will smiled for the first time in weeks, a genuine Will smile, one that stretched from ear to ear.
In that moment, my heart broke for him. Again.
Tracina poured the baby into his arms, and he cooed and rocked her, smiling and smiling, my cue to go over and tug a now baby-free Tracina to a quiet corner.
“You look insanely great, by the way!” she said, grabbing my hands and holding them out to take in my red dress.
“You think? I feel like a fraud.”
“Stop it, it’s fucking great. Is Will still being a dickhead?” she asked, snatching a glass of wine off a passing tray. “I pumped her milk so I’m getting my drink on tonight.”
“Will’s being … well, you know, Will.”
“You want my advice? Give him a nice, wide berth. Let him remember what he’s missing.”
“We are strictly business partners, Tracina. Our chance came and went.”
She ignored me. “What I mean is, don’t be emotionally available to him, if you want him back.”
&nb
sp; “I told you we’re just—”
“Be mysterious. Be busy. Get dating again. Who was that guy you were seeing last year?”
“Which one? The musician or the pastry chef?”
She gave me the side-eye. “I did not know you were that busy.”
We laughed.
“I know you, Cassie. Everything you’re telling yourself about Will, I said it to myself about my Carr. So like I said, you really want a guy? Behave like you really don’t.”
We both looked over at Will. If you could watch a man fall instantly in love, his face would look like Will’s, the world around him melting away, the object of his affection receiving his full attention. The baby took obvious glee in his rapture, her giggle audible from where we were standing. Her hands sweetly punched at his nose and chin, until, unprompted, she started wailing and Tracina’s whole body went on high alert. On cue, Will made his way back over to us, followed by a doting Carruthers.
“Oh sure, she starts crying and it’s time to give her back to Mommy,” said Tracina.
“If I could help, I would,” Will said, reluctantly exchanging the baby for Tracina’s empty glass.
“Nah. It’s cool. She wants her mommy. And a clean diaper.” Tracina took the now-bawling Neko downstairs to the staff room, leaving the three of us standing around awkwardly for a few seconds.
“Thank you for coming,” I said to Carruthers, patting his arm.
His smile was tight. “I am always happy to support local businesses.”
Matilda arrived just then, blessedly, and I excused myself from this painful company to greet her, despite Will’s help, don’t leave expression. As I walked towards Matilda, my phone vibrated in my pocket—a text. From Jesse.
Come over after party? Finn’s asleep.
Finn? Oh right, his son. I kicked myself for not asking his name ages ago. Before I could reply, Matilda pulled me in for an embrace.
“Cassie! You look stunning.”
“Thank you. Though I’m beginning to worry that maybe opening on New Year’s wasn’t the best idea.”
Just then more guests crowded the top of the stairs. Before I had a chance to break from Matilda to greet them, Will was upon then, instructing some guests where to hang their coats, showing others to the bar.
SECRET Revealed Page 10
