by Sarah Smith
Mom leans closer to the laptop screen and squints. “A violation of the rules? What are they talking about?”
I shift the mouthpiece of the phone away from me. “I’ll explain in a minute,” I whisper.
“Ignore the Flavor Network’s post,” Penelope says. “Chic just tagged you in something. Be sure to read the whole caption.”
I go to Chic TV’s Instagram account and see their latest post: a photo of our food truck.
“Oh wow! That’s us!” Mom says before I read the caption:
We here at @ChicTV had a great time at the Maui Food Festival! Maui, you’ve got some seriously delicious eateries! Congrats to @Tivas for kicking major a$$ and winning the grand prize! Sadly @theFlavorNetwork has gone back on its promise to deliver prize money to the winner for a second year in a row (something’s #fishy about that, #amirite?). But @ChicTV would love to deliver where @theFlavorNetwork has fallen short. @Tivas, we’ll give you your rightful prize money if you promise to shoot a commercial for our network this fall. What do you say?
A sharp intake of breath is all I have as a response. My head spins at how Penelope has flipped our course completely for the better.
“I just got off the phone with the food division at Chic TV a half hour ago, and everything is official. Someone from the contracts department will email you soon with all the details. The ball is officially rolling on this, so you don’t have to worry.”
I can’t speak. All I do is breathlessly stutter.
“Shoot, are you okay?” Penelope asks.
“It’s just . . . Penelope, how did you do this? Why did you do this?”
“Because it’s my job. And because you’re my friend.”
This time when my eyes water, it’s not because I’m angry or heartbroken. It’s because I’m overwhelmed with joy that someone as kind and successful as Penelope would even consider me their friend.
The word “friend” settles somewhere deep inside my chest.
“Look, I know I came off like a weird fangirl when we met at the farmer’s market,” Penelope says. “You’re an amazing cook and run the best food truck on the island. Everyone in the Maui food scene was blown away by you, myself included.” She pauses for a breath. “I know we haven’t known each other long, but my friends are important to me. Whenever I can do something for them, I try. And that’s what I’m doing now. Trying to be a good friend.”
At her words, I crack my first smile of the day.
“I know it’s hard making friends when you move to a new place,” she says. “I’m so happy I found you here in Maui.”
After nearly two years of struggling on my own, I have a friend. “That means a lot, Penelope. Do you maybe want to get a drink tomorrow after I finish up at the food truck? I owe you for how you helped us today. And for listening to me wail yesterday.”
It’s something so simple—two friends spending time together. But it’s been so long since I’ve experienced that. And I miss it.
She drops to a more wistful tone. “I really am sorry about you and Callum. You can talk to me anytime about anything. And you don’t owe me. I would love to get a drink with you tomorrow though.”
“Seriously, Penelope. You are beyond amazing.”
I promise to text her when I get off work, she promises to think of a good place to meet, and we hang up.
I turn back to face Mom, bewilderment clear as day on her face. But I can’t be too surprised. I went from crying in front of her to smiling in the span of a few minutes.
I take a breath. “It’s going to be okay now. Penelope fixed everything. We still won, and we’re still getting the money. We’re just going to do the commercial for a different network. Chic TV instead of the Flavor Network.”
That joyful smile from before spreads across her face. “She did? Oh my gosh, we are? Oh, Chic TV is way better than the Flavor Network! They’re so stylish! And that’s your auntie Nora’s favorite channel, remember? Oh, I can’t wait to tell her! I’m going to call her now actually.”
She scurries to the bedroom for her phone, leaving me alone again in the kitchen. When I turn to close my laptop, my eyes catch on a comment right under the Chic TV post about us, and my hand freezes midair.
@HungryChaps: What @theFlavorNetwork did was a travesty. @Tivas won fair and square, with zero help from anyone—not even us. Well done, ladies.
Inside I soften at the public congratulations from Finn. It’s beyond gracious of him to make a statement like that on Hungry Chaps’ Instagram account.
And then my eyes fall to the comment below his. A user by the name of @FoodAndFinanceLad. My chest swells when I process it. That must be Callum’s account—the account he said he’s never once used, until today—to leave this comment.
More than well deserved. Nicely done, petal.
A flower emoji ends the comment. I can barely breathe.
I click on the profile, and sure enough, there are no other posts or stories. Just that one comment. No question, this is Callum’s account.
I grip the counter to steady myself. Even after our fight, even after our very ugly and very public demise, Callum somehow found it in him to congratulate me with the Instagram account he never uses—and it’s thrown me for one hell of a loop.
Chapter 20
Everything okay, anak? You seem a little off.” Mom sets a glass of water on the kitchen table for me.
“I’m fine.” I take a long sip. It’s a lie, but I’ve got no energy for the truth.
Because the truth is too painful to talk about. I’d have to admit, like I almost did the other day right before Penelope swooped in and saved us, that I had a secret relationship with our rival, broke up on the worst possible terms, and reeled about it in silence until he left a sweet comment for me out of the blue on social media that had me questioning everything. I’d come off like a traitor and a basket case.
She plops down in the chair to my left, her focused stare fixed on me. “You don’t seem fine. In fact, you haven’t seemed like yourself lately. Want to tell me why?”
I let out a long exhale, saying nothing. It does little to ease the concern painted so clearly on her face. She stares with a furrowed brow, her dark eyes boring into me like lasers.
“Just tired, that’s all,” I say. “It’s just a lot dealing with all those bloggers constantly hanging out at our truck.”
This time when I speak, it’s the truth. This first week of having our food truck spot on Makena Road back to ourselves has been like navigating a paparazzi press line. Every day a dozen bloggers visit our truck to ask me two things. The first is how I feel about being dropped by the Flavor Network only to be picked up minutes later by Chic TV. Penelope was kind enough to give me a heads-up on that one. When we met for drinks, she warned that social media influencer wannabes may pester me in the hopes of getting their fifteen minutes of fame by latching onto the food truck that will soon be in a commercial for a popular network.
The second most common thing they ask about is Callum, our relationship, our fallout, how I feel now that he’s vacated our spot. And every day I serve customers while pretending that I don’t hear their invasive questions float within earshot as they crowd our truck. I never knew ignoring people could be so exhausting.
But it’s even more than that. It’s the fact that every day I park our truck in that spot, I hope against hope that the Hungry Chaps food truck will be parked there. Even though it will never, ever happen. When they didn’t show up that first day back, it was expected. It didn’t ease the knot in my chest at all though.
And every day since, the knot has grown bigger and tighter. Today I can barely breathe when I think of Callum and me sharing that spot, how for weeks we worked less than ten feet from each other during the day, then ravaged each other at night.
Yes, we’re done. Yes, we fought. Yes, we both said terrible things to each other. But that
doesn’t erase our passion, our feelings, how he made me happier than anyone I’ve ever been with. How he was the only person other than my mom who I could talk to about my dad.
Another labored breath and my chest feels as though it will collapse under the weight of this invisible agony.
It’s all crystal clear now: I love Callum.
I would happily endure a million nosy vloggers all day, every day, if I had Callum in my line of view. If I could look up and see him flashing a half smile at me from the window of his food truck.
Mom’s voice pulls me back to the present. “Those bloggers or vloggers or whatever they’re called are certainly irritating. But I don’t think that’s the only reason why you’re so sad.”
When she inquired on the first day why everyone kept asking me about Callum, I froze. I never wanted to tell her about us, even when I thought we had lost our festival prize and I was about to force myself to come clean. I brushed off her question, saying the vloggers were desperate for a story and making things up about us. She nodded and didn’t mention it again. But for a split second there was that knowing look in her eyes, like she could tell I was hiding something. She gives me that same look right now.
“I’m not sad, Mom. I just miss Lemon.”
An eyebrow raise is all my explanation gets. It was the same eyebrow raise she gave me when she asked about Lemon not being at the condo anymore and I mumbled some half-assed excused about Penelope wanting to take her for a while. In actuality, Lemon is still with Callum because she just happened to be staying with him when we ended everything between us. I haven’t had the nerve to reach out to him and ask if I can see her or if we could somehow resume some sort of fair visitation schedule. The pain from our split is still too raw.
“I’m your mom. I know when you’re sad. And I also know that it’s because of a very tall, very handsome English boy.”
My eyes go wide, but I rein them back in after a blink. “Mom, I told you, that’s not . . .”
She flashes her best deadpan stare. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it. Not since I was seventeen and she walked in on me curled up in a ball on the floor of my bedroom, thoroughly hungover after a night of sneaking alcohol at my best friend’s house.
“Nicole Elise DiMarco, I may be from a different generation, but I’m no fool. I know when my daughter’s in love, just like I know when she’s not telling me the truth.”
There’s a pop in my jaw as it falls open. I snap my mouth shut.
Her hand falls over mine. Both her eyes and her tone turn tender. “Did you really think I didn’t notice what you were doing all those nights you went out? Did you think I didn’t notice all those times at work when I caught you smiling to yourself for no reason at all?”
“But . . . how?”
“I caught you two looking at each other a few times at the food truck. Whenever you saw each other in those moments, you just looked so happy. I knew something was going on.” Her burnt umber eyes fall to her lap. “And then the other day Mrs. Tokushige sent me all these links to videos about what happened at the festival between you and Callum. She was so worried about you, how you were dealing with all this.”
I let out the breath I’ve been holding. “Oh.”
Patting my hand, she flashes a small smile. “The way he looked at you those times I noticed, it’s the same way your dad would look at me. You can’t fake that sort of feeling, that love. And you can’t hide it for very long either.”
She motions for me to drink the rest of the water in my glass. I do even though my head is spinning. My face heats at all the times she spotted my smug expression after a night with Callum. I had zero clue.
“Wow, Mom. I’m a little embarrassed at how I underestimated you.”
She swipes the glass from the table and refills it at the sink. She turns to look at me. “You should be more embarrassed at how you two ended it with each other.” Again she sighs. “It’s no surprise you pushed him away. You’ve been pushing everyone away ever since your dad died. Except me.”
I’m speechless once more, just a string of stutters and breaths.
When she looks up at me again, her eyes glisten. “Your dad would be so sad to know that he made you this afraid of love.”
Her voice breaks at the end, and she glances down at her hands while I let the shock of this revelation fully soak in. And then I reach for her hand, squeezing it gently. My eyes dart to his urn in the living room. My heart sinks to the floor. Because I bet she’s right. He would be devastated that I used him as an excuse to push someone so wonderful away from me.
I steady my voice. “Mom, don’t cry. Please. It’s more . . . complicated than that.”
Even behind glistening eyes, her stare doesn’t lose its punch. “Is it? You love him, and he loves you. It doesn’t get simpler than that.” For a moment she stops, lips pursed, shaking her head. “You think if you don’t let people get close—no friends, no relationships—you don’t have to face losing them someday,” she says. “That’s no way to live.”
Another truth bomb that takes a silent minute for me to process.
“You should call him,” she finally says.
“I can’t. You watched the video of our argument. You heard the things he said to me and the things I said to him. They were awful. I don’t know if we can come back from that.”
“People in love hurt each other, unfortunately. But you learn to forgive. Your dad and I learned that long ago.”
“Mom, you and Dad bickered over what takeout place to order from or where to vacation. Not this sort of thing.”
“You think we never argued about anything serious?”
“Not in front of me. You were pretty much the perfect couple.”
An amused chuckle falls from her lips. “We weren’t even close to perfect.”
“You sure made it seem that way. Everyone agreed. All my friends thought you were the cutest married couple they ever met because you always seemed so in love.”
“Oh, we were in love.” She takes a long sip of water from my glass. “But you’re wrong to think we never had any real problems.”
Tapping her fingers on the tabletop, she gazes into the kitchen. “Your dad broke up with me right before we got engaged.”
My mouth falls open. “I never knew that.”
“I laugh thinking about it now. It was so ridiculous. So typical. We were young, barely twenty-one. Looking back, it made complete sense, and I don’t blame him at all. But at the time, I was so hurt.” She wags her finger at me. “In fact, if you had come to me at twenty-one and told me you were getting married, I would have told you not to, to take a break, anything to get you to wait longer. Getting married too young is the kiss of death for so many couples.” She folds her hands on the table and her gaze turns serious. “I wanted to get engaged, but your dad got cold feet. Said he wasn’t ready, that he wanted to see other people. So we broke up. And he did exactly that.”
I hold my breath, unsure if I want to picture my dad in his younger years sowing his wild oats.
I shake my head, refusing the visual. “Wow. What a jerk. That sounds so unlike him.”
“Exactly what I thought at the time.” She twists around in the direction of Dad’s urn. “You had a bit of a jerk streak when you were younger, Harold. Thank goodness you were handsome enough to make me forgive you.” She turns back to me. “I cried myself to sleep for weeks, I was so heartbroken. But then a month later he showed up at my doorstep unannounced. I was shocked. He looked terrible, like he hadn’t been eating or sleeping. He said he made the biggest mistake of his life by letting me go. He wanted me back right then and there.”
“Are you serious?” I grip the edge of the table with both hands, eager to hear more.
“Dead serious. But I wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easy.”
My fingers dig into the engineered wood. I
t’s like I’m listening to a page-turner on audiobook. “What did you do?”
Chuckling, she shrugs. “I told him no way I wanted him back. And then I went on a bunch of dates with a few other young men.”
“But . . . you said you were heartbroken over Dad. You said you wanted him back.”
“I did, but I wanted him to know I had options too.” She waves a hand in the air. “I wanted him to see that I wasn’t that easy to win back—that he would have to work for it. He got the message loud and clear after that. And a few weeks later, he asked me to dinner at this lovely little bistro in downtown Portland. And then he proposed.”
“Wow,” I say, breathless. My seemingly perfect parents had a borderline dysfunctional lead-up to their marriage.
She reaches across the table, patting me softly on the cheek. “See? Your dad and I weren’t perfect at all. The way we got engaged was a mess. But we both admitted our mistakes and worked hard to do better. And we did. If we messed up, we apologized. We forgave each other too many times to count. And we never gave up on each other.”
She stands up from the chair and walks over to me.
“And you shouldn’t give up on Callum. You two have been through a lot. It takes time, but you can fix it.”
My head spins with this eye-opening revelation. Contrary to my lifelong belief, my parents weren’t always a shining example of a lovey-dovey, zero-conflict relationship.
Placing her hand on my shoulder, she gives a gentle squeeze. “What I told you wasn’t meant to shock you. It was meant to give you hope.”
Her words are a flicker of light in a pitch-black room. The mess I’ve made is salvageable. Maybe. Hopefully.
She leans down to hug me. “Just think about reaching out to him, okay?”
“I will.”
