by Katie McCoy
“Mom.” I remembered how horrified Mark had been when she did the same to him, only the crystal she gave him was to help him “relax.” “Jake doesn’t need any of your crystals.”
“Actually.” Jake examined the red stone. “This is really pretty. And who doesn’t need a little extra focus?”
My mom beamed.
“Who doesn’t need more focus?” my dad interrupted. “Well, Ella doesn’t. All she does is focus. On classical music.”
Great, I thought. Another lecture.
“You need to loosen up, Ella,” my dad told me. “Get up from the piano and your goddamn sheet music once in a while.”
Immediately the room became tense. I opened my mouth to tell my dad that if he paid attention he’d notice that I was up from my piano at that very moment and if I wanted to follow sheet music, then I was going to follow sheet music, but before I could say anything, Jake took my hand.
“Ella is an incredibly talented musician.” His grip was firm and comforting. “And she got that way because she is so dedicated. If my staff had half the focus that she did, I would have the best restaurant in the city. I’m just learning about classical music, but Ella is a fantastic teacher—and she loves the music. That’s obvious in every note she plays. There’s no way she won’t win this competition.”
Everyone was silent and I felt a lump form in my throat. No one else had ever stood up for me like that. I felt a swell of emotion towards Jake, something far more powerful than just infatuation. Something that felt suspiciously like love.
I waited for my dad to argue, to tell Jake that the only real music was the kind you created yourself, but instead he just grinned.
“I like this one,” he said and clapped Jake on the back. “Come on. Let’s eat!”
The rest of the meal went off without a hitch. My parents, despite being slightly high, behaved themselves for the most part. There was the occasional inappropriate joke, but Jake didn’t seem to notice or care. I had expected to spend the evening crawling deeper and deeper into my wine glass but I found that I was enjoying myself.
After dinner, as Jake helped my dad and Nina clear the table, my mom pulled me aside.
“You look really good, Ella,” she told me, placing her hand on my cheek. “Really happy.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I couldn’t help smiling. “I am happy.”
“I’m so glad to see you in something other than those drab dark clothes you always wore.” She smoothed her hands over my arms. “It even looks like you’ve gained some weight.”
I had noticed that I was filling out my clothes a little more than usual.
“I think so,” I confessed. “Jake likes to feed me.”
“You hold on to him,” my mother ordered. “A man that makes you happy and fat is one you want to keep.”
Luckily I had no intention of letting him get away any time soon.
My dad and Jake were talking as they joined us in the hallway.
“He was a real jerk,” my dad was saying.
“Who are you talking about?” my mom asked.
“Mark.”
“Oh.” My mom nodded. “A complete jerk.”
“I didn’t know that you and Mark had dated,” Jake told me, his face inscrutable. Was he jealous?
“Just for a little while,” I said quickly. “It wasn’t serious.”
“Your dad said you were living with him.”
Uh-oh.
“Is he still your teacher?” my dad asked. “I know you and I don’t agree on the kind of music you play, but surely there’s got to be another teacher out there that doesn’t put you on stupid diets and act like he’s got a big stick up his—”
“Frank,” my mom warned.
“You’re right, Dad. Mark is a jerk,” I told them, and saw Jake’s face relax. “And after the competition is over, I won’t be working with him anymore. I’m going to find a new teacher.”
“Good.” My dad leaned in and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “You deserve better.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“You know I’m proud of you, right?”
I felt a lump form in my throat. I knew my dad was proud of me, but it was the first time he had said it out loud. And I knew I owed part of that confession to Jake. For standing up to my dad, to my family. For forcing them to see that they weren’t as supportive as they might have thought they were.
“And Jake.” My dad shook his hand. “It was great meeting you.”
“You too.” Jake then gave my mom a hug. “Thank you for having me.”
“You’re welcome here anytime,” my mom told him, both of my parents suddenly normal again. Had this whole thing been a test for Jake, I wondered as we left. Well, if so, I thought as I looked back at my parents waving at us from the doorway, it looked like he passed with flying colors.
Jake slung his arm around my waist, his hand resting against my hip.
“Your parents are nice,” he said. “Weird, but nice.”
“You have no idea,” I told him. If anyone deserved a reward for putting up with their oddness, then Jake certainly did. I grinned to myself as he pulled me closer, his body warm against my side. And I had a whole bunch of ideas for exactly what that reward should be.
26
Jake
I told myself it didn’t matter that Ella’s current teacher was her former live-in boyfriend. After all, she was with me now. And she had spent all last night showing me exactly how appreciative she was that I was in her life. A thank you I couldn’t wait to repeat as soon as I got off of work tonight. I couldn’t remember the last time I was so eager to get home after the restaurant closed. There was something really nice knowing that Ella would be waiting for me when I got home. Especially when she was waiting in some of that lingerie she so loved.
I grinned as I headed into the kitchen, the image of her in garters and lace burned into my memory. I reminded myself to make a trip to some fancy lingerie place when I had the time. Nothing better than buying skimpy nothings you plan to rip to shreds. After all, they had to be that flimsy for a reason, right?
Usually the kitchen would be bustling at this point, everyone prepping for the night ahead. But today, the entire crew was huddled in a corner, whispering to each other. I stopped dead in my tracks as a wall of nervous eyes met mine and quickly looked away. Except for Dakota’s. Her expression was sullen, but she held eye contact.
“What’s going on?” I asked and everyone scattered to their station, still avoiding my gaze.
Dakota came over to me and I saw that she had a newspaper in her hand.
“Let’s go to your office,” she said.
I followed her, my heart dropping into my stomach. The newspaper and a terrified kitchen crew? This could only mean one thing: a bad review. And by the looks of it, it was really, really bad.
“Who was it?” I demanded as soon as my office door closed behind me.
Dakota handed over the newspaper. “Matt Metcalf.”
I scanned the column, finding phrases like “wouldn’t feed to my dog,” “unoriginal, unimaginative, and just plain lazy,” and the final sentence: “Patricia Roberts would be ashamed of what her beloved Grassfed has become under the hands of an inexperienced, copycat chef with no vision of his own.”
My blood boiled as I smashed the paper into a ball and lobbed it at the other end of the room.
“Fuck!”
“Matt Metcalf is a dick.” Dakota’s voice was calm, which somehow made me even more furious.
“He’s the number one food critic in San Francisco,” I reminded her, wanting to throw something else. “This could end my career, Dakota.”
“He’s a contrarian, everyone knows that.” Dakota’s chill was really infuriating me. “He called Patricia lazy and unoriginal at the place she was at before she started Grassfed, remember?”
“Everyone in the industry might know that,” I informed her, balling my hands into fists. “But the thousands of people that read the paper looking for a place to go to dinner don’
t know that Matt Metcalf is a fucking douchebag that hates anything new.”
“Look.” Dakota came to stand in front of me, her arms crossed. “This sucks. It really does. But you have a staff that is waiting to see how you react to this. You need to show them that it doesn’t matter.”
“But it does matter,” I insisted, even though my rage was beginning to subside.
“It only matters if you let it,” Dakota argued. “If you act like this is nothing, that this is just another day, then everyone in that kitchen will do the same.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” I admitted.
“Yes you can.” Dakota patted me on the shoulder. “Just get through the day and I promise, you and I will go out and get shitfaced as soon as the night is over.”
And Dakota lived up to that promise. By my fourth tequila shot, I was feeling a lot less stressed. I could also feel my legs a whole lot less. And my lips. Were my ears buzzing too?
“There’s got to be a silver lining to this.” Dakota was half slumped across the bar, her hand still wrapped around the tequila bottle.
I reached out and took it from her, refilling my shot glass, intending to sip it this time. But the moment I brought it to my lips, I completely forgot my plan and downed the whole thing in one swallow. It burned but it burned good.
“Not everything has a silver lining,” I informed her. “Sometimes it just has a shit lining.”
Dakota let out a sputtering laugh and then put her head down on the bar.
“Shit lining,” she mumbled into the wood.
But maybe she was right. My drunk brain started grasping at something. If the restaurant got a bad review, if I got a bad review, maybe there was some good there? But how was that possible? I tried to remember what Matt fuckhead Metcalf had said about my cooking. Unoriginal. Well, yeah. Because it wasn’t original. It was Patricia’s recipes. I was just copying them. Just doing them without her. Because that’s what the diners wanted. What the owner wanted. But the owner hadn’t been too happy with the reviews either. So what if we did something about it.
“Dakota.” I reached over the bar and shook her. “Dakota.”
“Huh?” She rolled her head to the side and looked at me.
“I found the silver lining,” I told her, though my tongue felt really thick in my mouth. Was the bar spinning?
“Shit lining,” Dakota muttered and put her head back down.
“Listen to me.” I got up and came around to her side. “Metcalf didn’t like that we were just doing Patricia’s recipes, that we weren’t doing something new. So maybe now I can finally do my own menu. Show everyone that I can do more than just repeat what the last head chef did.” Suddenly my angry drunk had become an inspired drunk. I waved down the bartender.
“Can I have some napkins and a pen?” I asked. “And another bottle of tequila?”
A few hours later, after pouring Dakota in a cab, my pockets full of napkins covered in my scribbled ideas for new menus, I stumbled home, stumbled up the stairs, and stumbled into my bed. The apartment seemed different for some reason. Like something was missing. But I could barely get my shoes off, let alone try to figure out what wasn’t there. Did I even know where my phone was? Oh yeah, in my pocket. I pulled it out and peered at the black screen. Nothing happened, even when I pushed the buttons. Oh. Maybe it was dead? Had I forgotten to charge it that afternoon? Was that what I was forgetting?
But my brain was already curled up under the covers, so I pulled back my blankets and crawled in—shoes and all. Whatever I had forgotten could probably wait until the morning.
27
Ella
Jake had promised to call. I fell asleep around four a.m., but I didn’t sleep deeply. Part of me was still listening for the phone to ring or for his footsteps in the hallway. I had sent him half a dozen texts when I hadn’t heard from him after the restaurant closed. When I woke up the next morning and saw that there were no messages from him on my phone, I became annoyed. When I called and it went straight to voicemail, I started to get worried.
I tried looking out my window up into his apartment but I couldn’t see anything, just his ceiling through his open curtains. For a moment I thought about going up and knocking on his door, but it was still early and Mark was due any moment now.
Even though the last thing I wanted right now was to practice with Mark, I knew that I couldn’t reschedule. He had been hounding me nonstop since the previous round of the competition, and I got the sense that he actually thought I had a chance of winning. Nice of him to finally gain confidence in me.
Of course, if I won, that would look good for him, so his interest in my success was completely tied to his own. One last rehearsal with him couldn’t hurt, but I had refused to go to his rehearsal space, insisting he come here, knowing he would hate that.
The front door buzzed. If anything, Mark was punctual. I sighed, smoothed my hair back, and buzzed him into the building.
“You’re not focusing.” Mark ran his hand through his hair again. He seemed to be pulling out quite a few strands today. He was right—I was distracted by Jake’s silence.
I kept glancing at my phone but there had been no calls, no texts.
“I’m sorry.” Mark leaned over the piano and snatched my phone from the surface. “Am I interrupting you?”
I tried to grab it back, but he was already scrolling through my text messages. His eyes widened, probably at some of the more racy messages Jake had sent me. They were tame compared to what he said when we were together, but far more intense than anything Mark had said to me during the entire span of our relationship.
“Those are private.” I was horrified that Mark was reading something so personal. Something that he had no business seeing.
“Well, now I see why your playing has suffered,” Mark said snidely as I snatched my phone back. “You’re lucky the judges are so lenient this year.”
“You are such a jerk,” I muttered, shoving my phone into my pocket.
“Excuse me?” Mark looked shocked. “See, this is exactly why we broke up. You are clearly too immature to deal with the pressures of being a professional musician.”
“No.” I stood, pushing back from the piano, not even minding that the bench toppled over behind me. The crash it made barely registered as I strode towards Mark. “We didn’t break up because I’m immature, but because you’re not a very nice person and you definitely weren’t a nice boyfriend. And don’t forget—I broke up with YOU.” I shoved my finger into his chest.
It felt incredible to say all that out loud. Mark looked as if I had slapped him across the face, but then his face twisted into an ugly sneer as he swatted my hand away.
“Oh, and this Jake guy is a better choice?” He let out a harsh laugh, stepping back. “Wake up, Ella, this guy is just using you for sex. He has no interest in your personality or your talent.” Mark put a nasty emphasis on that last word. “He just wants to sleep with you. And when he’s tired of that, he’ll leave.”
“Get out,” I shouted at him, my face growing red. “Get out of my apartment.”
“Fine,” Mark fumbled with his coat, stepping away from my rage. “But you know I’m right. Sit around and wait for him to call, but he won’t. Look at your phone, Ella, he’s already lost interest.”
“Fuck you, Mark,” I managed, though my throat felt like it was closing up.
“Grow up, Ella,” Mark said, and barely had time to duck as I threw my music at him. The folder burst against the door, sheets of paper scattering across the floor. He stared at them with shock. “You’re insane.”
“Get out,” I ordered, the room spinning. I felt faint and that familiar prickly feeling rose on the back of my neck. I barely noticed the door closing as Mark made a hasty exit.
I sunk to the floor, my skin ice cold, my heart thundering out of control.
I told myself Mark was wrong. It was okay that Jake hadn’t called. He said he would, but we weren’t in a relationship. We hadn’t talk
ed about what we were, if anything, to each other. No promises had been made. Maybe this was what he did. My hands began to shake as the panic attack took over. Was this what he did? Was all this just casual fun for him?
Oh god. I felt sick, my stomach heaving. I was starting to develop feelings for him. Real, serious feelings. Love-like feelings. What if he wasn’t even looking for a relationship? What if he thought we were just doing some sort of friends-with-benefits thing? And when he said he would call and didn’t, that was just his way of ending things?
The panic overwhelmed me and the only thing I could do was curl into a ball on the floor and pray that it would pass.
28
Jake
I felt like shit. Death to tequila, I thought as sunlight slapped me in the face. What was I thinking, drowning my frustration in liquor? I wasn’t a kid anymore. I didn’t have the fortitude for this kind of bullshit temper tantrum.
Through the thin apartment walls, I heard someone yelling and then the thud of something being thrown. What was going on? I reached across the bed, searching for Ella, but found nothing but sheets. I then realized I was still fully dressed, including my shoes.
What the fuck?
I pulled back the blankets, and found that my clothes were wrinkled and smelled like bar smoke and tequila, both of which made my stomach roll. Somehow, I kept from puking as I sat up.
What time was it? I groped around for my phone before finding it in my pocket. The screen was black. Dead. How long had it been dead for?
Ella.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
I had told her I would call last night. Obviously that hadn’t happened. Somewhere between the review from Matt fuckhead Metcalf and Dakota and I drinking ourselves into oblivion, I had totally forgotten about Ella. I had forgotten about everything, in fact. I couldn’t remember the last time I had gotten so drunk, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be drinking tequila any time soon.