by Katie McCoy
Marilyn stood in front of me, her blonde hair neatly pinned back, her lips pressed tightly together. “Jake, I’m sure you know that I was very reluctant to promote you, and with the review from yesterday, I am wondering if my instincts weren’t correct. But Patricia promised us that despite your age and inexperience, you would be able to take on her responsibilities.”
Of course I knew that, I literally heard it every time something went wrong.
“I understand,” I responded, wanting nothing more than to go home and pass out for several days. Unfortunately, I had to come back tomorrow and the next day and the next day and continue to cook Patricia’s recipes—which were great, but they weren’t mine.
Then I remembered what Dakota and I had talked about last night before my argument with Ella had eclipsed everything else.
“Marilyn.” I stopped her just as she was about to leave. I hadn’t planned on making this pitch before I had a menu to suggest, but I couldn’t just let Matt Metcalf’s review stand. “I know you are very proud to continue Patricia’s style of cooking, but have you considered that people might want something different now that there’s a different chef in the kitchen? I mean, that’s what the problem was in the review, right? Repeating something that’s already been done.”
“What are you suggesting?” Marilyn crossed her arms.
“Let me try my own menu,” I suggested. A look of doubt crossed her face. “One week,” I quickly amended. “We’ll do a brand new menu for a week—something different and fresh, but still living up to the Grassfed name. Allow me to make a statement as head chef—one that’s my own, rather than imitating my predecessor.”
“One week?” I could see the wheels turning in her head.
“We’ll find some fun name for it, something that takes the negative review and makes it seem like we’re not bothered by it. Like, A Meal at the Court of Public Opinion.”
Marilyn smiled. “I like that,” she said, and I gave myself a mental high five. “Okay,” she agreed after a moment of thought. “One week. We’ll do some stuff on social media—nothing too big, more word of mouth, like it’s almost a secret VIP event. But I want to see your menu suggestions first. End of week.”
“You got it,” I told her, my brain recharging, adrenaline pumping. There was no way I was getting any sleep tonight. Finally I was going to get my chance to show this city what I could do.
31
Jake
As it turned out, putting together a menu comprised of completely original recipes was a lot harder than I had imagined. I had to go back, way back, to some of my old culinary school recipes just to have a place to start from. And it didn’t help that every time I started experimenting with them in my kitchen, I inevitably thought about Ella and the brownie batter. How it had tasted on her skin, and the thin material of her bra against my tongue, and the feel of her mouth around my cock. Then, of course, there was the occasional sound of Ella’s piano floating up through my floorboards, reminding me of our time on the piano bench. Her body pressed against mine, her hips rolling as I stroked her clit, her moan as she came in my arms. Fuck. Everything in my apartment was giving me a melancholy hard on. It made for a very horny, very frustrating test kitchen set up.
Eventually I gave up and went over to Dakota’s smaller, but less distracting kitchen. I just needed to be away from my apartment and all those memories. It also reminded me that I still had no idea how to win Ella back. She had been practicing non-stop all week, the same piece of music. But instead of irritating me, like it had that first morning, I found myself listening and longing for her. Occasionally, I even lost myself in the music, captivated by her playing and hearing a little bit of her in each note. Somehow she had turned me into a classical music fan. Or just her fan.
I was thinking about her and the music when Dakota snapped her fingers in front of my face.
“Dude.” She pointed at the stove where my sauce was boiling over. “Get it together,” she ordered.
I rushed over, but the sauce was ruined. Not like I had high hopes for it anyways. Everything I made seemed to be wrong and I couldn’t figure out what I was missing. Not to mention, I couldn’t help thinking there was something important I was forgetting. Not with my cooking, though, but with life. Some sort of event I had forgotten, like a birthday.
“Fuck.” I threw the saucepan into the sink, frustrated with my cooking and frustrated with myself. Bad enough that I couldn’t concentrate because I was thinking about Ella, I had to go and convince Grassfed’s owner to give me that chance I had been waiting for ever since I became head chef. Perfect timing.
“You’re a mess,” Dakota stated the obvious.
“Yeah, thanks.” I glared at her. “Your support is always appreciated.”
She shrugged. “I am being supportive. You think I just let anyone come over and destroy my kitchen? My ass is on the line too, you know.”
I hung my head. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“You’ve just lost your mojo.” Dakota clapped me on the back. “So you just have to find it again.”
“Just like that,” I responded wryly.
“Just like that.” Dakota smiled at me encouragingly. “Look, you’re too much in your head.” She flipped through my pages of potential recipes. “You need to get back to the basics.”
“You’re right.” I began cleaning the saucepan. “Hey, is today your birthday?” I asked Dakota even though I was 99% sure it wasn’t.
She gave me a strange look. “Uh, no,” she informed me. “You forgot when my birthday was?”
“No, it’s just—” I couldn’t shake that feeling that I was forgetting something important. “I just feel like today means something, but I can’t figure out what.”
“Well.” Dakota scrunched up her face, thinking. “It’s not your mom’s birthday, or the anniversary.”
“No,” I would never forget that.
“Not your dad’s birthday, or a grandmother’s?”
“Nope.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Maybe it’s not a birthday I’m thinking of.”
“I’m sure it will come to you.” Dakota had returned her attention to the recipes. “Okay, what about this?” She waved one of them at me.
I grabbed at it and shook my head. “Nope, that’s one of Patricia’s old recipes.”
“Really?”
“Yep,” I crumbled it up. “One of her failed ones that I thought I could improve on. I couldn’t.”
I leaned forward and put my forehead on the counter. “Work brain, work,” I ordered.
“There, there.” Dakota gave me a not-very-reassuring pat on the head.
“Every idea I have has already been done before,” I mumbled into the tiles.
“Yeah, but so what? You don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” Dakota was still flipping through the recipes. “Just make it taste good.”
My mom would have known what to do. When I was really young, I had been the world’s pickiest eater, my tastes changing daily. I didn’t know what I wanted, just what I didn’t want, and somehow she had always found something to make for me. Something that I always loved. That’s what made her a good chef—she could just look at someone and know exactly what they needed. Or if she couldn’t figure it out, she knew how to ask the right questions to figure it out. God, I missed her.
Sometimes I wondered what it would have been like for me and my dad if my mom was still around. She had been the glue, I suppose, the thing that kept us together, and once she was gone, we just didn’t know what to do with each other. I wanted to hold on to her memory, to keep her alive in some way. He just wanted to forget, to move on. Even years later, when I started cooking like she had, he didn’t want any part of it. After a while, I just stopped trying. Those occasional phone calls between us were the only thing that connected us now. Even though we lived in the same city, I felt like there was an entire world between us. A world I hadn’t even been able to conquer with food.
But still, even if my father didn’
t believe it, I knew that food had a special ability to help people. I mean, it had helped Ella, hadn’t it? Okay, sure, my first real attempt to feed her hadn’t really resulted in the reaction I had been looking for, but it had opened the door, at least.
“Let me see those,” I requested, taking the recipes from Dakota. Surely there had to be something in here. Something that would make someone like Ella, someone like my dad, happy. At least for the length of a meal.
Then I found it: stuck to the back of one of my older recipes was something written out in my mom’s handwriting. Her chicken noodle soup. So simple, so basic. And yet, when I was a kid, there was nothing I loved more. It was amazing how something like chicken noodle soup could bring you comfort when you were—
Fuck.
The importance of today suddenly dawn on me. I grabbed my coat.
“Dakota, I gotta go,” I told her, pocketing my mom’s recipe.
“What?” She pointed at the mess I had made in her kitchen. “Seriously? You’re leaving this here?”
“I’ll come back and clean it up,” I promised. “But I just figured out my menu. And how to win Ella back.”
Dakota’s eyes lit up. “In that case, what are you waiting for?” She gave me a hug and practically shoved me out the door. “Go get her!”
32
Ella
I was going to throw up. Or pass out. Or throw up and then pass out. Either way, I really, really didn’t want to be here right now. The room seemed to wobble and I swayed on my feet.
“Whoa, there.” Nina grabbed my arm. “Are you okay?”
I had asked her to come with me to the last round of the competition because I didn’t want to face it alone. Or rather, I didn’t want to face it alone with Mark. My instructor—soon to be former instructor, no matter what happened today—was standing off to the side, ignoring me and looking at his phone. Not that I had expected a pep talk. Even when we were on better terms, even when we had been dating, he hadn’t been one for the encouraging words. “Do what I taught you” was about as far as he went in that department.
But that wouldn’t cut it today. This was the last round—the final chance to show the judges that I deserved to win this competition. Unlike the rest of the performances, this time I wasn’t alone. I was playing Rachmaninov’s third piano concerto with an entire symphony behind me. And a full audience.
I wanted to win. I wanted to win so badly, but any confidence I had found over the last few weeks was gone. It had left me just as I had allowed Jake to leave.
“You look terrible, El.” Nina guided me to a chair. “Put your head between your knees.”
I did as she said, even though I knew it wouldn’t do much. I was careful not to snag my nails on the millions of tiny, sparkling beads sewn into my concert dress. It was black, of course, but it was the most beautiful black dress I had ever worn. It molded to my body like a second skin, scooping low in the back, exposing my shoulder blades. My hair was pinned up in an intricate bun, a silver comb tucked into the back, complete with its own crystals. My black heels were higher than my usual ones, elongating my legs, and I had worn my sheerest stockings, the ones with a dark seam up the back. The entire outfit glittered gorgeously under the lights, and even if I didn’t feel like a performer, I sure as hell looked like one.
“You’re going to be fine.” Nina knelt beside me, gently rubbing between my shoulder blades. “You’re going to be great,” she amended.
But I didn’t want to be fine. I didn’t even want to be great. I wanted to win. But this competition had taken a toll on me, and even if I won, I was starting to realize that performing wasn’t really where my heart was. I was starting to think I was better off focusing on something that I liked to do. Like teaching. Teaching kids like Jeremiah. It was the only time I was at my piano with someone else watching when I didn’t feel like I was going to die. Okay, there was that time with Jake, too, I thought, remembering the feel of his hands in my hair, the way he combed through it with his fingers. Even now, it gave me chills up and down my spine.
But then the reminder of what I had done, how I had ruined that particular arrangement, banished any good memories and replaced them with a whole new level of panic and disappointment. I was such a moron for suggesting that we break up. I didn’t want to break up with Jake. I wanted to be with him. I wanted him in my life. On a more permanent basis. I . . . I loved him.
Oh god.
Tears sprang to my eyes as I realized exactly what I had lost. And I had been so busy practicing for this competition that I probably missed my chance to apologize, to win him back. No doubt a guy like that had plenty of women lined up, waiting to take their chance in his bed. The thought of Jake with another woman made me feel even sicker. I never thought of myself as the jealous type, but there it was, the ugly suffocating feeling of jealousy. Jealousy for something that had only happened in my mind. What would I do if I ran into him on the stairs with a new girl at his side? My stomach heaved at the thought of seeing him in the building and knowing I couldn’t be with him.
I would have to move. That was the only option. I couldn’t stay there knowing he was only a floor away, in the bed we had shared, with someone else. Yep. I would have to move.
Maybe I would get a studio somewhere else—one that was a little bigger, where I could still have students, but also a place for them to wait if they needed. And maybe get a real bed. But what good was a real bed if I didn’t have someone to share it with. One someone in particular.
“El.” Nina shook my shoulder and I looked up at her. “You’re up next,” she told me.
I dropped my head back between my knees. For a brief moment I had forgotten about competition—I was completely caught up in missing Jake. But now the nervousness returned in full strength. I tried to concentrate on my breathing. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.
Nina tapped my on the shoulder again.
I raised my head slowly—it was too soon for the other competitor to have finished, right? I wasn’t ready to go on. I wasn’t ready at all.
But instead of pulling me to my feet and shoving me onstage, Nina handed me something. At first I didn’t realize what it was, the smooth wide cylinder in my hands. Then everything came into focus and I saw that she had given me a thermos.
“What’s this?” I asked.
Nina shrugged. “One of the tech guys brought it back. Said some guy told him to bring it to you. There’s a note.”
A piece of paper was tapped around the side of the thermos. My fingers shaking with nerves, I peeled it off and unfolded it.
Take a sniff. You’ll do great.
There was no signature, but it was Jake’s handwriting. Quickly I unscrewed the top of the thermos. The familiar, wonderful scent of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup wafted towards me. A sense of calm came over me. A sense of safety. And also, love.
He had remembered. Jake had remembered not just that today was the last day of the competition, but also how much this silly little thing calmed me down. And he had brought me canned soup even though he thought it wasn’t real food. My heart swelled.
Was Jake in the audience? I stood and walked towards the curtain. Peering out of the side, I could see the judges and behind them, an entire theatre full of people—including my parents—all dressed in their nicest clothes, all waiting to hear me play. And then, behind all of them, leaning in the doorway of the theatre, was a scruffy looking guy in a ratty T-shirt. Jake. He was here.
I heard the thunder of applause as the previous performer stepped off the stage.
The MC stepped to the center of the stage. “Our next performer is Ella Thomas, performing Rachmaninov’s Third.”
Applause rippled through the theatre, but I was frozen, still watching Jake, who had stood a bit straighter, his attention focused on the stage. I didn’t have to play for the judges, or for the audience, or even for my family. I could play for him. Just for him.
“El.” Nina nudged me. “They’re calling your name.”
&n
bsp; I carefully smoothed down the skirt of my shimmering gown, wiped my palms dry, and walked out on the stage.
33
Ella
The theatre was silent as I made my way to the piano. I knew Jake was out there, watching, and the knowledge of that kept my legs from shaking. As I took my seat, I heard the orchestra rustling, instruments raised, waiting for the conductor to begin.
The moment my fingers touched the keys, though, they disappeared. Everyone disappeared. It was just me and the music. And Jake. We were alone in my apartment, his fingers in my hair.
I knew the song, I knew the melody, but I had never played like this before. Everything I had, everything I felt, I poured into the music. Each note was perfect. Each note was a part of me. The part of me I was finally ready to share.
As I neared the end of the piece, the rest of the room, the orchestra, the audience, came back to me, my ears filling with the beautiful sound of the symphony—the horns and strings—an entire stage of people playing alongside me. Playing perfectly. Like it was meant to be.
When I finished, the last notes hovered in the air, in the silence, for only a moment before the audience burst out into applause. I felt a rush I had never felt before—my entire body humming with the excitement and pride of the moment. I had done it.
Standing, my dress glittering under the lights, I walked to the front of the stage and took a bow.
“That was AMAZING!” Nina cheered as I got off stage. “Holy cow, I had no idea you could play so well.” She swept me into her arms and spun me around. “How do you feel?”