by Amelia Betts
“I want sparkling!” Cecile chimed in.
Oh, right. Water.
“Sounds good to me,” I said. My eyes darted around the room as if I were a Navy SEAL on a reconnaissance mission. The dining room was full but not too loud, and our table was smack in the middle. It felt like our little threesome had been put on display for others to stare and comment—Look at this strange little group! What do you think the story is there? Meanwhile, the question of whether or not Liam was there was killing me. Before reading that article, I hadn’t assumed he was the chef in addition to being the owner. Instead of the back office that had appeared in my dream last night, Liam was probably in the kitchen, looking implausibly sexy in a white apron.
“This was my mom’s favorite restaurant,” Cecile announced, her eyes on me. “Have you ever been here?”
I shook my head in a knee-jerk reaction but refrained from speaking.
“You’re acting weird,” she observed.
“Cecile!” Julien shot his daughter a glaring look of disapproval across the table.
“No, it’s all right,” I said. “I was just having a déjà vu moment. Do you ever get those?”
“Doesn’t that only happen to people who do drugs?”
Oh great. Here we go, I thought. The honeymoon period was officially over between Cecile and me, ever since she’d insulted me the day before. As I’d suspected, she hadn’t wanted me at this dinner at all. So much for her being the little sister I’d always wanted.
“Cecile!” Julien reprimanded her again, then smiled at me apologetically. “She’s in a mood today, don’t you think?”
“It’s my birthday. I can act however I want.”
“Cheers to that!” I said, almost admiring her brazen, adolescent stubbornness, and raised my empty water glass just as the waiter appeared with our bottle of sparkling water. Taking my raised glass as a not-so-subtle hint, he poured mine first. Another waiter emerged behind him, carrying a long, rectangular white plate.
“Compliments of the chef,” he said, setting it down.
My eyes bulged as Julien inspected the artful presentation of the tuna tartare we had just been gifted.
“Dad? Did you tell them it’s my birthday?” Cecile sounded annoyed.
“No, honey. I promised I wouldn’t, and I didn’t.”
Staring at this artful plate of food, “compliments of the chef,” my head was off and running, interpreting the surprise as a direct message from Liam to me. I pictured us tucked away in some dark corner of the restaurant, stealing a moment together:
“How did you know I was here?”
“I would know if you were in the neighboring building, Mischa. You have a magnetic pull.”
“So do you.”
“See me again?”
A thoughtful pause. I glance past him, pensive. “The tuna tartare was really spectacular.”
“Please. I can’t function without you.”
The sound of the flash on Cecile’s iPhone snapped me out of it. She was taking a picture of our food as Julien stared at the plate, a wistful smile spread across his face. “They loved Renay here,” he said. “Sometimes they’ll send a little something out. It’s a nice gesture.”
Oh, yeah. Right. I should have guessed that the ghost of Renay Maxwell could trump my own, less innocent affiliation with the chef. I’m more forgettable alive than she is dead. Ouch.
But then, when the salad course was served, everyone got a little shot of gazpacho with crab, “compliments of the chef.” And with the dinner course, we were presented with an extra side, a scrumptious cauliflower risotto with bacon. When it came time to order dessert, Cecile warned her father not to surprise her with anything because she didn’t want to feel “like a fatso.” So he didn’t. Yet that didn’t stop our waiter from returning five minutes later with caramel dark chocolate gelato, served with toasted coconut whipped cream and an almond wafer—the very dish Liam had used to lure me here in the first place. It was the final deciding vote in my mind that yes, indeed, this was about me. But what was he trying to get across by sending all of this free food to our table? Thanks for the quick fuck? Or, Hey, I’m a mind-reading wizard who planted that sex dream in your head last night to see whether you’d be up for a threesome; here’s some tuna tartare and soup and stuff while you think it over…
“Would you mind asking the chef to stop by our table? I would love to thank him personally,” Julien told the waiter, after he’d delivered our desserts.
“Absolutely! I’ll send him right out,” he promised, at which point, it took everything in me not to face-palm. I looked up at the ceiling, having the sense that it was somehow lowering down on me and only me. Why hadn’t Liam sent out copious amounts of booze along with all the free food? I could really use a shot of tequila right about now.
“You’re acting weird again,” Cecile said, taking notice of my silent meltdown.
I shook my head. “Just more déjà vu.” There was an audible tinge of panic in my voice. I needed a plan to get away from the table pronto, and for as long as possible. The thought of facing Liam for the first time since our mind-blowing, yet ultimately empty sex, with Julien and Cecile as my audience, was unbearable. But where could I disappear? To the bathroom? Maybe forever? “I need to use the ladies’ room,” I said.
“Me too,” said Cecile when I stood up, and off we went together.
“Are you dying? Having to sit through this extremely boring dinner like you have nothing better to do?” she asked as she soaped her hands at one of the sinks. I was still in the handicapped bathroom stall, trying to manage the mounting anxiety that was shaking me like a mini-earthquake.
“Umm, not at all,” I answered in a purposely strained voice, pretending to be ill. “Sorry, I’m just feeling a little off.”
“It’s probably from all the rich food. I bet we both just gained five pounds,” Cecile said, her blatant, adolescent self-consciousness a good reminder that my inner voice too often sounded like hers: self-hating, judgmental, joyless. On an up note, her comment had placed us in the same boat, seemingly indicating that the pendulum had swung back in my favor, and she and I were comrades yet again.
“I’m sure we didn’t gain five pounds. Maybe one,” I conjectured, an honest estimate. “Listen, I’m gonna be here for a while. You should go ahead without me.”
“Are you gonna force yourself to puke?”
“No! That’s terrible!” My voice rose, more than a little frantic. “I don’t do that! Never do that!”
“Fine, fine, fine. Jeez,” she said.
I heard the door swing open dramatically and waited until it latched behind her, then exhaled forcefully as I entertained the questions that were running through my head. Had Liam already made it to the table? If so, what were he and Julien talking about? Would Liam mention me in my absence? There was really no telling, because I didn’t know him. It had just now come to my attention that he was a famous (enough) rock star; that alone probably pointed to a level of recklessness and narcissism I could barely comprehend.
What could he be saying, though? How would he explain his acquaintance with me, if he chose to do so at all? Did he have an angle, or was he just winging it? Considering the worst-case scenario—something along the lines of Liam rehashing our rendezvous in vivid detail—I panicked. Whatever it was, the mystery was almost too much to bear. I decided I had to see it for myself.
Careful not to break into an actual run, I burst out of the bathroom high on adrenaline and snaked around the crowded dining room as quickly as possible, one hand on the back of my little black dress to make sure the hem wasn’t riding up. Upon first glimpse, the scene at the table was weirder than I had expected: Liam was seated in my chair, leaning in as if he and Julien were the closest of confidants. I cleared my throat as I approached and caught my reflection in a mirror on the far wall. I looked utterly confused, horrified, and not as thin as I’d hoped.
I corrected my frazzled demeanor just slightly by putting on a fa
ke smile and greeted everyone with a wave of the hand that went entirely unnoticed. After a few painful seconds of me standing by my occupied chair, however, Liam glanced up and greeted me cheerfully, seeming very pleased with himself. “There you are, girl of the hour.”
“Mischa, you could have told us you knew the chef,” said Julien in a jovial tone.
I smiled, relieved to find that the conversation was an amicable one, or, at least, politely awkward.
“Mischa’s always been very private. Ever since she was a little girl,” Liam said, his eyes on me, conspiratorial.
“I didn’t…” I started to speak and realized I had no idea what to say. How the hell was I supposed to play along with some lie Liam had made up while I was in the bathroom? “I mean… I forgot—”
“It’s true, we haven’t seen each other in a very long time. And the family’s so big, second cousins, third cousins, half of us in Australia. It’s a wonder we even know each other. A testament to our mothers, I’d say, very tight-knit.”
My eyes felt like they were leaping out of my head. I squinted to correct the problem, then glanced at Liam pointedly, trying to communicate my disbelief without words: You told him we were related? His eyes spoke back to me: Yeah, what’s it to you? He was probably one of those compulsive liars who tells untruths just for the fun of it. But the blood relation part I found particularly insulting; for some reason, it signaled to me that Liam wanted nothing more to do with me sexually, because who has sex with even the most distant of relatives in 2015? I mean, yes, we were in small-town Florida, but we weren’t from small-town Florida.
“I knew you had family in the Philippines,” Julien chimed in, “but not Australia.”
“Yeah. It’s strange we both ended up here,” I said, too baffled to elaborate.
“The world is ever so small!” Liam rose from my seat and gracefully ushered me into it.
“Thank you again for the dinner. It was wonderful.” Julien jostled Cecile’s knee under the table.
She forced a polite nod. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, thanks, Liam,” I said, attempting to sound casually familial.
He bared his teeth in a wide grin and leaned in, placing his hand proprietarily on the table in front of me as he addressed Julien. “I’m happy to set you up. Anytime. Hope to see you again soon.”
I tried to breathe in the scent of him as he hovered in front of me but couldn’t get past the smells of various foods and burning candlewicks scattered about the dining room. As he moved away from us, his hand left the table and revealed a folded piece of paper he’d left by my napkin. A secret note—oh dear God! I wanted to grab it and open it right then and there but worried that Julien would notice. So I waited, aware of each second that ticked by as Julien paid for the bill, hiding the note in my palm for safekeeping.
Unfortunately, plan A, which was to read it quickly at the table after Julien and Cecile had gotten up to leave, was thwarted when Julien pulled back my chair and motioned for me to walk ahead. After that, the three of us walked outside to the parking lot together, which is when I implemented plan B, announcing that I had left my phone back at the table and running back inside. In the front lobby, I tucked myself into a corner and unfolded the note, which simply read: “Meet me out back in five.—L”
It was like the note from last night’s dream but this time it was real. It was even signed with his first initial the way I had dreamt it, as if my subconscious could predict the future. The whole thing reminded me of middle school, when boys would pass messages like this to the girls they liked. I never got one, but every once in a while a friend would show me hers, and we would pore over it after school, analyzing the wording, the handwriting, the way he’d signed his name. Of course, my folded-up paper from Liam was far from some innocent love note, but my heart skipped all the same as I reread it a second and third time, searching my brain for excuses to give to Julien. Liam’s asked me to stay and chat after he’s off work… My cousin needs some advice on family matters… I owe Liam some money but he’s agreed to let me work it off…
“Hey, did you find your phone?” The sound of Cecile’s voice startled me as she dipped her head into the lobby.
“Oh yeah.” I hid the note in my palm as I held up my clutch to indicate that the phone was inside.
“Let’s go, then! I’m gonna miss my hour!” She was referring to the hour of television she was allowed to watch at night, prior to eleven p.m. Cecile propped the door open behind her as a prompt for me to follow her outside, and I did so obediently, in spite of myself.
Watching Liam’s restaurant fade into the distance through the rear window of Julien’s car was a mild version of torture. I hated myself for letting a bossy teenager ruin a second-night stand with a former rock star turned chef. Why couldn’t I have stood my ground and used one of my bad excuses? He was probably in the back parking lot right now, standing under the one dim streetlight in his white chef’s coat that somehow looked sexy despite obscuring his perfect body, wondering what the hell was wrong with me to turn him down again.
* * *
The ride home was strangely silent. I wasn’t sure if there was a heaviness to it or if it was simply one of those comfortable silences that family members fall into after a big meal. Either way, the lack of conversation allowed me plenty of time to obsess over my missed connection.
In truth, I only had myself to blame for not staying behind, although it was easy to feel like something of a prisoner while riding in the backseat of Julien’s car. I found myself wondering (and not for the first time) why I was even there. Did Julien expect me to be a confidant, or a mother figure, to Cecile? Was I supposed to bring light back into his dark and depressed house of grief? Was I the comic relief? And had he really bought Liam’s story about being my cousin? Was it possible for someone to be so smart yet gullible at the same time?
When we got home, the quiet followed us inside as Cecile made a break for the living room, dying to watch her coveted hour of TV. I had a similar burning desire to be alone and had decided on an early bedtime after the promise of Liam’s note had officially expired. In the kitchen, I filled a glass with water as Julien sorted through a pile of mail.
“All right, good night,” I called from the back door, water glass clutched in both hands conscientiously. “Thanks again for dinner!”
“No problem, Mischa,” said Julien, seemingly absorbed by the task of opening his mail.
Back in the guesthouse, I paced around like a madman. Usually I opted for rolling around in bed as I stewed, but tonight I was fired up. I took Liam’s note from inside my clutch and read it again. Just the thought of the secret parking lot rendezvous he’d suggested made me sigh with disappointment. Unfortunately, he was probably cursing my name at this very moment, thinking I had stood him up. I needed to do something—at least tell him I would have stayed if I could—but I didn’t have his phone number. The only option would be to swallow my pride and call the restaurant, though it took all of a few seconds to realize I had such little pride left to salvage, a desperate phone call to Liam’s place of work wouldn’t make much of a difference. I looked up the number and dialed, my heart fluttering nervously as I took a deep breath.
The hostess answered too soon, after only half a ring. When I stuttered out my request for Liam, I got a predictably unwelcome response. “Liam is not available right now. May I take a message?” she asked, her voice clipped.
Desperate, I threw out a little fib. “Actually, this is his cousin, Mischa. I’m calling about a family emergency.”
“Oh no!” It turned out the stick-thin, doll-faced hostess whom I’d eyed suspiciously in the lobby was an easy mark. “Can I tell him which family member this is regarding?”
“Oh, he’ll know.” I sounded oddly confident. In truth, my hands were clammy and I was pacing the room even more frantically than before.
A flourish of classical piano hit my ears as she put me on hold, and my heart went from fluttering to pounding. Although
it felt like I was calling a guy I hardly knew to ask him out on a date, I tried to remember that he had passed me the note, not the other way around. Also, we had already had sex, lest I forgot. The cat was rather removed from the bag at this point.
“That was a nice black dress you were wearing,” Liam’s voice chimed in on the other end of the line in a low, sexy hush.
“How did you know it was me?” I said, taken aback and flattered at the same time.
“You said you were family. I haven’t got one of those. So, how’d you like the food?”
“Umm… it was amazing, actually.”
“I could eat that gazpacho all day—”
“Oh my God, that was my favorite!”
“I wish I could have seen you eat it. I don’t get many professional addicts in my restaurant.” He chuckled in a way that seemed overly familiar, as if I really was his cousin, or an old friend.
I searched my brain for what to say next, but talk of food had totally derailed me.
“All right, well, good talking to ya,” he said. “Hope that family emergency works itself out!”
“No, wait, Liam—” I raised my voice in a panic. “Can I see you later?”
Liam let out a long sigh. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. You were right to avoid me.”
“I wasn’t avoiding you! I was just… stuck with my boss and his daughter. I’m kind of like an indentured servant right now.”
“Yeah, well, I think it’s for the best anyway. I mean… it is for the best.”
A loud crash interrupted, followed by a muffled male voice shouting expletives. “Listen, I gotta go,” he said, distracted. “Goodbye, Mischa.”
And that was it: click, dial tone, end of call. He was over it. He hadn’t even said “good night”; he had said “goodbye,” as if one of us were dying or heading off to Mars. And all I could think was if only… If only he wasn’t over it. If only I had stuck around. If only we lived in a parallel universe where Liam wasn’t a sex addict and I never ate high fructose corn syrup. I spent the next couple of hours tossing and turning before drifting into a restless sleep plagued by more nightmares revolving around him. The one I remembered after waking up involved a reunion of our pretend family, at which Liam revealed that we had slept together to everyone’s disgust. He’d even gone into detail, telling mutual aunts and uncles about where we’d done it, what kind of bra I was wearing, the kinds of noises I made. Through it all, I stood like a pariah in the middle of the group, methodically eating the entire contents of a picnic table loaded with hot dogs, potato chips, and grocery store sheet cake. Naturally, I woke up ravenous.