“So, what are your plans after the funding goes through?” Cristian asks as he slides the tablet toward me and points at a few places where I need to sign and initial.
“I’ll probably go back to London once I find an executive chef to replace me.”
He leans back in his chair as I continue scrolling through the pages, initialing here and signing there. “You’re giving up?”
“I don’t think the American restaurant business is for me,” I say, glad I can keep my face pointed at the tablet so he can’t see the utter defeat I’m feeling inside. “I probably got in a bit over my head for a bloke who dropped out of uni. I reckon I need to go home, study up on American corporate law before I give it another go.”
“I wasn’t talking about the business.”
I look up from the tablet, and he nods toward a framed photo of Alice and her brother on his desk. “She’s flying to Paris tonight.”
“Properly buggered that up, huh?” I remark, hoping he doesn’t see the way the five simple words he spoke have torn my insides to shreds. “You’re probably glad this is the last time you’ll have to see my face.”
Cristian laughs. “You’re not like your brother. I could have killed him for what he did to my baby.”
“How about me? Just going to break a few of my bones?”
He shakes his head. “I have no desire to injure you. Well, not yet.”
I try not to think too deeply into what this means. “Uh…thanks?”
“I used to have a Jamaican customer who came to my restaurant almost every day,” he says, changing the subject. “She told me so many stories about her life as a young girl on the island. Beautiful woman who had a lot of great wisdom to share with me. But I’ll never forget the one thing she used to say the most: Those who don’t listen, must feel.”
I stare at him for a moment as I attempt to parse out why he’s sharing this with me. “What does it mean?”
He smiles as he folds his hands over his belly. “It means those who don’t listen to wisdom, or to their hearts, must feel the consequences of not listening. It means, those who don’t listen, must feel the pain of ignoring the truth.”
I let out a heavy sigh as I begin to understand where this conversation is headed.
Setting down the Apple Pencil, I push the tablet away and sit back in the chair. “Okay. I’m listening.”
Chapter 20
ALICE
As Minka approaches the exit for John F. Kennedy Airport, the going-away playlist she created for me on Spotify begins playing an upbeat version of “Les Champs Élysées.”
“Can you please turn that off?” I say, trying not to sound rude, but it’s difficult not to when my emotions have been all over the map today.
She taps her phone and the music cuts off. “I still can’t believe they would only raise your stipend if you started sooner. Like, don’t they know I have a wedding to plan? Who the hell do they think they are, stealing my maid of honor?”
“Maybe you guys can get married in Paris,” I offer with more hope than I’ve felt for weeks.
“Ooh! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that,” she says, changing lanes as we approach Terminal 1 for Air France. “But my momma would kill me if my aunties couldn’t come to my wedding. Girl, you know how she is.”
“I know,” I reply, unable to stop myself from pouting. “But a small wedding in Paris would be so romantic, wouldn’t it?”
Minka is quiet for a moment, making me wonder if I’m being too pushy. But when she opens her mouth, I realize she’s just puzzling out yet another way to ask me the same question.
“Are you sure you can’t work things out with Ethan?”
I sigh as she pulls her Prius behind a line of cars waiting to unload passengers at Terminal 1. “Even if I wanted to work things out, I’ll always wonder whether he loves me or his memory of her,” I reply, unable to speak her name anymore after the last three weeks of emotional trauma I’ve endured.
Minka shakes her head. “Again, I’ll remind you that the way you feel about her is probably exactly what Ethan worried about when he got involved with you. But he didn’t let it stop him, girl.”
I hug my purse against my belly as I watch the passengers ahead of us disembark their vehicles and hug their loved ones goodbye. “But what if he was using me? I can’t handle another breakup like that. And what happens if I don’t get on that plane, only to find out Ethan doesn’t even want me back? I may lose the internship. I can’t put myself through another job search in this post-war-with-Edward New York.”
I decided very soon after the blow-up at Forked that I’m no longer going to contact Food & Beverage magazine to set the record straight about what happened between Edward and me. Destroying Edward the way he destroyed me no longer holds the same appeal. Not only does my history with him seem insignificant now, I don’t have the energy to attempt to clean up the wreckage left in the wake of our breakup.
Minka pulls forward and we’re two cars away from the loading zone now. “There is one little thing you’re forgetting.”
“What’s that?”
“That I haven’t seen you that happy since you met that O’Connell chef dude at The Strand. Remember that?”
I smile as I recall what a spaz I was when I asked Chef Patrick O’Connell to autograph my copy of his latest cookbook.
“And don’t you feel even the tiniest bit guilty for not telling Ethan about the internship?” Minka adds.
And just like that, my walls are up again. “See? You had me with O’Connell, but you lost me with the guilt stuff. I’m not apologizing for demanding Ethan show
