I stared at the phone, my eyes welling with sudden tears. “Love you much,” I whispered, but there was no one on the other end to complete the familiar farewell. Daphne was already gone. Shivering a little with cold and sadness, I tucked the phone back in my pocket and trudged up the pebble beach toward Toast, stunned by this hidden cost of my dream come true.
13
I woke witha start and a searing headache and sat bolt upright in bed, gazing wildly around me. I was once more in my own familiar bedroom, wearing my old green Portland State sweatshirt. What time was it? What day was it? I checked my phone. Five a.m. on Wednesday, February 23. The day I had just finished in Brighton, England.
I flopped back on the bed with a groan, both relieved and a touch disappointed to be home once more. So ithadbeen a dream. Of course it had.There was no Toast. No too-thin Brighton version of me with unflattering caramel highlights and a subdued wardrobe. But if it was a dream, why did I have this wretched hangover?
After Toast had closed in the wee hours of the morning, the staff had all gone out to a nearby pub. Chandice had been there and Nicola and a few others, and then, just as I was about to call it a night, Colin showed up. I recognized him from the photos on my phone.
He leaned in to kiss me, and I pulled him onto the dance floor instead. We danced awkwardly, my shoes sticking to the ale-soaked floor as Abba blared from the speakers. Colin twined his arms around mewhen a slow song came on and pulled me close. He smelled like turned earth and grated ginger, lovely but entirely unfamiliar.
At eye level with his pillowy lips, seeing the way he smiled at me with genuine tenderness, I wondered if in this other life I really loved him. He was perfectly sweet, but I felt nothing for him. In fact, dancing with him made me miss Rory all the more. I pulled back, feeling guilty and uncomfortable. Colin was alone in his affections. I was the interloper, the cuckoo wrongly placed in this relationship. By the end of the night I’d managed to avoid kissing him, spilled tartar sauce down my blouse, and drunk too much beer. It all felt surreal, like another person in another life, which, in a way, it was.
I closed my eyes, exhausted. Downstairs I could hear Dad whistling, and the enticing scent of bacon was curling under the door. Why was Dad making bacon at five in the morning? I usually rose alone and was at the diner baking pies by the time the rest of the household got up. Speaking of which, I needed to get moving, hangover notwithstanding. There were pies to make.
“Girls, bacon’s on,” Dad called up the stairs, his voice smoker-husky and so familiar.
I licked my lips and grimaced. My mouth was fuzzy, breath sour with the taste of British ale. I sniffed my fingers, catching the faintest lingering reek of tartar sauce and shepherd’s pie, the unmistakable odor of an old British pub. I could swear it had been real. Real and elating and disappointing all at once. I swallowed hard, trying to orient myself once more to this life, this reality.
A sharp rap at the door and Daphne stuck her head in. I scrambled up and fumbled for my glasses sitting on my bedside table, finding my familiar aluminum cat-eye frames. Daphne came into focus as I slipped them on. She was wearing her yoga pants and an athletic top, her hair pulled up in a messy bun on the top of her head, yoga mat rolled up and slung over her shoulder by its strap.
“You awake?” she asked. “I’m subbing for a six a.m. class this morning, and Dad wanted to get up and make us breakfast before we leave. I told him not to bother—bacon and yoga aren’t a great mix first thing in the morning—but he was pretty set on it.”
“I’ll eat your bacon.” I hopped out of bed and hugged her so hard I squeezed the breath from her.
She squealed and pulled back. “Hey, what was that for?”
I couldn’t respond around the lump in my throat. I remembered her voice on the beach, the flat, unwelcoming tone that spoke of hurt and rejection. She’d been working as a nursing-home aide. She’d felt so cold. Her words had been so dismissive, this girl I’d sacrificed so much for. But that was the point, wasn’t it? In my English Toast life, I’d sacrificed entirely different things. So maybe that was the reality, that we sacrifice no matter what path we choose.
Daphne gave me an assessing look. “Are you okay? You look pale... well, paler than normal anyway.” She leaned forward and sniffed me. “And you smell gross. Like... old beer.”
“Weird.” I tried to give a nonchalant shrug. Inside I was melting with relief that she was standing here in my doorway, criticizing how I smelled, relaxed and secure in our sisterly bond. I didn’t know what exactly had happened in Brighton. Was it real? A dream? A little of each? I only knew it had changed nothing and everything at the same time.
Downstairs the smoke alarm went off, and Dad started swearing, using a colorful string of expletives he’d learned in the navy. Bertha started barking at the smoke alarm noise, adding to the commotion. I looped my arm through Daphne’s, and together we went down to breakfast, back to my normal life. I’d never felt such a bittersweet mixture of resignation and relief.
“What happened to me?” I demanded, facing Aunt Gert’s ample backside. She was wedged under a booth in the Eatery’s empty dining room, scrubbing gunk off the underside of the table, preparing for us to open. I’d just been taking the pies out of the oven when I saw her come through the kitchen with a bucket of water.
She crawled out from under the table and sat back on her heels, rag in hand. “I will never know how people manage to get mashed potatoes in the rivets of the screws.” She shook her head, then surveyed me. “So you did as I said and took a lemon drop.” It was not a question.
I looked around and leaned closer, even though we were alone in the diner. “I did.”
“And?” She dipped her rag into a bucket of soapy water, then dried her hands on the coat of the boxy, drab blue Mao suit she was sporting today. She’d told me once that she’d picked it up in Beijing on a visit sometime after the Cultural Revolution. It was one of the most unflattering garments I’d ever seen a person actually wear in real life.
“I woke up in Brighton, England, the owner of my very own local farm-to-table restaurant.”
“Sounds remarkable.”
I hesitated. “Yes. It was. The restaurant was at least.”
“And the other part?” She was watching me with those sharp blue eyes.
I sank down in a booth next to her and put my chin in my hands. “It was what I dreamed of for so long... but it was different than I imagined. Toast was fabulous, a dream come true, but there was another side to it.” I hesitated. “I had no life outside the restaurant, no friends or hobbies. And there were... other consequences, ones I wasn’t expecting.” I thought of Daphne and Dad and winced.
“That’s often the way,” she said thoughtfully. She wrung out her rag and scrubbed vigorously at the mint-green piping on the bench seat across from me. “When we make a choice, we necessarily limit all theother choices. Every path narrows our options, every decision closes many other doors. Yet we make a choice hoping we’re trading all the other options for the one that will be the best.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I agreed.
“If you could choose that version of your life, would you?” Aunt Gert asked it casually, but her hands stilled on the booth’s worn vinyl seat, waiting for my answer.
