Page 85 of Neap & Spring

“Did you like New York?”

It’s the safest version of what I actually want to ask. The question underneath the question. It’s a door left open. She can walk through it or she can close it, but either way I’ll know something.

I remember when she lived in New York. She told me all about it, back when she was still telling me things. We talked every day, sometimes twice a day, messages bouncing back and forth across the country. Her complaining about the cold and the subway and how crowded and expensive everything was. She would talk for hours about how the kitchen she worked in ran differently from Paris, and way differently from the one she’d just left in Boston. I remember thinking she sounded tired in a way she never had before, but I told myself it was just the adjustment. Just Vivi being Vivi, burning through something new on her way to the next thing.

And then nothing. A week of silence that became two. Then three. Then permanent.

She’s silent for a long time. I peek from the corner of my eye at her just to make sure she’s still there.

“Parts of it,” she says finally. “The city itself. The energy. There’s nothing like it.” She takes a small breath, and I can hear the tightness in it. “The winters are brutal though. I was only there for about six months.”

Six months.

The timeline hits me like a physical blow and steals the air from my lungs.

I knew it already. I’d done the math a hundred times, lying awake at night trying to figure out what I’d missed and what I’d done wrong. But hearing her say it out loud makes it concrete.

Whatever happened to her happened there. In that city. While I was texting her about nothing — fish deliveries and my dad’s knee surgery and whether she’d tried that ramen place she’d mentioned — she was living through something I didn’t know about.

Something she was going through alone.

Something she didn’t feel comfortable telling me about.

My jaw tightens.

I want to push and demand and understand what happened to make her walk away from something she was so clearly born to do. I want to know what was so bad that she couldn’t call me. Why, whatever it was, she decided to go through it alone instead of letting me help her.

Why I wasn’t enough for her to trust.

But I don’t ask. I force my voice to stay steady. “You know you’re welcome here. In Westerly Point. For however long you want to stay.”

She turns to look at me, and her eyes are wide. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I hold her gaze, trying to show her I mean it. “I mean, the restaurant obviously needs you. The business plan and the marketing stuff. But also —” I pause, searching for the right words. Words that won’t reveal too much and won’t scare her away. “I like having you around.”

“Even though I color-code things and argue with you about menu changes and completely took over your office?”

“Especially because of that.” I love her sticky notes everywhere. I love finding her laptop open on my desk. I love the evidence that she’s been there, that she’s real, and that she hasn’t disappeared again.

She’s smiling now, and it reaches her eyes. “I like being around. Even though you’re bossy and yell at people about plating symmetry.”

“I don’t yell.”

“You absolutely yell.”

“I’m projecting. Coaching, even. There’s a difference.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

We’re both grinning now, falling back into that easy rhythm we used to have. That rhythm I’ve been missing for five years without fully realizing how much. Right now, sitting on this beach with the sun setting and the waves crashing, we’re just two people who understand each other in a way that’s hard to explain. Two people who just fit. And always have.

The sun is lower now, touching the horizon. We should probably head back. Roman’s going to have questions. So is the entire staff. They’re going to want to know where I went and why I left during prep. Roman is going to grill me on what I was doing all afternoon.

But I don’t want to move. I don’t want this moment to end.

I definitely don’t want to go back to the restaurant where we have to be professional. And we can’t sit this close. Where I can’t let myself think the things I’m thinking or feel the things I’m feeling.

“Cal?” Vivienne breaks the silence with a whisper.