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“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Alice needs me to deliver the lasagna down to Haven House,” he said.
“Times have not changed, have they?”
“Not at the Riverview. Not with Alice.” Make the food and deliver the food had been a way of life for him at the inn when he and Helen and Josie were organizing the lunch program at the elementary school. That felt like a lifetime ago.
“You want to come with me?” he asked.
From her half-shut laptop came a chorus of muffled chimes announcing messages and emails. The never-ending pressure of her job.
Say yes, he thought. But she was silent.
Clearly, the weight of that laptop was heavier than the temptation of what might happen between them.
“Of course,” he said, stepping back and waving his hand like he could erase the invitation. “You’re busy. I was already interrupting.”
“No,” she said, and practically jumped to her feet. She fully shut the laptop so it wasn’t binging at her, but picked up her phone and slipped it into her back pocket. So, not totally untethered. “I’d love to help.”
“Well, full disclosure, Alice said if we showed up down there Daphne and Jonah would put us to work wrapping presents.”
“Oh my god, remember that year we had to wrap all the presents for the Haven House families? We were there until four a.m.”
He took a deep breath and nodded. “I remember all the years, Josie. All of them.”
In the truck Josie sat as far from him as she could, practically leaning into the passenger-side door. “So? Tell me the truth about Netflix and your YouTube channel.”
He turned onto the road leading toward the highway down the mountain to Athens Organics and Haven House.
He liked that she watched his show. Maybe more than he should. For a guy with a million followers, he always—every single time he uploaded a video—wondered if one of those million was her. And he’d wanted it to be. Ached for it to be.
“The truth about the show,” he said, “is that I’ve had some luck. And every once in a while, I have a few good ideas. And then…some more luck.” He shrugged.
“Do you like it?”
“I like cooking and talking about food and learning about food. But the bullshit around a show…”
“Yeah, that’s not really your style.”
“Not even a little bit. But it’s kind of a machine at this point. It runs itself. I mean, I don’t mind the idea of branching out and trying new things. But what Netflix and YouTube want from me doesn’t feel like me.” Big fat flakes of snow started to twirl down from the gray sky overhead. The beginning of the storm they were supposed to get.
“What about your job?” he asked. “Whole lot more glamorous than making coffee on some mountainside.”
“Nothing about what I’m doing is glamorous. Or even interesting.” She sighed.
“Then quit.”
She laughed.
“I’m serious.”
“And do what?”
“Literally anything. You can do literally anything, Josie. Take Common Ground someplace else.”
She rolled her head across the window.
“You used to say that to me all the time,” he said. “The night of your graduation you said it, and it was like I heard you. And I believed that you believed it, but I just could never believe it myself. And if I hadn’t left this place…I might not have ever believed it.”
“You’re saying quit my job and belief will come?”
“Yep.”
“Said by the guy who doesn’t have to pay rent in Queens.”
He laughed. “True, but so is what I’m saying. Sometimes you have to let go of one thing to grab onto another.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yeah, it is. You just don’t want it to be.” She was silent and he glanced over to see if she was glaring at him, but she was looking out the window, chewing on her lip. A classic Josie tell that she was thinking deep thoughts.
“Hey,” he said. “Alice wants to do a Five Questions.”
“That’s a great idea,” she said. “I’m surprised you haven’t done it yet.”
“Well, I started one yesterday but she brought up my mom and I stopped. And she said today that we could try again and she’d pretend she didn’t know me.”
“That would be awful,” Josie said.
“For her?”
“No. Awful TV.”
“What should I do?” he asked.
“Oh, I think you know what you should do,” she said. “You should do a Five Questions with her all about your relationship. And how you came to be at the inn and what she taught you and what you learned from her. It should be a total reveal about your beginning in the kitchen.”
“No one wants to see that,” he said.
“Everyone wants to see that. And you should be peeling potatoes while you do it.”
“You make it sound easy,” he said.
“It is. You just don’t want it to be.” She smiled at him like it was nothing how coy she was being. So coy he wanted to pull this truck over and get his hands under her shirt, teach her a lesson about what happened to girls who smiled like that.
