um, Gus took my car. And I probably shouldn’t drive anyway. Can somebody take me home?”
Amanda’s eyes were on Andy, but Sabrina, who probably had her reasons, rushed forward. “Oh, of course,” she said, slipping her phone into the back pocket of her perfect white jeans. “Let’s go.”
Amanda was such a softball. Taking down Frannie’s—and her sister— was going to be almost too easy. If Mae had to, she’d ride out the stripping thing just fine, because that was exactly who she was—she did what she needed to do to get what she wanted.
She had ahold of herself now, too. She knew what she was doing. Mae picked up her own bag but waited a beat before following the other women, choosing her words carefully. Andy needed to be put in his place, too. Now.
“Amanda never could stay away from the guys in the kitchen,” she said to Andy’s back, and continued over her shoulder as she walked out the door. “Guess you’re joining the club.”
She left without giving him a chance to answer.
* * *
×
Mae slipped out of her motel room early the next morning with a welcome sense of being ready to shake things up. By the time Kenneth and Patrick opened for coffee, she was going to have earned it. After all, Mimi’s needed a fresh look, and that old sign of Amanda’s was worn, chipped, and dated. It wasn’t as if Amanda even cared about Mimi’s anymore. She probably didn’t even want them to use that chicken she had painted now that she was with Frannie’s, and if she did, well, she should have acted like it. Mae didn’t feel bad about painting over it. Not one bit.
It was still dark when she started, but Mae had set up her supplies for this last night. She could work by the porch light until the sun came up. Rolling the paint over the sign, pressing down hard, felt good. She was erasing yesterday. Today would be great.
Her worried mood of the night before had mostly passed, leaving her invigorated. She could do this. She could keep the attention of Food Wars where it belonged, on the food, and if not, she’d serve up Amanda and Andy on a silver platter. She herself would give up nothing, and really there was nothing to give. The dancing gig was a nonstarter, and Sabrina clearly knew it. There wasn’t a whisper of it anywhere on any social media channels. It wasn’t even worth saving up for later, not if she wasn’t going to react anyway.
Jay she would deal with when she got home. Their whispered conversation last night had been unsatisfying—her trying not to wake Madison and Ryder, him trying to—what? Convey his boredom? She had wanted to share her plans for defeating Frannie’s, but it was too hard to explain where she was and what was happening, especially when he wasn’t even bothering to pretend to be interested.
When she’d met Jay in business school, Merinac was so far behind her that it was second nature to let him assume as everyone else did that the “suburb of Kansas City” where she had grown up was basically the equivalent of Long Island. By the time it was clear he was sticking around, it was too hard to clear it up, and Mae only partially wanted to. She was just another student by then. Everybody had a (well-paying) summer internship. Everybody had student debt—not Jay, it turned out, but most people. It was fun, becoming someone who was accustomed to buying her clothes new and putting down her credit card for big group meals split sixteen ways (and trying not to mentally calculate who had had more to eat or drink because clearly that was not the way it was done). And Jay liked that version of Mae. Loved that she could roll with courtside seats at a 76ers game or the tasting menu at Vetri Cucina as easily as downing beers at a dive bar. Was excited by her ambition and delighted by the opportunity to show her all the new things fulfilling those ambitions meant she could do and buy and be.
She pressed a little harder with her paint roller. All she had been hoping for last night was to feel the tiniest connection with that old Jay. The one who would think the Yellow Rose of Texas was funny. She’d tried to turn the conversation to him, ask how work was going, but he had given her nothing.