waist. I’ll need to memorize the ever-changing menu. I’ll also need to have a training with the sommelier and pastry chef.
I admit to looking forward to these last two things very much.
David introduces me to the rest of the waitstaff—making sure to leave out the part where I’m his baby cousin—as well as the chefs and sous chefs and the bartender, who happens to be there doing inventory. My brain is swimming with all the names and information, so I’m grateful when David turns and tells me to be here tomorrow night for the staff meeting and training, starting at four. I’ll be shadowing a waiter named Peter, and when David winks like Peter is cute, my stomach twists because I want to be with my cute man, the one who won me over with his wit and laugh and—yes, his biceps and collarbones. But I’m pissed at him, and maybe he’s pissed at me, and for the life of me I have no idea how this is going to shake down.
David must see some reaction in my face because he kisses the top of my head and says, “I’ve got you, honey,” and I nearly break down in his arms because whether it’s luck or generations of effort and attention ensuring it, I have a truly amazing family.
It’s only noon by the time I’m back home, and it’s depressing to register that I should be halfway into my second workday at Hamilton, meeting new colleagues, setting up accounts. But I admit there is a tiny glimmer in the back of my thoughts—it isn’t relief, not exactly, but it’s not altogether different from relief, either. It’s that I’ve accepted that it happened—I messed up, I was fired because of it—and that I’m actually okay with it. That, thanks to my family, I have a job that can carry me as long as I need it to, and for the first time in my life I can take the time to figure out what I want to do.
As soon as I finished grad school, I did a short postdoc and then immediately entered the pharmaceutical industry, working as the liaison between the research scientists and medical doctors. I loved being able to translate the science to more clinical language, but I’ve never had a job that felt like joy, either. Talking to Ethan about what he did made me feel like Dilbert in comparison, and why should I spend my entire life doing something that doesn’t light me on fire like that?
This fresh reminder of Ethan makes me groan, and although I know he’s at work, I pull out my phone and send him a quick text.
I’ll be home tonight if you want to come over.
He replies within a few minutes.
I’ll be there around seven.
I know he isn’t the most emotionally effusive guy, but the tone of his last three texts sends me into a weird panic spiral, like it’s going to take more than a conversation to fix whatever is going on with us, even though I didn’t do anything wrong. I have no idea what his perspective is on any of this. Of course I hope that he believes me, and that he apologizes for last night, but a tight lead ball in my stomach warns me that it might not go that way.
Looking at my watch, I see that I have seven hours until Ethan gets here. I clean, I grocery shop, I nap, I memorize the Camelia menu, I stress-bake . . . and it only eats up five hours.
Time is inching along. This day is going to last a decade.
I can’t call Ami and ramble about any of this, because I’m sure she’s still not speaking to me. How long is she going to keep this up? Is it possible that she’ll believe Dane indefinitely, and I’ll have to eat my words even though—again—I haven’t done anything wrong here?
I put the menu down on my coffee table and sprawl on the carpet. The possibility that this rift between me and Ami could become permanent makes me light-headed. It would probably be a good idea for me to hang out with someone for distraction, but Diego, Natalia, and Jules are all at work, Mom will only worry if she knows what’s going on, and calling anyone else in my family will just result in fifteen people showing up on my doorstep with sympathy dinner later when Ethan and I are trying to hash things out.