Chapter Six

Brandy

“It’s on fire!”

“Shit, grab me the extinguisher.”

“Where is it? It’s not under the sink.”

“Um, try in the pantry!”

“Here it is!”

“Hand it over. I’ve done this before.”

“So have I!”

The explosion of white foam that came out of the extinguisher proceeded to not only cover the stove but also the counter, everything on it, and much of the wall behind it. I sighed. So much for the breakfast menu.

“Good job, Basil,” I said.

“Is that sarcasm?”

“No, actually, it isn’t,” I said. “I was lying when I said I’d done it before.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“So was I. I just really wanted to.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

We stared at the mess that the extinguisher had made, foam dripping down the wall like soap after a toddler’s bath, and listening to the crackle of the dying flames on the stove.

“What now?” Basil asked.

“Well, good news, we didn’t have any customers. So we shut the door, lock it, pull down the shades, and get to cleaning. We should be back open around eleven, I would guess.”

“I’ll get the rags,” she said. “Any idea what happened?”

“Nope,” I said. “Gas stove. Old but shouldn’t be acting like that. I’ll have to call a repairman for it. We should avoid using it until someone sees it.”

“Is there one in town?” Basil called from the closet where the extra aprons, rags, and other cleaning supplies were kept.

“I don’t think so. Probably in Odessa. We might get lucky, though. I’ll ask our neighbor if they know anybody.”

“The preacher?”

“Pastor Don, yeah,” I said. “He might know somebody. Grandma might even remember who she used, now that I think about it.”

“Mind if I put on some music?” Basil asked as she brought the cleaning stuff up to the counter, sat it down, then went around to lock the door.

“Sure,” I said. “At this point, I need something to distract me from the garbage bin that is my life.”

“Hey, don’t be so down. You have a date tonight, right?”

I shrugged. “I think it’s a date,” I said. “I’m not entirely sure. I mean, I’d like to date him. But he seems like he might be out of my league.”

“Please, you’re gorgeous,” Basil said, always the one to knock my self-esteem issues out of the water with a bombardment of compliments. “I’ve been telling you for years you need to get out there and date again.”

“Says the woman who hasn’t been on a date in how long?”

“I haven’t been on a date,” Basil said. “That doesn’t mean I haven’t seen any action.”

“Excuse me?” I laughed. “You live with us, remember? I know you haven’t had anyone over.”

“That’s because I don’t bring them there,” she said, working on the wall while I worked on cleaning the stove.

“Are you talking about when you go into town for the night? I thought you were just going to Crockett’s or something.”

“I went there once or twice,” Basil said. “Not exactly my scene. But there’s a place not far from Odessa. It’s for… well, not for normies. I like it.”

“Well then,” I said. “Learn something new every day.”

“Shh, don’t tell anyone. You know how people in this state get about anything queerer than a beehive hairstyle.”

“Isn’t that hairstyle the exclusive domain of drag queens now?”

“Not in Texas,” she huffed. “Though it does make the satire funnier.”

We cleaned as the music played and chatted. I learned a bit more about Basil’s love life, which she insinuated was boring and intermittent, but compared to mine was as exciting and whirlwind-like as any I had read about in those dog-eared romances Grandma had stuffed in the back of the bookcase behind copies of National Geographic .

As we fell into a comfortable silence, my mind wandered to the wedding and the way Collin held me as we danced. It was more than friendly but still gentle. It let me know how interested he was without being creepy or too forceful. I could still feel his fingers on my hips, smell his cologne, and hear his heartbeat, if I only shut my eyes tight enough and concentrated…

“This is the oldest stove in the history of mankind,” Basil said, interrupting me.

“Hmm?”

“This stove. It’s ancient. We need some serious upgrades in here if we expect to keep going for much longer. I know you don’t want to hear it, and it’s probably not the best time, but…”

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I’ve been avoiding it for a while, but you’re right. We need upgrades. I can’t risk stove explosions every day.”

“So what are our options?”

“Well, business loans are probably not going to work,” I said. “The last loan I got I still owe quite a bit of money on, and there’s nothing I can do to convince a bank that business is suddenly going to pick up. They were already super skeptical I’d get any business anyway here in Foley, and it’s starting to look like they were right.”

“What about personal loans?” Basil asked. “I could probably get a small loan, but it’d just be a Band-Aid for a month or two.”

“Same,” I said. “I’m not even sure I have the credit for a personal loan anymore either.”

“Well, shit.”

“There is one other option,” I said, sighing. The wall was pretty well cleaned off and I had moved to the counter now. Basil joined me, and we stood side by side, cleaning up the foam. “But it’s not my favorite.”

“Reverse mortgage?”

“No. Absolutely not. I’m not going to jeopardize my grandmother’s home,” I said. “That’s off the table. I’d die first.”

“All right,” she said. “Then what? We going to start an Only Fans?”

“Also, I’d rather die before that. Although this idea is a form of selling myself.”

“You don’t mean…”

I nodded. “I could call that production company back and talk turkey about doing a reality show.”

“Oh, Brandy, I thought you said you’d jump off a roof before you did another reality show.”

“Well, jumping off a roof doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t survive it,” I said. “Might make for a hell of a cliffhanger on the end of season one anyway.”

“Morbid, but I’m going to skip past it for now. You only told me someone contacted you about it and left a card. What exactly was the offer?”

“We didn’t get that far,” I said. “But it was being sold to me as something I could potentially keep the place in New York open on, so we’re talking really good money. But in order to get it, I’d have to let them have access to my life, the restaurant and everyone who worked there and the regular customers too. I couldn’t ask that of everybody there.”

“But you can ask me,” Basil said.

I wasn’t sure if there was bitterness in that comment, but if there was, she deserved to have it. She had stuck by me through all of this, given up her life in New York to come on this journey with me, and now was being soft-pitched giving up her privacy to maintain it. She could leave at any time and walk into a kitchen in New York and walk out with a job. She knew that. But she stuck with me because she was my friend. Because I’d helped her when no one else would and put her through rehab. Because I was her friend.

“I’m not saying it’s the direction we have to go,” I said. “But it would potentially be a solvent for our problems. We’d get paid and get six weeks to prep while they laid down the framework of the show and everything. Then we’d film for a year.”

“A year?”

“A year unless the business goes under or something dramatic happens.”

“That’s a long time, Brandy,” she said. “A year is a really long time.”

“But without the money, this place might not be open a year. It might not be open six months.”

Basil was quiet for a long time after that. We finished cleaning, then went into the back and started prepping an all new lunch menu. By the time we got back out to the floor, there were actually a few customers waiting at the door, and I opened it to greet them.

Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Who was I kidding? Six people coming in for lunch wasn’t going to fix the problem. I had just been avoiding the inevitable. At some point, I was either going to have to admit defeat—again—or debase myself almost as much as selling pictures of my boobs on the Internet would. Not that I had anything against other people doing that. I just could never.

It was times like this that the doubt crossed my mind. Had I made a giant mistake trying to do this? I was a baker. I made cakes and pastries and things like that on a super high level. Why did I think I could run a specialty sandwich shop in a nothing town like Foley? Just because my grandmother ran it and was super successful didn’t mean that would happen for me.

I should have taken the reality show money years ago and then just sent my grandmother what she needed to survive. Moving here was a massive waste of my and Basil’s lives. I was going to drive us both into the ground.

“Look,” Basil said, breaking the silence between us as the last of what counted as our lunch rush left. “I want you to know I am behind you, no matter what you choose. If you think a reality show is the way to go, I’m down. We’ll do it together. Like always. But after the show, I might want to see about heading to Austin. I kind of want to do something like this in a bigger city. I think the idea is super sound and it could work. And I think I might be able to get a business loan if it’s my own restaurant.”

“I understand,” I said. “I do, I get it. And thank you. If I do the show, I’ll understand you getting out of Dodge once we get the money and have a season in the can. And if I don’t, I’ll understand you bailing when this place crumbles into dust and I throw myself off a large roof.”

“But not die,” she said with a grin.

I shrugged.

“No,” she said. “Not die. I refuse to listen to that. I refuse to allow you to talk or think like that. This is going to work, whatever this is. You are going to make it work. And I’m going to be right here behind you making sandwiches.”

“Thanks, Basil.”

“Anytime. Now let’s see. You’re going to Crockett’s tonight? Do you have something you’re thinking about wearing?”

“Umm, no?” I said. “I hadn’t put a lot of thought into it yet. Thought I’d wing it. Like I said, I’m not a hundred percent sure it’s a date.”

“Listen to me, you beautiful baby bird,” Basil said, taking me by the shoulders. “If you dress like it’s a date, it will be a date. Got me? Do you have anything , and listen to me, I mean anything that shows off your tits?”

“No?”

“Then a button-up shirt it is. This is redneck country. You’re going to wear one of my shirts, unbutton it down to the center of your chest, and let those puppies breathe, all right? Do you have any jeans that are one size too small?”

“Of course,” I said. “They weren’t too small when I moved here, but I’ve been stress eating, and I…”

“Perfect. Wear those. Oil your skin with butter to get into them if you have to. Hopefully, they will come off in a hurry later and you won’t have to worry about putting them back on until tomorrow.”

“Basil!”

“What?” she said, shrugging. “Are you telling me you don’t want to get laid?”

My mind went back to his strong hands and how they’d held me so delicately to his chest.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Exactly. Now, let’s talk about that hair…”