Chapter Twenty-Nine

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Kieran

B anquet 's thirty-fifth floor offices near the World Trade Center Memorial had a pretty fantastic view. Downtown Manhattan's office towers shone in the October sunshine, and the trees across the water in New Jersey were turning rich shades of orange, yellow, and red.

A short Afro and horn-rimmed glasses floated high above me in the window. "Stunning, right?" Lamar Wilkinson said over my shoulder. "Nothing like New York in the fall. Sure you don't want to move here, Chef? San Fran's parochial as fuck, you know that."

I turned to the Banquet host and shook his hand, plastering on the Happy Pirate Leprechaun grin. "Sure, but I like living where I can't get frostbite."

"A real California boy. Maybe they should have called you the Happy Surfer Leprechaun. Though you'd have needed to lose the bandanna."

I laughed with him. I was more than ready to put it in the trash, but Tobias had insisted. He was hanging out at the back of the room, working on something on his phone.

Banquet- branded blue apron on, mic clipped to the top, some instructions from the director, and then we were live on YouTube.

Lamar clapped his hands and grinned. "‘What's up, everyone. I'm here with Kieran O'Neill, who's the sous chef at Qui in San Francisco, but you know him better as the Happy Pirate Leprechaun from Fire on High . He's got a new book, Whatever You Want, coming out in March, and he's here today to give us a sneak preview of one of the recipes. Good to have you, Chef."

"Good to be here," I said, smiling big.

"Word on the street is that you're going to be moving on from Qui pretty soon to bigger and better things."

My smile went down to its real size. "Not bigger, actually," I said, keeping a secret in my voice. "I'm actually going to try a whole new challenge."

Curiosity lit in his eyes. "Tell us about it?"

I shook my head. "I can't yet, I'm afraid. But it's not going to be what people expect from me, that's for sure."

The perfect site for my restaurant had suddenly come up: an old diner on Grand Avenue in Oakland, with original redwood paneling and forest-green booths. The awesome farmers' market by Lake Merritt was a short walk away, a super-chill wine shop called OakVine was a few doors down, and next door to them was a family-owned Ethiopian restaurant that'd been serving the community for years.

I hadn't told Ellie that I planned to set up shop close by. I'd save that for after I'd apologized in a big way.

"That sounds dope," Lamar said. "So, what are you demonstrating today?"

I blasted the full force of Happy Pirate Leprechaun at the camera. "It's a beautiful citrus salad with duck confit. I know we think of salad as something we should eat, but I wanted to create one that felt like a treat, with a great balance of brightness and richness. Blood oranges are my favorite citrus, so I've put them together with radicchio and homemade duck confit, and dressed it all with a sherry-and-blood-orange vinaigrette."

"That sounds really fancy," Lamar said for the invisible audience.

I imagined Ellie next to me, calm and focused, and took a deep breath. "It's not hard at all. I'll show you."

I walked through the same steps I'd shown her. The salt and the oil and the herbs, massaging the seasoning into the legs.

"You're basically taking the duck to the spa," Lamar said as I put the legs in the oil for their long, slow poach.

"Pretty much! Here's what it looks like once you're done." I traded the pan for one that had been cooked earlier, the duck legs now shiny and golden. "And now, we supreme some oranges."

Lamar said, "Those colors are beautiful. Now, I know you did a duck and blood orange hollandaise dish at your Qui pop-up, but what inspired you to turn it into a salad?"

His question sent me back in time, all the way to a farmers' market in late February, and the first time Ellie had dropped her cool, polite mask in front of me. Her round, freckled face soft with pleasure when I'd fed her the slice of fresh blood orange, the gentle awe in her voice as she'd compared fruit to a sunset. How I'd wanted to be by her side when she discovered other simple joys, other sweet things.

"It's not really my recipe," I said, loving how telling the truth about me and Ellie tasted on my tongue, sweet and refreshing at the same time.

Lamar let off a confused laugh. "Hold up. Do you mean you copied it?"

I resisted the urge to throw my arms up like I was on a rollercoaster. "No, no. I mean, the original idea is mine, but my cowriter took my random thoughts and turned them into a whole recipe. She'd lived in France and thought the duck would work in a recipe like a salade lyonnaise."

"Oh, you had a ghostwriter for the book." Lamar turned to the camera. "A lot of chefs do, folks. We're trained as cooks, not writers. Kieran's not unusual at all."

"Not ghostwriter, cowriter," I corrected firmly. "And her name is Ellie Wasserman. Whatever You Want wouldn't exist without her."

"Ellie Wasserman? You mean the woman who yelled at you in that old video?" What the fuck, his eyes said, totally confused.

"Yes, that's Ellie. She believed we could make the book happen, and she helped me every step of the way."

Lamar's mouth was wide open. Tobias slashed his throat with his hand again and again.

But I still needed to say the most important part. I kept my voice strong and sure as I said, "Her name should be on the cover with mine. But I messed up, and she didn't get the credit she deserved, because I got angry about something else. And I'm so, so sorry about that."

A small smile appeared on Lamar's face. "Is she more than just your cowriter?"

Her letter hadn't asked me for anything, so I'd do the same. "Ellie's hugely talented and should be a lot more famous. She's the one who wrote the Herat cookbook, and the La Estufa book, and she's worked on a lot of other things that you probably have on your shelves without getting much credit."

"Hear that, Ellie Wasserman?" Lamar said to the camera. "Maybe we should get you on the show. You sound pretty special."

With those words, pride bubbled in my chest like the best champagne.

"Cut!" the director called.

"What the hell, man?" Lamar said to me. But he was laughing as he said it.

My grin could have powered the whole city. "Sorry not sorry I took over your whole show."

He slapped my shoulder. "I was getting so bored with these videos. You turning it into a full-on rom-com apology made my day. Does your girl watch these?"

I took a deep breath. "Not really. But I think someone important will tell her to."

"Man, you're bolder than I thought."

I took off the Banquet apron. I knew what was coming. The second I started walking toward the kitchen door, Tobias grabbed my arm and yanked me into a quiet corner.

"That was a mistake," he hissed.

"No, it wasn't."

Tobias pulled on his black curls. "You want to stop being the Happy Pirate Leprechaun, and you just handed half the credit to the fucking ghostwriter! What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Doing that was about the rest of my life, not just the money," I said calmly.

"What else is there besides the money?" he yelled. "Trust me, someday you're not going to be famous anymore, and you'll spend the so-called rest of your life in some sad house somewhere boring, and Ellie Wasserman will be eating a pack of Oreos a day and nagging you to mow the lawn." He shook his head. "You should have kept her invisible."

I breathed away the wash of red his words painted. "OK. That makes it easy."

"What's easy?"

"You're fired." Wow, the endorphin rush from saying that was amazing .

Tobias's mouth fell open in disbelief. "Excuse me?"

I grinned. "You heard me. We're done." And now I needed to call the love of my life.

Ellie

"Yes, I know, you're dying without me, it's all so awful and wrong," I crooned.

Floyd yowled again as I walked up to the cottage. He still wasn't used to me being out all day. Despite his outrage, I'd been leaving the house more and more. Instead of tucking myself in at my desk, I'd pack up my stuff and find different places to work around Berkeley. Instead of doing yoga on my own, I went to an evening class near campus, making small talk with other people winding down from their days with slow stretches and hard poses. I'd even gone for coffee with one of them, a freelance web designer, and she'd made me weep with laughter as she told me stories about her two sons.

I'd started another notebook, loving the feeling of sketching new ideas across wide-open pages. I didn't have a title for this book yet, but I had an idea: using recipes to travel. Evoking all the places I'd been, and everywhere I wanted to go. Nicole and I would start work in March, visiting my old haunts in Lyon, then working our way south through Provence, into Spain, and all the way around the northern coast until we'd finish in Lisbon.

It would be even more fun to go with Kieran . But I didn't have the right to get in touch with him. He deserved to be happy, and I'd tried to ensure it with the letter to Mrs. Hutton. If his happiness meant letting our lives split apart after the nine months we'd worked and laughed and made love, I had to accept that, and go looking for joy on my own.

But I still followed him on Instagram, like a complete masochist. The publicity department at Alchemy must have told him to post more often in the lead-up to publication, and he was putting up a new story and post every day. He'd toured the farmers' markets and grocery stores in San Francisco and Oakland, talking about ingredients he was excited about and techniques he liked to use to bring out their best flavors and textures.

His haircut had grown out enough that he had to sweep it out of his eyes, and his stubble had become a short beard. Maybe it was a trick of the light that his cheekbones had gone from sharp to gaunt, and maybe the dark patches under his eyes were just shadows. But the part of me that couldn't remember how everything went so wrong wanted to feed him soup and hold his hand. Give him the chance to turn off and just be.

After I'd spent thirty minutes last night looking at his pictures of Manhattan, I'd shoved my phone in my nightstand when I'd left the house today. I told myself I wanted to work without distractions. But I'd bounced from my favorite café to the library and back, hopped up on way too much caffeine, spending less time writing ideas down and more thinking about him wandering around New York.

If I kept doing this, insomnia was going to bite me again. Not because of Diane's visits, though. Over the last few weeks, we'd started seeing each other in daylight, with Ben mediating. Diane hadn't really gotten to know me without Max between us, and now she listened when I told her about my hopes, about my dreams of a cookbook with my name on it, one that shared everything I knew and loved about good food and good company.

Even better? Ben was cooking Shabbos dinner every week. He'd said that he was perfectly capable of roasting a chicken, and he'd borrowed some of my Barefoot Contessa books for sides inspiration. I couldn't leave him in better hands than Ina Garten's.

"Hi, bud." I greeted Floyd as he capered in front of the opening door. "Anything exciting happen while I was out?"

I bent down to scratch his arched back, but his purr sounded weird. Like he was breathing too fast.

Wait, no. My nightstand drawer was buzzing. It was arrhythmic, but constant. An emergency announcement?

But when I unlocked my phone, alerts flooded my screen, texts and emails and Instagram likes galore. Just as I tapped the screen, Nicole's name appeared.

"Why are you calling instead of texting?" I asked.

"Jesus H. Christ, where have you been ?"

"Wow, inside voice, please. I was out, like you've encouraged me to be for years. Should I be a hermit instead?" I asked sarcastically.

"You went out without your phone, you weirdo?"

"It's a thing I do now. I turned off Wi-Fi on my laptop, too."

"Today of all the freaking days. Check the Banquet YouTube," she ordered.

"What's gone viral now?" Even I'd seen the video where someone made Skittles from scratch.

"Seriously, do it. And fast forward to fifteen minutes in."

I hung up and opened the page on my laptop and Kieran's grinning face was front and center. Of course, that's why he was in New York. He'd be inundated with fans now.

Wait a second. "Kieran O'Neill Makes the Best Salad and Reveals His Secret Weapon"?

I followed Nicole's instructions and pressed PLAY , and there he was. The host, Lamar Wilkinson, towered over him, and Kieran was looking up, all earnestness.

"Ellie's hugely talented," Kieran said, "and should be a lot more famous. She's the one who wrote the Herat cookbook, and the La Estufa book, and she's worked on a lot of other things that you probably have on your shelves without getting much credit."

"Hear that, Ellie Wasserman?" Lamar said. "Maybe we should get you on the show. You sound pretty special."

A squeak escaped me. I clapped my hand over my mouth, then called Nicole back. "Jesus H. Christ."

"I know, right? Hashtag QueenEllie is trending on Twitter. You're the woman of the fucking hour."

That would explain the buzzing. I had ten thousand new Instagram followers, and the visitor count on my website had skyrocketed. Most of my new messages were requests for gossip, wanting me to confirm or deny that Kieran and I were together. But some of them were from chefs and editors, wanting to know if I was free for work. An hour later, I was still sorting through the communication explosion when a text appeared. A brand-new voice note from Kieran.

I knew he'd just handed me the credit for the book, so it couldn't be bad news. Could it?

"Hi, Ellie." A blast of Daft Punk. "Jesus. I'm staying at this ridiculous hotel called the Beacon in Williamsburg and their lobby's like a club. One sec." Shuffling, then relative quiet. "So, yeah, it's Kieran. Of course you know it's me, unless you deleted my number. Or blocked it. I wouldn't blame you if you had."

His anxiety practically radiated from the phone.

"I'm so sorry. I was an asshole, and way too impatient with you, and too stupid to realize that if I hurt you, I'd hurt myself a thousand times worse. Because my heart was yours from the second you told me you had faith in me." He scoffed at himself. "Nice one, Kieran, you should have started with that. But I don't want to take anything from you. I just want you to be happy, and help make your dreams come true, the way you make mine. Because you're magical, and so fucking gifted, and I'm going to love you for the rest of my life." He exhaled. "Thank you for the amazing letter. I don't know if you can forgive me for leaving you. If you think you could, but you need time, you should take it. I think you're worth waiting for." A pause. "I'd wait for you forever, love."

I listened to him again, and again, and again.

I could wait for him to come home. Talk everything out, then have a real first date, dinner and a movie, like normal people did.

But it wasn't his turn to take a chance.

After a few clicks and a sizable hit to my bank account, I was out of my chair, out the door, across the backyard.

"All right, all right, don't break it," Ben called when I pounded on the back door. "Did you want to watch Holiday with us after all?"

I took a deep breath. "I'm going out of town for a few days, and I need you to look after Floyd."

He leaned against the doorframe. "Of course. When are you leaving?"

"Um, in thirty minutes."

His eyes went into full-on suspicious-parent mode. "And where exactly are you going in thirty minutes' time?"

"New York."

"Is this to find Kieran?"

I couldn't keep my mouth from curling up. "How'd you know?"

He rolled his eyes. "I, too, can set up a Google Alert."

"Yeah, it's for him." Millions of butterflies darted around my stomach at the thought of the literally incredible thing I was about to do.

"That's my girl," Ben said as he slapped my shoulder, with the biggest grin on his face I'd ever seen. "Need a ride?"