Besides, she only had enough money to make it eight more days. According to the constant math she’d been performing in her head, her funds—and her closet sublet—would run out on Valentine’s Day. If she wanted to catch a break by then, she’d have to be at every audition, every class, every open call. No time for anything else.
“Brilliant marketing move,” Cori laughed. “Right?”
Reluctantly, Reese handed her back the phone. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, telling people they can’t have something, especially this Gen Z audience, is like ringing a dinner bell. The Cookie Jar website crashed an hour after the VIP Section posted this video. The Sweetest Fix might as well be the newest iPhone.”
Reese’s mouth hung open, her head swimming with the implications of what her friend was telling her. “Oh no,” she breathed, closing her eyes.
In the TikTok, Leo said submissions were closed, but Leo had told Reese they wouldn’t officially stop accepting orders for a few more days. Meaning, the Cookie Jar got so many submissions, their website crashed. Now Leo would have to fulfill them all.
And this whole thing had originated with her.
Two sharp claps signaled class resuming. With guilt germinating in her stomach, Reese stood up and fell into position, memorizing the quick burst of choreo being demonstrated at the front of the room. She executed the moves, improving her timing slightly with each pass, but her head wasn’t in it. No, her brain might as well be on the counter of the Cookie Jar—and that’s where it stayed on the way home, with Cori and a few other dancers chattering beside her on the sidewalk. The animated group invited her to brunch, but she declined, walking the rest of the distance to her building alone.
Her plan was to shower, change and search online for more open call listings, but when she walked into the apartment and smelled chocolate, a wave of sadness rolled through Reese, halting her halfway between the front door and the hallway.
Marie, her landlady, turned from the kitchen counter where she appeared to be whipping frosting in a standing mixer. She cast an assessing glance in Reese’s direction, drawing a chocolate-dipped finger in and out of her mouth slowly. “Broadway has chewed you up and spit you out already?”
Reese firmed her chin. “Not just yet.” She’d already learned to have thick skin where the blunt Miss LaRue was concerned. “What are you making?”
“Dark chocolate truffles.” For a moment, the landlady seemed hesitant to share more, but she finally patted a white sack on the counter. “This is cocoa powder used at my favorite bakery in Paris. My childhood friend Jean-Marc sends me some every month. There is nothing in this country that compares.”
“Wow.” Her throat hurt. “I know someone who would love that.”
“The boy you are moping about, I assume.”
“I’m not—”
The French woman’s snort cut her off. “You chose the dance over the boy. I did this, too, once upon a time.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Reese said quietly.
Marie hummed.
“Do you regret it? Choosing dance over everything?” Reese asked.
“Depends what time of day, what time of year, what time of month you are asking, oui?” A brief smile danced across her lips and she regarded Reese out of the corner of her eye for a beat, then flipped the standing mixer on a higher setting. “Jean-Marc sent me two bags of cocoa this month,” she said loudly to be heard over the whirring appliance. “If you have use for the rest of his bag, I suppose I can spare some.”
“Oh.” The unexpected kindness from the usually standoffish woman had her sputtering. “Thank you.”
Reese made it two steps to her bedroom, before she turned back around and collected the bag of French cocoa powder from the kitchen, making Marie chuckle quietly. Reese would drop the sack off tonight at the bakery for Leo. Just by way of apology for causing him so much extra work. Maybe she would include a tiny, little—friendly—note. This was a safe move because he wouldn’t be there and it would go a little ways toward easing her guilt. This whole viral TikTok thing was squarely on her head and she owed him a gesture, at the very least.
He wouldn’t be there.
She’d be in and out. No risk involved whatsoever.
Chapter 13
Every business owner in Manhattan dreamed of wall-to-wall customers.
Even Leo, on occasion.
But not today.
It was getting close to dinnertime and the place was jam-packed with young people offering them an obscene amount of money to be added to the non-existent VIP list and asking to take selfies with him, which he all too quickly declined. Apparently in the space of a few hours, he’d become known as #meanbaker on TalkTalk and he wanted no part of it.
After their website received two hundred orders in the space of fifteen minutes, Leo was able to convince Jackie to close the submission form, but that didn’t stop the traffic from crashing the site completely. Leo knew he was supposed to be thrilled about this. But he only wanted reality put back the way it had been this morning.