He glanced away, embarrassed to have noticed so much. Or, really, to think that he knew anything about her.
Her phone rang and she dug it out of her pants. “Yes. Yes. I need another second. No, I’m not on the moon. It’s just…gimme a sec.”
Josie raced through the kitchen, cables trailing, phone pressed to her ear.
When the door swung shut behind her, the kitchen was silent. Too silent. He could practically hear Alice’s brain turn.
“You should go talk to her,” Alice said. Slices of bacon began to sizzle in the pan and Alice poked at them with the long-tined fork she’d been using to fry bacon for as long as he’d known her.
“She seems pretty busy,” he said with a laugh, pretending to be relaxed. Pretending the idea of talking to her didn’t make him ache. Pretending he didn’t owe her…something. An explanation. An apology.
“Hmm,” Alice said.
“What does that mean?” he asked with a laugh. Alice’s hmms had a whole subversive language all their own.
“Used to be a time you guys wouldn’t shut up.”
“Well, I’m not sure we have much to talk about anymore.”
“Really?”
“Yeah…I mean…we went pretty different directions.”
Alice actually gaped at him.
“What?”
“I think you went in exactly the same direction, just in different ways.”
He shook his head and crossed over to the counter where he’d learned how to peel potatoes—lots of potatoes—and make a piecrust and season a pork roast. Where he’d made dumplings and friendships.
“I think she needs someone to talk to,” Alice said quietly. “I think…I think something is wrong with her.”
Don’t care. Don’t. This is a path you do not want to take.
But the word came out anyway. “Wrong?”
She shrugged. “It’s just…a hunch. You gonna help me with this dinner?”
“It’s why I’m here,” he said, grateful they weren’t talking about Josie anymore. Grateful to be put to work and kept busy.
And soon he was mincing garlic and browning sausage.
Aware, every second, that Josie was just through the doorway.
JOSIE
Crisis averted.
Josie blew out a breath.
So much energy, she thought. So much energy, and for what?
To keep a contestant struggling with an addiction problem on the show because she has a million Instagram followers? They’d agreed to pay for a sobriety coach and Josie had put her foot down that it would be a sobriety coach the production company chose. They’d fallen for that before. The previous year a contestant had brought a “sobriety coach” who was actually his dealer.
She felt a question—the question—the one she didn’t like, looming at the edge of her consciousness. What am I doing?
She started a new email to Dan and Joanne, her I Do/I Don’t bosses.
You know, she wrote, we could actually tackle issues of addiction if we changed the focus of the show to something along the lines of my pitch. I know that you’re discussing the merits of my idea and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. And I’m here to answer any other questions you have or work over some of the ideas. It’s a way to do something bigger. Something better. We should schedule a talk in the New Year.
She hit Send, buoyed again by the strength of her idea. The power of pulling them out of the gutter and putting the show—and herself—on a different path.
“Josie?” It was Alice bellowing on her way in from the kitchen. “I need you.”
“What do you need?” she asked, turning to look over the edge of the sofa to see Alice come in with Cameron behind her. His hair was long. She hadn’t realized it the previous night. It came down to his chin. He looked a little like Leonardo DiCaprio in the Titanic movie.
And thin gray sweatpants.
And a body with muscles that filled out the sleeves and shoulders of his shirt.
Good god, it just wasn’t fair what the years had done to Cameron. They’d taken a good-looking kid and turned him into a heart-stopping man.
“I need you to do something with him!” Alice said, pointing at Cameron.
And now…honestly, objectively, that wasn’t dirty. It was just Josie and her dirty mind and the gray sweatpants that made those words seem dirty.
But Cameron’s cheeks turned pink and he couldn’t meet her eyes, and that made it all worse. Better?
She wasn’t sure.
“His hair!” Alice said. “The boy’s dropping hair in my tomato sauce and I can’t have it.”
“If you have a ponytail holder,” he said to Josie, “we’ll let you get back to work.”
“I don’t. But Iris must be around here—”
“Cut it,” Alice said. “Cut his hair. Like you used to.”
“Oh…that’s a terrible idea,” Josie said.
“Well, it’s the only way he’s working in my kitchen. Gabe’s clippers are still in the back bathroom. This can be handled in five minutes.”
“By shaving his head?” Josie cried.
“It won’t be the first time,” Cameron said with a sigh. “Josie would you mind helping me?”
“Sure,” she said, and Alice nodded like it was all settled, and before Josie could even make sense of it all, she was in the bathroom with Cameron, about to shave his head.