“Six?” He pauses.
“I wouldnever.”
“Seven?!” he adds with surprised delight.
I let out a theatrical sigh. “Fine. Six glasses . . . and two old coffee mugs.”
“I knew it.Your roommate must be absolutely nasty.”
“She is!” I roll onto my stomach, feet swinging back and forth in the air behind me. “Yes, I’m messy. And chaotic. But James, she isdirty.Like leaving spaghetti sauce caked onto the countertop until it either rots and grows something fuzzy or I clean it. And don’t even get me started about all the used condoms in the trash can that she never takes out.”
“That’s criminal.” I hear him slide the barn doors closed and then his feet crunching over the gravel and dirt path. “Here’s what you do. Tomorrow, take the trash can and set it on her bed. Better yet,empty it out ontoher bed.”
“I can’t do that! I still have to live with her until—”
In my silence, James asks, “Until when?”
“I actually don’t know,” I say in barely a whisper as I remember the reason for this phone call.
“Madison?” James prompts when I don’t speak again for a while. “What’s going on?”
I swallow and, for once, don’t hide the truth. “I graduated today.” There’s a heavy silence on his end of the phone. I don’t wait for him to fill it. “I graduated, and I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t feel like making a big fuss.”
“Why? You like a big fuss.”
This makes me smile. “I do. But only when it’s for something I love, and . . . I don’t love anything about my life here. It’s not what I thought it would be—my career included.” My smile fades. “And today . . . today was an especially bad day.” I keep Chef Davis’s words from my shift this afternoon before graduation to myself:I have let you stay on here too long, and I can’t deal with your incompetence anymore. Get out of my kitchen. You’re fired.
“I wish . . . I wish I could come home and—I don’t know—move at a slower pace until I figure it all out. But everything here feels so urgent and overwhelming.” I have the honesty of an intoxicated person but the depression of a fully sober one.
“Why can’t you? Come home?” His voice is a soft, low rumble, and something about it has me all too aware that this is officially the longest one-on-one, genuine conversation I’ve ever had with James.
I open my eyes, and the white and yellow stained ceiling blots out the sparkling stars of my imagination. “Because there’re no entry-level kitchen jobs available in Rome. Or even near it.”
I’ve only been searching for entry level since I have no illusions that Chef Davis will recommend me for anything beyond scrubbing dishes, but I haven’t even found a single prep cook or porter job listed either.
And even if there was a position available, I don’t know if I’d want to take it. I used to love being in a kitchen, experimenting with recipes and forcing my family and friends to taste test everything. But after this year, I can hardly stand inside the threshold of one without having a negative physical reaction.
I should probably scurry back to Rome and live on Emily’s couch while she makes me hot chocolate and picks up the pieces of my life yet again. But I’m tired of that pattern. I want to go home—but not as The Failure.
“If I come back, I need to have a secure job to return for, or I’m not sure I’ll be able to face everyone.” I immediately regret voicing that thought. Who’s to say I can even trust James with it?
There’s such a long pause that I think maybe he hung up. “James?”
“Sorry. I’m here. I just got inside the house and . . . was thinking about something.”
“Oh, yeah! Sorry!” I say, embarrassed that I’ve been boring himenough to lose his attention. This is a new level of pathetic. “I’ve taken up too much of your—”
“No, I was thinking about something that might help.”
“Oh.”
I hear him take in a long breath. “What if I were to tell you I was opening a restaurant on the farm, and . . . I want you to be the chef?”
A laugh jumps out. “I would say you’ve lost your mind. Starting a restaurant is a huge endeavor and you definitely don’t want me at the helm of that ship.”
“So that’s your answer?”
I laugh again, still thinking this is some weird joke, but when he doesn’t join me, I swallow. “What do you mean?”
