“Tell me something awful about Evelyn.”
“Huh?” Andrew’s handsome face falters.
“Come on, you must have some dirt on her, working here. Like, tell me her hair is a wig or she’s got a hump beneath all that cashmere and crisp cotton. Tell me something so that next time I sit down across from her I can think about it.”
Andrew brushes one pointer finger over the other, liketsk, tsk, tsk. “That’s not very nice.”
“I’m not very nice, haven’t you heard?”
He rolls his brown eyes. “Joni Jewell is a hack. I mean, come on, what’s less original thanI’m gonna go after the bitch who stole my man?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds like a country song.”
Andrew starts crooning, “Woman done stole my man.” He exaggerates his slight Southern accent so much it makes me laugh.
“Come on,” I beg, “tell me something about Evelyn that proves she isn’t as perfect as she pretends to be.”
“I really shouldn’t.”
“You probably shouldn’t be talking to me in the middle of the night, either,” I point out.
Andrew raises an eyebrow. “Fine,” he says, as though I’m dragging the information out of him and he can’t resist me any longer. I grin. “She’s going through a divorce. Super messy. Her husband’s trying to take everything.”
“You’re not supposed to make me feel sorry for her!” I moan. “Is her ex trying to take her money? Her kids?” I shrug off the blanket Andrew spread over my shoulders.
“Nah, her son’s grown up so there’s no custody battle or anything like that,” Andrew assures me. “But they’re in business together, so it’s still complicated and awkward while they both try to treat patients without running into each other. Sometimes I think that’s why they came up with this individual cottage thing.” Andrew waves his hands to indicate the room around us. “Anyway, Evelyn wants to keep the profits to herself.”
“Wow, so she’s the bad guy?”
Andrew shrugs. “She’s not the good guy.”
I relax into a slouch. No one’s trying to take a kid from their mom. It’s just Evelyn henpecking her husband with rules and regulations, getting off on bossing him around like she does me.
“Have you always been a chef-slash-bodyguard?” I ask. Fans like when you’re as interested in their lives as they are in yours.
Andrew shakes his head, but I can see that he’s pleased to have a chance to talk about himself. “I used to be a waiter-slash-songwriter.”
“What happened?”
“Turns out waiter-slash-songwriter isn’t very lucrative when no one’s interested in what you have to say.”
“I used to be a waitress-slash-songwriter.”
It’s a lie, but it feels true. It’s what I’d intended to be when I left home. I thought I’d get some shitty job to finance a shitty life until I hit it big. But instead I met some guy and slept in his bed and ate his food until I met some other guy, and then another.
Even after I hit it big, I met another guy, and then another. By the time I met my husband, I had a bad reputation, though he never believed what they said about me.
“What makes a waiter-slash-songwriter qualified to be a chef-slash-bodyguard?”
“That’s a long story,” Andrew says. “And not a particularly interesting one.”
“You got somewhere to be?” I gesture at the empty room.
“Bed,” Andrew says. It almost sounds like an invitation, but then he places the guitar in my lap, his hands hovering above my hips for a beat before he stuffs them into the pockets of his drab gray uniform. “Finish that song. Stay up all night if you have to.”
I shake my head. “I never finish anything anymore.” What am I doing, admitting that to a stranger?
“This time could be different,” he says, lingering beside me. “Lemme know if you get hungry.”
