JOSIE
She shouldn’t have come. She’d gotten angry and righteous and she’d made a decision without thinking it through. And now she had all the answers she didn’t really want.
It was for the best.
It was ridiculous to think we could be anything.
You got over me.
No, she wanted to say. She hadn’t. She hadn’t gotten over him one bit.
But he had so clearly gotten over her that she kept her mouth shut.
This is a good thing, she told herself as she followed Cameron into the butcher shop. You got the answers you didn’t know you needed and now you can move on. Yay.
The bell tinkled over the door as Cameron and Josie stepped inside.
Knapstein’s, much like the downtown street, had had a face-lift. It had always been pretty, with original wood floors and ceilings, but the last time she’d been in there the place had shown its age, which was over a hundred years. Mateo, the fourth generation Knapstein to take over the butcher shop, had given it some new life.
Dark-stained wooden floors and ceiling. Chalkboard paint on one wall with specials and prices. Staff were serving customers from gleaming stainless-steel cold cases and wearing smart denim aprons with the old-fashioned logo embroidered on the front.
Christmas music played in the background. And the air smelled of roasted chicken and potatoes.
Mateo’s mother, Nancy, was a Portuguese woman his father had met while on vacation, and their marriage had brought new energy to the store. Mateo, it would seem, was running with it.
“My god!” Mateo said from the far counter. He used the back of his wrist to push his glasses up high on his nose. “Is that Five Questions Cameron?”
“Mateo,” Cameron said, smiling. “Look at what you’ve done to this place.”
Mateo, his dark, bald head gleaming under the warm lights, came out from behind the counter, and he and Cameron hugged with much backslapping and smiling. Mateo was several years older than Cameron, but since the inn got all their meat from Knapstein’s, the two had formed a strong friendship.
Had he just walked away from Mateo, too?
“I got your email,” Mateo said. “Sorry I haven’t had a chance to respond. It’s been nuts with the holiday.”
I guess not.
“Look at this place,” Cameron said, taking it all in. “Your parents would be so proud.”
Mateo smiled, his arm still around Cameron. “Thanks, man. Though they’d have an opinion on everything I’m changing.”
“That’s for sure,” Cameron said and then stepped back to include Josie in their circle. “You remember Josie? Max and Delia’s daughter.”
“Of course. The runner. Good to see you. You’re here picking up Alice’s order?”
“We are,” Josie said. “And this place is gorgeous.”
“Thank you, thank you,” Mateo said. “We’ve gotten into some prepared foods. Churrasaco.” He pointed to the display case with the Portuguese roasted chickens in their crispy skins. The potatoes and rice. “Sauces and marinades.” He was pointing at the jars on shelves. The freezer cases full of shepherd’s pie and Bolognese sauce. Jars of pickles. Spice blends and piri-piri sauce, chimichurri, all his mother’s recipes. Which had been her grandmother’s recipes.
It was all the perfect combination of the old and the new.
Inspiration struck.
“You should do five questions with Mateo,” she said, and both Cameron and the butcher turned to look at her. Internally, she winced. It was hard to turn off the good television filter. “Fifth generation butcher? Mom’s traditional recipes?” She shrugged. “Seems like a good one to me.”
Cameron blinked at her and then smiled so wide, that crooked tooth was revealed. She glanced away to read the price of ground beef per pound, her hand to her stomach, which had twisted in the face of that smile.
“What do you say, Mateo?” Cameron asked.
“Come on,” Mateo said, wiping a hand across his shiny head. “No one’s going to care what I’ve got to say.”
“I don’t know,” Cameron said. “I think the television producer might be on to something.”
“Okay,” Mateo finally said, still seeming nervous. But the endearing kind of nervous. Excited and pleased to be asked. “Right now?”
“No, you’re busy,” Cameron looked around at the customers, who were watching them.
“Nah, my kids got it.” Mateo pointed over to the thin young men helping other customers. They looked like teenagers.
“You are too young to have kids that old.” Cameron said.
“Well, me and Mich started young. When you know what you want, why wait? So?” he asked. “You want to go in back? The lighting is good, but it’s not as pretty.”
“Right there,” Josie said and pointed over at the old butcher block that stood between two cold cases. It was the block Mateo’s great-grandfather had used to cut up the cows and sheep and goats that area farmers would bring him.
Cameron gave her a look she couldn’t read. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
Cameron and Mateo started to set up.
Adjust that light, she thought just as Cameron reached over and tilted a wall sconce slightly away from Mateo so the light wouldn’t reflect off his glasses. Ask him about the butcher block, she thought, just as she heard Cameron say, “I’m going to ask you about your great-grandfather’s butcher block. Tell me the whole story. Don’t be your usual modest self.”
“I’ll try to get my brag on,” Mateo joked, looking handsome and serious.
This was going to be a good one. The best part, and she wondered if Cameron had figured it out, was that until now he hadn’t interviewed anyone who knew him very well. There had been some female guests who gave the impression that they were going to get to know Cameron real well once the camera was off. But no one like Mateo.
And then Cameron and Mateo started, and they were joking and telling old stories, and the sound of their laughter pulled everyone’s eyes to them. Where they stayed for twenty minutes.
“Can I help you?” One of Mateo’s sons asked.
When you know what you want, why wait?
Funny how that advice could backfire.
“I’m here for the Riverview Inn order,” she said.
A half hour later, after Cameron and Josie made promises to stop in at Mateo’s annual Boxing Day open house at his place by the river, they finally got back out to the truck where Josie had already loaded the turkeys and roasts, the specially cut bacon and the smoked ham.
“I didn’t think you would be sticking around for Boxing Day,” she said. “And since when did everyone around here start celebrating it?”
“Since it extended the holiday,” Cameron said. “Alice got the British Christmas vibe and was able to charge top price for eggs.”
“Come on, really?”
“You know Alice, always looking for a way to make something special.”
“And cost more,” she said. “But you’re sticking around? For the day after Christmas?”
“My plans are loose. And we’re going to do some butchering for the second part of his episode. It’s worth sticking around for. But what about you? Don’t you have to get back to the city?”
She entertained the thought of actually going to that open house with Cameron. They’d take a bottle of wine; he’d put his hand at the small of her back while they talked to people. She’d laugh at his jokes. It would be like an alternate reality. Who they would have been if that night hadn’t happened. “I do,” she said. “I’m leaving Christmas morning.”
“That was a really good interview,” Cameron said as he started the truck.
“You’re a good interviewer.” She pushed the vents to blast their bodies with warm air. The sun had gone down while they were in the shop and the temperatures had dropped hard. They’d had a long, laughing argument over the best cut of steak and how Mateo’s father had taught him to butcher a pig when he was ten. It had been a somewhat bloody conversation.
“It didn’t occur to me to ask him. That was all you.”
“Cameron,” she said. “I do know something about reality television.”
“Congrats on the new job,” he said, glancing sideways at her. “Executive producer.”
“How do you know about that?’ she asked, and all at once she felt every barrier that had been abandoned the last few hours rise back up, ready to protect something she didn’t want to talk about. Protect something, even though she didn’t totally understand why she was protecting it.
“I have been known to cyber stalk you,” he confessed.
“Well, I suppose that’s fair. I have been known to binge your YouTube videos.”
“That’s how you knew Mateo would be good.”
“You have a real ability to click with people. You do a pretty good job of faking it when you don’t have chemistry with a guest—which is rare,” she said. Because Cameron could create a connection with a couch. “But when it’s real, it’s really fun to watch.” There were some things he could do to increase his chances of making a connection. Pre-planning and pre-interview stuff. But his was a bare-bones operation. She got that. His empathy and curiosity were enough to get him through.
“I don’t…I don’t know what to say to that.” He sounded like he didn’t often get compliments. Which was bullshit; the guy was a success, people had to be coming out of the woodwork to praise him.
“There’s nothing to say.” She shrugged. “It’s a statement of fact.”
“How about you? How was your work emergency this morning?”
She opened her mouth and then shut it. Opened it again, shut it again.
CAMERON
Tell me, he thought. Please. Tell me.
It was astonishing how much he wanted her to tell him what was bothering her. How much he wanted to be let into her life. To occupy that space with her—to be someone’s confidant. Friend. Amazing how much he missed that.
And he’d never really realized it until right now. Until being back with her in this damn truck.
Finally, she blurted, “Meaningless. My job really only has meaningless emergencies.”
She shut her mouth again, like she hadn’t meant to tell the truth.
“Meaningless?” he repeated, and she shot him a sideways glance.
“Nice try.”
“What?”
“I remember you told me how all the counselors and therapists you went to when you were a kid tried to get you to open up.”
“I did?” Of course he had. He’d told her all his secrets. The teenage Cameron had been a real blabbermouth.
“Repeat the most important word in the sentence, but like it’s a question.”
“Question?” he asked.
“Stop!” she cried, and he finally smiled. “It’s…you know, a little telling that you thought the most important word in my sentence was meaningless.”
The heater was doing enough of its job that she pulled off her mittens and worried the wrist of one of them with her fingers.
“I’m trying to change things,” she said and then shook her head like she hadn’t been planning on saying that. “Make the show into something else. Something we could all be proud of.”
“And?”
“They’re reviewing my pitch,” she said, smiling a little. And he could tell she was hedging her bets. “But signs look good. It would be for next year.”
“What’s your pitch?” he asked.
“It doesn’t…you can’t be that interested.”
He was interested in everything about her. “Of course I am. Lay it on me.”
She explained her idea of putting people with different ideas and philosophies and religions and backgrounds in a series of booths so they couldn’t see each other, and instead of answering questions about what made them different, they had to answer questions about what made them similar.
“Things like their favorite food their mother made, the name of their first pet, what they did on summer vacation when they were young. What they wanted to be when they grew up. Things they’re scared of, things like that.”
“So they talk about what they have in common, rather than what they stand in opposition to.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I feel like we’re all so divided.”
“You’re assuming people have the same kind of childhood,” he said. And he could feel her focus. “I didn’t have a pet. My mom didn’t make me food I loved.”
“You’re right. I’ve thought about this, but I’m not sure how to resolve the issue. Except maybe to just let it be an issue. Maybe that is how we open people’s eyes to how privilege works.”
“That’s a lot to ask of reality television. It’s really ambitious.”
“I think there’s room to ask more of television. We’ve sunk down to the lowest common denominator. I think we can ask more of television and more of our viewers.”
“That’s the Josie I remember,” he said with a smile.
“I’m calling it Common Ground. And maybe it is too ambitious or big, but I’m ready for something exciting, even if it means making it on my own.”
“Josie,” he said and then didn’t know what else to say. Or how to put what he felt about her into words. “It’s a complicated, amazing idea.”
You’re amazing.
“I feel like your show manages to bring people of different backgrounds together over food and coffee,” she said.
“I don’t have a show.”
“Come on, Five Questions is totally a show. You have, like, a million subscribers, Cameron.”
“I really don’t know how that happened.”
“Oh my god, that you somehow stumbled into YouTube success is the most Cameron thing I’ve ever heard.”
She was smiling at him and he was smiling at her, and for a moment, bright and hot, it was like every moment since she kissed him on her graduation night to now had never happened. And those things that had happened to the two of them over the course of living their lives had been shared.
She wasn’t a stranger. She was his best friend. Had been. Back when he’d had that kind of thing.
And he didn’t look away. And she didn’t, either. And his longing for her, for what they might have been, was painful. Excruciating.
“You’ve really made a name for yourself,” she said quietly into the loaded air.
“That’s what I’m told.”
“You know something?” She laughed. “Fuck that.”
“What?”
“Yeah, fuck that oh I just stumbled onto something and I’m just lucky and I’m not paying attention to the money.”
“What are you talking about?” He laughed.
“You don’t have all those followers without paying attention.” He glanced over at her and she raised an eyebrow. “I’m just saying you can cut the act. With me. You can be honest. I know exactly what that kind of success takes and how hard you have to work to keep it.”
With me. You can be honest.
“So?” She knew the drill. The energy around these self-made stars and everyone trying to capitalize on it.
“YouTube and Netflix keep calling me in for meetings,” he said.
“They want to do a show?” she asked
“Yeah.”
“And you?”
“I like what I’m doing.”
Her silence was telling. So was the way she was staring at him. “What?” he asked with a laugh.
“What what?” She shrugged one shoulder.
“You want to say something and you’re stopping yourself.”
“I don’t…” The coyness fell away for a moment. “I don’t know you well enough to tell you your business—”
He put a hand out, stretched it across the back of the seat and touched her shoulder. Just slipped his hand over her coat, and he could only feel the shape of her beneath that coat.
She shifted and his fingers, icy cold, touched the hot skin of her neck and they both gasped.
He pulled away, put both hands back around the steering wheel.
“You knew me better than anyone else.” He shrugged.
“That was a long time ago,” she said.
“Was it?” He glanced over at her. “Because it doesn’t feel like it. Not tonight.”
What the hell are you doing? This whole conversation felt like it was tempting fate in a way fate did not need to be tempted. The past was the past.
“Being back,” he said into the quiet truck. “I can still feel that teenager I was when I first got here.” He pressed his hand against his chest as if showing her where that kid was hiding out.
“You mean Chaz?” she joked. It was the name he tried to get everyone to call him for about five minutes when he first arrived. Max had put the kibosh on that real quick.
“Yeah, him.” Her grin was bright white in the gloom of the twilight. “All that posturing. All that fear. How badly I wanted Alice and Max to…” He stopped and whistled. But the words he was going to say hung in the air as clearly as if he’d shouted them.
Love me. Be proud of me.
“Anyway, I used to be so embarrassed by that kid but now…I’m almost fond of him.”
“I was pretty fond of him, too,” she said. But she looked out the window instead of meeting his gaze. “It’s true for me, as well. I mean, it feels like part of me is still that girl. And maybe that’s just how people feel when they get older. Like they keep adding to the person they were, piling versions of themselves on top of each other.”
“Like those Russian nesting dolls?”
“Yeah. I mean, I can still feel that scared little girl who first arrived here, so angry at her mom. So worried about her dad. Confused about everything. She’s still…” She put a hand to her neck. “Here. Her voice still comes out of me.”
“You had a pretty traumatic event,” he said. “With your dad.”
“Thank god for therapy,” she joked but he didn’t laugh. They were getting closer to the inn, the glow of the main lodge visible over the trees.
Thank god.
“I think about my dad sometimes.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “About the kind of man he was and what parts of him are in me.”
“Josie,” he said. “You’re nothing like your father.”
“Well, I’m not a murderer.” Again she tried to make things light but Cameron was not having it. He knew how she was trying to deflect. “But I have his height. And his skeptic’s nature.”
“Stop,” he said as they pulled into the back driveway. The truck bounced over the snow and potholes, and the inn, even from the rear, was so pretty. He’d forgotten how pretty it was. Particularly this time of year.
“And he was a person who tore things apart, you know? He loved destruction. It made him feel strong and in control. And sometimes I’m scared that I have that part of him, too.”
He slammed the truck into Park and then, shockingly, he grabbed her hands where they were clenched in her lap. His skin was warm, his palms rough with calluses. And then, maybe because she didn’t pull back, he touched her face, her cheek, the edge of her lips.
Her lips parted on a broken breath and his thumb touched the damp of her mouth and it was so fucking exciting he couldn’t stand it. It was too much and not nearly enough.
“You built me up,” he said. “Knowing you gave me the confidence to do everything I’ve done. You are a builder. Like Max. Your mom. And I can’t thank you—”
“Cameron,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“Let me thank you, Josie. Please.”
“Look at what I did to you. That night—”
“I owe my life to you and to that scared girl who befriended that scared boy so full of attitude. I do. It’s a fact. That night didn’t change that. And it made what happened next possible.”
The words I love you almost slipped out. Because he did love her, like the dearest friend he had. But the words were loaded between them. Dipped in other feelings, complicated by what might have been.
A kiss hung in the air. The possibility of them. He wanted her with something close to pain. An ache.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered and got out of the truck.