“That depends,” she replied as she appeared to study him earnestly. “If you keep the beard, are you going to have it meticulously trimmed and manicured at some overpriced Tribeca salon?”
“Absolutely. By someone named Mystique.”
She nodded and smiled. “Figured.”
“Had?” The director—Sebastian?—got her attention and waved her over to him.
“Be right back,” she said in response before bounding over to a row of cameras. Max turned and watched her go—and got caught watching her go by the director, who was shooting daggers out of his eyes.
At least, until Hadley reached him. Once he turned to her, his expression softened, and a smile overtook his face.
What’s going on there? Max looked away and walked further into the kitchen. After a quick glance around him to figure out if he could expect to be fussed at for being where he shouldn’t be, he stepped behind the island, and effectively onto the set of At Home with Hadley. The floor felt slick beneath him, and the dust of the white, bleached flour being stirred up by his shoes made it very evident as to why. There was flour everywhere. Not to mention a fair amount of sugar, what appeared to be cornmeal, and a little bit of Karo syrup.
“Are you kidding me?” he whispered under his breath, in utter disbelief. The woman was a professional chef. A successful one. How had she managed to get anywhere in the culinary world with less tidiness than one of those steakhouses where you throw peanut shells on the floor? If this were one of his kitchens, he’d fire her.
Do not tell her that.
He mentally thanked the voice of warning in his head, even as his fists curled and his feet shuffled uncomfortably—and then stopped shuffling when he realized flour clouds were starting to leave remnants on the legs of his jeans, and his shuffling was just making it worse.
These were just not appropriate conditions for a professional kitchen. Not even close.
The old Max would have made sure Hadley knew that. The old Max would have made sure everyone knew that. And he wasn’t proud to realize that. But he had high standards. He could acknowledge that the old way of dealing with those standards needed work. But the standards themselves? He wasn’t going to apologize for that. He would just find less aggressive ways to meet those standards. Hopefully ways that didn’t completely alienate the funny, forgiving chef who just happened to learn kitchen etiquette from the Swedish Chef.
He spotted a sponge in the deep farmhouse sink and wet it down with warm water. By the time Hadley made her way back over, Max had almost cleaned up all of the endlessly sticky corn syrup.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said.
Yes. I did.
He shrugged as he scrubbed. “So . . . this house. You weren’t kidding. It’s a lot for one person.”
She reached into a pantry and pulled out a broom and dustpan. Then she began cleaning up the mess on the floor, and Max felt tension release from his shoulders.
“Yeah. I keep having flashes in my mind of the entire crew living here, and each night we’d yell out ‘good night’ all across the house, like The Waltons or something. ‘Good night, Hadley.’ ‘Good night, Jerry.’ ‘Good night, John Boy.’”
“Good night, Hadley,” a member of the crew called out as she walked toward the door.
“Good night, Margo,” she replied with a wave. “See you tomorrow.” Then she winked at Max and said, “We’ve been practicing.”
Max smiled and rinsed out his sponge. “This kitchen, though.”
“Right? All these years, I think maybe I’ve just been working toward this kitchen.” She let out a groan. “You know, though . . .” She lowered her voice and leaned in closer, to speak privately. “It’s only been a few days, but I kind of hate the place.”
“What?”
“I mean, I’m grateful. And I’ll adjust. But at night, all alone with three thousand square feet . . . I don’t know. It’s weird. Playing the piano as late into the night as I wanted, with no concerns about disturbing the neighbors, was only fun for one night. Then I realized I didn’t have any neighbors close enough to be called neighbors. I could hop in my car and drive to the grocery and back faster than I could walk to their houses to borrow a cup of sugar.”
She swept and dumped what she had collected into the garbage, and then repeated the cycle. And through it all, she talked. And through it all, Max watched. There was something so uniquely genuine about her. Just like it didn’t make sense that she had achieved as much success as she had without learning to get the flour in the bowl rather than on the floor and countertop, it didn’t make sense that she found a way to be more of a real person than any other celebrity he had ever met.
She abruptly cut off whatever she had been saying. Max had momentarily lost focus.
“I’m sorry.” She groaned. “I must sound like the most pampered princess. I’m grateful. I am. And that’s that.”
He kept watching her as she returned her cleaning supplies to the pantry, but he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to be around her. Texting was good. Texting was easier. In a text, he could be whoever he wanted to be. Not that he tried to be someone he wasn’t, but he definitely tried to be a more presentational version of who he was. They’d exchanged countless texts back and forth, to the point that Max had walked into Hadley’s house today feeling as if they knew each other. Maybe even liked each other. But suddenly without the ability to take an unobserved moment to think and calculate before he allowed his thumbs to do the talking, he felt destined for failure.
“It’s fine.”
You don’t sound like a pampered princess. I get it. Why do you think I’m always on the road? Maybe you could get a dog.
These were all thoughts he was having. Some more worth saying than others. All more worth saying than, “It’s fine.”
Max scratched the palm of his hand against his scruffy cheek. I get it. Start with that. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth to attempt realness with her. To attempt . . . what? Human connection, he supposed. It had been a while.
“Anyway,” Hadley resumed. “I think this kitchen is going to be great for Renowned. Especially since we’ll need room for both of us.”
She kept talking about the best features of the kitchen and pointing out the aspects she thought Max would appreciate most, but he was only half-listening. She’d begun talking again before he’d had a chance to stumble his way through an attempt at realness, and he wasn’t sure if he should take them back to the connection point or thank his lucky stars that she now seemed perfectly content to instead point out the telescopic racks of her Thermador range.
But he was unfortunately—mercifully—robbed of the decision. Max and Hadley both turned toward the commotion that was suddenly coming through the door. Marshall Simons and his entourage had arrived.
Max snapped to attention like a little boy who’d been caught yanking on a girl’s braids. Marshall Simons. In the flesh. Everything else was momentarily forgotten as he realized he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt starstruck. It hadn’t happened many times in his life, that was for sure. He’d met Paul Bocuse once during his culinary school internship in Paris, and there was the time he and his dad bumped into Mr. Rogers at the hardware store when he was a kid. But that was about it. And now, Marshall Simons.