“I can’t do this, Max.”
“Can’t do what?”
“This. Whatever this thing is that we’re doing. This flirtatious, just-friends thing.”
He scoffed. “You’re the one who wanted to be just friends.”
“I know. But I didn’t realize just how precarious it would be. Being your friend, I mean.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know if I agree with you or not that what you said tonight was the worst stuff you’ve said, but I know it hurt the most. Not because you said it, but because I was so blindsided by it.”
“I really am sorry.”
She nodded. “I know. And apology accepted. Truly. But . . . well, it’s one thing to have to be on guard against personal attacks from my supposed rival. It’s another thing entirely to feel like I can’t ever let my guard down because I never know when to expect an attack from my friend.”
“Hadley . . .”
She looked down at her feet. “It’s just too risky. I, um . . . well, somewhere along the line I started caring too much. I hope you understand.”
“Hadley,” he repeated. He didn’t know anything else to say.
“I’ll see you in the morning, Max.”
He stood in the doorway—not watching her walk away, not turning away either—until she had almost reached the elevator. Then he found himself in the hallway, yelling after her.
“Your dad really messed you up, didn’t he?”
She froze in her tracks and then turned around, her eyes full of fire. “Excuse me?”
He walked toward her in complete dread. He didn’t want to fight with her. Not anymore. But she didn’t get to have the last word. She didn’t get to decide they weren’t friends. And it sure wasn’t up to her whether or not they cared about each other. It had been decided, and there was nothing either one of them could do about it.
“That whole thing about preparing yourself for a life of sickness, poorer, and worse. I get what he was saying, Hadley, but it totally screwed you up. You’re so convinced that a life with someone else has to be awful. That that’s the price for caring about somebody.”
She shook her head and turned away from him, and continued her walk to the elevator. “That’s not true.”
He ran to catch up and then stepped in front of her. “It is true. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before, but it’s absolutely true.”
She stepped around him and urgently pushed the button on the elevator. “How dare you tell me I’m screwed up? You!”
Max laughed bitterly. He just couldn’t help it. That one had stung, but he also knew it was fair. “Yep. You bet. You bet I’m screwed up. At least I admit it.” The elevator doors opened and Max stood in front of the door to block her. Hadley tried to maneuver to get around him, but he wasn’t budging. “You can stay here and talk this out with me,” he seethed, “or we can talk about it while we film tomorrow. What’s it going to be, Beckett?”
She crossed her arms. “Sure. We can talk about it. Here, on Renowned, whatever. As long as you talk about what happened on America’s Fiercest Chef.”
He threw his hands up in the air. “I’ve talked about it.”
“I mean why it happened. I’ve heard more explanation about why you had a breakdown from my grandmother than I’ve heard from you. Why is that?”
“You’ve never asked.”
“I’m asking now!”
“Why does it matter?” he shouted. “It’s ancient history—”
“But I deserve to know! Don’t you think, Max, that if anyone deserves to know, it’s me?”
“How long are you going to use that weapon?” he asked as he clenched his fist and released over and over.
“How long are you going to give me reason to use it!”
He put all the effort he could into breathing deeply. Steadily. But he no longer knew how to personalize the anger. What consequences did he have to worry about? He couldn’t imagine that he could possibly do more damage to Hadley than he already had. His career was over, it seemed. Between Hadley and Leo, his already limited friend resources were depleted. Buzz’s trick wasn’t going to work if there was absolutely nothing to lose.
But then he closed his eyes and felt a familiar rush course through his veins. He saw the dining room of his flagship restaurant in Lenox Hill. He recognized the well-known but never monotonous sensation he always felt when taking one final look around before opening the doors for the dinner crowd. Soon the room would be filled with wealthy diners—the New York City elite—whose names had been on a list for months. Years, in some cases. There would be politicians who came to be seen and celebrities who came simply because they could afford it. Celebrities who would be every bit as impressed by tuna noodle casserole if it cost $200 a plate and had Max’s name attached.
But somewhere in the room that night, as he liked to believe there was every night, there would be a twenty-three-year-old kid whose passion was food. That kid had scrimped and saved—maybe even sold their bed—in order to, just once, taste the food of a master. And after that meal, that kid would never be the same. After that meal, that kid’s course would be set and their dreams would be solidified. After that meal, that kid would become Max’s competition, coming up behind him, ready to change the industry, just as Max had.
In thirteen years he had gone from being that twenty-three-year-old kid to being a written-off man on the verge of losing it all. How had that happened?
In his mind he took one more look around. Each chair, each place setting, each light fixture cost more than that meal had cost him thirteen years prior, but that meal had made every single thing that had come since possible.
He opened his eyes and saw Hadley studying him in what appeared to be complete and utter bafflement.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Max released a steady breath. “I never meant to hurt you, Hadley. I hope you know that. I’ll see you in the morning.”
22. Render and drain.
HADLEY
From the time I started watching Renowned, twenty-five or so years prior, I’m pretty sure I’d never missed a single episode. Not until my episode, that is. I was already in Manhattan in preparation of filming, which would kick off there for the week the next day, and during the premiere that Sunday evening, I put the Do Not Disturb sign on my hotel room door, turned off my phone, and took a bubble bath so long I had to refill the tub twice. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand seeing it.
As I thought back over the footage that had been filmed, I couldn’t think of a single moment I wanted to relive. Not the annoyance I felt with him as I prepared Bouille Hadley, not our awkward on-camera evening exploring Nashville after our much, much worse off-camera squabble at Bluebird Cafe, and definitely not the two days of filming following our hotel confrontation. I knew, more than anything, I wouldn’t be able to stand watching Max be . . . fine.
At least he seemed fine. Healthy. Mature, even. And overwhelmingly unaffected by our last off-camera exchange. He walked into my house, greeted the crew, smiled a subdued smile at me, cooked when he was told to, complimented my food on-camera, and willingly took on more of a supporting role when I was the focus of filming.