“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.