I throw up again.Chapter FortyEliTwenty thousand dollars.
It might be the most money I’ve ever seen at one time. It’s definitely the most money I’ve ever had at my disposal, right here in my hands in the form of a check from Bramblebush.
And I have no idea what to do with it. I didn’t think I’d win. I thought Violet would, and despite everything, I was strangely okay with it.
I still wanted to win. Wanting to beat Violet at something is baked into my DNA at this point, but in truth, I was ready to be happy for her.
But now I get to be happy for me.
“Congratulations,” Montgomery says, patting me on the shoulder one more time. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”
Then he turns and leaves the kitchen. I realize that everyone’s looking at me, and I quickly slide the check into my pocket.
“You’re at least gonna take us for drinks, right?” Naomi says. “Try to remember the little people after you’ve hit the big time.”
“Fancy drinks,” Brandon adds in. “At that new cocktail bar downtown.”
“Are you even old enough to drink?” I ask.
“Bet twenty grand could buy a decent fake ID,” Naomi adds in.
“Drinks are a maybe,” I tell them, faux-sternly. “I’m not buying anyone a fake ID. Get back to work.”
“Whatever you say, Uncle Moneybags,” Naomi teases, pulling out some huge mixing bowls.
I stare around the kitchen, trying to remember what’s happening. I think we’re preparing for some corporate event that’s tomorrow night — a textbook manufacturer who wants an old-world Italian feast — though, for the first time since I started here, there’s no Saturday wedding.
Take Violet somewhere she’s never been. Forget a bed and breakfast in the mountains. Go to Paris.
Put a down payment on a house of your own so you can move out of your mom’s house.
Buy a new car, for the love of God.
What does Italian food need? Probably tomato sauce. Maybe I should just make several gallons of tomato sauce and then figure out what else later.
Open a brewpub with Daniel and Seth. Expand the brewery, have your own kitchen. Quit working for Montgomery, because twenty grand aside, he’s a terrible boss.
That’s actually not a bad idea.
I’m lugging three gallon-sized cans of whole tomatoes back from storage when the kitchen door opens, and Violet steps in quietly.
She looks like hell. Her hair’s a mess. Her eyes are red, puffy, glassy, her face splotchy.
And she glares at me like she’s trying to set me on fire with her mind.
I drop the tomatoes on the counter with a bang. Everyone else in the kitchen looks over at the noise, looks at her, looks at me, and quickly goes back to whatever they were doing.
The bottom’s already dropped out of my stomach. She walks over to me.
“Eli,” she says, her voice a rough whisper, her eyes flat with anger.
Before I can answer, she walks away. I don’t know what else to do, so I follow her though the kitchen, around the corner, into the cold storage room.
In a flash, I remember the time I kissed her here. In the middle of that awful wedding. We’d been up all night and just make five hundred cranes together, and when I saw her come in here, I had to follow her. I had to kiss her just that once or I thought I might die.
Violet turns. The sharks in her eyes snap their teeth. We’re not here for a kiss.
“Why?” she asks, her voice breaking.
I don’t know what’s happening, but I go to take her by the shoulders. I want to comfort her, tell her that whatever’s happened, it’ll be okay.
She steps back before I can touch her.
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t you dare right now.”
Panic stabs at me. Anger blossoms in the wound, a gut reaction, a pure and simple reflex at Violet’s fury. I haven’t even done anything. I keep myself in check.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“I should have known,” she says, her arms crossed in front of her chest. She’s shaking. She looks away and a tear runs down her cheek, her jaw flexing. “Of course you didn’t change. Of course you’d fuck me over for that much money, you fucking asshole.”
Her words feel like bricks, hitting me one by one.
“You think I fucked you over to win?” I say, cracking the knuckles on my right hand, anger booming inside me, hot and dark. “I win one goddamn thing and you can’t handle that?”
She snorts, derisively. She looks at me like I’m something she found on the bottom of her shoe, tears streaming out of both eyes now.
“He showed me the picture,” she says, like I’m stupid.
I feel like something gets yanked out from under me.
“What picture?” I ask.
“I can’t believe I was this stupid,” she says, ignoring my question. Her voice wobbles, but she keeps control. “I can’t believe that after everything I knew about you, all the shit you used to do to me, how much I knew you hated me growing up, that I would fall for this just because you got hot. Well, good job, joke’s on me, you win.”