“For only seven more minutes.”
At first the Gabby didn’t understand the woman, then she realized what had sounded like meenoots, was actually the word minutes. “I’ll be quick.”
“You’ll make a mess.”
“No, I swear I’ll order only a salad.”
The girl huffed and rolled her eyes. “Sit.”
Gabby didn’t have to be told twice. She plopped her butt on a round stool and tried to appear super hungry so the server would understand that she wouldn’t have come in here unless she was really desperate.
“Adel, there is someone here who wants food.”
An older woman pushed her way through a swinging door, carrying a tub of what appeared to be clean coffee cups.
“Oh, crap.”
Gabby shifted. “I’m sure you all don’t mean it but I’m starting to feel a little unwelcome.”
Adel plunked down the tub with a rattle. “No, sign says we’re open until nine, so I guess we’re going to have to feed you. Coffee?”
“Please.” She saw the young girl pour what was no doubt multiple-hours-old coffee dregs into a cup, but Gabby didn’t mind. It was piping hot.
She shivered as the heat transferred from the cream-colored ceramic to her hands. It had been spring in New York when she left this morning. She was sure of it. She took a tentative sip. It was as foul as she expected but it warmed her throat all the way down.
“What do you want?”
This was easy. She’d already committed herself to a salad so there would be no reason to look at the menu and tempt herself with any of the other offerings. Willpower, Gabby. Willpower.
“House salad, oil and vinegar dressing is fine.” Then she caught herself. “On the side. I need the dressing on the side.”
“Oy.” The girl rolled her eyes. “One of those. On the side this, on the side that. If you want it all on the side to put together yourself, go buy groceries and do it at home.”
Said the girl with the long legs, tiny torso and high cheekbones. She was gorgeous—model thin with long, straight brown hair that looked as though it might actually touch her bottom.
Gabby naturally hated her on sight.
“Zhanna, give it a break.” Adel finished stacking the cups under the counter and stared at Gabby for a moment. “You look hungry. You sure a salad is going to be enough to hold you?”
“Absolutely.” Not. But this is what happened when you let yourself get careless. When you enjoyed food instead of counting calories. When you didn’t accept you were thirty-three and not twenty-three and couldn’t shed five pounds in a weekend. When your metabolism worked against you, but no one let on there was a problem until it ended up costing you your job.
A woman had to pay the price.
Gabby felt her price might have been slightly steeper than any another woman’s, but those were the breaks. Especially in television.
“A salad is fine,” she said.
“Right.” Adel exited through the swinging door and Gabby was left with the decidedly unfriendly Zhanna. If she was staying on the island for a while, it would probably help to make an effort to get to know the locals.
“Zhanna, that’s a beautiful name. Where are you from?”
Zhanna stared at Gabby as though trying to discover her true intention in asking. She must have concluded it was no more than mild curiosity because she answered, “Russia.”
The way the R rolled off her tongue was dramatic and Gabby couldn’t help but be a little impressed. She was just chubby Gabby from Philadelphia. While this girl was the exotic Zhanna from Russia. That comparison made Gabby wish she had more of an accent. “How did you find yourself here?”
“How did you?”
Not exactly a conversationalist, this Zhanna. “I took the ferry.”
“Me, too.”
Small talk over. Okay. Clearly, this local wasn’t someone Gabby was going to win over. After a few minutes of silence, the kitchen door swung open again. Adel set the large plate of green stuff in front of her.
Gabby wished she could be more excited about it, but veggies had never really done it for her. Still, she needed to fill her stomach, so she started eating. Halfway through she was actually starting to feel better. Then Adel came out of the kitchen carrying a slice of pie.
Hot apple pie if the smell and tendrils of steam emerging from it were any indicators. To compound the evil temptation she scooped up some vanilla bean ice cream—the easy-to-detect brown bean flecks suggested it might be homemade—and plopped it on top.
“Figured you ate the salad, you might as well have a little pie.”
Don’t do it, Gabby told herself. Do not eat that pie. Being forced to eat the pastries, the gourmet cupcakes and all those delightful things the local chefs who were featured on the show’s kitchen segments had ended up killing her career.
Gabby didn’t think she wanted to ever return to television to expose herself to that scrutiny again, but she couldn’t shake the feeling she had been responsible for destroying her life and not the show’s executives.
“It’s not going to kill you,” Adel said as she simultaneously slid the pie in front of Gabby while she cleared the salad plate. “It’s pie. Not poison.”
“You don’t understand,” Gabby said wearily. “I’m trying to change my life.”
“Really?” Zhanna asked, leaning on the counter. “Your life? Why do you need the changing of it?”
Oh, sure, Zhanna couldn’t talk about making her way from Russia to Maine, but Gabby was supposed to come clean with all of her secrets. The odd thing was, late at night, alone in a café with a girl who rolled her R’s and a woman who looked as though she knew what a lifetime of hard work meant, Gabby found herself wanting to confess.
“I got fired from a morning talk show because I put on too much weight and I’m getting too old.”
“Bastards,” Adel hissed. “A woman’s always got to be young, thin and beautiful. Is that it?”
“For men,” Zhanna said. “Yes. Go on.”
“I realized I had nothing in my life but the job. Which meant without it I had nothing. I was nothing.”
“Tragic.” Zhanna’s face was a study of sympathy. “Russians, we understand tragedy.”
“I needed a job, so I took this entry-level position at a publishing company, but I know it’s not where I want to be. I feel like an old lady among kids.”
“You must find a new path for yourself.”
“Yes,” Gabby declared. “That’s what I want to do. I thought this job would help me buy time, but now I think it’s given me something even better to do. I think I want to write.”
Adel leaned on the counter next to Zhanna. “Writing. Interesting. What are you going to write—murder mysteries, thrillers, romance?”
“I love the romance books,” Zhanna said. “Especially the American ones where nobody dies at the end.”
“No, I’m not a fiction writer,” Gabby said. “I was sent here to get Jamison Hunter’s story and damn it, I’m not only going to get his story, I’m going to tell it.”
At the mention of his name both women straightened. Zhanna scowled and Adel frowned. Gabby was trying to figure out what she said to garner this reaction when Zhanna grabbed the plate of pie and dumped it under the counter.