Page 5 of Pity Play

He’s got a point. When fellow chefs find out I’m dining at their establishments, they tend to go overboard. And I do like to see how their average guest is treated. “Maybe you can come home for a weekend while I’m there and we can go together.”

“I have plans to take the team to first place this year, which is going to mean constant work. I won’t be able to get time off until school ends.”

“Good luck with that,” I tell him. My friend is nothing if not driven to have the top-ranking team in Illinois. With his work ethic, I know that’s only a matter of time.

“We don’t need luck. We just have to run our butts off. I swear every year these kids get lazier.”

“You sound like an old man,” I tell him. “It wasn’t that long agoyouwere the one playing high school ball.”

“It’s been long enough to know that kids today expect their wins without putting in the effort. We knew what it took, and we put in the time.”

“Okay, grandpa,” I joke. “I need to get going and tie up business here before I leave tomorrow. Thanks for finding me a place to rest my head.”

“No problem,” he says. “Keep in mind that Lorelai wants to open her own bed and breakfast someday. I bet she’d love any tips you might have.”

“I don’t know anything about running a B & B.”

“No, but you know something about cooking. You could show her how to whip up some winning recipes that’ll knock people’s socks off.”

“Maybe …” That idea doesn’t seem at all appealing, but I don’t want to come off as ungrateful. “I’ll call you in a few days,” I tell my friend.

“Good luck, Luke. You’ve got this.”

I hope he’s right because at this moment I don’t feel the least bit certain things are going to go well. In fact, the only reason I’m going back to Elk Lake is because my mom begged me to. She dropped a guilt bomb the likes of which I didn’t see coming. She told me that someday she and my dad would be dead and gone and then it would be too late to make things right.

My dad is only sixty-three, so while I don’t expect that grim event to happen anytime soon, he did just fall off a roof. That alone might have been enough to usher him into the next world. I may not think it’s my place to fix our relationship—and I don’t—but it’s clear he’s not going to make the first move. If this feud of ours goes on much longer, we may never put things right.

Leaving stacks of papers all over my desk, I push my chair back and stand up. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I can do this. I know that life isn’t always easy, but if this works and mydad and I somehow find our way back to being friends, it will all be worth it.

The bottom line is that I love the old guy, and I miss him. If I have to eat a little crow, I guess that’s just what I’ll have to do.

CHAPTER THREE

LORELAI

My eyes pop open as soon as the alarm on my phone goes off. There’s nothing quite as menacing as the opening strains of “Phantom of the Opera,” which is the tune I’ve programmed to help me greet each new day. The haunting composition adds drama and helps compensate for the placidness of my existence. While I love my hometown, it doesn’t exactly ooze excitement.

The first question I have after opening my eyes isWhy is it still dark out? I never wake up this early. Or is it late? Did I take an afternoon nap? Looking at the clock, I discover it’s five a.m. It takes several more seconds to figure out what day it is, and I’m more confused than ever when I realize it’s my day off. That’s when it hits me: Luke Phillips is coming back to Elk Lake today and he’s staying at my house!

Jumping out of bed, I hurry to run a brush through my hair before tying a do-rag around the fiery-colored mass. It’s been ages since I last cleaned, and I’m bound to stir up a storm of dust. With all the work I have ahead of me, I’m not sure I’ll have a chance to shower before Luke comes, and I want to look my best when he sees me after somany years.

I don’t bother getting dressed before tearing down the stairs. As soon as I hit the landing, I scan the living room to assess the damage. It’s not messy as much as it is dingy. My first stop is the kitchen where I put on a pot of extra-strong coffee before gathering my cleaning supplies.

Once the Italian roast comes down, I pound a cup back before retracing my steps to the living room. If this were my house, instead of my parents’, I would decorate very differently. As in, less traditionally and with a brighter, more modern flare.

Picking up old family photos, I run my feather duster over them. They’re still in the wooden picture frames they were first put into many years ago. I gave my parents a digital photo frame one year for Christmas thinking they’d like a wider variety of memories flashing before them. After several months of not seeing it, I offered to set it up for them. My mother hemmed and hawed and tried to change the subject several times before finally confessing she had given it to charity. That’s when I had to accept my parents were happy being trapped in the last century and were not looking to embrace anything new.

I make quick work of the living room and get everything done except for the fireplace. If it were up to me, I would replace the old wood-burning element with a nice gas insert so I didn’t have ashes to clean up. But again, my parents like things the way they’ve always been. Which means I have a messy job ahead of me. I decide to put that chore off until I’m done with more important things, like cleaning the bathrooms and figuring out which bedroom to put Luke in.

If he were a paying client, I’d set him up in my parents’ room, but those quarters are currently being used by me. Even though I’m thrilled Luke is going to stay here, I’m not motivated to make the effort of hauling all my stuff out of my current digs. That leaves either Noah’s old room—which still sports a pair of bunk beds along with the faded aroma of a teenage boy—or mine, which has a queen-size bed. I decide that regardless of the frilly pink décor and Spice Girls posters, a grown man wouldappreciate something more than a twin-sized mattress—especially a man as tall as Luke.

After climbing the stairs, I open the door to my room, and I’m immediately filled with the comforting familiarity of my early years. I’ve thought about redecorating now that I’m an adult but being that I spend as much time living in my parents’ room—when they’re in Florida—as I do here, I haven’t quite pulled the trigger. Also, I’m twenty-eight, and even though I tell Noah there’s nothing wrong with me still living at home, I have started to wonder how much longer I’ll be here.

Once again, I let my feather duster take flight and when it gets to the posters, I perform a ritual from my teenage years. I swipe it across Mel B’s face and sing, “I tell you what I want, Luke Phillips. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna go out on a date with you!”

I’m so busy jamming around my room that I jump when the doorbell rings. It can’t even be eight o’clock so I have no idea who it is. I know it’s not Luke because he won’t be here until ten. That leaves old Mrs. Bing from next door.

My bluish-haired neighbor isn’t generally a bother, but ever since her husband went into the nursing home, she regularly stops by when she needs a jar opened or a spider killed. One time she told me that our weeds were growing out of control and kindly offered to send her gardener over. I let her do that once but then she hit me with a bill for a hundred and fifty dollars. Now we all just live with the weeds.

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