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“Reese, save me,” Michelle says, her voice muffled over the phone.

I sink into my office chair, holding my arm over my forehead. “I could say the same to you!” I sit up to take a swig of my rapidly cooling coffee. Outside, Nancy yellsCUT!“Do you know this morning I started fantasizing about answering Mom’s questions about my future?” It’s true, and though I’m exhausted from being here since five, at Neil’s request, it’s been good to be distracted.

Because every moment I’m not working, I’m obsessing about Eli. The memory of that night—of every moment between us over the past three weeks—has consumed me.

My sister snort-laughs on the other end of the line. “Don’t fantasize about that,” she says. “Did you know she asked Will tonight when we’re going to have babies of our own?”

I nearly choke on my coffee. “Again?! Does she not notice you have four kids between the two of you already?”

“‘But none of them arebabies,Michelle!’” My sister does an impeccable imitation of our mom, and now we’re both laughing.

“I’m glad you called, Mich,” I say, once we’ve both taken a breath. “You’re the perfect antidote to my completely shit morning.”

“Tell me.”

I explain to my sister how I don’t normally come in when they start filming anymore, since I have to be there to manage the transition into our regular restaurant operations. But last night, two nights after I made out with Eli in his truck (I carefully skip over that part—our first very-much-not-part-of-the-plan date—and simultaneously try to squash down the warm tingling bubbling up again at the memory), Jacques called me. He was pissed and threatened to quit. Neither of these last two things were out of the ordinary for Jacques Leclerc, but him calling to tell me was.

“Jacques has a bee in his beret about one of our contestants.”

If Michelle notices how I use the wordour,like the show is now mine too, she doesn’t say anything.

“It’s that Augusta woman,” Jacques shouted at me the minute I walked in the door this morning. Except his thick French accent, which sometimes fades, was back in full force, so it sounded more likeEET EEZ THAT AUGUSTA WOOMAN!

“She’s on my last nerve!” He’d made a fist and plopped it on his hip.

“His mustache was trembling he was so upset, Mich.”

“Jacques, you’re in charge of who stays and goes,” I said, exasperated. I hadn’t even had more than a few sips of my giant thermos of coffee, the one I was still nursing.

“But she cannot go!”

It was then I had to hide my smile, because suddenly I understood. Augusta was one of the few contestants who wasn’t terrified of our chef—the other being Marcel, who Jacques had suspiciously let stay on, despite somehow several of Marcel’s dishes turning out charred thanks to his distracted flirting with said chef.

Not only that, but Augusta pushed back when Jacques was being an ass, which honestly, he needed. And he quietly respected. It’s why I knew I’d made the right decision in hiring Sophie, who tossed Jacques a very specific glare when he got testy. She and Rufus were the only people here besides me at the restaurant who weren’t terrified of him.

I lean back in my chair now. “He had to admit to himself he couldn’t vote her off the show because she’s the best.”

“This is the woman all the men are mildly obsessed with, right?” Michelle asks.

“Yes. The women, too,” I say. “She has the personality of a winner. But it’s not bravado. It’s like…charisma. When you talk to her, you feel like you’ve picked up some of her shine, honestly. It’s weird.”

There’s a pause, then Michelle says, “You used to have that.”

Now I really do choke on my coffee. “What?!” I exclaim, half laughing, dabbing at my mouth with a napkin from my desk drawer.

“You did,” Michelle insists.

“You’re nuts.”

“Back when you used to do shows, you’d come off the stage glowing. People would talk to you, and when you’d move onto the next, they’d be glowing too.”

Something strange ticks over inside of me. Some flash-in-the-pan memory of a feeling—a high—I used to get up there on stage, the lights searing into my skin, my voice spent, yet still ready for more.

“Those were coffee shop gigs,” I say softly. But even as I say it, I want to admonish myself. Those gigs were everything. I loved those cozy places, snow sticking to the window outside, the crowd clinking glasses and murmuring then going quiet as I got onstage.

“You know I’m right,” Michelle says.

I swallow. “Those were the days,” I say. Whisper, more like.