Chasing your tail, p.1
Chasing Your Tail, page 1
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2023 by Kate McMurray
Cover and internal design © 2023 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by Stephanie Gafron/Sourcebooks
Cover illustration by Elizabeth Turner Stokes
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
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Cataloging in Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
For all the pet parents.
Chapter 1
Lindsay Somers should have known she was about to be betrayed.
Lauren Fitch, one of her closest friends of almost ten years, sat across from her at Pop, their favorite bar, and said, “Okay, please don’t hate me.”
Lindsay narrowed her eyes. “What did you do?”
“So you know how I’ve been wanting to hire a pastry chef for the café?” Lauren was the manager of a Brooklyn-based cat café, not coincidentally just up Whitman Street from Pop.
“You didn’t,” said Lindsay.
“We interviewed five candidates and ate copiously of the sample stuff they made us. And the best candidate not only made delicious pastries for humans to eat, but also baked cat treats that went over so well that the cats followed him around for the rest of the interview as if they were trying to get their next fix.”
“Just say it.”
“Diane made the final decision, not me. In my defense.”
“It’s Brad. I can already tell it’s Brad. Just say, ‘Hi, Lindsay, we hired your ex-boyfriend to work at the cat café.’”
“Hi, Lindsay, we hired your ex-boyfriend to work at the cat café.”
Lindsay groaned and pressed her forehead to the table. “Of course you did.”
“He was the best candidate by a mile.”
Lindsay groaned again and picked up her head. “I’m sure he was. Which begs the question of why he was auditioning to work at a cat café. No offense.”
Lauren grinned. “None taken. He said he’d only ever worked under other people. He wanted creative control over the menu, and I was happy to give it to him.”
“You do know that he cheated on me.”
“Yes, and I hope he rots in hell for it, but that doesn’t affect his baking. The frosting on his cupcakes is… Oh, there are no words. Like eating whipped magic.”
Lindsay knew she was scrunching up her face, but she couldn’t help it. Brad was still a sore spot. Sure, the man could bake—and he could heat up the sheets, too—but that didn’t make him any less of an immature douchebag. And now he’d be working at the cat café? Just having him in the same city was bad enough, but knowing he’d be in a location where Lindsay would be likely to run into him… How could Lauren have done such a thing?
Evan walked into the bar with his boyfriend, Will, and they slid into seats at the table. He looked back and forth between Lindsay and Lauren and narrowed his eyes before realization came over his face.
“You told her!” said Evan.
“I’m not speaking to Lauren anymore,” said Lindsay, crossing her arms in a way she hoped would come off as theatrical. She was mad, but she was trying not to let on how much this bothered her.
“Ah, handling the news with the grace and aplomb we expected of you,” said Evan.
“What’s going on?” asked Will.
“Brad Marks, the new pastry chef at the café, used to date Lindsay,” said Evan with a smirk. “Their relationship did not end on good terms, and now Lindsay and Brad are sworn enemies.”
“I don’t know if Brad knows that,” said Lauren. “He asked how you were.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you were doing well. That you’re writing about food.”
“Oh, great.” This was such a nightmare. “So now he knows I write about food instead of making it.”
“I mean, he could google you to get that information,” said Lauren, glancing at Evan and looking alarmed. “I didn’t know it was a state secret.”
“It’s just so humiliating. I went to culinary school with him. And now he knows I couldn’t cut it as a chef.”
“I couldn’t either,” said Will, who worked as a cookbook editor. “But we still work in the industry. We’re just showing off our expertise in different ways.”
“And you write for one of the most-read food websites in New York,” said Evan.
That was true, although writing restaurant reviews for two cents a word was no way to get rich. She’d been supplementing her income with other freelance writing, but the truth was, she loved writing about food. Her culinary degree gave her an expertise few other food writers had, and she loved being able to apply that expertise to finding new ways to talk about food. Anyone could write a review of a steak house by talking about how good the food tasted, but Lindsay liked to take in the atmosphere and think critically about how the dishes were put together. Hell, she loved food, loved cooking, loved making elaborate meals for her friends. She hadn’t done much of that lately because she’d been working so much to make ends meet. She sighed and picked up her phone, pretending to read her email while her friends teased her.
She mentally shoved Brad aside while conversation around her drifted toward something else. She focused on her phone while Evan told some story about something that happened at work that she half listened to. She knew she was being rude, but she had to recalibrate and try not to think too hard about what Brad working for Lauren would mean. Then an interesting email snagged her attention. It was from her editor at the food website. “Oh my god.”
“What?” asked Lauren.
“You will never guess what’s opening in the old Star Café space.” The Star Café was a coffee shop that had been across the street from the Whitman Street Cat Café. It closed a couple of years ago when a real estate developer bought the building. Since then, the first floor of the building had been occupied from such a long series of failed businesses that everyone on the block was starting to think the space was cursed. There’d been a shop owned by a national chain clothing store that had gone out of business, a fast-food taco place, a stationery store, and even a retail store for a cellular phone company, and none of them had lasted more than three months.
Evan leaned forward. “It’s a restaurant, right? It looks like a restaurant. I walked by there on my way here.”
“Not just any restaurant. This one is owned by one of the singers from the Bayside Boys.”
“Ooh, which one?”
“Little Joey Maguire.”
Evan laughed. “I had such a crush on him when I was twelve. Joey was the dreamiest.”
Will elbowed him.
“Which one is Joey?” asked Lauren. “The one with curly hair or the one with the tattoos?”
“Curly hair,” said Evan and Lindsay in unison.
“I know you were going through your disaffected tween stage when the Bayside Boys were popular,” said Evan, “but they were everywhere in the early aughts. Surely you know their names. And Joey’s had a decent solo career. Remember that song ‘Love like a River’?”
Lauren shrugged. “Sure.”
“You don’t. Philistine.”
“Anyway,” said Lindsay. “This email from my boss says he’s from Georgia originally, so he’s ‘going back to his roots’ and invested in this restaurant that is supposed to be refined soul food, whatever that means.”
“Fried chicken, but make it fashion,” Evan suggested.
“Anyway, they want me to review it next week.”
“You have to let me come with you,” said Evan. “Will Joey be there? Can I meet him? Do you think he would sign a napkin? Or my body? Oh my god, I would die.”
“I’m sitting right here,” said Will.
“Yes, but sweetie, it’s Joey Maguire. I mean, if you had an opportunity to meet someone from your celebrity cheat list, I would let you.”
“Joey Maguire’s on your celebrity cheat list?” asked Lindsay.
“Of course. And you have nothing to worry about, Will. He’s in a very dramatic relationship with that blond actress with weird eyebrows from that CW show you like. But I can at least try to get a selfie with him. After he signs something on me.”
Will narrowed his eyes. “Nothing below the belt.”
Evan laughed and kissed Will on the cheek. “I’ll be an angel, I swear.” He turned back to Lindsay. “I can come, right?”
“Oh, all right.” Lindsay was pretty excited about the—unlikely—possibility of meeting Joey Maguire, too. He’d starred in a lot of her teenage fantasies as well. Usually, these celebrity restaurateurs were pretty hands off, but maybe he’d show up for the opening week. “I’ll make a reservation for all of us,” she added.
“Oh, that will be fun!” said Lauren. “A night out, good company, judging food.”
It would be fun, but Lindsay was clearly still mad because she said, “I love you, Lauren, but you still hired my ex-boyfriend.”
“He’s only going to be working in the morning. The odds of you ever running into him are really small. And he makes cookies for the cats! None of the other chefs offered that.”
Lindsay sighed. Lauren was right; Lindsay rarely ever stopped by the café before midafternoon, so the odds of her running into Brad were low. But not impossible. What if they ran into each other? What would she say when she saw him? What if… She took a deep breath and told herself that Brad’s little intrusion into her life would be fine. Right?
***
“So let me get this straight. You’re making pastries. For cats.”
Brad understood how silly it sounded. He stared at his friend Aaron and said, “Yes.”
“You were a sous-chef at Milk Bar. You got a ton of press for your work at that chocolate place. Your doughnuts were featured on a Food Network show. And you’re leaving all that behind to make pastries for cats.”
Brad signaled to the bartender that he wanted a refill on his beer. “I am also making pastries for humans, and the café is giving me complete creative control, which I’ve never had before.”
That really had been his motivation. He hadn’t realized when he’d applied for the job that the Lauren who managed the café was the same Lauren who’d been close friends with his ex, Lindsay. Lauren had gotten married, so he hadn’t recognized the last name in the job ad. But when he’d arrived with his samples, he’d recognized her. They’d only met a handful of times while he and Lindsay were dating, but that whole period of his life was seared into his brain. It was a series of happy memories he didn’t want to remember.
Lauren had outlined the parameters of the job: their bread and butter was pastries for the morning coffee crowd, but she wanted some special things for people who came into the café to sit during the day. The cat treats had been his idea. A culinary school buddy worked at a bakery for pets in Park Slope and had given him some recipes that he’d tweaked based on what he’d researched about what cats needed nutritionally and what was poisonous. The chicken-flavored cookies had tasted pretty weird to Brad, but the cats had loved them, and Lauren had loved the idea of offering them to the café’s customers.
And, okay, he had asked after Lindsay. Once he realized who Lauren was, he wondered if fate had brought him to this cat café. He was embarrassed by the fact that he still thought about Lindsay a lot, even though they’d broken up almost five years ago. He’d been in two other relationships since then. But Lindsay had always been the one he remembered most. She was the one who got away.
“Weird coincidence,” Brad said. “The manager at the café is good friends with Lindsay.”
“Your Lindsay?”
“Well, she’s not my anything, but yeah.”
Aaron frowned. “Lindsay doesn’t work at the café, does she? Because if this just an elaborate plot to win her back, I’m going to pour my beer on you.”
“No, no. It’s just a coincidence. The manager said Lindsay’s writing for Eat Out New York now, which I already knew.”
“Wow, really? I read that site, although I never look at the bylines. They actually have pretty decent recipes. Probably nothing for cats, though.”
“You’re not getting over that anytime soon, are you?”
“I’ll let it drop when you let go of Lindsay. She’s not coming back, dude.”
“Did I say I want her back?”
Aaron shrugged.
“So, yeah, I’m working at a cat café. What’s going on with you?”
Aaron grinned. “I’m developing a new show.” Aaron worked as a producer at the Food Channel. “It’s a half-hour competition show. Three chefs have to work against the clock to make a dish with one wackadoo featured ingredient. We’re planning on cuttlefish for the pilot.”
“That doesn’t seem that weird. I’ve cooked cuttlefish.”
“We’re kind of leading the viewer into it. Start off with a few episodes with ingredients chefs work with but home cooks generally don’t. Cuttlefish, sea urchin, bone marrow. Then we can bring in some ingredients that are only really used in specific cuisines. Gochujang, maybe. Durian. Rocky Mountain oysters. The stinkiest cheese I can find in Chelsea Market. And I saw an episode of the Japanese Iron Chef where the chairman’s ingredient was fish eyeballs. Wouldn’t that be a twist?”
“I’m an adventurous eater, but I don’t want to eat fish eyeballs.”
“They’re a delicacy!”
“Have you eaten them?”
“Once. The texture is very weird. And I couldn’t get over the fact that I was eating an eyeball.”
“See?” Brad shivered involuntarily imagining it.
“We also might do some episodes where we withhold an ingredient. Like, everyone has to make risotto, but you can’t use rice.”
“That’s just mean.”
“I had a cauliflower risotto at a restaurant last week that was delicious.” Aaron made a chef’s kiss motion. “Cauliflower doesn’t taste like anything so it sops up sauce like a sponge.”
Brad laughed and sipped his beer.
“You could do the show,” said Aaron.
“Hardly.”
“There’s a dessert round. Or we could do a special all-pastry episode. But even if not, you’re a good savory chef, too.”
“Sure, but I don’t want to be on TV.” Cameras made Brad nervous. When he’d still been working at the chocolate restaurant, he’d been asked to do a short on-camera interview for a feature story on a local morning show, and it was like all the words he knew had fallen out of his head. He’d said “well, so” about a hundred times. He worried he’d go on Aaron’s show and forget what salt was.
“Just think about it. You’d be great. And you won’t have to talk very much, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’ll think about it. If the focus is on pastry.”
Brad liked the world of pastry a lot more than he liked savory cooking. No one would ever ask him to use cuttlefish or fish eyeballs in a cupcake. The stinky cheese was giving him ideas, though.
And, see, this was why he wanted creative control. If he wanted to see what happened if he put Brie or Gorgonzola or Limburger in cake frosting, he should be able try it. But since he was making cookies for cats, too, he’d need access to all kinds of weird ingredients he never worked with—fish, liver, beef stock. More than anything, he liked the challenge. Breakfast pastries like muffins and danishes were no problem. He could make a batch of scones in his sleep. It was everything else that came with this job that had piqued Brad’s interest. Aaron just couldn’t appreciate what a weird opportunity this was.
