“I’m sorry,” Regan said, as Kiki bent to pick up the mail. “I haven’t been sleeping great, and work has been so busy and…” Her words stopped because Kiki had stopped moving. “What?”
The wide blue eyes were back as Kiki met Regan’s gaze and heldup a manila envelope. They stared at each other in silence for a full five seconds before Kiki whispered, “I think this is it.”
Regan swallowed so hard, anybody standing in the room would’ve heard it. As if she was moving in slow motion, she reached out and took the envelope, then glanced down at the return address.
Whisk Me Away.
“Holy shit.” It was a whisper that matched Kiki’s, like they were afraid the room was bugged and they didn’t want to give away the details of the mail. She rolled her lips in and wet them, then swallowed again, because the lump in her throat wouldn’t go down. Her heart pounded in her ears as she looked back up at Kiki and slowly handed the envelope to her. “I can’t look.”
“I got you.” Kiki took the envelope, stood up, and turned her back. Regan listened to the tearing of heavy manila, the shuffle of papers, then silence as Kiki must’ve been reading. But that only lasted a few moments before she turned around with a squeal and huge smile. “Baby, you’re in. You’re in!”
“No way.”
“Yes way.Allthe ways. You did it. I told you.I told you!”
Regan finally pushed herself to her feet, taking a moment to shake her now-tangled arm out of her backpack strap. With a shaking hand, she pointed at Kiki. “Read it.” As Kiki spoke, Regan paced.
“‘Dear Ms. Callahan, we are pleased to inform you that you have been selected as one of six attendees to theWhisk Me Awayeight-week retreat sponsored by renowned pastry chef Liza Bennett-Schmidt.’”
“Oh my God,” Regan whispered as Kiki went on.
“‘The retreat will begin on May twenty-first and run through July sixteenth. The location is Chef Bennett-Schmidt’s residence in upstate New York, where you and your fellow attendees will be housed for the duration. This is also where all pastry creation and apprenticing will take place. Chef Bennett-Schmidt was impressed with your résumé, your credentials, and your creations. Please bring your knowledge, your creativity, and your willingness to learn. Any details you’ll need to know are contained in this package. Chef looks forward to meeting you for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’ Then there’s a bunch of other papers and forms, what looks like a nondisclosure agreement, and a pamphlet.” There was a beat where the apartment was silent, and thenKiki added, “Holy crap, Regs, you did it. You’re going on a retreat at freaking Liza Bennett-Schmidt’s house!”
Regan stood and stared, and a part of her felt like she would stay there forever, simply frozen in permanent disbelief. This was—at the risk of sounding incredibly clichéd—a dream come true. Liza Bennett-Schmidt had been an idol of hers, a mentor of sorts, despite having never met her, and now? Now she was about to spend eight solid weeks learning from her, listening to her, gleaning everything she could about her craft from the very person she’d been following and listening to for literalyears.
Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity didn’t even begin to cover it.
* * *
She was in.
Ava Prescott sat at the foot of her neatly made bed in her tiny studio apartment and stared at the letter in her hand. The corner trembled slightly as she read for the fourth—fifth?—time.
We are pleased to inform you…eight-week retreat sponsored by renowned pastry chef Liza Bennett-Schmidt…where you and your fellow attendees will be housed…Chef looks forward to meeting you for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity…
Jiminy Cricket pawed at her leg, gently, as if he didn’t want to disturb whatever it was that Ava was doing. She glanced up at the clock next to the bed. It was almost one in the morning, and she’d been sitting there staring for nearly twenty minutes.
Giving herself a mental shake, she pushed to her feet. “Sorry, Jims. Mommy got a little caught up. Are you starving?” Jiminy meowed his exuberant response and followed her to the kitchenette. Yes, one in the morning was a pretty unconventional time for a cat to have dinner, but that’s how Ava’s schedule worked. She went in midafternoon and was rarely home before midnight. The joys of working in the kitchen of a high-end restaurant.
She set the glass bowl on the floor and stroked Jiminy’s back ashe chowed down on his wet food. “I got in, Jimzy,” she said quietly, knowing if she said it out loud, it was closer to being a reality and less likely to be a dream she would pop awake from at any moment. “I got into the Bennett-Schmidt retreat. Can you believe it?”
Jiminy paused in his eating long enough to look her in the eye, and she smiled at him.
“That’s right. Your mommy’s a rock star. Pretty cool, huh?”
She really needed to sleep, but her brain was buzzing. She felt slightly electrified, like she’d had about four too many Red Bulls, the way she felt when she came up with a fantastic new dessert idea. Excited. Wired.
She really wanted to call her mother, but it was still one in the morning, and while her mom didn’t sleep nearly as much as she once did, she generally wasn’t awake at that hour. She briefly entertained texting, but if her mom hadn’t remembered to put her phone on its night setting, it would definitely wake her up. The only people she knew who were most likely still up were those she’d left work with, but she hadn’t told any of them that she’d applied for the retreat.
With an irritated sigh, she peeled off her work clothes, dropped them in the hamper in the corner so the entire apartment didn’t end up smelling like onions and fried food, and walked naked to her teeny bathroom to shower off the day’s work.
Always a little bit keyed up when she got home, Ava never went to bed right away, despite the hour. She’d shower, make herself something to eat if she hadn’t eaten at the restaurant (she hadn’t tonight), watch a show or two. But tonight, she felt keyed up and then some. Still buzzing, even after a hot shower that was meant to relax her, she padded to the counter in blue and white striped pajama pants and a blue tank top, her hair piled on top of her head, got out a couple pots, and set to making herself some midnight spaghetti. Having something to do with her hands would help calm her nerves.
One of her professors in culinary school had taught her midnight spaghetti, named because it was a common dish chefs made at the end of their shift, often midnight or later. She boiled salted water and tossed in some spaghetti, then sliced fresh garlic and got it sautéing in olive oil. While those things were cooking, she pulled a bag of fresh parsley out of her tiny fridge and chopped some up, and added a bit of chickenbroth to the garlic. Before long, she’d drained the pasta, added some of the water to the frying pan, and was transferring it to the garlic sauce so it could absorb it. She added a healthy helping of parmesan, salt and pepper, then the parsley, tossed it all together, and put it in a bowl. She carried it over to her bed, where Jiminy had already made himself a spot on one of the pillows, as if waiting for her to start their show.
She got comfortable. She did have a chair and a love seat in the small studio, but she rarely used them at night after work. She preferred to set her laptop up on her breakfast-in-bed tray and eat her dinner while watching. Which her mother would be mortified by. Dinner in bed? Spaghetti? Horrifying.
She smiled thinking about it, then hit the keys on her laptop and navigated to YouTube, where she searched episodes ofWhisk Me Away. It had been a while—well, it had been a good six months, when she’d watched as she filled out the application to the retreat—since she’d watched, and she found herself immediately caught up. Liza Bennett-Schmidt was attractive, yes, but it went beyond that. Ava always thought this must be what they meant when they said somebody had “camera presence.” The camera loved her. And she was a natural. Smiling at the camera made it feel like she was smiling right at you, the viewer. And in addition to that great camera presence, she knew what she was doing as a pastry chef. Her show was always twofold. First, she’d make something gorgeously complicated, something no home baker would have any reason to try other than curiosity. But after that, she’d take an element of that dessert and craft something simpler from it, something her viewers could make in their own kitchens without struggle. She made home bakers feel like pastry chefs in Paris, and that was how she’d become such a success. Her following was enormous. She had her own line of bakeware. She’d published something like eight cookbooks so far. She did commercials for mixers and ovens and utensils and a brand of flour and had her own clothing line of chef apparel. The woman was a world-famous gazillionaire. A household name akin to Martha Stewart.
