Next to You (6 page)

P
hlox laughed
at the skeptical expression on her brother’s face when she pulled into the grassy parking area of Pizza A Go Go.

“You sure the health inspector isn’t going to storm the place with a SWAT team while we’re eating?” Rye asked.

“Trust me on this,” she said.

Pizza A Go Go was housed in what some might call a cross between a mobile home and a shack, set down on the edge of a field like it had been picked up in Kansas by a tornado and deposited here. The parking lot wasn’t paved and the signage was minimal. But the pizza was to die for.

Phlox had been surprised to see her brother’s sleek black BMW pull into her driveway at three o’clock in the afternoon. It was a pleasant surprise, though she knew immediately why he’d come. Oh sure, it was to bring the photo album she had called Cherise about. But that was merely a secondary motivation. The photo album could have been overnighted, as she had requested. No, the real reason why her older brother had driven two hours from New York was to check up on her, a motive he had immediately—if sheepishly—admitted to.

Not that Phlox minded—not too much, anyway. She and Rye were close. A few eyebrows had been raised when she hired Rye to be the chief financial officer of Phlox Beauty, but there was no one else she trusted more.

“I know the ambience isn’t much but the food is amazing,” she said as they walked across the parking lot toward the unassuming restaurant. “Plus, I’m supposed to be getting fat this month, so carbs and cheese are right up my alley.”

A teenaged hostess led them through the small, dark interior and out onto the back deck, which overlooked acres of trees and overgrown brush. A child’s playset had been set up fifty feet away. An older woman dressed in jeans and a white oxford shirt set a bottle of sparkling water and two photocopied menus on the table.

“I’ll be back in a minute to take your order.”

“No liquor license,” Phlox whispered to her brother. “That’s the owner. She and her husband—and their kids—run the place.”

After they placed their order for a medium spinach and ricotta pizza with thin crust, Phlox leaned back in her plastic chair and enjoyed the feel of the late afternoon sun on her face and arms.

“I’m glad you came,” she said. It felt good to get out of the house, actually, away from the pressure to be the old Phlox—and away from Jared Connor, who had turned into a painful reminder that some people didn’t know that the old Phlox ever existed.

“So sis, how are you? Really?”

“I’m fine, Rye.” She smiled encouragingly at her brother. “Really.” This was the checking-up-on-her part of the day’s entertainment. And she was fine. Mostly fine, anyway. Except for her inability to use a certain part of the kitchen—which explained why she was taking her brother to Pizza A Go Go for dinner—and the fact that she had totally pissed off an employee.

“What have you been doing up here?”

“Baking, reading, relaxing. A little work here and there. I’m only allowed one phone call to the company, per Zee.”

“Yeah, I heard that.” Rye uncapped the bottle of water and filled their glasses. “Sales have been good on the A2Z. Maybe a little too good.”

“How so?”

“The factory’s running at max capacity. If this takes off, we’re going to have find a larger facility.”

“Or build our own.”

Rye grimaced. “That takes a bit of cash, though. Zee has dispatched Nicholas to the factory to see if he can squeeze a little more production out of them.”

Something in Rye’s voice gave Phlox pause. “You don’t sound as if you think that’s a good idea.”

He shrugged. “I’m not real keen on Nicholas.”

“Why not? He’s Zee’s boyfriend.” Zee had hired Nicholas Ackermann as a business consultant last year, then proceeded to fall in love with him.

“I don’t know. I just get a bad feeling about him.”

“Maybe you’re just suffering from male territorial syndrome or something.” Rye was one of only a handful of men who worked at Phlox Beauty, as well as Zee’s honorary big brother since she was an only child.

“Maybe. What’s the scuttlebutt online about A2Z?”

“Mostly quiet from consumers. A few complaints here and there about glitchy kiosks and price.”

“It’s getting good reviews in the press, right?”

She nodded. “I think that’s driving sales but it’s still in the new purchase phase of the sales cycle. People are trying it but it’s too soon to tell if they’ll repurchase.”

Launching the A2Z Cream had been a risk for Phlox and Zee. Everyone told them that they were crazy—no, certifiably insane—to launch it in the current economic climate. A customized product that women had to order first, then wait for it to be delivered? Cosmetics were so often an impulse purchase, they knew that. You walked into a store for a refill on your favorite tube of lipstick and walked out with three new nail polishes, a new foundation and the latest miracle serum. Phlox had done it a million times herself.

But in focus groups they heard over and over the same damn thing. Women were tired of having to buy half a dozen different products to handle multiple skin care concerns. They had too much to do in the morning, too long a commute, too early a work schedule, kids to make breakfast for and see off to school. They needed to shave time off their beauty routine on those days when they didn’t have time even to shave their legs.

The A2Z Cream let women choose the features they needed at an in-store kiosk, then use the kiosk camera to transmit a picture of their skin tone so the product shade would match exactly. The only hitch was that a custom formula couldn’t be created in a store. Consumers had to wait two weeks for delivery. Everyone in the industry was watching to see if Phlox Beauty could pull this off. If they did, it would be a major coup. If they didn’t … well, Phlox tried not to think about the fallout. It would be their biggest and most expensive product failure yet.

The waitress brought out their pizza, crisp and hot. Phlox pulled off a slice for Rye, then one for herself. They ate in silence for a few minutes, Phlox waiting for her brother to bring up a certain someone. Eventually, he did.

“David’s been asking about you,” Rye said.

“Yeah, he’s called a few times.”

“Want me to set up a double date for when you get home?”

Phlox thought for a minute, then shook her head. “I know he’s a good friend of yours, Rye. But we just didn’t really hit it off before.”

“Well, you two didn’t get to spend much time together before you were in the hospital.”

“I know. But …” She stopped. She couldn’t tell her brother that his friend was only interested in her now because she looked better. “I’ll let you know about the date when I get back.”

After three slices of pizza, she pushed her chair back and admitted defeat.

“You’re a lightweight,” Rye grinned as he bit into slice number four. “I’ll tell Zee you ate the whole pie.”

“She’ll never believe that.”

An odd expression flashed over her brother’s face and he looked as if he’d been about to say something. Instead, he leaned around the edge of the table and pushed Phlox’s right ear and jawline up into the fading evening sunlight.

“What do you have on this?” he asked.

“A foundation I created.” Phlox touched the corner of her right eye. “It’s super pigmented so you get heavy coverage with a light coat.”

“It looks great, Phlox. You can’t tell, even outside.”

“That’s why I wanted the photo album.” The lie popped into her head quickly. She knew her brother would ask eventually. On the drive to the restaurant, she had wracked her brain for a plausible story that wouldn’t alarm him. “I’d like to develop the foundation into a viable product, and I’d use my own pictures as proof. I’m envisioning this as a product we’d sell to doctors.”

“Why just doctors? Not the general public?”

Phlox toyed with the remains of her pizza crust as she considered how to phrase her answer. “I want it to be a product for burn victims, plastic surgery patients. I want that to be the brand. It’s a product developed specifically for them. So they trust it.”

Rye nodded, but said nothing.

“I know there’s probably not much money in it. But now that I’ve developed it, it feels selfish to keep it to myself. I need to make something good happen out of this past year.”

T
he next morning
, Phlox awakened to the mouth-watering aroma of bacon. Her stomach rumbled like a truck before she’d even thrown off the covers. She had eaten nothing but muffins and cereal for breakfast since she got here. A real breakfast would taste good.

She threw on a pair of linen shorts and a light tee shirt, then practically skipped downstairs. At the foot of the stairs, she could hear coffee hissing and sputtering into the pot. Rye would make an unbelievable husband to some lucky woman, if only he stopped getting sidetracked by the equivalent of female bling.

“Sis! You’re up. I was about to come pound on your door.”

“Sorry. I’m not really on a rigid schedule up here.” She poured herself a cup of coffee, then poured one for her brother too.

“Want to chop some veggies for the omelettes?” he asked, gesturing with his tongs toward a cutting board and knife.

Phlox eyed them warily, wondering if there was any way to con her brother into moving them onto the island. Right now they were sitting right next to the range where he was frying bacon. The meat popped and crackled in the hot grease and, as if on cue, Rye rubbed a grease splatter on his arm. Her throat began to tighten.

This was ridiculous. How many times had she cooked bacon and eggs in her life? Hundreds? This shouldn’t make her nervous. But the memories were hard to push away.

She took a deep breath and rushed, blindly almost, to Rye’s side. She grabbed the cutting board and knife and whirled back to the island.

“Careful there,” Rye said, reaching out his arm to steady her.

She slid the onion, pepper and tomato to the far side of the island, putting three feet of granite between her and the range. Keeping her head down, she tried to ignore her brother setting another skillet onto a burner. She chopped more vigorously, allowing the knife to thwack against the wooden board, so she wouldn’t hear the click and poof of the gas igniting. Rye poured egg into the skillet, then turned to her for the vegetables. She pushed the cutting board across the island.

She had to get over this fear. But how? Her mind knew it was irrational. An omelette wasn’t going to blow up in her face. But her body seemed unable to accept that reality. Just looking at a gas burner made her skin crawl, her muscles quiver, her lungs gasp for air.

She couldn’t let her brother see her fear, though, so she busied herself with gathering plates and flatware, napkins and butter. If she couldn’t get over this, everyone would pressure her to sell the Connecticut house. She didn’t want that.

“Toast?” she asked.

“Sure.”

She dropped two slices of whole wheat into the toaster, then stood there and waited. She jumped a little when the toaster popped the bread back up.

“Let’s eat outside,” she suggested after Rye flipped the second omelette onto a plate, garnishing it with two slices of crisp bacon.

On the porch the morning air was still cool. The skin on her legs immediately tightened into gooseflesh. Rye handed her a plate.

“Are you sure you want to eat out here?” he asked.

“It’ll warm up soon.”

The look on Rye’s face said he doubted it would warm up before they finished breakfast, but he let it go. “Anything you need me to convey to Zee on Monday?”

“Nah. She’s being a hard ass about this phone call thing.”

“If anything requires your attention, she’ll call you. Or I will. You need this time up here, Phlox. You need to get your head back on straight.”

“I know I do. I’m working on it.”

“I think that foundation product is a good idea.” Rye took a long swig of coffee. “It probably won’t make much money unless we priced it at a premium, which I’m guessing you don’t want to do, but I do think it will help you. Personally.”

“I don’t want to be—” She caught the words just in time. “I don’t want it to be a drag on the company.”

“It won’t be.” He looked at her sharply. “Nor will you.”

A
fter Rye left
, laden with pistachio muffins, Phlox settled into one of the Adirondack chairs on the back veranda and opened the photo album. The first page was filled with pictures of her before the accident. She and Rye as children on Christmas morning, their hair messy from sleep and their pajamas twisted and wrinkled. There was her senior portrait from high school, and a prom photo of her and her date, a boy she could barely remember now. Their one date had been the prom. There were photos of her and Zee in the early stages of the business. At the first factory they’d used. The day where they had literally put every single one of the company’s products on their faces—they looked like drag queens. Phlox holding up a copy of their first mention in the
Wall Street Journal.
Zee and Phlox mock-fighting over a dollar bill, their “first” dollar made.

Absently, she reached up and touched her cheek. She no longer looked like any of those photographs, and it made her unspeakably sad. She hadn’t expected to miss the way she used to look. After all, she’d been no great beauty—much to her mother’s disappointment. Her nose had been a little too big for her face, with a snub tip. Her cheekbones had been invisible, her lips not exactly full and soft. The plastic surgeon had asked her what she hadn’t liked about the way she looked before—and it had been all of those things. With his help, she’d fixed all the things about her old face she didn’t like.

Objectively speaking, her new face was better. Her nose was pert and petite. She had high cheekbones for the first time in her life, cheekbones that were made for blusher and highlighter. Lipstick no longer looked like a slash of color scrawled on her chin.

She wasn’t used to this new face yet, that’s what she kept telling herself. In the morning, when she looked in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, she turned her head this way and that, marveling at its perfection. And it was perfect, as far as Phlox could tell, except for the scar that trailed out from the corner of her left eye and the long thin line that followed the curve of her face from her ear to her chin. Covered up with the foundation she had created, though, the face was perfect. Gorgeously, stunningly perfect.