Spying in Chocolate
By SarahsSupplyCloset
Author's Note: I appreciate everyone being patient with how wild my brain is. I'm getting all these ideas and I really wanted to at least put this first chapter of this one up specifically for the Chuck pilot anniversary. I hope to continue this, The Trapped Assassin, and The Model Agent. Wish me luck. My life is kind of in upheaval and these silly stories keep me grounded. Thanks for sticking around and hope you like this.
Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck and I'm not making money.
The phone rang and rang, and then it rang some more.
And when she couldn't stand to hear the thing anymore, she reached over, never taking her eyes off of the screen in front of her, and turned the phone off altogether.
Apologies and excuses weren't going to be enough for her.
Not after what he did.
But the worst part of it wasn't even him, as raw as she felt when she thought about the moment she walked into Julia's office, early for her shift, and found her boss and mentor hunched over the lap of her boyfriend who'd draped himself over her leather chair. The same leather chair Julia Rambeau had told everyone at the Pâtisserie Rambeau never to touch.
And there he'd been, not just sitting in the forbidden chair, but getting head from their boss who'd been the person to label it forbidden.
No, the worst part wasn't that he'd cheated on her with their boss, as bad as it was.
It was that Geraldine kept leaving messages and texting her. Things like, "Hey, Sar, listen. I know this was so fucked up. But the pâtisserie needs you. The team needs you. You're the best pastry chef in the joint. Our chocolate queen. He made a mistake. He's stupid. Men are stupid. But he's tearing his hair out and wants to hear from you…"
Bullshit.
Norma-Jean had done the same freaking thing, siding with Bryce, asking for Sarah to give him a break, especially knowing everything he'd been through lately with his parents in Connecticut splitting up, and his big brother being stationed in Afghanistan.
So what? Sarah thought.
Her parents had been split up since she was a freaking child. Welcome to the club. And she'd never found a reason to cheat on him with their damn boss, their mentor.
Sarah Walker was pissed all over again as she sniffled and flopped over the arm of her couch, hanging halfway off of it and letting her body just sag off the edge.
She could feel the awful pull. She had lost her boyfriend, her job, and all of her friends in one fell swoop. Her friends were going too. She felt it. That tug. Knowing they'd chosen a side, and somehow it wasn't hers, when she'd been the innocent one in all of this. She hadn't been having sex with their boss.
It had been so stupid to date a coworker in the first place. And she'd known at the time when he'd asked her out a year ago, after working together for six months, the blue-eyed exceptionally pretty man who'd waltzed in the front door at Rambeau's in Washington, D.C., straight from Connecticut, and managed to snag himself a spot right next to Sarah at the ovens. She knew now how he hadn't had to rise through the ranks like the rest of them.
And it made her want to throw up.
Julia Rambeau was young, though, in her mid-thirties, and a knockout brunette whose modeling career had flopped ten years earlier. It made sense that the men on staff watched her wherever she went. But it didn't make sense that it had been the one man at the pâtisserie who was Sarah's boyfriend who dove headfirst into a sexual affair with her.
Fuck.
The excuses people were making for the both of them were so exhausting and Sarah had no idea what to do. Everything in her was telling her not to be a quitter. And that was why she'd literally quit her job at Pâtisserie Rambeau the day after she'd walked in on Julia and Bryce. After she'd given herself time to be broken-hearted and mourn the loss of what had at least felt like a warm and comfortable relationship, even with its ups and downs.
Sure, she actually quit her job as a pastry chef.
But she wasn't quitting.
She was starting fresh, somewhere new.
Sarah climbed to her feet slowly and moved to her window, looking out over D.C.'s streets.
She wasn't just going to make a new life, she was going to do something she'd been training for since she was practically a kid standing on the stool next to her mom stirring the brownie mix in the bowl. Something she'd been saving for.
And sure, maybe she wished she could've stayed long enough at this job to save more.
But she thought she had what she needed to at least get started.
Now she just needed to pick a place. A place far, far away from Washington, D.C. and Bryce Larkin and all of the friends they shared (not anymore). The charming asshole had used crocodile tears to pull at their heartstrings. And anyway, he'd always been the popular one at the pâtisserie. She just kept to herself and did as she was told, and he asked about everyone's kid and sick parent and he joked around and flashed that smile.
Asshole.
Her lease was almost up on this apartment. She'd been planning to move out of this place and into somewhere closer to her work. Ironic. Since now she was trying to find a place as far away from Julia Rambeau's pastry shithouse as she could get without ending up in literal China.
She knew what she wanted, and she knew wherever she ended up moving, it had to be a big change, culture shock. Wherever it was, she was going to start on a new foot, a foot of her own, damn it. She'd learned everything she needed to learn from being Julia Rambeau's mentee.
Except how to be a cheating bitch. She hadn't picked that up from her.
Now she was ready to make it on her own, with her own shop, running her own kitchen.
This would be the biggest challenge of her entire life.
Bigger even than having to watch her father arrested and walked out of her grandmother's home in handcuffs in her senior year of high school. That had been the last time she'd seen him in person.
No way would she be going back to San Diego. That wasn't her home anymore. As far away as it was from D.C..
She was doing this anyway. And she pushed the thoughts of how much this was actually hurting her to her core out of her mind and went to her laptop to research. She had a few weeks left in this hellhole and then she was escaping this existence she'd thought she'd built.
It had simply been a facade though, a facade she'd rather die than continue.
$...$
"CHUCK!"
He jumped, nearly hitting his head from where he was crouched under the counter trying to fish a cord up through the tiny hole in the desk to connect to the screen. "Morgan, can you not do that when I'm under here like this?"
Chuck Bartowski was already having a frustrating day, a bump on his head was the last thing he needed to add to it.
"Sorry, but this is an emergency."
Sighing, Chuck pulled out from under the desk and flopped onto his butt, just sitting there on the floor and crossing his arms. "Kay, what is it?"
"Shanghai Sonny's is closing for good, man! Did you hear? No more Shanghai subs! No more Shanghai sweet rolls. No more Shanghai sunrise sushi! No more Shanghai saki! No more—"
"Okay, I get it," Chuck interrupted, rolling his eyes. "Wait… closing? Really?" He raised his eyebrows. "Wait, wait, you interrupted what I was doing for this? I'm not sure this constitutes using the term EMERGENCY, buddy."
"I don't think you're getting this, Chuck. Okay, pal? They're closing their doors. FOR GOOD."
Chuck frowned. "Wait, as in Sonny is…leaving? Leaving leaving? Shutting down the whole restaurant?"
"YUP! It's end times, man!"
He climbed to his feet, feeling a bubble rise in his chest. "But…Shanghai salmon balls…"
"Shanghai shrimp nuggets," Morgan moaned. "This is the worst day of my life."
"Why's he closing?" Chuck asked. "There were always lines out the door!"
"He won the lottery," his best friend commiserated. "He's buying a house at the beach and retiring."
"Aw mannnnnn that is so fucked!"
"I know!"
Chuck rounded the desk and made his way down the center aisle of the Buy More, going to the front doors with his right hand man on his heels. When he got there, he peered through the glass towards the Shanghai Sonny hut. It was such a cozy place, with a nice big kitchen he and Morgan would sneak into for free food on Sonny's good days. That wouldn't be happening anymore, apparently.
"What's gonna happen to that place?"
"I bet some shitty chain takes it over," Morgan said darkly. "Frozen yogurt."
They both shivered dramatically.
"This is a dark, dark day, my friend," Chuck said then, placing a hand on Morgan's shoulder as they watched the last vestiges of their favorite lunch spot disappear.
"The darkest, dude," Morgan muttered, shaking his head sadly. "Whatever goes in there just isn't gonna be able to fill Sonny's shoes."
"Never in a million years," Chuck agreed.
And in that moment, he absolutely believed that to be true.
$...$
The curse reverberated through the empty apartment, echoing off of the walls. Letting out a long sigh, she slumped onto the floor and shook her hand out, looking at the finger she'd just smashed under a box while trying to set it on top of the pile of even more boxes. It didn't look like any real harm had been done, but damn that had hurt.
She was in a manmade valley, surrounded by mountains of boxes and furniture. Leaning back, she felt the mattress she'd propped against the back of the couch behind her and she let herself sink against it, tilting her head to look at the ceiling and blinking hard to fight back the sudden urge to let tears fall.
She hated this, this constant bubble in her chest now that she was here, having left Washington, D.C. far behind her, and yet it wasn't far behind her. Because that empty feeling of her friends—or people she'd thought were friends—throwing her over for a fucking cheating asshole persisted. She'd forget, and then her brain would remind her again and she'd fight against the tears again. Both angry tears and sad tears.
It wasn't self-pity, exactly. Just anger that it had seemed so easy for them, and the lingering wonder… what kind of a person was she that not a single one of them had sided with her? It was harsh, the reality she lived in.
Okay, so this was self-pity. A little bit.
Her phone rang…somewhere.
She was feeling raw, too raw to talk business. And then she climbed up to her feet anyway. Because if she wanted to make this God damn work, she needed to be on top of it 100% of the time, whether she felt alone and vulnerable or not. Whether she was sad or not, angry or not.
This had to be her priority, above everything else, above herself even, if she was going to get it off the ground. She had to emulate Julia Rambeau in every way. Maybe not the sleeping with a sous-chef part, destroying the working order of her kitchen, ruining harmony in her pâtisserie. But just ramming herself forward and getting the shit done she needed to get done, and fuck everything else attitude had gotten her erstwhile mentor where she was now.
And now Sarah was determined to do this. Well, first she was determined to find her damn phone.
"What the fuck," she breathed, spinning on her heel, trying to follow the ringing to find her phone. "Where are you?"
As if it would answer.
She had to crawl over boxes but she finally found it near the door, scrambling to pick it up. "Hello?"
There was a soft clicking sound and then a robotic female voice said, "Please! Don't hang up—"
She hung up.
Walking towards the kitchen, having to step over her belongings, she set the phone down on the kitchen counter, grabbing one of her glasses she had yet to put away, rinsing it off in the sink after it had been in boxes making their way across the entirety of the United States in a moving truck.
She had to dig to get her Brita filter out of one of the kitchen boxes but she filled it up and hopped up onto the counter, waiting for the water to filter through. Leaning her head back against the wooden cabinets, she sighed and stared at her phone she set on the counter next to her.
What would her mom say if she knew she was less than 100 miles away right now? Not just visiting, but in an actual apartment, with all of her stuff here, a bed she had to put together once she figured out how to get it into the bedroom. Yet another thing she might need to hire people for.
She knew she should call her mom and talk to her, tell her what happened, do the thing you were supposed to do with your mom, calling for comfort and reassurance. And in spite of their troubles, she knew she would get that from her mom no matter how tense and awkward the phone call might be. That was what moms were for, right?
And Emma Walker tried at least. She tried to connect where she could, as bad as she and her ex-husband were as actual parents, they at least tried sometimes. That wasn't fair. Her dad tried only sometimes. But her mom really did do what she could whenever Sarah gave her a chance. It wasn't really her fault alone. Sarah had worked hard to put the wedge there between them too. It wasn't a one-sided rift.
Sarah almost picked up the phone to call. She just felt so miserably alone suddenly, which was ridiculous, since she'd always been literally alone, ever since she graduated from high school and hopped on a bus with a suitcase to find something else, something outside of the Carlsbad coastline, outside of California in general.
Sure, she'd dated, she'd had friends, she'd made connections. But even with the year and a half she'd been dating Bryce after he was hired at Rambeau's, she hadn't really been any less alone.
And that was something she needed to come to terms with.
That maybe this was just who she was.
For as long as she'd been in Carlsbad growing up bouncing between her mom, her dad, and her grandma, for as long as she spent in Seattle, New Orleans, and finally D.C., as close-knit as the group she'd fallen in with at Pâtisserie Rambeau—the nights walking to the midnight theater half-drunk on Barolo Chinato, waking up on Gertie's couch that smelled like lavender and cigarettes the next morning and having to hobble down to get a taxi back home, sometimes with Bryce, sometimes without—Sarah had never really belonged to that city. She'd never belonged to that group, to those people. To Bryce.
And they'd never belonged to her, either.
Always an outlier.
She didn't want it anymore.
It hurt.
Her phone rang again and she groaned out "Don't hang uuuuup" before she snagged her cell and looked. It wasn't a robocall.
It was Bryce Fucking Larkin.
"Fuck you!" she barked at her phone, feeling the lump in her throat. It had been almost two months now since that early morning when she'd found them together in Julia's office. Why couldn't she just get the hell past this crap? Did she even love him? Not really. Human pride was such a nasty thing, wasn't it? Ego?
And without realizing it, she hit answer and held the phone to her ear. "What?" she finally realized she had to ask.
"Oh. Jesus. Sarah, I thought maybe you'd… I don't know what. You just didn't answer. For, like, two months."
"I don't owe you anything."
"I didn't say you did. I just wanted to make sure you weren't, like…I don't know." He sighed heavily.
"Oh, don't worry. You're not the type girls jump into the Potomac over."
"Stop being so freaking caustic. All the damn time."
She raised her eyebrows. "Excuse me? I don't have good reason to be caustic?" she asked loudly into the phone. "She had your dick shoved halfway down her throat. If you wanted to bang your boss, Bryce, at least break up with your girlfriend first."
Bryce was silent for a long minute. And then he finally said, oh so quietly, "What happened to you? The way you're being, I mean, this just isn't…you."
She clenched her jaw. "How am I supposed to be? You didn't stop to think that having sex with Julia, our boss, would have consequences? Specifically for me. She was also my boss, you know, before you rode in on your sleek horse with those cool baby blues, you fucking asshole. She was my mentor. That was my career you fucked with."
"You're the one who quit, Sarah. Okay?" He sounded like he was getting angry too now, and honestly, fuck him for that. "Jules didn't fire you. She wanted to keep you on. She wanted to make it work."
"Mhm. Yeah. Well. Fuck her too. She can't have it both ways." Bryce was silent again. "What'd you think, I'd give you both my blessing and continue to make fuckin' pastries in the same kitchen as the two of you, knowing you probably fucked in there while you and I were still dating?"
Honestly, she wanted to scream. She wanted to hang up on him, grab the nearest pillow, and screech into it until she lost her voice. And then she wanted to cry.
"Sarah, I'm sorry. Don't think I don't feel guilt. It just…this all happened so sudden."
"Fuck that, Bryce. Don't even try that shit with me."
"It's the truth, Sar."
"Don't 'Sar' me. You were a selfish asshole and cheated on me with my boss, and you didn't give a shit what that would do to me, to my career, my dream to own my own shop someday, run my own kitchen."
"It wasn't about you."
"Bullshit. If it wasn't about me, you wouldn't have done it. It was about me. I wasn't enough. But that isn't on me. It's on you, Larkin. But it's out of my hands now."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I'm doing what I set out to do, and I'm doing it without Julia Fucking Rambeau and her fucking pâtisserie. I have everything I need. I'm the best chocolatier that Rambeau had. She said it herself. Now I'm doing something with it."
"…You're…You're opening up your own…chocolatier? Are you serious?"
"Yeah. I am." She hopped down from the counter, seeing that the Brita had filtered the water, grabbing her glass, pouring it, and taking a few long gulps. She was getting overheated and losing it a little, talking on the phone to her ex.
"Sarah, are you sure that's…the best decision? I mean, trying to compete with Pâtisserie Rambeau? It's an established landmark in D.C., Sarah. It has money in it. It'll crush you before you even get started."
"Good thing I'm not in D.C., huh."
He didn't say anything for a bit, and she nearly hung up, when she heard his quiet voice in her ear again. "What do you mean you aren't in D.C.?"
"What the fuck do you think that means, jackass?"
She felt mean now. She wanted to be mean. She wanted her words to sting.
"Can you chill out with the barbs for a sec, Sarah? Jesus. You aren't in D.C.? Where'd you go?"
"I went home."
"Home?" She could almost hear him wracking his brain. "Y-You said something about coming from New Orleans once. Shit, Sarah, did you go to New Orleans?"
That was right. She never actually told him…anything about her. Except that she'd moved to D.C. from New Orleans. That meant something, didn't it? That she hadn't told him anything about her life before she was hired by Julia Rambeau at her world famous pâtisserie.
She'd never entrusted him with even the little things. She hadn't ever really trusted him. It hurt to come to that realization. How much of herself had she wasted on him in spite of that?
"I didn't go to New Orleans." She wasn't telling him where she did go. "But I'm going to get my own place off the ground. I'm doing this, Bryce. In spite of you. In spite of Julia Rambeau."
"Neither of us wants anything but the best for you, Sarah. But God…Sarah, this is nuts."
"See if I don't, Bryce."
"You're really going to open a chocolatier all on your own? With no connections, no marketing experience, and no references? No capital? Do you know what even goes into owning your own shop, running your own kitchen?"
"Just because you fucked the owner, Bryce, doesn't mean you know more than I do about owning a business. Unless you're some kind of hellish creature that absorbs the skillsets of your victims when you screw 'em?"
"Wow." His voice was dulled. "This has made you pretty nasty, then. Noted."
"Yeah, it has. Guess the best solution to that would be that you lose this number."
"I...just called to make sure you were okay, to apologize. It's why I've been calling. I still care about—"
"Don't."
He sighed. "Okay, I won't. Look, I get it. I absolutely blew this. I fucked up. I should've been upfront about me and Julia." Yep! "But…Sarah, I'm worried about you, thinking you can just skip town to someplace where you know no one, no one knows you, thinking you can really start your own chocolate shop and have it even get off the ground, let alone be something you can…make a living on. Sarah, I'm being sincere."
"Oh? Congrats on that first. I'm happy for you," she said sarcastically.
"Let me help you, Sar. I know how to do this whole marketing thing. I did this in college, remember. Marketing major.""Fancy! But guess what? I don't need your help, college boy."
"I…might be able to persuade Julia to help you, if you won't accept my help."
"Especially no to that one!" she snarked, letting out a laugh in disbelief. "You both did everything you could to derail my plans, my dream, but I'm done letting other people dictate what I can and can't do. I don't want you calling me again, Bryce. Okay? Just…don't call me again. Don't worry—and I know you won't, not really—but I'll be just fine. Me and my chocolatier."
He sighed and sounded actually regretful when he spoke again. "I guess I deserved all of this. It's a fair response to what I did to you. Just know I-I didn't want to hurt you."
Sarah hung up then. She was done. She didn't want to hear the bullshit anymore. Swallowing hard, she let the phone drop onto the counter and she hunched forward, elbows on the tile, face buried in her hands. She cried.
She cried harder than she'd cried in a few weeks at least.
And she wasn't sure how much time passed with her hunched over the counter sobbing, but by the time she was fit enough to stand up straight again, she was thinking about where she'd been just three months ago. Her work had been her life, she'd had a mentor to look up to, a boyfriend, friends.
Now she was in Los Angeles, totally alone, and she was going to have to figure out how to make her savings last in an expensive city, get her business started, and be able to support herself if it didn't make a profit right away.
Did she make a mistake doing this? Moving cross country? Alone?
She spent the rest of the evening in a daze, slowly unpacking boxes, ordering takeout, not even enjoying the rich flavors of the Mexican food—real Mexican food—she ate. And then she finally crawled into her sleeping bag after finding a spot to lay out her mattress on the living room floor behind the couch, passing out.
$...$
"Hey, you think maybe next time Ellie will let you plan your own birthday party?" Morgan muttered as they rejoined the party.
"Nope," he said, sticking his hands in his pockets. He'd changed his shirt at least so that the pocket protector wasn't there anymore, if only to get that tenseness at the corners of his sister's mouth to smooth out. "I don't blame her, though. She knows if I planned my own birthday party, there would be no party. And instead, I'd do what I do every other day of the year."
"Video games and candy?"
"Basically, yeah," he chuckled. "Now, Morgan…Morgan, come on. I also read comic books."
"True, true. Sorry."
"S'okay."
Chuck met Ellie's gaze across the courtyard. She very dramatically mouthed MINGLE at him, her eyes wide, and he sighed. "Okay, I'm being given orders to mingle. Break? Meet at the fountain in, like, twenty minutes?"
"Yep. Word of advice, grab a beer first. Two beers. You can give the other one to a girl. Sort of opens up the conversation."
"H-How? What? How does handing her a beer open a conversation?"
"Makes her more open to conversation."
"Oh, that's fair. I thought you meant, like, 'What kind of beer do you like?' Okay, I'm going before Ellie comes over here."
"Run."
Chuck broke Ellie's hard stare and went to the ice chest, pulling a beer out.
"How you doin', birthday boy?" Captain Awesome asked, still standing at the barbecue. Bless the guy, he'd been there for almost the whole night. And it wasn't that Chuck didn't appreciate his sister and her boyfriend. He did. They sincerely wanted him to have a good birthday.
So he grinned as sincerely as he could at the extremely attractive blonde. "Pretty damn good, Captain Awesome. Pretty damn good. You?"
"Awesome!"
Chuck let out an "Ehhhh!", popped the cap off of his beer bottle, and lifted the beer in a cheers, taking a long swig and scoping out the party.
He could do this. Just a few conversations. And, per Ellie's orders, keep Jill's name out of his mouth. He could manage that, right? Sure he could.
Easy.
Maybe.
$...$
She woke up the next morning, blinking tiredly at all of her stuff still strewn about the apartment. And in spite of the dull ache in her head from sleeping with her neck in a weird position, she was struck by something.
The gross semi-hungover feeling she had from crying so much the night before still lingered, and yet…
Climbing to her feet and stretching, she turned to take it all in again.
She'd really just loaded everything into a rental moving truck, drove all the way across the country, and was here, in LA, ready to start fresh. Truly fresh.
She'd done this for herself. The first thing she'd really done for herself. This was for her. She was going to make her dreams come true in the angel city.
And her dreams would taste a lot like chocolate, hot cocoa against your tongue after coming in from the frigid winter cold outside. She could already feel the comforting warmth starting to spread through her cold body.
She walked to the window, shifting the curtain out of the way and looking out over the city that had woken up hours before she had, the streets already bustling with people and cars. It was just like the city she'd sometimes visited when she was a kid, the streets she and her dad had worked when she was young enough to not really understand what they were doing was wrong. And yet, it was completely different from what she'd remembered.
It was a foreign place to her, so different from the beachside town she'd grown up in, about 90 miles south from here.
This was her home now, or at least, she was going to try. Whatever that meant. Besides opening her own shop, she didn't know what else she'd find here, she didn't know what else she even wanted here.
One thing she knew, now that she'd had a whole night's sleep, was that she wasn't going to feel sorry for herself anymore. That was over. She'd gotten the hell out of a city that had done her no favors. She'd gotten the hell out of a bad relationship, away from a cheating boyfriend, and a mentor who turned out to be a terrible person, even if she could produce the perfect turnover.
"Prove those assholes wrong," she breathed to herself, standing up straight and lifting her chin. "Prove all of them wrong."
Most importantly, she knew she could do this. She just had to work. It was going to be worth the work, but she had to put her big girl pants on. She knew she had been the best artist in the entire pâtisserie. She needed to get her feet under her as far as the business part of this went. But she didn't need anyone else. She had what it took.
After a quick shower, some coffee, and a muffin from the cafe across the street from her apartment, Sarah spent the day unpacking, sorting her apartment, even getting her landlord and his teenage son to help her with the bed in exchange for baked goods. (They'd be future customers now.)
She was able to successfully pretend she didn't notice the boy's lingering gaze throughout.
By the end of the day, she owned a car, something she hadn't needed in D.C. at all. But this wasn't D.C., it was LA.
And the next morning, she was on the hunt for a space to rent for her chocolatier, researching and cataloguing what she'd need as she skipped around the greater Los Angeles area.
There'd been the Echo Park location, but the kitchen had been too big, the actual front space too small for what she had in mind. The West Hollywood location was too cutesy, and right near a coffee place that sold chocolate. She wasn't looking to compete with a neighbor. The spot in Little Armenia was too far off the beaten path, a lone little building that customers would have to go out of their way to drive to if they wanted her chocolates. There wouldn't be the opportunity for many walk-ins.
Another day passed, and then another, and another…and the days continued on until she finally resigned herself and decided to find a realtor.
Chocolate, she could do. Pastries? Absolutely.
But after three weeks of striking out, and an application and offer falling through, she needed a professional. As much as it would hurt her wallet, taking too long to find a place for her chocolatier would be more catastrophic than just coughing up the money for a good realtor now.
Sue took her out to Manhattan beach, to Venice Beach, back to Brentwood, Studio City, all in a span of a week.
By that time, Sarah had managed to make her apartment feel more like a place she could actually live in, without boxes and furniture clogging the walkways, her kitchen stocked, a new clean shower curtain in the bathroom. Granted, the walls still looked bare as she sold most of the things she'd collected over the years, things she didn't absolutely need, hoping that would help her out with this new venture.
Feeling settled in one aspect of her life still wasn't helping with the other aspects, however.
As nice as Sue was, and as good at her job as she was, Sarah needed a place for her chocolatier and she needed to put that money down as soon as possible so that she could get started with renovations and a whole mess of things people typically had a whole trustworthy crew of friends and family to help with. Or at least, that was how she assumed things worked.
It was how the Pâtisserie Rambeau had started up. She'd heard the story over and over, about Julia's beginnings, the upbringing in Manhattan with moneyed parents, siblings who went to law school and medical school, but all she wanted to do was bake, and oh they supported her of course but thought she was crazy. Blah blah.
Boring rich person who never had any real struggle getting what she wanted. Even other women's boyfriends.
"Okay, this might be a shot in the dark, Sarah, but I'm trying it anyway," Sue said as they walked together from their respective cars. Sarah had followed Sue from her downtown LA office to this massive outside shopping center looking place in Burbank. It hadn't taken long to get to the area, about 12 minutes with no traffic. And the parking lot was busy, especially over by the large electronics department store that was probably the main draw for the shopping center.
"It's interesting," she said, squinting around at the other businesses using the same parking lot as the electronics store. She didn't see anything like what she was planning to open up. Sandwiches, a "spy shop" (whatever that was), a jewelry store, an artisan kitchen supplies store, dry cleaner, hats, a party store, and a few big family restaurants that could be a potential pull for her.
"I know, it isn't probably the nicest looking location. Lots of pavement, blacktop, and that big chain retail building. Probably not what you were picturing when you wanted to open a chocolate shop, but I thought of it as sort of a clean slate." Sue waddled on ahead of Sarah and led her towards one of the larger spaces in the center. "A little flat at the front, sure, but the center owners are very lenient on their renters as far as renovations. This space'll be yours to with what you want, see. You can take out the front tables and chairs if you want. Put your own awning in at the entrance. Something French maybe?"
Sarah inwardly smirked at that. "Yeah. What about window paint?"
"Sure. Of course, if you went with this location, you'd have a meeting with the owners. They'd give you better guidelines, but they're a lovely older couple. I'm sure they're open to reasoning. They've been super responsive with me. On top of it."
Nodding, Sarah took in the front of the place. She could see the remainders of Chinese architecture and lettering on parts of the building, the doors and windows. "What was this place before?"
"Uhhh, some sort of Chinese takeout, I think?" She fixed some of the hair that escaped her updo behind her ear. "Shall we head in and check it out?"
Sarah nodded and let Sue unlock the padlock on the door, pulling it open. Sarah spent the next 15 minutes going through the dining area, inspecting the tables, the counters, and they finally headed into the kitchen.
She could already spot the changes that would make this place the chocolate shop of her dreams. She could picture filling chocolate molds in the kitchen, hunching over her creations with a piping bag in hand, her employees—however many she ended up with, who even knew how long from now—rushing around behind her.
"So? What do you think, Sarah?"
"What's the price?"
Before Sue could answer, Sarah's phone went off. Apologizing, she dug through her purse. She'd applied for a business loan from the local bank and was waiting to see if it would go through, and she'd been answering every single call that came through.
But this time as she answered, she heard a woman's voice ask if she was Sarah Walk—
It cut out. As she looked down at her phone, she frowned. "What the hell?"
Her phone dropped the call.
"Everything alright?" Sue asked.
"It's this stupid phone. It keeps dropping important calls. Remember? It did it to you, yesterday. And I'm waiting to hear back about a small business loan." Convenient that it worked just fine when her cheating ex called to condescend to her one last time.
"I had a phone that did that, too. My last phone. I just went and bought a new one. In my business, I need a working phone."
"Oh, of course."
They continued their business, and with the rental rates in her mind, the amenities, and the look of the place…
Well, it wasn't exactly what she wanted. And the location wasn't exactly ideal. But shoppers at the large retail store across the lot could see her chocolate shop as they walked to their cars. On cold winter days, maybe they'd see her and head in for a mug of hot cocoa or a mocha latte.
But she'd pictured a cute little shop, something that maybe used to be a home for someone, nestled in the heart of the city. People walking by could just pop in. The way things were where she'd interned in New Orleans.
This was removed from that city feel. It was more of a suburb. Chains were all around this shopping center.
She just wasn't sure.
As they stopped in the main dining area of the building a half hour later, the inspection and tour complete, Sarah sighed. "I'm just not sure about this one. Maybe I just don't have the imagination to see how this area in particular could look a little less…erm…"
"Industrial?"
"Straight out of the 1990s," she joked, chuckling with the other woman.
"Well, there haven't been many offers, so I think you have time if you'd like to see other places."
"I would like to see other places, maybe more in the city, downtown a little. But…this isn't a no. It's definitely not a no."
Sue nodded. "Alright, I'll add this to the maybe pile."
As they headed out of the shop, Sarah's phone rang again. She answered it immediately. "This is Sarah…"
There was some scratching, and then she heard a voice come through, garbled, just for a moment. She knocked her phone against the heel of her palm a few times and brought it back to her ear. "Hello? I can't hear you…. I think the connection is…"
But they'd hung up. Or her phone had just dropped it. Either one.
"UGH!" She looked up at the sky in frustration. "I can't get my loan if my phone won't take their calls. This is so unprofessional."
Sue then pointed over Sarah's shoulder. "The Buy More is right there."
Sarah turned to look. "Oh… Oh, right. I just can't afford a new phone right now. What with, you know, this. Trying to get a place to get my business started. Paying my apartment rent on top of that."
"Well, they'd at least know how to help." She shrugged. "They have those…oh, what are they called? Dweeb Dudes or whatever. They fix computers and phones. My wife took our eighteen year old there with her laptop and they got a virus off of it in a few hours, saved her laptop."
"Really?" Sarah raised an eyebrow and turned to stare at the large green and yellow building. "You know what? Why not? Thanks, Sue. I'm gonna just head over there and see what they do with this." She wiggled her phone.
"I'll see ya, hon. Give me a call if you change your mind on this place. I think it'd be a pretty darn good choice, personally. I think you have the creativity and artistry to make it exactly what you need it to be. But this is your dream. You get to pick where that dream starts."
Sue winked, put an aunt-like hand on Sarah's shoulder, and walked back to her car.
Smiling at the departing realtor, Sarah shook her head and turned to look at the shop she was still mulling over. She shut her eyes and tried to change the awning to something a bit more Belle Epoche in her mind. Would it stick out like a sore thumb in this shopping center? Absolutely. Did that really matter? She wasn't sure.
It could potentially be a lure for people.
She opened her eyes again. That kitchen had been great. With some shine, it might be just what she needed. But what use was a great kitchen if nobody wanted to buy her chocolate?
Turning, she looked down at her phone in her hand, then looked up at the Buy More.
Sighing, she strolled across the parking lot.
$...$
Chuck knocked on the shut door, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe. Switching the Gatorade he held over into his hand he'd just knocked with, he heard the approaching steps behind the door, before it was whipped open to reveal a large man with a serious look on his face.
"What—Oh. Bartowski. You get my sandwich?"
"Yessir, here it is." Chuck thrusted the bag out towards his boss. "Meatball sub with extra meat and extra sauce. Got the apple side like you asked."
"Good work, Bartowski." Big Mike snagged the bag. "Come in, son. I need to talk with you."
Sighing, Chuck followed his boss into his office. Thankfully, Big Mike didn't tell him to shut it, which probably meant he wasn't in trouble.
"Shut that, will you?"
Oh.
Reaching back, he grabbed the door and shut it behind him. Then he turned to face Big Mike again and lifted his bright blue drink. "May I?" he asked.
"Go right ahead, son." He unwrapped his sub, licked his lips, then grabbed it, lifting it in a mimicry of what Chuck had just done. "May I?"
"Absolutely, sir."
Big Mike took a big bite, and then he spoke to Chuck around his food. "After I finish my lunch, I, erm, I have a bit of a meeting. A meeting I need to be at. I'll be gone the rest of the day. So I'm going to leave the store in your charge, you got it, Bartowski?"
Chuck nodded seriously, trying to show Big Mike that he would take his charge with utmost gravity. "Yessir. I've got it. I'm in charge."
"You know what that means, right?"
"Make sure nothing catches on fire."
"Yes…"
"And that neither Jeff nor Lester end up arrested for lewd conduct."
"There it is."
Chuck held up his hand solemnly. "I will not fail you, boss."
"I know you won't, son. And whatever else happens before I get back tomorrow… just make sure all traces of it are gone before I get here, huh? Please."
"You got it." He did finger guns around his Gatorade. "Is that all, sir? I have a booby trap to set for Lester." Big Mike's unamused face made Chuck clear his throat. "Just joshing. Sir."
"You better be, Bartowski."
Gulping, he nodded. "Have a, um, good meeting, sir. And enjoy that sub."
Heading back out onto the sales floor, Chuck sighed and took a long sip of his drink. He'd need plenty of electrolytes to get through the rest of this day. He was already tired and it wasn't even 1 yet. He still had over 7 hours to go. Damn it.
Granted, he probably shouldn't have stayed up playing Halo with Morgan until 4 in the morning.
That freaking birthday party Ellie had tried to throw him the night before…
She was trying so hard to shake him to life and he felt it and it made him feel worse almost. He knew there was something wrong with him. He knew there was a lot wrong with him. And he knew that there was probably stuff he could change if he just did it.
But he couldn't make himself do it.
Or maybe he could and he just wasn't in a place in his life where he wanted to do it.
Change was hard.
And he was fine for the most part. He was surviving.
Maybe that wasn't enough for Ellie, but right now it was enough for him.
He felt like such a loser thinking that, and yet, still, he wasn't going to make the change. He'd spend just a little while longer sitting in this lazy and depressive rut he knew he was in.
Yawning, he walked around behind the Nerd Herd desk and plopped down, checking each of the laptops he was running diagnostics on, tapping around on his own computer. And then a post-it stuck to the counter behind the laptop caught his eye. Snagging it, he rolled his eyes. In a messy scrawl, someone had written "call Hapsburg to check on x-250 hard drive for Tripp job" then stuck it there for someone else to do. Namely him he knew.
Holding up the post-it, knowing the rest of the Nerd Herders had probably already disappeared somewhere, he still called out "Hey, so instead of leaving a post-it for someone else to do, can you just do the thing? Please?"
No answer.
He didn't expect one.
Getting to his feet again, he ran his fingers over all of the business cards they had scattered on the desk, trying to find the Hapsburg customer service number. He'd tried to make this place more organized and easier to manage when he was first promoted to supervisor, but it ended up wrecked anyway because nobody else followed his organization process, so he quit trying on that front.
Finding the number, he picked up the phone and made the call. And so…the marathon session of being on hold began.
Ten minutes into it, Morgan sidled up to the desk. "Sup, man."
"Hey, buddy."
"Just sold a big screen so I'm done for the day. Hit my day's quota."
Chuck furrowed his brow. "That's awesome, Morgs, but you're just…done now?"
"Yeah." He shrugged. "Got my commission for the day. Really, for the rest of the week nobody can be on my ass about sales."
Shaking his head, he let out a snort. And here he thought he was pretty bad. Morgan had him beat. "You do you, buddy."
"I heard through the grapevine you're in charge for the rest of the day." Chuck nodded, shimmying his shoulders a bit to the elevator jazz. "Aw man, that is awesome news. Is Big Mike already gone?"
"Not until he finishes his sub."
"Okay, let us know when he's out of here."
"Why?" Chuck saw Big Mike already making his way through the aisle down the side of the store, making a break for the front door. "Aaaaand there he goes. A streak of light."
Morgan turned and frowned. "Why the hell is he going that fast?"
"I don't know. I don't care," Chuck said emphatically, reaching up to straighten his pocket protector.
"Well, I mean, neither do I, but I'm at least a little curious. Affair?"
"It's not an affair. He isn't even married."
"But I mean, like, with someone else's wife."
"Why is that the first thing your brain goes to?"
"It's the funnest explanation."
"Not at all. Morgan, the funnest explanation is that he got a strange-sounding phone call from a long lost college buddy who he made a pact with never to talk about it again after they saw something weird happen in an empty field where they were smoking pot one night."
Morgan shook his head in awe. "You're right. That's way funner. UFO?"
"Probably. Maybe a government secret base that's invisible—"
"Yes, to the naked eye. But the strain of MJ they smoked revealed it to them."
"Perfect."
They high fived as Chuck watched Big Mike finally leave the building. And then Morgan whipped back around to face him. "So we're all leaving at 5 now right? He'll never know."
"He knows when the cash drawers get logged out and counted. He can read the sales log tomorrow morning and see that sales ended at 5 and he'll wonder why. So no. We aren't leaving at 5. I need this job."
"Shit."
"Why?"
"I just wanted to leave at 5," Morgan said with a shrug. "Can we at least have a Stargate marathon in the home theater room?"
"Just don't set anything on fire and leave it the way it was when you went in. Which means I don't want Big Mike finding popcorn stuck in the couch like he did last time. You know he looks every morning after Jeff and Lester—"
"They fucking BLEW IT for the rest of us."
"That's, like, their main function here."
"Assholes."
Morgan leaned back with his elbows on the desk and stayed quiet for a while then as Chuck finally got someone on the line. He asked a few questions, gave them a tracking number. As they were giving him a date for the potential delivery of the part he needed to make the repairs on Mr. Tripp's laptop, he heard Morgan gasp.
That was such a regular occurrence, he just kept writing the note.
"Stop the presses! Who is that? Vicki Vale!"
Happy Chuck pilot anniversary, everybody. :-) Please review. Thanks!
SarahsSupplyCloset