Page 67 of Bringing Home the Bacon
Chapter 21
Colleen
Bacon was right.
We are an excellent team.
After Bacon’s brainstorm—or lust storm, as he called it—we spent a full month planning our family cooking workshops while I put the final touches on my book and sent it off for publishing. We created a menu and a curriculum. We sourced fresh ingredients from local Greene County farms and marketed our proverbial buns off. Fork Lick Elementary kindly included us in their monthly PTA newsletter. Molly emailed her CSA clients. Diane filmed a cute video interview with us and posted it on her YouTube channel. Gran’s TikTok stardom continues to rise, and she used it to our advantage with several videos. The producing team at Yes, Chef! did a social media push for us too. Even Ginny offered to hang a poster up for us in The Quick Lick and include a flyer in every bag of groceries that leaves the store.
It feels like the entire town is showing us their support.
All the while, Bacon and I have been falling more and more in love up in the converted choir loft of our old white church while the design for the new restaurant takes shape below.
That’s right.
I’ve fallen head over heels in love with him.
And today is the day I’m going to finally tell him.
We just wrapped our final class of the month-long family cooking workshops. It’s unseasonably warm for early spring, so we’re celebrating the end of the session today with a big spaghetti and meatball dinner out on our rolling farm hills—prepared by our students of course—followed by the ice cream we all made together by combining frozen Bedd Fellows Farm strawberries with the finest cream from Udderly Creamy.
I’m busy pulling tubs of ice cream out of the restaurant’s massive freezers and placing them on a rolling cart when Ginny Quick wanders into the kitchen like she owns the place.
“Impressive showing today,” she says, holding a bowl of spaghetti and munching on a meatball.
“Why, thank you, Gin. We’re really proud of how everything turned out.”
“You should be. You and Bacon brought in $32,000 this month for Bedd Fellows? That’s incredible, Collie. It truly is.”
“I appreciate that. And thanks for coming out today. It means a lot seeing how much the town has supported us.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it.” Ginny’s eyes scan the restaurant space. She walks to the far end of the kitchen and peers up the back steps that lead to our loft. “It’s ironic that a girl who can count the number of times she’s been in a church on one hand is now living inside one,” she says.
“Ha. True.” I pull the last tub of ice cream out and place it on the rolling cart, readying to wheel it outside to our participants. “To be fair, this building hasn’t been a functioning church in over a decade.”
It’s true. Many businesses have tried and failed to succeed in this location over the years.
I really hope we’re the business that sticks.
I hope we stick.
“You certainly have changed a lot over the years,” Ginny says as she slurps a long piece of spaghetti into her mouth.
“How so?” I ask.
“Well, look at you! You’re the girl who always said you were an ‘independent woman.’”
“I am an independent woman,” I say with no small amount of snark in my tone.
“Really?” Ginny’s voice hits an irritating high note. “I don’t mean any offense by this, and I’m over-the-moon happy for you, but your life looks anything but independent these days. In fact, I’d say it’s downright dependent.”
I should ask her to stop talking. I should politely tell her to leave. But apparently, I am a glutton for punishment because I say, “What do you mean?”
“When we were teenagers, you always said how much you hated the way your brothers controlled you?—”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupt her. “I don’t think I said they controlled me?—”
“You definitely did! You said they always had their noses in your business and didn’t trust you to handle your ‘own shit’—your words, not mine—and that when you were eighteen, you were going to live on your own and never let another man dictate what you do ever again.”
