10. Oskar
The two weeksthat followed my phone date with Kelsey were busy.
Really, really busy.
“Don’t tell me we have a four top coming in when we’re this backed up in the kitchen, Sophie.”
“They reserved two weeks ago.” Sophie was panicked. “It’s a birthday party.”
“Then why did you take those— Fuck it,” I snapped. “We’ll make it work.” I pointed to the chef’s table. “Put them in the kitchen with me. Tell them it’s a birthday present. Hopefully they’ll think the madness is cool.”
“We’ll get it done, Chef.” Victor tried to calm me down, but I was steaming.
With all of the harvest events at the wineries in town, the restaurant was swamped. Victor, Sophie, and the whole staff had been busting their asses trying to accommodate every guest, but we inevitably had a few blowups in the kitchen as I dealt with a busy restaurant, all of the work at the winery, and a frustrated libido that had no outlet within two hundred miles.
It had been over two weeks since I’d seen Kelsey’s face.
I’d kept extracurricular activities to a minimum when I moved here. I wasn’t a monk, but I was far more discreet than I had been in Copenhagen.
In the restaurant world, most of the times that the rest of the world is having a good time, you’re the one working. Weekends and evenings are work time, which made having a normal relationship pretty challenging unless it was with someone in the same business, and then, more often than not, egos became involved.
When I moved to the Central Coast, I started fresh.
No one knew me here. I had no reputation or baggage, and I could be the man I wanted to be. Most of the women I’d been involved with since moving here were casual acquaintances I didn’t plan on seeing more than a few times. After meeting Kelsey, I’d stopped returning their calls.
Long showers had become my friend. I dreamed about Kelsey Rankin nearly every night. I loved it. And I hated it. Especially on nights like this one.
“Four walking out.” I cleaned the edge of one plate just before a waiter grabbed them. “Victor, where are we?”
After that first email for recipes Thursday night, Kelsey and I exchanged emails almost every day. We sent each other links to funny or interesting articles. I made a game of finding the most horrendous American recipes from fifty years ago—they almost always involved processed cheese or gelatin—and Kelsey managed to find obscure Danish recipes and would ask me if I knew how to make them.
I usually didn’t.
Kelsey finally sent me a picture of her that I immediately printed out and pinned up behind the desk in my room next to the sketch she had sent me from our phone date. I liked the picture, but I loved the sketch.
She was intelligent, funny, and could make me laugh even when I had a tendency to take myself a little too seriously. She knew a hell of a lot about food, farming, and the history of the area, which made talking to her about new recipes or ingredients fun, and she almost always brought up something I hadn’t considered before.
Kelsey was self-deprecating about her cooking talents, but she was far more creative than she gave herself credit for. But she was confident about her work, and that was always sexy.
I grabbed a pork loin from the fridge and was cutting into it when Victor bumped into my shoulder. I sliced my hand with the boning knife, and blood spilled over the almost-prepared roast.
“Damn it, Victor. So fucking clumsy. What the hell?” I yelled as a wrapped my index finger in a kitchen towel and pulled it quickly away from the station. I rushed over to the sink to clean and rewrap my hand, dumping the meat that I could no longer use.
Victor looked horrified. “Sorry, Chef. I’ll clean it up and start prepping another roast.”
I was just about to lose it again when I heard my phone ring. I grabbed it from my front pocket and looked at the screen. It was Kelsey. I took a deep breath and stomped to the back door.
“I’m taking five.”
“Yes, Chef,” they called behind me.
“Clean this shit up, Victor. And you’re going to have to make an extra trip to the butcher tomorrow, or we’re going to be short on the pork all weekend. Don’t interrupt me unless you’re bleeding.”
I walked outside and took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm down. My phone had stopped ringing by the time I sat down, but I hit Kelsey’s number and called her right back.
“Hey, Chef. I was just leaving a voicemail. I figured you were probably busy, but I wanted to say hi.”
“You have no idea how glad I am to hear from you right now. You may have actually saved Victor’s life. I’ll let him know to send a thank-you card.”
She made sympathetic noises. “Bad night?”
“Just a stupid accident, but I cut myself and ruined a pork roast. Luckily, it’s my left hand and not too bad. This week has been crazy, and it’s only Friday.”
“I wish I was there to give you a back rub and calm you down.”
“You have no idea how great that would be.” I smiled just hearing her voice. I could already feel my blood pressure going down.
“What’s this weekend looking like? What’s the weather supposed to be?”
“Nice actually.” I looked at the sky. “And still dry, so Josh’s happy because that means he doesn’t have to worry about rot in the grapes. It seems like every winery on the coast has a party this weekend.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever asked—do you do catering for those?”
“God, no. I did when I was first starting out here, but not anymore. That’s so much fucking work. I don’t know how some of these guys do it and have restaurants too. Most of them are family deals, so they have more people to work events.”
It was nice talking to someone who understood the business but wasn’t a chef. She knew enough about restaurants that she understood the ins and outs of what day-to-day challenges were like, but I didn’t feel competitive with her. If she were a chef, I would have been. I knew that about myself.
“Where are you?” I glanced at my watch because my five minutes were up, but I didn’t want to stop talking. “What do you have going on?”
“I’m home writing. I’m getting ready to go to a new place in Sausalito later. Pacific fusion seafood. God knows there’s a ton of them already, but the chef is supposed to be promising, so we’ll see if the menu stands out.”
The corner of my mouth turned up. “Just don’t eat at the chef’s table, all right?”
She laughed, but I was only half joking. We had never talked about it, but the thought of Kelsey being with anyone else made my gut turn.
She cleared her throat. “How about I don’t let any other chef eat at my table? How’s that?”
“I can live with that.”
She was silent for a moment. “And how about you? Any reservations for the kitchen scheduled?”
So we were having that conversation in a roundabout way.
“I have a four top coming in about five minutes.”
I heard a choking sound over the phone.
“Came out back to gather my strength.”
“Four?” Kelsey was laughing. “You’d need a choreographer for something like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know what I was thinking.” I smiled. “But I can promise that none of them are going to get the same experience you did.” I kept my tone light, but I hoped she understood the meaning behind the words. I was going to pursue her as much as I could, and I wasn’t interested in anyone else.
“So…” Her voice was serious. “I don’t know exactly what we’re doing, but I don’t juggle. Relationships, I mean. I’m not interested in anyone else right now.”
I answered quickly. “Neither am I.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” I had a grin on my face. She wasn’t my girlfriend, but we were definitely something after this conversation.
“You need to get back to work, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Might need to grab an energy drink.”
“Or two if there are four people at the chef’s table.”
I snorted. “Don’t worry, I’ll stay hydrated.”
“Good. Now go feed people.”
I smiled. “Yes, Chef.”