Rafael
Even though I headed in early the next day, when I went to open the back door, I found it already unlocked.
“Hello?” I called out with a frown, leaning my head around the door into the kitchen and then turning towards the storage area. If someone had broken in…
“Hey, Raf!”
The sound of the voice coming from the other end of the kitchen made my shoulders rise and tense up. Drake Warwick. He was already here.
Grey had given him a set of keys?
“It’s ,” I said, turning. Drake was just emerging from the end of the kitchen where the dishwashing sink took up its own alcove. There was a skinny kid behind him that I didn’t recognize, some twenty-something with a tortured artist look about his messy brown hair. What, was he bringing his boyfriend here before work already?
Drake grinned impishly at my correction of his name. “I found this kid wandering around outside,” he said. “He says Grey hired him to wash dishes. Do you know anything about that?”
So, not a boyfriend. Good. Because that would be been unprofessional – not for any other particular reason.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Luca,” the kid replied. He hadn’t really looked up yet. I noticed he spent a lot of time looking at his hands or the floor. Was he just shy, or was this something shady? Grey hadn’t told me anything about hiring someone already.
“Luca,” I repeated. “What did Grey say about the job?”
“He told me to be here in time for prep, but I don’t know when prep is, so I kind of hung out in the parking lot all day,” he said with a self-deprecating shrug. “Um, Grey’s my Dad’s friend. Or they used to work together, or something. I don’t really know. But he found out I was looking for work and he told my Dad I could come work here for him.”
So far, it sounded like Grey. There was only one way to be sure. I studied him for a long moment, trying to think of a subtle way to ask.
“You’re not sure if it’s legit?” Drake asked. I looked up to find him studying me.
“I’m not sure, no,” I said. “You could have just let in some junkie who wanted to rob the place.”
“I’m not a junkie!” Luca burst out.
“Call Grey, then.”
I chuckled. “You don’t know Grey yet. There’s no point calling him at this time of day. He’ll be asleep. He stays out all night and sleeps until the afternoon. He’ll be here in time for family dinner and to see everyone before the official shift start time.”
“Alright, well…” Drake shrugged and turned to Luca. “Do you fuck guys?”
Luca blinked up at him with extremely wide eyes. “What?”
“Do you fuck guys?” Drake repeated with patience. “Do you suck cock? Do you take big dicks up your ass? Or, maybe you put your di-”
“Chef Warwick,” I ground out. “That’s enough.”
“Yes,” Luca said in a very small voice.
“There you go,” Drake said, clapping his hand on Luca’s shoulder. “Sounds like he’s legit to me.”
I sighed. Just because the kid fitted with Grey’s hiring policy – or at least, knew enough to pretend that he did – had no real bearing on whether he was actually a new hire. But we did need a dishwasher, and he was here, and if Grey was lax enough to leave us in this situation then it was his problem. Not mine.
“Right,” I said. “Let me show you where everything is.”
Ainslie and Beau joined us before I was done giving Luca more or less the same tour I had given Drake the day before, minus the unnecessary addition of the menu. Ainslie looked him up and down and, before I’d had a chance to say a word, he broke out into a broad grin.
“Grey got us a dishwasher?”
“Looks that way,” I nodded soberly, but Ainslie was already throwing his arms up in victory and dancing around the kitchen.
I shook my head as he attempted – and failed – to get Beau to dance with him, eliciting laughter from the others in the kitchen. We had serious work to get on with, and poor Luca looked absolutely bewildered. He was hugging an arm across himself, clearly unsure of what to do with all this silliness.
“What’s the matter?” Drake asked, leaning close to me. “Not a dancer yourself?”
I shot him a scowl. “This is a professional kitchen,” I said. A clang announced Ainslie’s bump into one of the cast-iron pans, rattling it on the stove where it had been placed in preparation for the day, and I raised my eyebrows to indicate that my point had been made.
“Yeah,” Drake said, looking me up and down with narrowed eyes. He folded his arms across his chest. “Figures.”
“What figures?” I asked, frowning at him and wishing he would shut up and let me get on with my job already.
“You’re not a dancer,” he said and snorted. “I bet you’ve never even been to the club next door.”
I rolled my eyes and brushed past him. “If that’s your way of asking, rest assured, I will never be going there with you .” I gestured impatiently to Luca. “Come on, I’ll get you set up with the leftover stuff we didn’t manage to wash last night.”
I could feel Drake’s eyes burning into my back as I walked away from him – and hear his mocking laughter echoing in my ears.
So what if he was right?
I didn’t have time to go dancing . I was a chef. The prime dancing hours were when I was busy in the kitchen.
Besides, there were more things to life than dancing .
I opened a drawer under the sink, finding the shelves where we stacked dishes when there wasn’t time to get through them all, and groaned inwardly. We’d left a lot for Luca to tackle. It was a good thing he was here, or we wouldn’t have had enough dishes to get through service.
“Start with these,” I said. I thought for a second and tempered my instructions. “Start with the plates, glasses, and knives and forks. Not the kitchen knives, just the customer knives. Call me back over when you’ve done with those. I’ll show you where to put them away.”
The day seemed to pass in a blur. I cooked family dinner – alone, this time, while Drake started on menu prep for his first night of actually cooking – and we ate before I’d even managed to catch my breath. Grey showed up to eat and confirmed that Luca was actually a new hire and not just a stray from the street, and then we were back in the thick of it, the chaos of the kitchen taking over.
Every time I thought I was getting somewhere with the list of tasks on my plate, Luca shouted me over and asked for more instructions. I had to show him exactly how to polish the silverware so that it would pass Nikolai’s inspection, how to look after the cast iron pots and pans, and what products to use on our beautiful and beloved knife sets. It seemed every time I turned around from helping Luca, Drake was laughing and showing off in front of Grey, who had inexplicably remained in the kitchen – tossing up a whole bunch of chopped greens into the air and catching them into the same pan to continue searing them, leaning close to Grey to pick up something on the other side of him instead of asking him to pass it, plating up the first orders with an unnecessary flourish.
But worst of all was the way that Grey didn’t even seem to recognize how cynical this all was, and instead oohed and aahed and even clapped like he’d never seen a chef before.
“Where do these go?” Luca asked, holding up a few tools that he’d washed together – spatulas, whisks, and tongs.
“See the colored tape on the handle?” I said, tapping it on one of the items – a green spatula. “That tells you which station it’s from.”
Luca raised the green spatula, glanced around the kitchen, and frowned. “But there’s a mix of stuff at the green station.”
I followed his eyes. He’d managed to work out, correctly, that the station with a band of magnetic green tape across the cooker hood was the place for the spatula. But he was right. The spatula there had a band of red tape around the handle.
I stalked over to it. “Who put this here?” I asked.
Drake shrugged as he glanced up, seeing the red spatula in my hand. “I did. When you asked me to wash up yesterday.”
I scowled. “You didn’t think the colored tape meant anything?”
He smiled lightly. “There’s a spatula at each station. What does it matter?”
I gritted my teeth. “This is our system,” I said. “Green goes with green and then we know where everything is.” I put the green spatula against the green tape on the hood, feeling the magnets in both click together and hold it in place. I walked around to the red station – Luca trailing behind me – and went to put the red spatula in place, only to find it was matched up with the blue tongs.
I took a deep breath and tried not to let it ruin my day – but part of me thought that Drake had probably done this on purpose just to rattle me.
And damn it, it was working.
“What’s the matter, Raf?” Drake asked as I passed behind him, glancing over his shoulder at my face, right after Grey had finally stepped away to woo his customers.
“The matter?” I huffed, wishing I could just ignore him but finding myself responding anyway, as I gathered a bunch of chopped ingredients and threw them into the waiting pan that should have been filled ten minutes ago. “Who says anything’s the matter?”
“You’re not having any fun,” he claimed, spinning his greens into the air again with a grin. “I haven’t seen you smile all day. Lighten up and have some fun!”
“I’m sorry that my face isn’t satisfactory to you,” I bit out, even pausing in my work to stare right into his eyes. “But while you’ve been having fun and showing off, I’ve been keeping this kitchen together. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to keep on being the Head Chef this team deserves.”
I regretted it the moment I said it, ducking my head back down to put the finishing touches on the plate in front of me.
The last thing I wanted to do was give him any tips on how to improve. Let him fail. I would get the job that was deservedly mine all the quicker.
Drake only laughed and moved on, turning to put a pair of plates on the counter and call for service, which made me seethe even more.
I pretended I was ignoring him as he left the kitchen area, taking the route that didn’t require him to pass behind anyone and announce his presence, disappearing in the direction of our storage. Pretended – but I hadn’t been able to ignore him all night. Every single move he made, every stupid comment and laugh he made to Grey, every dish he’d plated up – I’d been all too aware of all of them.
Which was why my eyebrow raised of its own accord when he came back out of the storage area empty-handed and returned to his station as though nothing had happened.
“Behind!” Ainslie called out, and I tensed, jerked out of my own thoughts and back to reality. There were meals to be made and customers waiting out there, and I had no time to ask him what he had been doing. Besides, if I asked, he would talk to me again. I didn’t want him talking to me.
“Chef?” Luca’s timid voice rang across the kitchen, his messy-haired head – even worse now with the steam and heat of the dishwashing station – poking out from his alcove. I sighed and went to him – because as much as I needed to answer the open tickets, I also would need clean dishes before the end of the night – and if he wasn’t on top of them, we would all be delayed even more.
By the time we finally stopped, I was dead on my feet – even more so than on a normal night.
I clapped Luca on the shoulder as we headed for the door. His frame was bony under my hand. “Good work today,” I told him. “I think you’re getting the hang of it. Before the week is out, you’ll be bored as hell and trying to come up with new ways to make it interesting for yourself.”
Luca blushed slightly and shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said. “It’s so busy here.”
I nodded. What else was there to say? He was right. I glanced around the empty kitchen before reaching to turn the lights out; we were the last to leave.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I told him, locking the door behind us. “You have a way to get home?”
He nodded towards the road. “Bus.”
“It’s still running at this time of night?”
He checked the time on his phone. “Yeah, the last one’s due soon.”
“Get over there quick, then,” I told him. I hesitated for a moment; if he missed it, he would need a ride. But then again, I wasn’t his Dad or his brother or his best friend. And I really was dead on my feet.
I got into my car and drove almost on auto-pilot, thinking about tomorrow and hating Drake and worrying about whether Luca had caught the bus. I pulled up outside my own apartment without fully knowing how I’d got there, and turned off the engine with a sigh.
I leaned back for a moment, looking up at the quiet and dark building. Out here in the wider alley that served as our building parking lot, at least I could see the world carrying on around me. Cats jumping down to find rats amongst the garbage cans. The flicker of street lights as a bird, probably a gull, swooped by it. The gentle whoosh of the waves, still close enough from here that you could hear them even if you couldn’t see them.
I got out of my car and headed upstairs, throwing my keys onto the side table as soon as I got in and tossing my coat onto the back of a chair. I kicked off my shoes, walked to the bed, and considered for a moment whether I should get dressed, shower, or brush my teeth.
And flopped down instead, because I was tired and alone, and the less time I spent awake in this apartment in the dead of night, the easier it was to ignore that tired and alone were the only things I ever felt when I came home.