Drake
“Rafael just told me he caught you taking drugs.”
I sighed and sat down in front of Grey’s desk. The man himself hadn’t sat yet, but stood over me on the other side of the desk with his hands deep in his pockets. He looked like he was on a roll of cutting off heads.
There was no point in denying it. Honesty was going to be the only policy that could get me through this situation.
I took the bag of pills out of my pocket and set them on the table between us.
“What are they?” Grey asked, looking at them pointedly as if he wanted to rifle through them – but, at the same time, didn’t want to touch anything illegal.
“Painkillers,” I told him. “Strong ones. I have a prescription.”
“Why are they in a bag?”
“Bottles rattle, and they make a weird shape in my pocket.” I shrugged; then, knowing Grey as I did now, I made a move that was either very smart or very, very stupid. “I wouldn’t want anyone to get any ideas about what I might or might not have in my pocket.”
The corner of Grey’s mouth quirked upwards at the innuendo, and a little of the righteous fire in his eyes was put out. I was getting somewhere. “Why are you taking them?”
I bit my lip for a long moment, but there was no getting around it. I had to come clean. I laid my right wrist on the desk in front of me like it was an exhibit. “I have RSI,” I said. “Repetitive Strain Injury. I ended up having to take some time off my last job because the pain was out of control. It’s under control now. I just need to take the pills now and again when there’s a particularly busy service, like today.”
Grey made a humming noise. He sat down. “What’s the pain like?”
“It’s like an aching, burning feeling,” I said. “If I don’t address it right away, it develops into stiffness, until it feels like I can’t move my wrist at all. And I’m a stubborn fuck, so I keep on moving it anyway, and it’s agonizing. Then it starts swelling up and cramping, and then I’m off work for days, maybe weeks. I don’t let it get past the burning anymore.”
“You can work with this?”
I nodded.
“Reliably?”
I tilted my head to the side. “Let me recover from today and I’ll show you how reliable my wrist is,” I said. I hoped he knew from my tone that I meant it as a statement of confidence, not a promise of something I would actually carry out.
Grey snorted and shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “You swear to me this won’t affect your performance here?”
I leaned forward across the desk. “I have it under control,” he said. “I didn’t mention it before because I know what it sounds like. It sounds like I’m going to go on sick pay as soon as you give me the real job. But have I ever needed to take a break during a single service so far?”
Grey shook his head. “You’ve kept up with everything.”
“Including today,” I pointed out. “And from what I hear from the other guys, that’s about the busiest it’s possible for The Crow to get.”
Grey nodded. “That much is true.”
I sat back in the chair, my case made. “Then you know I’m not going to let you down.”
There was a long moment. My heart thundered in my chest despite the confidence I’d shown. I didn’t know whether he was going to dismiss me, anyway, but I had a good feeling.
“Alright,” Grey said, at length. “I’ll tell Rafael to mind his own business. No one else needs to know anything about this if you don’t want them to. Would you be better supported if they knew?”
I shrugged and then shook my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t need anyone making allowances for me or helping me out with stuff. I want to do it myself to make sure the quality of the food stays high.”
Grey nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “Then it stays between you and me. Don’t worry about anything coming out of this. And if you want to keep it to yourself, try being more careful when you take the pills. Go to the bathroom, or something.”
I nodded and grinned, then stood up. It had been a long day. “Thanks. You mind if I clock out? These pills are pretty heavy-duty. I don’t think you want me wielding a knife, and Rafael’s holding down the fort, anyway.”
“Yeah, go ahead,” Grey said with a wave of his hand.
I ducked outside and took a deep breath of fresh air. I glanced toward the kitchen entrance but thought twice about going in and collecting my stuff. It would still be there tomorrow. Right now, I just needed to get home. But there was a problem: I wasn’t feeling awake enough to ride my bike, and even if I did, the throttle required a turning motion in my wrist that I didn’t feel up to.
Beau was on his way out of the kitchen, heading to a car. I shouted his name and waved to get his attention.
“You mind giving me a ride?” I asked, and he nodded, gesturing to the passenger side to indicate that I should get in.
I looked up at the restaurant as we drove away, thinking about Rafael in the kitchen.
He’d turned me in.
Not even stopped to listen to my explanation.
I wasn’t looking forward to my next day at work.
I could hear the shouting before I even walked inside the building. I rushed forward to grab the door and head inside, wondering if there was something I needed to be involved in.
It crossed my mind pretty quickly that maybe they were arguing about me .
I heard Rafael first, and saw him first, too, as I rounded the corner from the storage hallway to enter the kitchen proper.
“We can’t just let him get fired like this,” Rafael was saying. “It’s not right. He’s just a kid. And I get the feeling he really needed this job.”
“Who are we talking about?” I asked, shucking off my coat and glancing around. Beau and Ainslie were already here.
“It’s none of our business,” Ainslie whined, at the same moment that Beau and Rafael both gave me the answer: “Luca.”
“So, he was fired last night?” I asked. I’d had a feeling that it might have been the case when I didn’t see him during the whole getting-called-to-the-office thing.
“Grey told him to get out,” Rafael sighed. I noticed he was avoiding looking at me, but if he felt any surprise or guilt about seeing me, he didn’t show it. In fact, he was doing a pretty good job of hiding his face and his emotions entirely behind his glasses. “But it’s all over nothing. The customer was a grifter.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yeah, we’re sure,” Beau said. “I saw your plating. It was flawless.”
“Well, obviously.” I felt a swell of pride at his words – a swell that was quickly deflated by Rafael’s derisive snort. I shot him a look and then deliberately glanced away, not wanting to fuel whatever his problem was with me.
I looked carefully at Ainslie. He was messing around with something in the dishwashing nook – getting some of his tools cleaned off, I realized. He wasn’t taking part in the conversation, and it didn’t seem as though he wanted to.
“What do you think, Ainslie?” I asked.
He clattered a couple of knives down against the counter, a metallic sound that rang uncomfortably in my ears. “I think Grey does whatever he likes, and nothing we can say or do is going to stop him.”
“We can’t just give up,” Rafael insisted. "This is a member of our team.”
“He’s only been a member of the team for weeks, not years like the rest of us,” Ainslie countered.
And I had been there not even twenty-four hours more.
At least I knew where I stood with Ainslie, now. He wasn’t going to miss me for a single second if I lost the job to Rafael, it seemed.
I turned and started to head back into the storage hall, wanting to grab my whites and change.
“What about you?” Rafael asked, aiming the words at my back. He hadn’t faced me once during this whole conversation, but he seemed plenty bold enough to talk now I wasn’t looking at him. “We’re going to talk to Grey as soon as he gets in. Don’t you want to talk it over, discuss the evidence, so we can present a united front?”
“A united front?” I repeated. I cocked my head to the side and then slowly turned and faced him. “Why would I want to be united with you?”
I turned and left him with those words ringing in his ears. I wanted him to think hard about the fact that he’d tried to throw me under the bus, and the very next day, asked me for help.
And I wanted him to know something else: that I hadn’t forgotten this was a contest.
If he could play dirty, so could I.
And if he wanted to take a stand against Grey when his job was already on the line, then I wasn’t going to risk myself alongside him.
I was happy to just watch – and be there to accept the role when Grey cleared Rafael out of my way.