Drake
I stepped down from the bus and looked both ways before I crossed the road and then the parking lot, hoping that none of my colleagues were arriving at the exact same time as me. I’d set off early on purpose to avoid being caught and having to answer questions about why I wasn’t riding my motorbike.
There was a very simple reason. I couldn’t turn the throttle.
My hand throbbed relentlessly. Not only was the joint stiff and sore, but after the heavy slam I’d given the shelf yesterday, it was blacked up with bruising. I’d hit it so much harder than I’d realized, and twice, too. Rafael had me so riled up that I didn’t even feel the pain until later.
I should have iced it right there and then, but I’d carried on working for a full service. Even when the pain had started to filter back through and I realized what an idiot I’d been, I hadn’t wanted to risk going to take more pills or taking a break.
I didn’t want him, or anyone else, to see my weakness.
Now I was paying for it, and I was going to be lucky to get through the shift without having to step aside. I was already whirring through options in my head: maybe I could say I was training Beau and helping him to see what it was like to take on Head Chef responsibilities for later in his career, or that the sign of a great manager was the ability to delegate effectively.
It would be complete bullshit, but maybe I could say it.
I swallowed two pills from my pocket before I pushed open the back door, finding it unlocked already. I was grateful for the relief already starting to flow through my veins and ease the all-consuming ache of my wrist when I looked up to see Rafael seated on the bench to the side of the room, looking over the day’s menu.
My voice went dry in my throat.
I was off my game, clearly, and I could only blame the pain and the pills I was taking to cope with it. There was no other reason why I should be so floored by this man. Why I would find myself unable to speak, unwilling to draw his attention to me because then I would have to face him and what happened yesterday.
We kissed.
So what if we kissed?
I’d kissed so many different guys in my life. One kiss hardly meant anything at all.
Except you’ve never had a kiss like that , the traitorous voice in the back of my head reminded me.
I was frozen, unsure of what to do, until the door cracked open again behind me; maybe it was seconds, maybe minutes, I couldn’t tell. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Ainslie coming inside, and greeted him in a way I hoped didn’t come across as panicked. More like, I was just coincidentally walking inside at the same time as him, and not standing here watching Rafael work silently like a creeper.
Rafael barely looked up at the sound of my voice and went right back to his clipboard. But was that a hint of a flush across the tops of his cheeks…?
I looked away, deliberately heading towards the station where I normally worked and pretending that I needed to tidy up.
Actually, I didn’t need to pretend much. There was a stack of dirty tools and dishes here from yesterday; clearly, whoever ended up doing the last stint of washing hadn’t bothered to go around collecting more things from the stations. In fact, when I glanced at the dishwashing sink, I saw it was piled high with dirty things still as well.
“Who’s doing the washing up?” I asked, glancing around.
I was met with silence.
Neither Ainslie nor Rafael reacted to me as if I wasn’t even there and hadn’t said a word.
Now that I thought about it, Ainslie hadn’t replied when I’d said hello.
Beau was walking into the kitchen now, shrugging off his coat and greeting Rafael and Ainslie, who both said hello to him.
So, they weren’t deaf. They just weren’t hearing me .
“The sink,” I tried again. “Who’s washing up?”
Beau opened his mouth but then closed it again at a sharp look from Ainslie. He gave me an apologetic glance and then pressed his lips together as if he needed to remind himself not to open them again.
I sighed.
Right.
Yesterday, I had gone against the group. I’d stayed on the side of my boss – the side that was going to get me into the least trouble – while they had all stuck their necks out for Luca. From what I’d gathered during the rest of service, the customer had come back in and been caught red-handed trying to pull the same scam again. Luca had been vindicated.
But I had stood apart and refused to defend him.
Could they really blame me? It wasn’t like I really knew anyone here. None of them would have put their jobs on the line for me, I was sure of it. I was just acting in the interest of self-preservation.
Was that so hard to understand?
“Fine. You’re all being children,” I said in a bored and unaffected tone. I was hoping that pretending it didn’t affect me would make them stop doing it because I was secretly hating it. There was no way you could run an effective kitchen if the line chefs weren’t communicating with the Head Chef. “But the dishes still need to get washed.”
“Then as the person who did not try to keep our dishwasher, perhaps you’d better roll up your sleeves,” Rafael said in a very deliberate tone, looking up to meet my eyes boldly for a second with his eyebrows raised. Only a second, and then he looked back at his clipboard.
Was it because, like me, a second was all he could take?
Was it because the memory of our heated kiss flooded through him and he knew that keeping my gaze for any longer would allow me to see it written in his own eyes?
“Fuck this,” I muttered. Team spirit? I could show them team spirit. I did exactly what Rafael suggested, rolling up my sleeves and walking towards the dishwashing sink with purpose.
He couldn’t have known, surely, that a bath in warm water was exactly the kind of thing that would relax the muscles in my wrist and make it feel better.
I barely got the time to immerse it, however, before a series of cheers went up behind me, making me turn and look out of the dishwashing nook and down the kitchen.
Luca was standing there, near the entrance from the hall, grinning sheepishly as all the other employees rushed around to slap him on the back and shoulders and ask him whether he was back for good.
“Mr. Monaghan called me and said he made a mistake,” he said, smiling from ear to ear. “He said did I want to come back and I hadn’t got another job yet, so I came.”
“Thank god!” Ainslie exclaimed. “We were threatening to go on strike, you know.”
“What?” Luca asked, looking around with a puzzled but dazzling smile.
“Of course,” Rafael said. “We all had your back.” His eyes slid sideways to where I stood, still apart, as if he wanted me to know that he still knew. Apparently, he didn’t want to upset Luca by bringing up the fact that not quite all of The Crow’s staff did, in fact, have his back.
I slunk behind the group to go back to my own station, fetching and carrying most of the dirty things from that side of the kitchen across to the sink instead of actually washing them myself now that Luca was back. When he’d returned to his normal place and was rolling up his own sleeves to begin work, I put a stack of pans down next to him and gave him a quick nod.
“Glad to see you back,” I said.
“Thanks, man,” Luca said with another big grin – one that almost ate me up inside with guilt.
I turned away and went back to the tasks I needed to complete today. I had to get them done. Today had to be about sheer focus and determination.
It was the only way I was going to be able to push through the pain I was feeling, even with the painkillers taking the edge off. I felt like I could barely move. With Rafael and the rest shunning me on top of everything else, what I really wanted to do was go back home and draw all the curtains closed and go back to sleep. Wake up when all of this was over.
Instead, I concentrated on carefully cutting pastry rounds for the construction of the pies we sold on the menu, cursing under my breath and sweating with each twist of my wrist that was needed to free the pastry from the cutter.
It was becoming too much to handle, and I’d barely started.
Tears sprang to my eyes at the realization that today was going to be the hardest service of my life. Not only was I going to have to do everything with minimal help from my coworkers in the kitchen, but I was already physically broken. I wasn’t even sure I was going to make it to family dinner, let alone through service.
I gritted my teeth and tried one more twist.
Agonizing pain shot through my wrist and hand, traveling up my arm and sending a wave of nausea through me. I closed my eyes and gripped the side of the counter with my other hand so hard my knuckles went white, trying to hold in a scream of pain.
I opened my eyes and caught Rafael looking at me with a curious frown, but he looked away again swiftly when he knew I’d seen.
Fuck him.
Fuck all of them here.
If they wanted to shut me out, fine. They were going to have to cope without me.
I stalked outside, grabbing my coat from the hall as I went. My phone was in my pocket. I sat on the stoop outside the door, making sure it was fully closed behind me and none of them could hear, and dialed my doctor.
I asked for an emergency appointment with the wind buffeting me. The air was cold and somehow charged; it felt like a storm was coming in. Appropriate, I thought. Luck was on my side, though – they had an opening for later today.
It was right at the start of service, but fuck it. They could cope without me if I was that much of a burden to keep around.
I opened the door up, knowing I was going to have to at least tell someone if I was leaving for the day. I had no intention of telling Rafael, though. He could find out by his own smug self. Besides, as much as he clearly didn’t want to talk to me, I also didn’t want to talk to him.
He clearly brought out something very strongly in me, and I had no desire to hurt my hand further.
I also very much did fucking not want to create a situation where I might find myself leaning towards him again, only for him to push me away – as I had no doubt he would want to.
I skulked through the kitchen without meeting anyone’s eyes. Thankfully, Luca was already washing up earnestly and getting through the pile, Beau wasn’t in the kitchen – probably because he was gathering ingredients for family dinner – and Ainslie and Rafael were deep in conversation about some element of the menu for tonight. I walked past them all and into the restaurant without anyone acknowledging me.
Nikolai looked up from his task of laying out silverware for tonight with some surprise when I emerged out of the kitchen, but Kit had his back to me – and I ignored them both as I knocked on Grey’s door, wincing when I did it with the hand I was trying to rest.
Grey didn’t call out to tell me to enter, but I tried the door anyway. After all, maybe he was trying to hide away until the whole thing with Luca died down so that he didn’t ever have to admit to anyone that he’d made a mistake – or have them point it out by saying he’d finally done the right thing.
The door opened, which meant he was in, because it was locked otherwise. I stepped in and looked up –
And cleared my throat, because apparently Beau was not getting the ingredients for family dinner after all.
Grey made an impatient grunt and pulled his arm down from the wall where it had been leaning above Beau’s head, turning to look at me. “What?” he ground out like he wanted to fire me just for the interruption.
Beau’s cheeks were flushed as he leaned against the wall, and he was looking down at Grey’s midsection rather than up at me.
I narrowed my eyes.
No, fuck it; this was nothing to do with me. Beau didn’t even want to talk to me this morning. He was a big boy. He could do what he wanted.
“I’m going home,” I said. “I have an emergency doctor’s appointment.”
Grey nodded and jerked his chin towards the door. “Fine,” he said. “Let me know about tomorrow’s shift before the end of the night.”
That was it?
I left the office and let the heavy door slam itself shut behind me, making my way to the front of the restaurant with a scowl. I nodded a quick goodbye to Nikolai and Kit when they looked at me, but didn’t offer them an explanation for where I was going. They both looked away fast, anyway. I would have bet my left leg that Rafael had told them not to talk to me, either.
Let them see how well shunning me would work when I wasn’t even there to notice them doing it.
I stepped outside and into the parking lot, and then let curses rain from my tongue towards the sky as I remembered I had to ride the fucking bus.