Rafael
“How do you feel?” Beau asked me with an almost shy smile.
I glanced at him and took in his expression. Did he know something I didn’t? Had Grey given him an exclusive preview of what the results were going to be?
I was probably overthinking it. Beau was just shy sometimes.
“I feel normal,” I said pointedly. “Because it’s a totally normal day.”
“Well, it isn’t,” Ainslie said. “Is it? It’s the day Grey decides who gets the job.”
“So, ask me how I’m feeling tomorrow, not today,” I said.
Even as I said it, though, I knew it was just a bluff. Underneath it all, I was far from calm and composed. I was on the verge of sheer panic.
I didn’t have access to the numbers, but I’d noticed Drake plating up more of his stupid little vegetable patterns than I did of my lobster risottos. The only thing that remained to be seen was whether Grey was actually going to stick to the rules of the contest we had agreed upon, or whether he was going to screw the numbers and pretend that I’d won to keep me.
For the first time in my life, I was actually hoping for Grey to be the untrustworthy asshole I had known him to be for all these years.
He couldn’t really fire me, or take my job away and expect me to stay under a demotion, to bring in this jumped-up new chef, could he? After all the years of service I’d dedicated to this place?
Could he?
I kept my eyes on my work, trying to focus. It was a normal day at work. A normal day in which Drake wouldn’t speak to me or even meet my eyes, even though he’d spent the whole time since we stopped talking to him trying to goad me into slipping up. A normal day, I reminded myself. Beau would go and hang out with his new boyfriend, my boss, in his office after the service was finished, like he had started doing this month. And the chef who didn’t belong in my kitchen was probably about to take it over and completely mess up my carefully curated system. Yep. Just a normal day.
I sighed and put down my slotted spoon for a second, looking at the mess I’d made of the plate I was putting together. No one in their right mind would accept this as a beautifully-made meal in a high-end restaurant. It was only fit for the garbage. I scraped everything off the plate, moved behind Ainslie to give the dirty plate to Luca, and went back to my station.
“I can do plating today, if you’re not feeling it,” Drake said.
I looked at him sharply. What was he doing? Trying to put me off? But there was no malice or even that teasing twinkle that his eyes held when he was flirting. Just concern.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, louder than I had meant to. I glanced around the room in general, gesturing with the spoon. “I don’t know why everyone keeps thinking that I’m not fine!”
“Really?” Drake asked with a completely straight face. “You don’t?”
I scowled at him, grabbed the pan, and set to work on plating up a new version of the dish I’d butchered.
The closer we got to the end of service, the more my hands started to shake. There was a desperate tightness in my chest that kept getting worse and worse. Everything in the kitchen seemed to be a trigger of sorts. I caught myself looking at certain pieces of equipment or tools or even the storage shelves, wondering if this was going to be the last time I ever got the chance to work with them.
There were other restaurants in Crowhill Cove.
I would be able to find work somewhere else.
But…
It wouldn’t be here.
And I’d dedicated so much of my life and time, spent so long building relationships with all of these people… to see it disappear now…
I swallowed hard and managed to get the lump in my throat back down into my chest before it made me cry.
We were nearing the end of the day, finishing off the last couple of orders, when I started to really panic.
“Well, looks like we’re down to the last ten or so tables,” I said. “Ainslie, you could probably clock off if you wanted to.”
Drake was giving me a strange look across the kitchen, but I ignored it. We both knew – we all knew – that Grey wanted to make his announcement tonight. I was just thinking I would rather there were fewer of my friends there to see it.
Ainslie snorted. “Are you kidding? Of course, we’re going to stick around to find out who’s going to be leading the kitchen tomorrow.”
“Or you could just turn up for your shift and find out,” I muttered under my breath, but thankfully, no one seemed to hear me.
“I might take the break and go through and hang out with Grey if that’s alright,” Beau said with one of those dreamy smiles he’d been wearing a lot lately. I suspected that ‘hang out’ was code for ‘make out’, and probably more. “I’ll still stay for the announcement.”
I sighed. Clearly, I wasn’t going to get my way. “Just finish off that last dish and you’re free to do whatever you want,” I said. It crossed my mind that I could ask Ainslie to take care of my duties for a while if he was determined to stay, so that I could take a break. But this might have been my last chance to work in The Crow’s kitchen, and I wasn’t going to waste it.
Beau hummed happily as he started to toss the vegetables he was stir-frying, but I looked up to the swinging doors as Nikolai barged in with an urgent look on his face. He ignored everyone else and made a beeline for me, which made my heart sink into the pit of my stomach.
Was it happening now? Was Grey not even going to let me finish the service?
“,” he whispered in my ear in a rushed hiss. “Grey’s out there flirting with a customer. I don’t think he’s leaving?”
I looked him in the eye for a moment and saw how panicked he was, and drew him off to the side. We stood next to a boiling pan right under the extractor whirring loudly within the cooker hood, where there was a good chance Beau wouldn’t hear us.
“What?” I said, needing more details so fast I didn’t even have time to be specific.
“The rest of the party got up and left, and now Grey’s sitting with him in the booth,” Nikolai said. He cast a desperate look sideways to check Beau wasn’t listening. “Like, sitting with him . When I left they were holding hands and Grey was doing that thing where he leans in and whispers in someone’s ear so when they turn their heads he can kiss them.”
I bit my lip. This was not good – very not good at all. Grey was returning to his usual ways. This was one of his obvious tactics: seduce a customer by schmoozing about how he owned the place, picking on a table at the end of the night so that they could go home together easily.
By the time we got out there, if most of the other customers were gone, he would probably be necking.
“Okay,” I said, letting Nikolai see that I understood fully, and I walked over to our dwindling row of tickets to grab the last one. I raised my voice to speak again. “Actually, Beau, can you do the risotto for me? It’s the last one of the contest, and I want to see if you’ve picked up the risotto as well as you have the scallops.”
Beau laughed. “I know you guys don’t like me seeing Grey, but you can’t just make up excuses to keep me here in the kitchen,” he said. “I made the risotto for you yesterday, start to finish, remember?”
I cursed the fact that the last ticket had to be that one dish only, and there was nothing else on the line that Beau hadn’t made a hundred times or more.
“Alright, you caught me,” I tried. “I wanted you to stay for moral support. I thought I’d be better off alone, but now Ainslie’s staying, it’s made me realize I’d like to have you both around for this.”
“I will be around,” Beau reassured me, putting the vegetables down in their pan next to Drake, ready for him to plate up the last dishes on his list. “I’ll come back in with Grey. Don’t worry.”
Panic flooded my mind as I tried to think of a reason to keep him here – any reason. From the corner of my eye, I could see Nikolai trying to get my attention, gesturing under the level of the counter so Beau wouldn’t see it, urging me to do something.
And just for a moment, a treacherous little voice in the back of my head said: but wouldn’t it be better if he found out once and for all what Grey is like, since he won’t believe any of us?
Before I had the chance to argue with that voice and try to protect Beau instead, he was already heading through the swinging doors, and it was too late.
“Why did you let him go?” Nikolai asked me furiously.
“I didn’t see you coming up with any clever ideas to keep him here!” I replied, throwing my hands up in the air. Drake, Ainslie, and Lucas were all giving us curious and concerned looks, but I didn’t even have the chance to explain before they all found out for themselves.
There was a loud cry on the other side of the door, loud enough that we could all hear the wordless anger and grief in it, and then Beau was charging back through into the kitchen in a hurry.
“Beau,” I started, but he was shaking his head. Tears were beginning to stream from his eyes even as he rushed past all of us and grabbed his coat from where it hung off a peg on the wall.
“Hey, man…” Ainslie, who was closest to him, tried to grab at his sleeve to stop him.
Beau had already thrown his coat on, but he reached inside the back of it and somehow, with furious and jerky pulls, managed to undo his apron and yank it off over his head. He threw it on the floor, sobbing openly now, the tears pouring down his face as it turned pinker and pinker. “Tell Grey I quit,” he managed to get out and rushed for the door.
Ainslie made to follow him, but even though most of us were still inside the kitchen, we could all clearly hear what Beau said next before slamming the door: “Don’t follow me.”
Silence echoed around our chrome space for a moment, filled only by Ainslie’s steps coming back to share in our open-mouthed stares.
We didn’t need to ask what had happened. It was obvious. Nikolai’s prediction had been correct: Beau must have walked in there and seen him kissing, maybe groping the customer. He had never been the soul of discretion. All of us had expected this; even Drake didn’t exactly look surprised.
Grey stumbled into the kitchen far too late, looking around wildly, his tie askew and his hair a mess.
“Where is he?” he asked.
“Gone,” I snapped. I put the spoon I had been using down with a clang. “And so am I.”