Chapter 18
Off so soon?” Nikolai rushes after me as the restaurant begins the process of shutting down for the night.
“Oh, you bet I am.” My table of YouTubers has departed with only Riley offering me thanks before they left.
I’ve managed to evade Svend, but I know my luck won’t hold for long.
While I feel a bit guilty for not trying to figure out what my end-of-service duties entail, I don’t feel much like waiting around for a lecture.
I can imagine Svend all too clearly as the washed-up off-off-off-Broadway director in half-moon reading glasses, gripping an ancient clipboard, salivating at the opportunity to berate the cast and crew after a performance to help fill the void in his sad little life.
He radiates the sort of bitterness that only years of rejection can produce, and I wonder, with as much disinterest as I can muster, what has gone so terribly wrong in his life.
Maybe he’s even more in need of a cosmic do-over than I am.
I almost feel sorry for him. Almost.
Nikolai looks around and sees that no one is looking for us.
He grabs me by the crook of my arm, and we walk purposefully toward the door, under the misguided notion that if we can’t see Svend, he can’t see us.
Like we fear a fate similar to that of poor Orpheus and Eurydice from Greek mythology, and don’t dare look back.
We clear the restaurant, all but sprinting toward the staff parking lot until we reach his ?koda.
“He was in rare form tonight,” Nikolai says once we’re on the road. He doesn’t head toward the city and our flat, which is fine by me. A setting where the air doesn’t fairly crackle with my father’s boyhood memories will make it easier to breathe. “The influencers, I suspect.”
“Good. I’d hate to think that was his good side.” This is not the sort of thing Copenhagen Sabrina would say. She’d be well acclimated to Svend and all his moods by now. But Nikolai knows I’m “off” today, and I can’t bring myself to care. “It’s not like I can control their behavior.”
“I’m sorry you had to take the brunt of it tonight. It’s not right.” His eyes are focused on the road, but he glances over at me from time to time.
“No. He’s the worst sort of GM. He’s the kind that conflates bullying with leadership skills, and I can’t stand it. He is the face of every toxic workplace I’ve ever encountered.”
Chef Jerome at Hotel Esmeralda immediately comes to mind.
The result of his bullying was Edward, who in turn became a bully himself.
Such sad little people. People who have claim to legitimate talent but whose overinflated sense of it overshadows their work.
Maybe Svend is a failed chef himself, and GM at The Mesmerist is the best he could do.
And though he isn’t legally obligated to make his bitterness everyone else’s problem, he manages the task as though he is.
At this stage of his life, he’d do better to retire early and take up fishing.
That way the only person he’d make miserable is himself.
We sit in silence for a good half hour or more, and I appreciate the calm. There is something about Nikolai’s presence that is comforting in a way I haven’t experienced with anyone else. With Edward, I was always on edge about saying the wrong thing.
Nikolai pulls over to an overlook by the coast, adjacent to what appears to be a massive bird-watching preserve. The bustle of the city feels a world away, though I know it’s not all that far. Nikolai seems to know I need solitude without my saying a word.
He really is incredible. I’ve only known him a few hours, but I hope Copenhagen Sabrina can see what a catch he is.
If she wants to date, she could do a lot worse.
But maybe this Sabrina, like me, has been too focused on work to consider jumping back into the dating pool.
For her, it’s been three years since Rian.
For me, it’s been both eleven years and a matter of hours.
I am in no headspace to offer this version of myself any sort of advice.
Nikolai shuts off the engine, grabs a pack from the back seat, and gestures for me to follow him.
A sandy strip of beach is just across the street, mostly empty given the late hour.
He offers me his hand, and I accept it. We walk by the sparkling gray waves, still illuminated by the last rays of late-summer sunset.
I imagine Copenhagen must be dreary during the short daylight hours of winter, but there’s something to having a sunset that lingers past ten at night.
We wander a few minutes, and I find it hard to concentrate on anything other than his hand in mine. He must be thinking the same thing, because he pulls our joined hands up and places a featherlight kiss on the back of my hand.
“I have wanted to hold your hand for a long time, but I’ve been afraid to rush things. I hope you don’t mind . . . I just wanted to comfort you as best I could.”
With a shaking breath I repeat his gesture and kiss the back of his own hand. “Not at all.”
With his free hand, he tucks a loose tendril of my hair behind my ear and caresses the side of my face. “I’m glad.” His tone is a bit husky. He is clearly besotted. But not with me. With Copenhagen Sabrina. I have to try hard to remember this.
We stop at a particularly pretty stretch of beach before the last rays of sun give way. From the pack he produces a huge blanket, which we spread over a large swath of sand. I make to sit facing the sea, but he stops me before I execute my maneuver.
“Face north tonight, not south.”
I raise a questioning brow.
“Trust me. The show is coming from the north tonight.”
We lie on the blanket, facing north as Nikolai urged. Within moments the sky is a sea of rippling gray waves. It’s as though the sky and sea have changed places for the night, and I can’t restrain a gasp. “What . . . what is this?”
“Noctilucent clouds. A trademark of our northern climes. The understated cousin of the Borealis. My dad once told me this is what inspired the name for the restaurant he was going to open with your father. On nights like this, they’d go out as far from the city as they could to enjoy them.”
I whisper, “I don’t blame them. This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“La Mer Grise. ‘The Gray Sea.’ It’s fitting.” He nods.
“I like that it would have had a special meaning for them. I can imagine what an amazing restaurant they would have built.”
“So can I. But I can’t find it in my heart to regret the outcome. The world would be a much duller place without you.”
His hand finds mine again, and I love the feel of his fingers laced in mine. “I think the same about you, Nikolai.”
He is silent for a moment before he finds his next words. “Trust me when I say these words are costing me dearly. I think you need to leave The Mesmerist, even if it means leaving Copenhagen. Madsen will personally see to it that your career is stunted.”
“Why does he have it out for me?” I can’t help but ask. I’ve had conflict with managers before, but I am generally well liked by my superiors. To be loathed by a boss like this is a wholly new experience for me.
“Because you intimidate him. You dance circles around him in every aspect of this business, and he can’t stand it. You see contempt and rage when he glares at you? All I see is inferiority and envy.”
“How pathetic.”
“It is. And it boils down to this: Madsen won’t stand to see you promoted in-house.
So no chance of getting any managerial experience.
And even if you tripled the alcohol receipts single-handedly, he wouldn’t give you a good reference to go elsewhere, especially anywhere in Copenhagen.
The longer you stay, the harder it will be for you to find a new job.
You have weeks, not months, before this becomes a hole in your résumé. ”
An ache sears my gut. He’s speaking truths I don’t want to hear. “You’re right, though I hate it.”
“I wish things could be different.” He doesn’t bother to conceal the emotion in his voice. “But you want Michelin, and this is not going to get you there.”
Copenhagen Sabrina has told Nikolai about Michelin.
This is . . . big. And a tad scary. Edward had been the only person I’d confided in, and that came to a no-good outcome.
The number of people who know my aspirations has now doubled, which should be more than a tad scary.
It should be terrifying. But I can’t picture Nikolai ever using information I shared with him in confidence as emotional blackmail the way Edward did.
He is a different caliber of human being.
I snuggle closer to him to brace against the lowering temperatures and the nip of the sea air that coils around us with every flutter of the breeze. He mirrors my gesture and I love feeling the warmth of his flank against mine.
At length he breaks the silence. “I’m sorry that coming to Copenhagen was a mistake for you.”
I sit up on the blanket. “I don’t think it was, Nikolai. Professionally, things weren’t perfect, but I do think I was meant to come here now. If only for a short while. But what about you? You’re far too talented a chef to spend your career as a bartender.”
“Don’t worry about me, min elskede. I’ll be fine.”
“I will worry about you. I worry about any talent being underutilized. And when that talent happens to be in the possession of someone I care about, I’ll worry as much as I like.
” Feeling emboldened, I reach over and caress the side of his cheek.
He closes his eyes, as if to tell me he’s savoring the moment.
I lie back down, and he takes me in his arms. We stare up at the gray-blue waves overhead, listening to the soft lapping of the ocean behind us, and lose ourselves in the beauty of the night.
I have no idea why I needed to come to Copenhagen, and I know I’m not meant to stay much longer.
But for the first time, I really wish I didn’t need to go back.