Chapter Twenty-Six
Aubrey
“So he won?” Jase asked as he pulled ingredients from the box he’d brought to the prep kitchen.
“He crushed it,” I said, still buzzing from the excitement of yesterday’s fight.
“Watching him, you’d never guess he retired.
” So much so a part of me wondered if maybe Gabe would decide to come out of retirement for good.
He was on the older side for the sport, but nothing unheard of.
As long as he was strategic with his fights and didn’t push too hard, it was entirely possible he could still do it.
If the frantic sex we’d had last night at his gym was any indication, he was feeling up to it.
And boxing was his love the way cooking was mine. His heart had been broken for a while, but maybe this tournament would be what mended it.
It twisted something inside me to think about. The knowledge boxing again would make him happy the way nothing else could, and the bitterness that it would likely mean him leaving Philly again.
I was pretty sure Evan felt the same twist of emotions. The comfort of watching his brother box the way he had growing up colliding with the possibility it could take him away again. The push and pull of joy and hope, grief and spite wrestling within one heart.
“Hopefully, he’ll win tonight so I can see him tomorrow,” Jase said. He’d worked at the restaurant during last night’s fight and had to again tonight. But Saturday’s and Sunday’s fights were in the afternoon, so if Gabe made it to the final, Jase could see him both days.
“Dani and Robin are going tonight?” I asked.
He nodded and blew out a laugh. “I’m pretty sure Robin is expecting something out of the WWE, so you may have to remind her not to throw any chairs into the ring.”
I grinned. “I feel like she would excel at roller derby.”
“I’m going to leave that one for you to bring up with her at your own risk.”
“It could be fun. We could get bright wigs to wear under our helmets and have a team name like ‘Crème Br? Slayers.’”
“And the part where you get tackled on rollerblades?”
Admittedly less appealing. “I’ll just play the bench. Be moral support for Robin and Kelly.” Those two were a dangerous combination if the few times I’d hung out with them and Dani were anything to go by.
Jase moved the empty box off the counter. “Ready to do this?”
I straightened, my eyes falling to the two cutting board stations he’d set up with identical ingredients.
“You know the drill,” he said. “The guys each picked one ingredient. I had Neela pick the fourth. Appetizer or entrée?”
It was an exercise we’d started a few months before I moved to catering, one Jase got the idea for from some reality cooking competition Dani had gotten him into.
Each person in the kitchen picked one ingredient, and we’d get a set amount of time to make a dish incorporating all four.
Or sometimes, there was only one ingredient, and we had to make a dish incorporating it in as many different ways as possible.
The tight timeframe meant no chance for overthinking. Just cooking on pure instinct.
“Appetizer,” I said.
“Twenty minutes it is.” He pulled out his phone and set the timer. “Ready?”
I set my knife on my cutting board and stretched my neck. “Ready.”
“Go!”
We sprang into action, grabbing the ingredients lined up in front of us, peeling and chopping, dropping them into sauté pans, and snagging more items from the pantry.
The energy of having another chef in the kitchen brought more to the space than a playlist ever could.
I didn’t even need to see what Jase was doing.
I could hear his knife making cuts, smell the onion and garlic as it hit his pan, feel his presence beside me creating without hesitation, which meant I had to do the same.
No time for thinking; just cooking on pure instinct.
What felt like twenty seconds and not twenty minutes later, his phone alarm blared, and we dropped whatever was in our hands and raised them in the air.
I looked at his plate. He looked at mine. We both grinned.
“Moment of truth,” he said.
We started with his.
My favorite thing about Jase’s food was how intentional it was.
Nothing went on the plate without purpose.
No garnish for the sake of garnish. No ten different components if the same impact could be achieved with six.
When you were being forced by the exercise to use certain ingredients, it was easy to drop a shaving of one on at the end and call it a day, but Jase never did.
He was mindful about his food, and it showed.
The ingredients the guys and Neela had picked were shrimp, fermented chilis, strawberries, and bacon. Jase had made strawberry carpaccio with shrimp-chili broth and bacon dust.
It was so freaking good. If I were him, I’d put it on Ardena’s menu next week, no changes necessary. He was seriously the best chef I’d ever worked with.
Then it was my turn. While Jase tended to focus on how to be most efficient with the ingredients, I liked to go for the unexpected. Try out a technique that might not typically be used for something and see what it did.
“What the fuck,” Jase said as he tasted it. He pointed at my dish. “That sauce is ridiculous. I never would have thought of putting hibiscus with fermented chili.”
I glanced at my bacon-poached shrimp with roasted strawberries and fermented chili-hibiscus sauce, my rib cage lifting. I wouldn’t put it on a menu as is, but I agreed there were special aspects to it. The kind of something that had been missing from my menu attempts so far.
“What if we used your carpaccio idea instead of poaching the shrimp?” I suggested. “I think it’ll balance better than the bacon.”
“Or we could try octopus. It would elevate it slightly, which seems like what the judges are looking for.”
I flipped to a new page of my notepad and scribbled our ideas, writing so fast my hand hurt.
An hour later, we’d mapped out enough for me to play with, and I felt full in a way that had nothing to do with food.
“Thanks for this,” Jase said, surprising me.
“Why are you thanking me? You’re the one who helped me out.”
He dropped his gaze to his knife roll, almost shy. “I know, but you never ask for help. You’ve saved my ass a hundred times over the years, and this feels like the first chance I’ve had to repay you.”
That couldn’t be true. Could it?
“Even back at Pépère,” he went on, “you never asked me to step in when Christian was being an ass or to give you the better tasks just to piss him off. Not that it would have made a difference in the long run, but it would have been something.”
“You did that anyway,” I said.
“Yeah, after I realized you were never going to ask. I had your back then, and I have it now. It just”—he shrugged—“feels good to know you know you can ask. Especially now that we’re not in the same kitchen.”
My throat tightened. “Sometimes I wish I was still your sous chef. I really liked cooking with you.”
“Then we’ll do more of it,” he decided. “Stuff like this. Staff meals and shift drinks and team trainings.” He sought my gaze.
“You’re still a part of my team, Chef. An important one.
And if at some point one of us isn’t at Ardena any longer, you’ll still be a part of my team.
I know I’ll always be able to count on you.
I hope you’ll give me more chances to be there for you too. ”
“It wasn’t your job to help me,” I tried to explain. It was one thing to delegate tasks to line cooks or waitstaff—that was my job. It wasn’t asking for help when it was how things flowed in a kitchen.
But when it came to bosses and—I was starting to realize—the people I cared about, the worst thing I could think of being was a burden. What kind of boss wanted an employee who constantly needed help?
What kind of parent wanted a child who was always in the way?
What kind of friend wanted to be asked over and over for favors?
I did. It made me feel useful, assured me I had a purpose. A place.
Did other people feel the same?
“You weren’t just my sous chef, Aubrey. You were my friend,” Jase said. “Still are, I think.”
I gave him a look like of course.
He smiled. “Well, I like helping my friends. Especially when they’ve done so much for me.
Called me out on my shit and kept me from making life-altering mistakes.
It’s kind of the point, you know? Just because you can do it alone doesn’t mean you have to.
I’m glad you didn’t force yourself to this time. ”
I didn’t know what to say. He and Jillian were two people I’d gone out of my way not to inconvenience by asking for things, and now they’d both flat-out told me they’d been waiting for me to do just that. They wanted me to.
It was hard to doubt it when it came from both of them. When I had Gabe telling me essentially the same thing every time we were together.
To ask for what I wanted.
To say what I needed.
To allow myself the chance to be heard. I wanted to be able to do that.
And I wanted Gabe.
Not because I needed him or idolized him the way I had as a kid. But because he challenged me while still making me feel safe. He heard me before I was brave enough to say what I wanted out loud and helped me be brave enough to say it at all. To ask for help like I had with Jillian and Jase.
I owed it to myself, and to him, to be brave again.
There were three days left of the tournament that needed Gabe’s focus. But after…maybe I’d try this asking thing again.