Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
WILDER
Lexi hasn’t spread the word about the fate of the restaurant, but a pall of gloom follows her whenever she’s come in over the past couple of weeks.
The staff have to know something’s going on.
I’ve tried to play it cool, keep them hyped up about the daily specials, how well they’re all doing, this groove we’re getting into as a team after more than two months of being open, but they’re not dumb.
They’ve known Lexi for decades, most of ’em. You can smell in the air that something’s amiss at Heights Bites.
Rather than her normal, lively frantic energy that brightens the place up and keeps the staff on their toes, it’s like a blanket of sadness has been trailing her instead.
Straight up to her office most days, only peeking her head down if the dining room gets too busy for whichever front of house staff are in to handle on their own.
So basically never, now that Billie is here. Not that we aren’t slammed most mealtimes, but Amelia’s mom was the perfect addition here. Between her, Wanda, Tracy, and Violet, well, it’s pretty smooth sailing.
I’m not sure if seeing how hustling and bustling the dining room gets over the lunch rush, or the constant flow of customers throughout the dinner period makes this harder on her, knowing it’s coming to an end, but she’s taking more days off than she ever did before. She’s out again today even.
Only time I get to see her here is when my shift ends and I drag her back to my place and give her a reason to forget about the rest of it.
But as far as conversation, there hasn’t been much of one since that night we went to her sister’s for the bonfire.
We’ve got more of a physical understanding between us these days, but I really could use someone to talk my offer out with. Someone who knows where I come from, what’s important to me. Who sees me through everything else and can help guide me to the right choice here.
I want that person to be Lexi. I just don’t think she has the space for my dilemma right now. It’s too close to home for her, the fact that she can’t offer me the job I came here for because of her mistake.
I might have to take Rory up on her offer to meet with me this afternoon. I could use her brains on all of this.
Leaning back against the brick wall in the alley on my break, I pull the letter out of my back pocket for the zillionth time since I got it two weeks ago.
My eyes scan over the contents even though I dream of what it says, word for word.
To: Wilder Amante
Re: Offer letter
Chef Amante,
I hope this letter finds you well.
We are opening a new fine dining establishment in Cobble Hill next spring. We’d like to offer you the position of executive chef. Concept, menu planning, and execution would all fall within your jurisdiction.
We’re looking for someone with vision, class, and a sophisticated palette who could give our guests more than just a meal, but an experience.
Something they keep coming back for more of.
Salary and benefits are attached. Your start date would be by fall, at the latest.
Awaiting your acceptance,
Your family
Just like it does every time, my skin ices over at that closing.
Family.
The years they were my family were the worst years of my life.
I lost my only blood family to their so-called family. My father gave his life in their service. For what?
It’s only when I got out of that life that I found anything for myself that started to feel like an actual family.
And it’s the people inside the building behind me.
Samuel’s quiet, calming presence, unruffled even at the peak of lunch rush.
Charlie’s enthusiasm over every new skill he masters in the kitchen.
Dishy’s dirty jokes that keep us laughing while breaking down and cleaning up.
The women in the front of the house who keep us in line.
And the boss, the one who brought it all together, this small place off of the tiniest Main Street I’ve ever seen, with the ragtag crew of people with the biggest hearts I’ve had the pleasure of working with.
Lexi is the reason this is even happening in the first place.
It’s the team we’ve built through a fast couple of months where we all got thrown into the fire together, a kind of camaraderie that only comes with sink or swim.
When you’re back to back, keeping each other afloat during an hours-long rush, have run out of half the ingredients on the menu, put out metaphorical fires together (and one literal one Charlie managed to start), you can’t help but bond with your staff.
They have my back. In just two months, they’ve proven it.
What did my father’s old life ever do for me? I gave, and I gave, and all I got from it was the chance to walk away.
Is this going to be any better this time?
Or is the restaurant a front for something that’s going to end up with me behind bars again?
Maybe this time I won’t make it out.
My fingers flip to the second page of the letter, the enormous starting salary, the benefits package that no job I’ve ever had could compete with, and the bonuses listed out for hitting milestones as the restaurant opens and grows.
I have no doubt it adds up to more than all of the staff here make combined.
But even my rose-tinted glasses can smell the shit in the letter.
This is my chance, the voice in my head shouts. What I’ve been waiting seven years for. A shot at my own restaurant.
Salt + Spice could be open, just months from now. Executive Chef Wilder Amante etched in the glass doors.
It just feels too good to be true.
Like there’s a trap in there somewhere I’m not seeing.
“Chef!” The back door bursts open, Charlie stumbling out of it, eyes alight.
“Yeah?” The letter gets shoved back in my pocket, crumpling as it goes.
“You’ve gotta see it. I did it. Me! I did it!”
Kicking off the wall, smile pulling my mouth up at one side, I follow him as he practically skips to the line, hands gesturing the whole time.
“It was just like you said, the crepe, and then I flipped it, and somehow it turned out perfect.”
Halting next to him, I lean over to inspect his dish.
Perfect lemon and blueberry crepes.
Even my pickiest French instructor in culinary school would’ve raised an impressed eyebrow at this plating.
“Damn, Chef,” I tell him, one hand thumping his back. His knees give out and he sinks a good six inches, but he regains his stature with a beaming grin. “You did it.”
Pulling him into a bro hug, our hands stay connected in the shake for a second as I smile at him proudly.
When I look down at our clasped hands, the word FREE is staring back at me.
What am I doing?
Risking my freedom again by taking a deal from my old connections?
So what if this place isn’t Salt + Spice. I’m shaping my own menu here, leaving my flavor on this town in the now, with the help of these people by my side.
Helping Charlie master basic skills in the kitchen, watching Lexi bloom as she stacks wins, and seeing dozens and dozens of smiles on faces in that dining room day in and day out, because of what I’m doing?
It might not look like the dream I always thought it would, but sometimes gifts come in different packaging than we expected to see.
And this place here? This life of mine I’ve built over the summer? I think it might just be the dream I never knew I had.
I can’t just walk away without trying to help them.
“Chef,” I call to Charlie and he perks up, looking back at me. “You’re in charge today. I’ve gotta go do something.”
He salutes me as I take off my jacket, hanging it in the small break room and taking off out the back door, down the alley, through the crosswalk between blocks, and across the street.
It’s not minutes before I’m the one bursting through a door. This time it’s Rory’s.
She looks up from her desk, unsurprised.
“I need to talk to you.”
The hum of my motorcycle drowns out the noises of summer at night in the Smokies, the shadowed ridges edged in the last hues of sunset. The rumble of the bike between my legs soothes me as I drive, and my mind feels free to unpack the last ten days.
The way Rory’s eyes had bulged out at the contents of the letter confirmed what I already knew.
Deals like that are once in a lifetime.
Her lawyer brain ran with every angle of the offer, helping me look at all the ways it could go.
The obvious conclusion was nothing in the Heights could compete with numbers like those, even if a literal angel swooped in to save the restaurant.
The compensation package I got offered was more than the projected total earnings from the café for the year.
Rory and I went through every option, and within days I’d sent my email to management that my last day as chef would be the day before the grand opening.
The calendar on the wall of our shared office upstairs with the big circle on the date reminds me the grand opening is just two days away now.
And aside from a near-immediate, lackluster email response saying congratulations, she hasn’t so much as acknowledged my choice. Certainly hasn’t asked me about it.
I’d almost think Lexi was avoiding me entirely, if she didn’t still come over to give herself over to the distraction of our bodies most nights. Like all that’s between us is physical.
It’s starting to piss me off.
I forget how to ease on the brakes and stop abruptly in front of my destination, parking the bike. My head tilts to one shoulder, then the other, cracking my neck in an effort to let some of this tension out of my system.
It doesn’t work.
Lexi didn’t come into the restaurant today either. She either doesn’t give a shit that I resigned, now that she’s losing the diner, or she feels it too deep to know what to do with all that emotion.
My bet’s on the latter, but by the end of the night she’ll tell me one way or the other.
Walking up to her door, I take in the full blooms of her garden, their aroma hanging heavy in the humid summer night air. Somewhere not far, a neighbor must be burning a bonfire, the scent warming my nose.