The Slow Burn

Chapter 1

If I wanted to be charitable, I would assume John didn’t know about the fire when he dumped me.

I’m not sure it’s in my nature to be charitable, though.

I didn’t anticipate walking into my apartment and seeing his bag packed while the only thing that mattered to me was burning down.

The excuses started instantly. They were the same excuses I’d always suspected he’d use on me when he eventually left.

I’m only holding you back.

You don’t have time for me anyway.

You don’t need anyone else, and I respect that about you, but I need more.

I wanted to ask whether this breakup was actually because my restaurant was on fire, which might make me less impressive arm candy now.

I wanted to ask if it had anything to do with the hostess at his newest restaurant, the one who’s always fawning over him.

But I didn’t. After all, he’s not wrong that I never have time for him anyway.

So now, as I’m sitting at a diner with Anita the day after, my head feels on the verge of imploding from the copious amounts of tequila I consumed once John closed the door on us.

Normally at night I would’ve been at the restaurant, but of course last night, my restaurant was in the capable hands of the New York City Fire Department.

Standing there, watching my favorite place go up in flames without any ability to stop it, wasn’t exactly something I could handle.

I left to walk the two blocks to my apartment and wallow. And get dumped, apparently.

So. Tequila. A fitful, mostly blacked-out night of sleep. Then Anita throwing a bucket of ice water on my face, into my bed, at ten o’clock in the morning, saying she was dragging me to brunch. Ugh, brunch, I thought, even as she was pulling me out the door, every line cook’s nightmare.

“Look at this as a blessing in disguise, Kit.” She’s practically inhaling her pancakes, her usual mile-a-minute, Italian-accented verbal pace barely affected.

“No one needs a break more than you. Insurance money will pay for the restaurant. Take the summer off, let the management team rebuild, and you can come back stronger.”

“No.”

I’m in denial. I fork a piece of her fluffy diner pancakes, even though my eggs and tea are still sitting untouched in front of me.

“Go to a resort on the beach. Soak in the sun and ignore everyone. It’ll be great. You haven’t taken a vacation in the fourteen years I’ve known you—this is a great excuse.”

“I hate the beach,” I retort.

“Doesn’t have to be the beach,” she continues undeterred, her dozen bracelets clanging and her colorful attire hurting my hungover eyes.

“Go to Tokyo and eat your way around the city. Wander through vineyards in France and drink yourself into oblivion. Just take some time off. There’s nothing you can do for the restaurant by wallowing in your apartment for months on end. ”

She doesn’t even know John broke up with me yet. I can’t help but think that maybe there was a problem with my relationship if my best friend is suggesting I leave the city for months and she hasn’t even considered what would happen to my boyfriend.

I push that thought out of my mind. It’s not important now.

“I could keep busy by working for you?” I ask hopefully.

Her dark eyes stare at me with so much force I worry I’m about to disintegrate. At least that would eliminate my drunken headache.

“I’m perfectly happy at the trattoria with my two line cooks and simple prep. I left that fine dining shit behind me, and you are not going to fuck up my happy place—”

“You know some people might say it’s rude to imply that having your best friend working with you would be—”

“A best friend who I worked with already. Thank you, but no thank you,” she says, cutting me off.

“There’s a reason you have Michelin stars and profiles in Food & Wine and I don’t.

You’re the only executive chef who actually shows up seven days a week at her restaurant.

Even T. K. took a day off in the heyday of French Laundry. ”

I take another piece of her pancakes without looking up. I can’t argue with Anita.

We met as lowly line cooks at New York’s seafood mecca Le Bernardin right after we’d both graduated culinary school.

She was untethered petals blowing in from Italy on a warm breeze, ready to learn something new.

I was a determinedly rooted succulent, stoically primed to survive without sunlight, who just wanted to plant myself in the most prestigious restaurants I could find.

After a couple of years, Anita abandoned fine dining and went to work in a series of simple but perfect Italian restaurants, until she opened her own.

Think four fresh pastas, two meats, and a smattering of appetizers that people go crazy over.

She’s managed effortless in an always-booked restaurant, and I love her for it.

But that simplicity has never been my goal. I went from Le Bernardin to Masa to learn Japanese technique and then on to an acclaimed French spot, where I was noticed as the chef de cuisine. I wanted to win, whatever “winning” means to a workaholic chef. And I have.

A few years ago I was tapped to become the executive chef of a new restaurant from one of the city’s leading hospitality groups.

They’d found the ideal space for their vision, inflected with New American, French, and Japanese influences, and I was apparently the chef with the perfect training to execute.

I’m not an owner, but it’s still my name and recipes on the menu.

It’s the kind of opportunity an ambitious chef covets, and it’s lived up to every dream, instantly becoming one of the most renowned and hardest-to-get-into restaurants in the city.

I’ve thrived calling the shots. I look forward to every single day.

Until today, I suppose.

“Come on,” I harangue Anita, undeterred. “You know I go insane if I’m not busy. I’ll keep my mouth shut. I was a sous for years. I can take instructions.” I pause, because I’m not looking forward to admitting the one thing that might convince her. “You know I can’t ask anyone else.”

She snorts—the thought of me approaching any other chef is laughable.

My precision, my dedication, my competitiveness, and my fastidiousness are all assets in my kitchen, but they haven’t exactly given me a reputation as being collaborative.

I never ask anyone for anything. No one would believe that I could shut up and take instruction, even though I lived that hierarchy for a decade before having a space of my own. But I could do it again.

“You’re spiraling a little bit, you know that?” she asks, in what has to be the most obvious statement ever made. “You don’t need to slum it at someone else’s restaurant to be busy.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘slumming it,’” I mutter.

“Yes you would.” She shoves the last of the pancakes in her mouth before I’ve even touched my plate.

“You’re mourning and in shock simultaneously.

But the restaurant will reopen. You’ll get a plan together and expedite the work, and you’ll be back up and running by the fall.

There’s nothing you can do about it now, so use the time for something fun. ”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is, though,” she says with a shrug. “John’ll have some construction crew he overpays working discreetly on nights and weekends to get it done for you as quickly as possible.”

Now I’m the one shoveling food in my mouth. I guess my appetite disappearing no longer matters when I need to avoid the ability to speak.

“John and I broke up,” I finally say with my mouth full. If I’m not looking at her and can obscure what I’m saying, maybe I’ll be able to avoid her incredulity.

But no such luck. She stills.

“What did you just say?”

“You don’t even like him,” I mumble. It’s the defensive equivalent of I know you are but what am I?

“When did you break up?”

“Last night.”

“Last night after the fire?” Her voice is getting loud.

“Well, technically I think the fire was still happening.”

“So you were losing it over the restaurant and got in a fight and dumped him?” Her voice is getting louder by the second, and she hasn’t even heard the story.

“He dumped me,” I say as casually as possible.

“Wait . . . John dumped you while your restaurant was on fire?”

“Maybe he didn’t know about it.”

I look up right as a bread roll comes flying at my face. It hits me in the jaw with a sweet little thud. At least the bread here is soft. I wonder what bakery they get it from?

Anita snaps her fingers in my face at my distraction. “‘He didn’t know about it’? He’s head of one of the city’s biggest hospitality groups. He’s a personal investor in your restaurant! You think he was hanging around your apartment without a heads-up that everything was going to shit?”

I weigh that thought—one I haven’t really had time to consider, with the tequila and the blacking out and the morning headache.

“Well,” I say, “he needed a reason to finally admit he was sick of me, so I guess maybe this was as good as any.”

Anita’s hackles go down, and her whole face softens.

I hate that she’s always been able to catch my tiniest flecks of weakness on the rare occasions when they leak out, like a restaurant inspector who spots the one out-of-date product in the entire walk-in.

No one else clocks those lapses, because at this point everyone else assumes my products are immaculate.

Only Anita ever seems to poke at me to prove I’m human.

She’s quieter now but still as serious as stone. “Your value has never been tied to that—”

“Save it,” I growl, desperately hoping to avoid a pep talk.

“—show clown who love-bombed you and introduced you to his contacts so you’d feel like your value was tied to his skills as a restaurant investor. He didn’t elevate you. You elevate you. Your talent. Your skills. Your work.”

“I’m also pretty good at sex,” I quip, trying to throw her off.