Chapter 1 #2
But she’s not taking the bait. “You don’t get to think he’s better than you. You’ve always had the ability to do better than him, and I can’t believe that little shit dumped you when you’re a star and he’s an empty suit.”
“Stop being so nice and just give me some honest feelings, why don’t you,” I reply, sarcasm dripping while I take a long sip of my tea.
“Kit.” My name sounds like a warning coming out of her mouth. But after we stare at each other for a few moments, she clearly decides to drop it. “Are you okay?”
“About John?”
“I guess?” she says.
She’s always hated him, so I’m surprised she’s not doing a victory dance.
“I’m . . .” I sigh, because I think I know the answer and it’s hard to admit it out loud. I bite my already-chewed nails but then rub my hands through my short hair to try and stop myself from succumbing to my least favorite habit.
But with my whole life imploding, I guess it’s an acceptable time to be slightly more exposed in front of my best friend.
“No one else is ever going to want me for me. I’m not sexy or fun.
I’m obsessed with work. I have no other hobbies—happily!
I like that about myself. John understood that.
He didn’t need me, and he never pushed our relationship.
We never had to live together; he didn’t need date nights; we went to industry events, we had sex, and when we talked, it could be about the restaurant.
Maybe that’s not like some amazing love story, but it’s all I can handle. ”
You know the poster of Get Out, where Daniel Kaluuya’s eyes are as wide as humanly possible, conveying both terror and sadness simultaneously?
That’s what Anita looks like right now. And this, this right here, is exactly why I don’t share my innermost thoughts with people.
They’re abnormal and no one wants to hear them.
But before I can let that depressing realization settle, Anita grabs my hand.
“I’m sorry, I really didn’t know that’s how you saw things,” she finally says, and I hate the quiet pity in her voice. “But honey, that’s not it. It’s fine if you don’t need a partner, but love shouldn’t ever just be that.”
I know she’s thinking of her husband and the gooey way they look at each other.
It’s not that I don’t believe in love—I see it.
I see her. I know people build lasting relationships and that love isn’t some farce we’re all fed.
But she’s wrong about me. That isn’t me.
I only love cooking and New York like that—and I’ve always felt really damn lucky to have two things I do love that much.
But there’s no way to explain that to someone who can check her passion at the door at the end of a shift and would live wherever life took her.
“I don’t want to talk about John, okay?” I say, and she nods, knowing I need to change the subject back to safer ground. “But I do know enough to know that I can’t sit around for months waiting for my restaurant to get renovated.”
She sits back, and the smile that curves onto her face scares the shit out of me, because I know she thinks she has a solution, and there’s no way to stop Anita once she has an idea in her mind.
“I actually have the perfect plan for you,” she says, predictably.
“Is it working with you?”
She ignores me and continues. “You want to work. I want you to get away. What about Italia?”
“What about it?” She’s spent fourteen years trying to convince me to travel home with her, and I wouldn’t have expected her to want a vacation now.
“Nonna needs a summer assistant. Her usual person is out on maternity leave, and it’s been a bit chaotic. Why don’t you go work for her?”
That wasn’t what I was expecting. “Doesn’t your grandmother run like a tiny restaurant in a random town in Tuscany?”
“Yes,” she replies, daring me to say anything against her beloved nonna.
I try to be as delicate as possible. “Didn’t you just say to me that working in your restaurant would be slumming it?”
“Yeah, but I don’t need help. She does. And besides, she’s a legend. You’d learn more from her than you did at Alinea.”
“I was shucking oysters and tweezing dill for the entire summer at Alinea, so I don’t actually count that as a real culinary learning experience.”
“Exactly.” Her smile is smug, and I’m panicking a little; after begging for something to do mere moments ago, I now have no legitimate excuses.
“You can’t pace around the city all summer like a caged tiger, waiting for your restaurant to reopen.
And with this, you’d actually learn how to make pasta from scratch, which I still can’t believe you ignore as a basic cooking skill. ”
I roll my eyes at that one. Never get into a conversation with an Italian about food when you were trained on French technique.
“And she won’t cut you any slack,” she continues. “It wouldn’t be a break. She won’t care that you have a Beard Award, and she’ll be thrilled to work you to death.”
It’s pathetic how much that thought perks me up.
“You’re going,” she says, certain that she’s got my life all figured out. “Come on, the hard is what makes it great.”
“Don’t quote A League of Their Own at me,” I huff. “I introduced you to that damn movie! Italians can’t quote baseball things.”
“Cooking is what gets inside you!” she gleefully taunts back, doing a pretty terrible Tom Hanks impression and relishing getting under my skin.
Or maybe she’s relishing lightening the conversation.
We’ve always kept things breezy for each other, and this day has been skating way too close to openness.
“I’ll think about it,” I finally say.
Outside the diner, we give each other hugs while she continues to yammer in my ear about how her plan is the best idea of all time and I try to ignore the tight feeling in my stomach. Uncertainty is not something I’m used to anymore, and this sudden turn of events has me completely upended.
I walk until I find myself ducking under caution tape around the restaurant and into the burned-out remains of my kitchen.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but I’m not prepared for the total disarray that greets me.
Everything is either charred from fire or wet from the water that put it out.
It’s jarring in a place that’s usually clean to the point of sterility.
Fine dining is nothing if not precision, and the beauty of a perfectly organized stainless steel restaurant kitchen has always been calming.
Now, instead, it’s anarchy in front of me.
Before today, this room was more home to me than my actual home.
It was my happy center nested inside the city that I belong in—the comforting soft interior of a perfectly cooked chocolate lava cake.
This room has always been my own personal docking station, where I go to power up, to function, to be at my most potent.
Each section is like an extra limb—sauces that I’d hover over to make sure they were perfectly seasoned; seafood that needed to be scorched just so to stay deliciously tender; salads that sang with the produce I’d carefully curated from farmers whose numbers I had on speed dial.
And now it’s torched.
My phone buzzes with a text, and I pull it out of my pocket. Ugh, John.
I already got a call in to our teams in Dubai and Tokyo.
I think we could schedule you in three month-long residencies at our properties there and potentially, I’m thinking Singapore but maybe S?o Paolo could be better.
Everyone’s really stoked—not about the fire, obviously, but about the opportunity to get you for a chunk of time.
I stare at it, wide eyed. He broke up with me last night, and this is what he’s texting me today? Like we’re simply back to being colleagues?
I scroll down and see I have a text from my dad too.
Kit! I just saw the news! You need a plan of action. How long do they think renovations are going to take?
I cringe as I look at the texts side by side.
It hits me for the first time in my life that even though I’ve worked for everything I’ve earned, I’ve always allowed a man to clear the path for me.
And maybe those weren’t the wrong choices in those particular moments, but I hate that that’s somehow my default.
This room is suffocating.
I walk outside to get some air, although that’s hard to do with an end-of-spring heat wave already making the trash smell.
I stand waiting for the light to change and see a guy sitting on the ground with a sign asking for cash.
I look in his hat on the sidewalk, upturned and ready for donations, with only a couple of dollar bills and a Korean face mask packet someone’s thrown in.
This ridiculous city. I love it so much, even though it spits everyone out. Fast paced, acerbic, funny, intense. So much of it is me.
I pull out a twenty and add it to his pile.
Anita’s right. I’ve gotta get out of here for a little bit; I can’t handle my beloved New York with this much ambiguity.
I wouldn’t survive, even if I called in a favor and worked at someone else’s restaurant.
The boredom would eat at me. The speed and energy of the city would taunt me.
I want to work and do what I’m good at, not think about logistics.
Anita’s plan floats to the front of my mind, like a crystal clear door number two.
It’s a lighthouse tempting me across an ocean.
There’s a thrill to the idea of rejecting the path everyone assumes I’ll embrace.
Perhaps the double whammy of losing my restaurant and John is the jolt I actually need to take control and do something that’s entirely my decision, suggested by the one person who’s never treated our relationship as a transaction.
I want this feeling to go away, and Anita’s offering a tailor-made solution.
So I do the first impulsive thing I’ve ever done in my life. I take out my phone and book a one-way ticket to Rome.