CHAPTER 7 #2
The restaurant closed over an hour ago, but I wanted to catch up with her and take a quick food break before going home.
I already regretted my decision.
“No one important,” I said.
“If they weren’t important, you wouldn’t have sent them free dessert.”
I finished my fries and tossed the empty container into a nearby trash can. We were in the street behind the restaurant. It smelled like garbage and food grease, yet I felt more at home here than in my family’s boardroom.
“It was an old schoolmate,” I amended. Margaux had the tenacity of a pitbull, so I had to give her something, or she’d never let me off the hook.
“But not a friend,” she observed shrewdly.
“No.”
What Maya and I had was too complicated to classify as friendship.
Friends didn’t compete as often as we did. They didn’t live to get under each other’s skin, and they certainly didn’t cancel guys’ night to crash the other’s date instead.
Every morning, I received a list of VIP guests who were scheduled to dine at my restaurants that day. The reservation was under her date’s name, but he’d listed Maya as his companion. She was the VIP, not him.
I’d told Margaux I wanted to shadow her in the kitchen tonight when I’d really wanted to see what Maya was like on a date. What did she order? How did she act? What did she wear?
They were questions I should’ve already had the answer to, considering we’d grown up together. The fact that I hadn’t until tonight bothered me for reasons I couldn’t name.
“Is your father still being a little bitch about you becoming a chef full time?” Margaux asked.
I smirked. She was one of the few people who knew about my ambitions, and she was one of the very few who was brave enough to talk about my father that way.
“évidemment.”
She made a disgusted noise. “So corporate. T’as un don naturel pour la cuisine. Tu ne devrais pas perdre ton temps à suivre les conseils de ton père alors qu’il n’y connait rien.” You have a natural talent for cooking. You shouldn’t waste your time listening to your dad when he doesn’t get it.
“I have a natural talent for marketing too.”
“That’s not the same, and you know it.” She pointed her cigarette at me. “Do you know what your problem is? You ask too much and don’t negotiate enough. You’re his only son, and he needs you more than he lets on. Use that to your advantage. Make him take you seriously.”
I was silent.
Margaux was right. I could force my father’s hand more, but doing so would require me to believe in myself one hundred percent. I had to wholeheartedly, unequivocally trust that becoming a chef was what I was meant to do, but I was only ninety-eight percent of the way there.
As much as I wanted it, there was still two percent of me that doubted myself. My previous failures hung over me like a cloud, and until I figured out a way to get past that, I was stuck in limbo.
I couldn’t tell Margaux that, though. She had too much conviction about what she did, and admitting I didn’t have enough would simply be another failure on my part.
“That’s a problem for another day.” I pushed off the wall and headed for the main road. “Thanks for letting me shadow you tonight. I’ll see you around.”
She stubbed out her cigarette and lit a fresh one. She was aware her smoking habit might kill her one day, but her attitude toward death was the same as her attitude toward everything except cooking: fuck it.
“Don’t get used to it,” she called after me. “Next time I see you in the kitchen, you better be the one running it.”
I laughed even as a pang hit my chest. I tossed my hand up in a casual wave goodbye and turned onto the main avenue.
It was a long walk home, but it was a gorgeous night, and the city was strangely calming when it was this quiet.
My footsteps echoed in the near-empty streets. Besides the occasional passing car and pedestrian, it was just me and my thoughts.
My father. Maya. The product launch. The past and future and everything in between. There were a dozen roads splitting off into a dozen more, and I wished I could commit to a path without second-guessing myself every step of the way.
I made it halfway downtown when my phone buzzed. I almost sent it to voicemail before I saw who was calling.
Interesting.
I picked up, my mood lightening. “Miss me already?”
“You wish,” Maya said.
“I can’t think of any other reason you’d call me after midnight. Unless…”
“Don’t finish that sentence unless you want me to throw up,” she warned. A beat passed, and then, “Why did you send me that dessert?”
That fucking dessert. It was my second most foolish decision of the day, after canceling guys’ night to work.
“You like strawberries and chocolate,” I said. “I was being nice.”
“You’re never nice.”
“I’m always nice.”
“Not to me.”
“Fair point,” I conceded. “What can I say? I was in a good mood.”
“You’re up to something, Laurent.” Her obvious suspicion made me smile. “If I find out you put laxatives or something in that cake, I’ll kill you.”
Cause of death: anaphylactic shock.
The memory of the coroner’s pronouncement floated through my mind.
My smile wavered, but I kept my voice even.
“One, I wouldn’t damage my restaurant’s reputation by doing something so stupid.
Two, that’s rich coming from someone who was planning to do that exact thing to me at her family’s dinner party last month. ”
A long silence greeted my response.
I pictured Maya sitting in her penthouse, her mouth open with shock, and my good mood returned.
“You thought I didn’t know?” I tsked. “I can predict your every move, Sal.”
Truthfully, I’d run into Diya on my way to the conservatory that night. She’d refused to tell me why she was holding a bottle of laxatives, but I’d put the pieces together myself.
I’d never tell Maya, though. Let her think I could read her mind.
“I had no such plans,” she said, her tone wholly unconvincing. “And if I did, you deserved it.”
“If you say so. But if you really want to know the truth, I sent you that cake because you looked miserable.”
“I wasn’t. I was having a good time.”
Another lie. One of these days, she’d figure out that she couldn’t hide the truth from me. Not when it came to stuff that mattered, and not when it came to her.
“I’ve seen people have a better time getting mauled by a lion,” I said.
She huffed. “Why do you care if I’m miserable? I thought you’d love seeing that.”
“Because.” I stopped at a red crossing light. “I’m the only one who gets to make you miserable.”
Another silence, this one weighted on both ends.
Maya was stress and frustration and escape all rolled into one.
Our interactions never failed to raise my blood pressure, but in a world where my days blended together with mind-numbing ease, she was the only person who made me feel alive.
Her anger, her drive, her rare moments of genuine vulnerability. I couldn’t get enough.
I wanted to stash her emotions in a bottle and carry them around with me because seeing her feel made me feel too. Without our constant battles, my life would resemble a flat desert landscape.
Empty. Predictable. Boring.
So, no. No one else was allowed to make her feel the way I did. That privilege was reserved solely for me.
“You are such a bastard,” Maya finally said.
There was a strange note in her voice, but she didn’t give me a chance to respond. When I checked my screen again, she’d already hung up.
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was still thinking about me hours after that dessert. I’d say that was a win for me.
My mouth curled into a grin.
I continued my walk home, my steps lighter than before.
Sending Maya that cake hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.