2. Jordan
JORDAN
The bechamel was fighting me again.
I had four burners going at The Starred Skillet, with each one holding a different ratio of the same recipe. And not a single one of them was doing what it did in my restaurant kitchen.
Back in Manhattan, I could make this sauce with my eyes closed, six gallons at a time.
And it came out silky smooth every time.
But scaling it down for a home cook who was making dinner for their family just wasn’t working.
My math was wrong. Or chemistry. Or just my hazy brain.
I didn’t know where the problem was, but it was too thick in one pot.
Too thin in another. The cream had broken in the back left pot, and my last hope had actual lumps in it.
Dammit.
That was the whole problem with writing a cookbook after fifteen years of running a restaurant kitchen.
My instincts were built for volume. I was used to having access to walk-ins that were stocked to the ceiling with the finest ingredients and six line cooks moving in sync.
I didn’t know how to cook alone in a normal-sized kitchen with a normal-sized pot anymore.
Every recipe I attempted had to be deconstructed and recalculated from scratch. And even after that, the bechamel was still not cooperating after three weeks of various experiments.
"You're beating it like it’s been a bad girl." Magda chuckled from the doorway, looking up at me from over the top of her clipboard.
"It has been. Trust me." But the analogy didn’t really work because I wasn’t a disciplinarian. Unless my girl begged me to spank her, I was usually more of a gentle Daddy. But you wouldn’t know that by the way I was breaking a sweat over this damn sauce. “I don’t know why it’s not working.”
"It's flour and butter, Jordan. It’s not that hard." Magda had owned a restaurant with her ex-husband for years.
Now I was lucky enough to have her managing my commercial kitchen so I could focus on my passion. Which I thought was gonna be writing a cookbook, but I was becoming less passionate and more pissed off by the second. "It's flour and butter that used to respect me."
She snorted and kept walking. That pretty much summed up our whole relationship at this point.
I specifically asked her not to treat me any different than the other people renting kitchen time here.
That meant no fussing or extra attention just because my name had been on a restaurant marquee for a decade.
Technically, I also owned the building, but she was the only one who knew that, and I wanted to keep it that way.
I dumped all the pots and started again from scratch.
I was going for a cold roux and gave it my full attention for exactly nine minutes before I admitted defeat.
Again. My manuscript deadline was fast approaching, and my editor didn’t give a shit that a sauce which had never once given me trouble in the past was suddenly impossible.
Was this what the yips felt like? Did I have the yips?
Fuck, I needed a break.
I washed up and grabbed my jacket off the hook. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
"The Bean Box?" Magda didn’t even look up as I passed by her. It had become a routine she'd clocked a while ago.
"Yeah, I need some actual coffee and fresh air."
"Mm-hmm." I couldn’t see it but I could definitely hear the smirk in her voice. "Say hi to your barista."
I rolled my eyes, and my heart started to beat a little faster. "She's not my barista." Yet.
"Yet." Dammit, Magda. Stop reading my mind.
I didn't bother with a response because I didn’t like to lie.
The Bean Box was four minutes away if I walked fast, which I always did. I told myself I was passing by three other coffee shops because the Bean Box coffee was so superior. But that was mostly bullshit. It was good, but that wasn’t the full truth.
I mean, it was true that the house I was renting only had a hotplate and a pod brewer that couldn't make anything worth drinking. But it was also true that I had access to a top-of-the-line espresso machine at the kitchen.
What I wasn’t willing to admit to Magda or even myself was that I'd been going to that particular shop for weeks because of the blonde barista who worked there.
She was sweet and beautiful, and after the first few times I saw her, my coffee habit had somehow become more of an obsession that rearranged itself around her schedule.
I told myself it was a coincidence the first few times I saw her there, but I didn’t bother trying to justify my actions anymore. I was grown, and I could go to any damn coffee shop I wanted.
The bell over the door chimed when I walked in, and she looked up and smiled. Just like I hoped she would.
She stepped back from wiping down the espresso machine and smiled. "Hey, stranger." Something in my chest always puffed up when I saw her. It seemed to be in equal relation to something tightening in my pants. "Your usual?"
"You remembered?" That was hot AF.
"I remember everyone's order. It's kinda my whole job." She winked as she reached for a cup and wrote my name on the side. "Jordan with a large oat milk, extra shot.”
“Wow.” I loved the sound of my name on her tongue. “You’re good.”
“Don't sound so surprised." She grinned over her shoulder then turned away to start frothing the milk. “You’re memorable.”
I am? "I'm not surprised. I'm flattered."
"You should be." She glanced at me from the machine and started pulling the shot.
She started to hum, like she did on most days when it was quiet. She always had a cute little tune in her head that made her shake and bounce in all the right places.
A woman walked in and went straight to the pickup counter. She asked Kylie something about oat milk versus almond, and Kylie answered with a little bounce on her toes, like the question itself was delightful. She couldn’t be any more adorable if she tried.
When the woman left, Kylie giggled to herself for no apparent reason and then looked at me as if she’d been caught.
Even though I should have felt contrite, I didn’t bother looking away. I wanted her to know I caught everything she did. It was unusual for me to be so focused on someone for so long, but I liked learning little things just by watching her.
I’d never considered myself to be particularly observant with most people, but I definitely was with Kylie.
There was something about her that I couldn't quite look away from. I’d watched her with a full crowd of customers, laughing and smiling and taking orders like a boss. And I’d watched her when it was empty like this and she was just free to be silly.
In all cases, she was beautiful in a way that I soaked in whenever I was around her.
She'd giggle at her own jokes and then light up over small things that most adults had long since stopped noticing.
Whether it was her favorite song coming on the radio or a customer complimenting her nail polish, she just beamed happiness.
But there was something else too. Something in the way her smile faltered when she watched a couple holding hands or a man holding the door for his lady.
Maybe she was lonely too.
It wasn’t obvious, but there was something hiding behind those pretty eyes that were always bright when they locked with mine.
I'd dated plenty of women who were sweet and funny.
And lots who knew exactly how to hold a room.
But none of them ever made me want to sit in a coffee shop for an extra twenty minutes just to watch them wipe down a counter.
Her openness felt almost unguarded, like she hadn't yet shielded herself against the world the way so many single women did. I couldn’t help wondering what it would take to earn a closer look at whatever she was willing to share.
When she appeared in front of me, I shook off the longing and smiled. “That was fast.”
"You’re easy." She slid my cup across the counter and then grabbed her tongs. “Do you want your cake for here or to go?”
"For here, actually." I hadn't planned on eating it here, but it was the perfect excuse to linger.
"Oh. Cool." She seemed surprised and maybe even a little pleased that I was sticking around. "Well, um, you’ve got plenty of tables to choose from."
I grabbed a table by the window and pulled out my laptop like I actually intended to work. To keep up the charade, I opened the manuscript for my cookbook and glanced at a mostly blank page in between staring at Kylie.
There wasn’t any better way to pass my time than to drink my coffee while watching her work.
Small groups of customers came in and out, giving me lots of chances to admire how her tongue curled around her lip when she was steaming milk and the way she was so good at remembering people’s names, even when they were hard to spell.
A little kid came in with his mom, and Kylie crouched down to his eye level to ask if he wanted a cookie.
She used a soft voice that made it clear she really loved kids.
It was sweet. And hearing her childish voice was…hot.
With nowhere in particular I had to be, I stayed longer than I’d meant to. I always did.
By the time I packed up my laptop, the lunch rush had thinned out and Kylie was restocking napkins behind the counter.
"See you tomorrow?" she asked as I stood up and pushed in my chair.
The fact that she knew my schedule without me ever mentioning it felt like something to take note of. But I didn’t want to project my interest onto her, so I just chalked it up to her being really great at her job. "Yup. See ya then."
The walk back to my rental wasn't long enough to clear my head. Between my frustration on the lack of recipe progress I was making and my ever-growing interest in the sweet barista I’d had to force myself to leave just a few minutes ago, I was wound up tight.
As soon as I got inside the little bungalow that was my temporary home until my house on the hill was completed, I dropped my keys on the counter and toed off my shoes.
I rented it fully furnished, so nothing in the house belonged to me, but I was stuck here for at least another month or two.
My contractor had pushed the timeline back again last week because of some permit issue with the county, and I was starting to wonder if I'd be living out of this place until the cookbook was finished and my new restaurant idea died a quiet death from neglect.
There was something I needed to do before I talked myself out of it. I opened up my laptop and pulled up an email to Magda.
If the station across from mine hasn’t been rented yet, save it for me. I might bring in a sous chef to work with me on some recipes.
With that out of the way, I went back to my pathetic excuse for a manuscript. Chapter twelve. Braising basics. It was a section I'd rewritten a hundred times in a hundred different forms and could probably do in my sleep.
Yet the cursor sat there blinking at the top of the page, mocking my lack of creativity or focus.
And I didn't write a single word.