Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There was a huge, well, rush in making it through one of the meal rushes at a restaurant, a kind of satisfied decline in the adrenaline needed to keep up with the hectic flow of orders that came with each mealtime.
Jared rolled back his shoulders as he finished up with the very last lunch order that was likely to come in, given that it was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon.
He stretched out his neck; he flexed his fingers, which had been curled tightly around a knife, spoon, or spatula for practically every second of the last three hours.
He paused, let out a long, slow breath and waited a beat for the second familiar feeling to set in.
Gosh, he was starving.
This feeling always hit a bit like a freight train, slamming him as it went from zero to sixty in an instant.
For some reason, working with food tricked his body into thinking that it was being fed, or maybe it just kept him too busy to think about his own physical needs. But the moment he was done…
It was like he hadn’t eaten in a year.
Luckily, he had been a chef for long enough that he knew perfectly well that this feeling would arrive with a vengeance, and he had set aside a meal for himself.
Today, he had saved some of the roast beef he’d been serving and turned it into a sandwich, made with thick slices of meat and hearty slabs of freshly baked sourdough bread.
Jared himself wasn’t much of a baker, but he had a partnership with Honey Bee Bakery, who supplied him with fresh bread every day.
He was grateful for the collaboration, especially as it saved him from having to come into the restaurant at four in the morning every day.
He’d taken some of their bread, the meat, and added several slices of crispy iceberg lettuce for the texture.
Finally, he’d put a whole-grain mustard on both slices of bread to add some bite.
Not everyone loved the intensity of unground mustard, but Jared had become a big fan when he had trained at culinary school in France, and he’d never lost the taste for it.
On the side, he’d whipped up a simple spinach salad with balsamic vinaigrette. On top of the loosely torn baby spinach, he’d added a crumbled handful of goat cheese, some chopped pecans, and pickled red onions.
Not to toot his own horn, but it was a darn good-looking meal.
Jared always put attention and care into his lunches, because he had so many ingredients prepped already and it was a small thing to set aside some for himself.
By dinner, he was usually too wiped out to go to much trouble.
The night prior, he’d just eaten a pork chop.
He hadn’t even gone to the effort to make himself a plate.
He’d been so tired that he’d just wrapped the thing in a napkin to protect his fingers from the sauce, plunked down in an empty booth, and eaten it, too exhausted to notice much of what he was consuming.
He never wanted to let weariness steal his love of food. That was what had gotten him into cooking in the first place, after all.
So, lunches were his “me” time.
He carried his plate out to the main dining room, which was nearly empty.
There were a few stragglers still finishing up their midday meals, and Jared gave a nod of thanks to the waitstaff for their efforts.
Fortunately, he’d found time to give each server a break to eat their own lunches earlier in the shift, so they wouldn’t be feeling their stomachs trying to collapse in on themselves, as his was currently doing.
His feet were steering him automatically toward his favorite booth, one that overlooked a large willow tree that was just starting to get the first buds of spring on it, when he spotted Hope, sitting in a corner booth with an almost empty plate and…
Was that part of a quilt in front of her?
He had pivoted in her direction before he’d consciously made the decision to do so.
Hope looked up when he was a few paces away, her fingers pausing with her thread and needle still clasped between them.
“Hi,” she said, her bashful smile charming and frankly adorable.
Jared noticed that and then pushed the thought away.
The last time he’d commented on her (admittedly quite pleasing) appearance, things had gotten awkward enough that it was honestly a bit of a surprise to see her here at all, let alone seeing her here and apparently happy to see him.
“Hey,” he greeted. “Mind if I join you?”
He hefted his plate in illustration.
“Oh! No, not at all! Please, do.” She tugged her project closer to her to make space for him to eat.
He slid into the booth seat across from her. His body wouldn’t let him pause a single moment longer without eating, so he took a bite of his sandwich, letting the flavors sweep over him before he said anything further.
Sometimes, all it really took was an extremely good sandwich to remind him how very worth it all those years in culinary school had been.
“So,” he said when he’d gotten through half the sandwich and the black hole in his stomach was starting to feel a little more manageable. “I see that you are quilting.”
Hope’s grin was a little crooked, a little teasing.
“Keenly observed, Chef Novak,” she joked. “Maybe you should give up this restaurant thing and become a detective. Magnolia Shore’s very own Sherlock Holmes.”
He rolled his eyes playfully. “What I meant was, have you really gotten so bored in Magnolia Shore that you need to take up a ‘granny craft?’”
She pressed a hand to her chest in mock affront.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said haughtily. “I will have you know that I am, in fact, a very accomplished quilter. And I have recently rediscovered my passion for it. The fact that I rediscovered it while living with my actual grandmother is mere happenstance.”
He laughed at her performance, then matched her tone.
“My most sincere apologies, madam,” he said, sketching a bow as well as he could while sitting in a restaurant booth and holding a sandwich in his hand. “Please forgive the insolence. You are as accomplished as any of the grand quilters that this town has to offer.”
She scrunched up her nose. He, once again, had to push down any thoughts about how adorable she was, lest they find their way to his mouth.
“I wouldn’t go quite that far,” she said, spreading the square out in front of her.
It was made of a series of triangles that pointed toward the middle of the square.
“This is just a simple pinwheel pattern. It’s pretty basic, as far as quilt patterns go.
But it does feel good to get back into a hobby that uses my hands.
And my grandmother has about a million fabric options lurking in her back room.
She let me help myself, so I’m indulging. ”
“It does feel good to make things with your hands,” he agreed.
It was part of what drew him to cooking.
He liked knowing that he could pick up a knife and some ingredients and use his skill to feed people, to satisfy their stomachs and their souls, as only good food could do.
“But you’re doing the entire thing by hand?
Don’t people usually use sewing machines? ”
“Oh, definitely,” she agreed immediately.
“And I’m certain that I’ll end up doing part of this via machine, since I’ll be stitching for about the next ten years otherwise.
But right now, it’s nice that I can pack up a little sewing bag and take it with me around town. It feels good to get out and about.”
He raised an eyebrow, then speared a forkful of salad. “I don’t want to bring up the word ‘bored’ again,” he said, letting the implication hang. He ate the bite of salad. Ooh, that goat cheese really was delicious.
Hope wobbled her head from side to side.
“Yeah, maybe,” she admitted. “Or, I don’t know that I’d call it being bored.
Everything here feels kind of new to me, even if I used to spend time here as a child.
But I’ve been so preoccupied the past few years with work that I haven’t visited.
Since my sister and I both live in Boston…
or I guess lived in Boston, in my case, Miriam always came to visit us, rather than the other way around.
So, it’s been a while since I’ve been here, and it’s exciting to see it all again. ”
She paused again, gazing out the window. Jared let her ruminate and busied himself with another few bites of his meal.
“I guess I just feel a lack of purpose,” she said.
“There’s taking care of my grandmother, obviously.
That’s really important to me, of course.
But she’s getting better every day, and that’s good.
But it does leave me… a little at loose ends, I suppose.
It reminds me that I miss my job, and sometimes that feels hard to explain, because so many people think of it as ‘just being a waitress.’ But I really liked that job.
I liked feeding people, even if I wasn’t the one cooking it. ”
Jared, in his career, had worked nearly every role that a professional chef had to offer.
He’d been a busboy as a teenager; he’d waited tables to earn some extra money in culinary school.
Then, there had been the usual rise through the ranks.
He’d worked as a prep cook, a line cook, a sous chef.
He’d worked catering gigs and a short stint as a private chef for a handful of rich clients.
He liked running his own kitchen the best of all these, but the constant had always remained.
Feeding people.
“That makes perfect sense to me,” he said to Hope quietly, meaning every word. “It’s the best part of the job, no matter which part in the process you actually have.”
She paused for a moment, and he could see that she was biting the inside of her lip, considering something.
“You know,” she said seriously, “that’s where you’re wrong. The part of the process does matter. We wait staff just don’t usually tell you chefs… because our part is the best part.”