Dirty Chef

Thank goodness we had Jon back there. He kept the kitchen running and took most of those shifts for himself. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d called in one of the others to cover for him.

Time flew behind the bar, and I spent the evening slinging drinks, chatting to guests—old and new—and helping Tracy when he needed a hand. We didn’t have the space or the manpower at this point to have an elaborate dessert menu, so we only had three items, and the butter cake was my one and only contribution. I assisted with the torch to burn the sugar on top as Tracy rushed to sprinkle bacon bits onto two servings of mac and cheese.

Dinner guests stopped arriving around nine, offering Adam a break to chug some water and eat.

“Sorry you had to cancel your date,” he said, sticking zucchini fries into his mouth.

“It’s fine,” I replied. I gave a smile to the guest ordering another beer. “That’ll be $6.50, sir.” While he swiped his card, I glanced back at Adam. “How do you feel about putting together a Valentine’s menu this year?”

We’d never done that before, and I thought it could be fun. We’d done Adam’s luxury steakhouse version of Christmas, Thanksgiving, Labor Day, and the Fourth of July. And, of course, we celebrated the apple harvest once a year with the rest of the town. Adam’s creations were particularly coveted that week. He was so fucking brilliant.

He chewed on some more food while he mulled it over, and I handed over the receipt to the guest in front of me.

“Maybe,” Adam answered pensively. “I’ll think about it.”

I nodded in acknowledgment and looked out over the place. No one seemed to be needing anything, so I poured myself a Diet Coke and took a breather.

“What was Griffin’s excuse today?” I asked.

Griffin was a friend of ours and the only one Adam trusted to fill his shoes at the grill every now and then. He was a great chef and owned a small franchise of food trucks in Seattle. But lately, he hadn’t been able to come up the few times Adam had given him a shift.

If Griffin had lived down in Seattle, it would’ve made more sense; it was a two-hour commute. However, his house was just twenty minutes outside of our little town.

“He was vague about it,” Adam said. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow. He made a comment… I think he and Charlie broke up. Maybe.”

Oh. Okay. I felt for Griffin, though we’d sort of seen this coming. Charlie was a city boy, and Griffin wouldn’t settle down in Seattle if someone paid him all the money in the world.

“Let me know if you drive down to him,” I requested. “I’ll send along a care package.”

Adam’s eyes lit with warm amusement. “You’re too cute, love. You can take the girl out of Italy, but you can’t take Italy out of the girl.”

I gigglesnorted and rolled my eyes. I was fairly sure caring about my friends wasn’t strictly an Italian thing.

It’d been so long since I’d thought of Italy as my home. My dad was American and had been stationed at Aviano as a flight instructor with the Air Force, and if Adam and I lived and breathed our restaurant, my dad lived and breathed the service—and most of all, NATO affairs. And once he met my mom there, he’d done everything to stay.

Only a brief stint had brought my parents to the US. My English had been good, but the culture was foreign. In an attempt to give me a taste of an American upbringing, Dad had signed me up for a summer camp shortly before we were due to return to Italy. I’d shown up on an island off the coast of this little town called Camassia Cove, fifteen years old and clueless about life, and then this guy… I quirked a smile at Adam, who was telling Tracy something…

If only I’d known then that the heartache of a fifteen-year-old girl was nothing compared to the heartache of a thirty-one-year-old.

Adam had volunteered at the camp, burned out after a few hectic restaurant years in New York and Atlanta, and it was while preparing sloppy joes for teenagers that he’d come up with the idea for the place we ran today.

I’d been so fucking in love with him.

Of course, he’d barely noticed me. He’d been twenty-seven and focused on his job. But he’d been very nice. He’d always had a smile on his face, and he’d cheered me up at the end of my stay. He’d given me his super-secret recipe to the best s’mores in the universe.

Yeah, I’d never stood a chance.

Two

Alessia Rossi

“Your room always smells so fucking nice.”

The words slithered through the film of sleep, and I frowned and turned my head away from the noise. My cheek landed on the pillow. I let out a breath and waited to be sucked into the dream again.