Who’s The Boss?

by McCarthy , Erin

  “What?” My heart rate was shooting up as I contemplated how to respond to Nico. “No. I’m not quitting. I told you that.”

  “Then why is Nico saying you are?” He held his phone up.

  “It’s a misunderstanding.” I typed fast.

  No, I don’t want to quit. I didn’t mean to send that to you.

  It sounded ridiculous but it wasn’t like I could claim the text was meant for someone else. It wasn’t a phrase you tossed at many people in your life.

  Are you sure? Because Martin just quit too and if you want out, do it now. I’ll be pissed if you come at me two weeks from now saying you’re out.

  I swallowed hard.

  No. I don’t want to quit.

  Good. No bullshit.

  Nope. No bullshit.

  I took a deep breath and raised my hand, needing the bartender to replace the drink I’d tried to throw at Sean. I needed a sip to steady my nerves. That had been close.

  “Tell Nico you’re with me and I’m insisting I don’t want to quit,” I told Sean.

  “What?” he asked, clearly distracted. He was still studying his phone. Finally, he looked up. “Oh, sure. Tell Nico you don’t want to quit. I can do that.”

  I frowned, just a little. I was about to answer when I got a response from Nico.

  If Chef Kincaid quits, it's on you, Isla. He quits, you’re fired.

  Holy shit, was he serious?

  Everything about this week was just a dumpster fire. It was tempting to argue with Nico, but I had already accidentally texted him (I couldn’t blame the baby, as much as I wanted to), so I had to just suck it up and comply.

  Complying doesn’t come naturally to me.

  I swallowed my pride.

  Got it. There’s nothing to worry about, I promise.

  The bartender brought my fresh drink and I took a larger sip than was wise. For a minute both Sean and I sat there in silence.

  Then he cleared his throat. “Tell me about the rest of the staff. I’m sure you know them better than Nico and Sid. Then I should probably head out, I have plans later.”

  A date? Not that I cared. Much. “I do know the staff really well.” I gave him the lowdown, trying to focus on the positive only. “They’re great people.”

  The whole time it was rolling around in my head that I had to keep Sean happy or I was out of a job.

  That was the very definition of irony.

  After around twenty minutes Sean glanced at the time on his phone and said he had to leave. That was fine with me. We had reached a tenuous truce. I had to retreat into being polite or I was totally screwed.

  “See you Monday,” he said, as we walked out of the bar together.

  It was raining. That cold, spring spitting of moisture onto us. It was not going to be an enjoyable walk to the bus stop.

  “Do you want a ride?” Sean asked. “My car is just down the street.”

  I did, because I didn’t want to get wet. But I needed to minimize my exposure to Sean if I wanted to stay sane. “No, thanks,” I said, even as the sky opened up and the mist turned into true rain. The wind increased and my hair blew across my face, blinding me.

  When I yanked strands out of my eyes, I saw Sean was grinning and shaking his head. “Stubborn. Even when it gets you wet.”

  His choice of words brought me immediately back to the hallway outside of Michael and Felicia’s apartment. Heat bloomed in my cheeks.

  Understanding of the innuendo dawned on his face too and he opened his mouth to speak.

  I didn’t stick around to hear whatever he might say. “Gotta go, bye, see you Monday.”

  It felt like I was running away, which I was. It made me slow my steps. But then the rain really started to come down, and I was forced to pick up the pace yet again, trying desperately not to think about all the ways he could get me wet.

  Sean Kincaid made me crazy.

  And I hated it.

  “Who pissed on your Wheaties?” my grandfather asked, after opening the door for me.

  I laughed. “Good to see you, too, Gus.” I wasn’t allowed to call him Grandpa or Gramps or Pops. It was always Gus. Which must have sounded ridiculous when I was five years old, but he wasn’t one for convention.

  Gus lived in Alphabet City, in a pre-war rent-controlled apartment that was insanely cheap for New York. He had talked off and on for years about moving to Florida, but he knew if he left the apartment, there was no way he could ever return to New York because he couldn’t afford the rent on a new lease. So he stuck it out winter after winter and grumbled the whole time.

  I strongly suspected he stuck around for me too, but the crusty old coot would never admit it. My first instinct whenever something was off in my life was to call Gus and this had been no different. After running away from Sean Kincaid, I had ducked into a coffeeshop, ordered an espresso, and called my grandfather. Something about my tone must have alarmed him because he’d invited me over on the spot.

  His apartment smelled like stale cigars and ramen. Gus wasn’t supposed to smoke cigars anymore, certainly not inside, but that was yet another thing he didn’t care about. He did what he wanted. It was unfortunate he didn’t have a balcony but that was a privilege in Manhattan reserved for a lucky few with deep pockets.

  “You have that look,” he said. “The one that says you’re stewing over someone or something.”

  He wasn’t wrong. I followed him into the apartment and shifted some newspapers off of his sofa and sat down. I shook my hair to get some of the rain off. “Sid and Nico hired a new executive chef and it isn’t me.”

  “No? Well, shit, I’m sorry, kid. You’ve been working hard for that.”

  The floral cushions of his ancient sofa threatened to swallow me. I tried to push myself further back but I was drowning in stuffing. “I wouldn’t care if it had been Martin, but it’s an outside chef. Martin got pissed and quit and now I’m stuck working for Sean, who I hate.”

  “You know him already from the business?” Gus was wearing a Metallica T-shirt and Levi’s. His arms showed off his old Navy tattoos. Lots of anchors and voluptuous women. He sat down in his favorite easy chair.

  “No, not really. But I met him at Felicia’s engagement party last Christmas. He’s her brother-in-law and we got stuck in the elevator together. He was such a dick, Gus.”

  “And?”

  “And he kissed me and it was so hot,” I blurted out. No one knew about that kiss. Not a single living soul except for Sean himself and I couldn’t keep it inside any longer. I needed to vent and rant and admit that it was a really good kiss. But I couldn’t tell my friends. They would read too much into it and go on a matchmaking campaign and it would make an annoying situation even more annoying.

  The kiss meant nothing other than we had sexual chemistry, which was probably connected to the hatred we stirred in each other. It did not mean that we were meant for each other, which was what Savannah would claim.

  “Yowsa,” Gus said, rubbing his white beard. “Being trapped in an elevator can lead to all kinds of stuff. So you didn’t go out with him or anything?”

  “No. We got to the party and I ran away from him and I hadn’t seen him since until I found out he’s my new boss.”

  “It’s a bad idea to sleep with the boss,” he said. “You give up all your power.”

  “I’m not going to sleep with him.” I wanted to. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. But I wasn’t going to. “But I don’t know how I’m supposed to work with him. Nico said if I can’t get along with Sean, he’ll fire me.”

  Gus’s untrimmed and wild eyebrows shot up. “That seems harsh.”

  “It’s totally unfair. I can’t control how Sean acts.” I could control myself though and trying to toss a drink in his face hadn’t exactly been exercising that control. “This is annoying and exhausting.”

  “Suck it up, buttercup. Cooking food beside someone you don’t like is not exhausting. Working twenty-four-hour shifts on a submarine is exhausting.”
>
  I made a face at him. “Thanks for your sympathy.”

  It had been pointed out a time or two that I might be a whole lot like my grandfather. We cared but we had a difficult time showing it. Also, cynicism ran deep in our bones. It was a Kowalski trait. Yes, we were born that way but it didn’t help that my grandfather had lost his wife and his son and I had lost a grandmother and both parents. We were two cynics not so much clinging to each other as poking at each other with love.

  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “Sure, it sounds like a raw deal. But you’re not the owner, Sid is. He can do whatever the hell he wants and you have to follow his rules. Just do what the new chef tells you to do and then hit the gym afterward and throw your fist into the punching bag.” He shrugged. “Either that or quit. Those are your options, kiddo.”

  “Those options suck.”

  “Yeah, well, so does unemployment.”

  Gus had sold his own lucrative electrician’s business a few years earlier. He had rewired half the houses in the Hamptons in his heyday, so I wasn’t sure what he knew about unemployment.

  I lay down on the couch, kicking my shoes off as I stared up at the ceiling. “You know what else sucks? My friends are all doing the couple thing. Leah and Felicia are married. Married. That’s crazy. Savannah is engaged and has a one-year-old son. The only one of our group still single is Dakota.”

  “Aren’t you happy for your friends? Don’t be catty.”

  “Of course I’m happy for them.” I folded my hands over my stomach. “I’m not jealous either. I’m just selfish. Who am I supposed to hang out with all the time? They’re moving on to the next phase in their lives and won’t have time for me.” It sounded really bratty when I said it out loud. But I didn’t mean it that way. I was just worried I was going to be lonely. I was used to having my girl gang at ready access whenever I wanted.

  I didn’t like being alone. It took me back to being a teenager and losing both of my parents and feeling like I was a tiny grain of sand in a vast expanse of beach, shifting and rootless. When I had been forced to move from suburban New Jersey to Manhattan to live with Gus and my grandmother, I’d had a rough couple of years. Then I’d met Savannah and finally felt that, aside from my grandfather, I had a friend who would always have my back.

  Gus didn’t say anything for so long I turned and glanced over at him to see why he wasn’t talking. He was grinning. “What? Why are you laughing at me? Is my loneliness amusing to you?”

  “You seem to be missing the obvious here.”

  “What is that?”

  “You could find a boyfriend yourself.”

  I pulled a face. “Gross. I don’t think that’s in the cards for me.” It wasn’t like I objected to falling in love. Not exactly, anyway. It’s just that it terrified me if I were being honest. Being vulnerable. It made me shudder.

  “A shrink would have a field day with you.”

  That made me laugh. I pulled myself back into a sitting position. “Thanks. Why is that?”

  “It’s obvious. You lost your parents and now you’re afraid to fall in love. I don’t need a degree to see that.”

  He was right. That didn’t mean I liked hearing it. “They’d say the same thing to you, old man. Maybe you can put a ring on the widow Johnson’s finger.” Gus kept claiming Helen wasn’t his girlfriend, just a friend with benefits, but you only had to be around her for three minutes to see she was wildly in love with him.

  “Mind your own business. We’re content with things the way they are.”

  “Have you asked Helen that lately?” I asked, highly doubtful she was content with casual.

  “Why would I ask her that?” he asked. “I might not like her answer.”

  Apparently relationships at seventy were no easier than they were at twenty-eight.

  “We’re two sides of the same coin, Gus. Which makes sense since you raised me.”

  As always, he pulled no punches. “Don’t give me that bullshit. I didn’t get my hands on you until you were fifteen. Your parents raised you and they had a wonderful marriage.”

  He was right. He was always right. “Can you just let me wallow for like two seconds?” I asked.

  That made him let out a rough, rattling laugh. “You want to wallow in your feelings or act like a quitter, you’re not getting any sympathy from me. You know better than that.”

  I did. And honestly, I loved him for it. He’d helped me drag myself back up when I could have gone deep down a dark road. “So what you’re saying is you're not going to marry Helen?” I asked.

  “Not anytime soon. But this isn’t about me. I’ve already had the love of my life. Don’t deny yourself that joy, Isla.”

  For some reason, that hit me like a brick wall. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I swallowed hard. “The love of my life is cooking.”

  It was. I didn’t see that changing anytime soon.

  Four

  Isla had chosen to walk in a driving rain rather than accept a ride from me. I respected the stubbornness. But it was not going to be easy to work with her, obviously. We had tension thick between us. Sexual and otherwise.

  But I had to make it work. Nico had texted me that if Isla quit, he was going to fire me. Just like that. How the hell was I supposed to control Isla? She had a fiery temper and a deep dislike for me. It pissed me off that my future at Bone was tied to her. It was totally unfair and I wasn’t sure what the fuck to do about it.

  I found a parking spot in front of my friends Jasmine and Sidney’s apartment in Queens and jumped out of the car. I was running late to babysit their toddler, Kennedy, because I had lingered at the bar with Isla. Fortunately, they were going out to dinner and not an event that had a specific start time. Plus, they were generally forgiving of me being late considering I was free help every few months.

  Sidney opened the door and stuck his hand out to shake mine. “Hey, what’s up, man? Thanks for coming over tonight.”

  “No problem. You know I like hanging out with Kennedy.” I did. She was a perfect human specimen, all spiral curls and big brown eyes, with a confident grin and a round belly that just screamed for raspberries. I would strangle a bear with my bare hands to protect that kid.

  “She’s been waiting all night for you, so you’ve been warned.” He stepped aside so I could enter the apartment.

  Kennedy came barreling across the room yelling my name at the top of her lungs in her high-pitched three-year-old voice. She hit me like a cannonball and I picked her up and tossed her over my head. She shrieked in delight.

  Jasmine, fastening the back of an earring, came into the living room and over to me. “Thank God you’re here. I thought she was going to spontaneously combust from all her energy and excitement.”

  I set Kennedy back down, who promptly started to climb my leg. I leaned over and gave Jasmine a kiss on the cheek. “You look beautiful.” She did. Her gorgeous features had first caught my attention a dozen years earlier, but what had made me fall head over heels for Jasmine at twenty-three was how sweet and innocent and intelligent she was.

  She had been a brand-new transplant to New York from Barbados, and I had been a restless New Yorker, not sure what I wanted to do with my life. Jasmine and her love had grounded me, given me a purpose. For years I’d thought of her as the one who had gotten away, but she’d done the right thing breaking up with me. She had a serious intention to stay a virgin until marriage, and while I had respected that, I hadn’t been ready for the commitment she needed. At all. I was years away from being that kind of guy. Eventually, she had told me she felt herself caving, and that she would hate herself if she compromised her values knowing there was no way I could offer her marriage.

  So she had dumped me.

  My one and only true heartbreak. I’d been devastated. I’d even gone and proposed to her in an eleventh-hour attempt to win her back, to which she had said no.

  It was the smartest thing she could have ever done, and now we were great friends.
I might even call her my best friend. Sidney was very cool with our friendship, and it probably didn’t hurt that while we had dated, I had never seen his wife naked. Tough to swallow at twenty-three, great for our friendship at thirty-five.

  “Ever the charmer,” she said, pulling back and looking at me. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

  Jasmine was also damn near psychic. She always knew when I was turning around something in my head. “I’m fine. I start my new job Monday. The staff meeting didn’t exactly go as smoothly as I had hoped. One of the chefs quit.”

  “That’s typical, right?” she asked, trying to pull Kennedy off of my leg.

  Her daughter shrieked and flailed her arms. I took her from Jasmine and bounced her on my hip. “Yes. Pretty typical. But the other chef is someone I met at Michael’s engagement party and she can’t stand me.”

  Jasmine raised her eyebrows. “Oh, God, you hit on her, didn’t you?”

  “No,” I protested. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Then what would you say?”

  “I called her a manhater and then made out with her in the hallway,” I said. When put that way, it was no wonder she wanted to stab me with a fork. None of which should matter in the kitchen at Bone, but Isla was passionate. I had a hard time imagining she could set all her emotions aside.

  Jasmine started laughing. “What? Oh, Sean.”

  “How does that even happen?” Sidney asked, sitting down on the sofa to pull on his loafers. “How do you get women to make out with you after you insult them?”

  “It’s a gift,” I told him. “Or maybe a curse. Because now we have to work together and she can’t stand me. She threw a drink in my face tonight.”

  Jasmine eyed me. “Tell me exactly what you said before she threw the drink in your face.”

  “Uh…” I tried to remember her exact words. “She asked me why I kissed her and I told her because she looked like she wanted me too.” I winced. “Okay, I hear it when I say it out loud. I’m usually smoother than that.”

  “But?”

  “But what? Nothing. I don’t know. She throws me off my game.” I buried my lips in Kennedy’s curls and breathed in her sweet scent. She rewarded me by laying her head on my chest and squeezing her arms around me. “I have to take a step back and just be polite. Reserved. Not flirtatious. You know, everything I’m not.”