by Vivian Lux
I sat down on my porch rail and looked up and down the street. Five o'clock in the afternoon was the middle of the night for me, and I wasn't often fully awake at this hour. It was strange, moving through daylight like this, seeing the hustle and bustle that I was usually not privy to.
The Ass End was well named, since we faced the backs of all the shops. The townies lived back here, the people who didn't own the shops, but worked them. The waitresses, the shop girls, the bus boys, the tour boat operators and the jack-of-all-tradesmen who picked up seasonal, cyclical work when they could.
And also, the newly divorced shop owners who needed to save every penny to pour back into their fledgling shop and their newfound independence.
Like me.
We lived back here in the grand Victorian houses broken up into five or six separate apartments, and in the tiny little bungalows with dirt patch yards and five or six busted up kids' bikes on the porch. We hid back here and Main Street turned its back on us, showing us the ugliness it would never dare show the tourists. From back here we had a good view of the backs of everything, the dumpsters filled with food waste and the folding chairs set up by sore-footed bartenders who ran out back for a quick smoke.
Every so often, a resident of the street would turn off Main Street and come down ours, kicking up a cloud of dust once they pulled into their unpaved driveway. Aside from the kids playing, there weren't too many people out and about — besides the now gently snoring Mrs. Callahan — so when I spied the black clad figure at the end of the street, I smiled and waved.
Charlie lived two doors down from me, with her mother and her adorable little toddler. She moved like she was exhausted, but as got closer to home, her tired face broke out into a wide smile when she spied her little boy, toddling across the postage stamp sized lawn in front of her house and out to greet her.
"How are you?" I called, waving to Charlie's mother, whose name I didn't know. She was out on the porch, smoking a cigarette and watching her grandson. Here they were, coming together at the end of their day, but mine had barely even begun. This was my morning, when everyone else was winding down. I'd moved in four months ago, but unless I was awake during this time, I rarely saw anyone. Aside from Mrs. Callahan, the last conversation I'd had was with Finn and Jackson yesterday.
The thought of them made me sit up straighter.
Little flashes of sensation flickered across my mind as I went over that conversation once more in my head. Jackson, gorgeous in a dangerous sort of way, but rude as hell too. Finn, handsome in an All-American sort of way, but pushy and controlling. I didn't like them. That was for sure. But I kept thinking about them too. Meeting them had left me rattled.
No wonder I'd come home instead of cleaning off the rest of the graffiti.
"Goddammit," I said aloud, suddenly remembering.
"Huh?" Mrs. Callahan snorted awake. "Who's that?"
My cheeks colored. "Sorry, Mrs. Callahan," I called, ears burning. "I just remembered something I forgot to do.” Well that was really stupid, Zach's voice chided in my ear. Leaving your shop all marked up with graffiti like that, for all the customers to see. You're really bad at this, Bee.
A frantic anxiety settled into my chest, sending my heart racing. I turned to head back in.
"Hey, Bee!" Mrs. Callahan called. "You going to be bringing around any more of those honey buns of yours?"
I stopped and took a deep breath, then turned and gave her my winningest smile. "Of course. I'll get you another box this Sunday."
"The girls'll love it," she agreed, hoisting herself to her feet and shuffling slowly to her front door. "You be careful going out in the dead of the night like you do. I'll be prayin' for you."
"Thank you, Mrs. Callahan," I said.
"A girl alone like you."
"I don't mind being alone," I interrupted. "I can take care of myself."
She fixed me with a beady glance that felt like it tore right through me. "Oh, I don't doubt that at all, baby girl. But ain't it nice to let someone else take care of you?"
I thought of Zach for a moment, before I pushed him from my brain. I lifted my chin and shrugged. "I wouldn't know."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Finn
Enraged, I hung up the phone. I tried to shove the hanging plastic sheet out of my way, but it slid down my arms, raising static electricity that had it clinging to my clothes. "Goddammit, when the fuck am I getting a door?" I shouted to no one in particular. I wrestled myself free and stood out in the middle of the open space and shouted to be heard over the noise of the workmen's hammers. "Kyle!"
Our brand new general manager slid off the stool where he'd been perched double checking a shipment of cutlery. "Yeah boss?" he called, coming over to me.
"I just got off the phone with Jasper Hill Winery," I said, trying to keep from raising my voice. "They said they delivered a shipment last Thursday."
Kyle widened his eyes a fraction. I knew he was a recent Culinary Institute grad, but still. He had no business looking so young. And with those kicked-puppy-dog eyes, he looked even younger. The kid was going to need to toughen up fast before this industry chewed him up and spit him out. "They said that?"
"They did," I said carefully. "And the signature on the delivery slip is yours?"
"Oh right!" His face broke out in a smile. "Yeah, I remember now."
"Why do I have no record of this new inventory?" I seethed.
He cocked his head to the side. "You should. I put it on your desk. Remember I told you?"
"No," I gritted. "And you should never just put it on my desk. You should have entered it into the system yourself to keep something like this from happening."
He cocked his head even further, so his head was almost at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground. "But boss," he said, with his brow furrowed so deeply he reminded me of a Shar-pei. "You told me not to do that."
Now it was my turn to wrinkle my brow. "I did?"
He nodded. "Last week. You said no one was to touch the computer except you."
"I did?" I had absolutely no recollection of this. "Well that wasn't very smart of me."
Kyle grinned. "I thought you must have a method."
I blinked. "I do, yup, definitely," I said, trying to recover my poise. "Do you remember where you put the inventory slip?"
He nodded. "Right on your desk."
My desk was a brushfire waiting to happen. I swallowed, not wanting to seem as out of control as I felt. "Good," I nodded. "Thanks."
"You got it, boss," Kyle said, then went back to his cutlery.
I stood there for a second, feeling completely adrift. There was no way I could have missed that inventory slip, especially since I was looking for it.
But clearly, I had.
I was losing it.
"I'm going out," I called back to the kitchen. "Need to clear my head."
Jackson emerged, his chef's whites somehow immaculate even in all the dust and chaos. "You okay?" he asked.
I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers. "Not sure," I confessed. "Hope so."
Pushing my way out the front door, I blinked to emerge in the evening sunlight. My stomach growled a little, reminding me that Jackson hadn't served family meal yet. He was down in the weeds with his menu, working through a form of writer's block, and I knew not to push him too hard lest he shove right back.
But damn, I was really getting hungry.
I stretched up, lifting my face to the sun for a moment before dropping to touch my toes. I'd been missing gym time in the crush to get everything ready for opening day and I was definitely feeling it. Probably was the reason my mind was so fogged up that I'd missed an inventory slip all together.
I took a deep breath, and as I did, I heard the sound of a motor turning down the quiet dead-end.
My body reacted before my mind did, turning so I could face her head on as she drove up in her old-man car, the back covered in bumper stickers. She lifted her fingers off the steering wheel in gr
eeting, then came to a screeching halt in front of her store.
Jackson and I had spent this morning scrubbing every trace of graffiti from those bricks. The solvent Jackson found probably murdered a few brain cells, but it was effective as hell.
And Bee was noticing. I couldn't help but grin and she threw her car in park, and stepped out of the driver's seat, staring at her newly pristine storefront.
Her mouth opened and then closed silently, and then she turned towards me. I could see the question forming on her lips, but she swallowed it back down again. "How are you?" she called instead.
A weird sort of tug-of-war was going on in my head. On the one hand, I hated that she didn't know I had helped her this way. Doing things without getting credit for them? That wasn't my style.
But on the other hand, I liked that I'd made things a little easier for her. From what I'd seen, she'd done everything herself. No team, no family members helping out front. She seemed to be all alone in the world and trying to make her own way through stubbornness and sheer force of will.
I understood that on a deeply personal level.
"I'm good!" I called out in answer to her question. "Getting an early start tonight?"
"I needed to come in early to—" she paused and looked again at her clean storefront. "I, ah, had some things I thought I should take care of."
There was a pinched, exhausted look to her face that ignited something inside of me. Jackson always laughed and called me a mother hen when I checked up on his health. But I couldn't help it. And Bee looked like she needed a good meal and a nap. And maybe an hour or two of my face between her thighs.
The thought was too goddamn tempting for words. “Have you eaten?" I called.
"What?"
"Food? Dinner?"
She came closer. Her eyes were wide and wary and I felt a strong urge to punch whoever it was that had made her so cautious. "What?" she asked again.
"Have you eaten?"
"I'm a baker," she said with a cheeky little grin. "I have to taste my batches."
I licked my lips and smiled back. Her grin was infectious. "I mean, real food."
"You're saying my cupcakes aren't real food?"
"Man doesn't live by cupcake alone."
"Yeah?" she bit her lip, eyes shining with mischief. She ran her fingers along her side, taking in her full, heavy breasts and wide, sensuous hips. I swallowed hard. "But woman sure can."
"And it's clearly working out well for you," I told her, stepping closer.
Her breath caught in her throat. At first I wondered what I was hearing. Was it fear? But then I saw the flush that spread across her cheeks. I pressed my lips closed to contain the growl of desire that roared up my throat. "You think so?" she asked, her voice a little higher than usual.
"If cupcakes are what gave you this body, then yeah." Her eyes flashed a little, and I wondered if I'd pushed too far.
But her full pink lips fell open a little and then curled upward into a smile.
"I'd like to try them," I told her. "Your cupcakes and..."
"My buns?"
My throat suddenly went dry. "Yeah," I choked out. "Your buns." Holy shit, my dick was about to rip through my pants. She was close enough that I could smell her, and my breath was coming so rapidly that her scent filled my lungs. All the stress of the restaurant was falling away and the world seemed to dial down to a pinprick where all that mattered was the shape of her lips and the overwhelming need I had to taste them. Right now.
"Finn-y!" Jackson's voice cut through the haze in my head. "Food!"
Anger flashed in my brain. I turned to see him standing there in the doorway with a smug fucking smile on his face.
"Jackson's calling you," Bee said helpfully. She was looking over to the restaurant with an odd expression on her face. I didn't like it. I wanted her to be looking at me again.
But the spell was broken. She took a step back. "Enjoy your dinner," she said politely.
"You should come over," I said hastily. "Try the menu we're working on."
"Yeah, I'd like that."
"How about now?"
She seemed amused. "I've got work to do tonight."
"But we already cleaned off the graffiti for you."
Her eyes flashed and suddenly her expression was cool. "You did that?"
"Yes," I said, nodding my head and completely disavowing Jackson. "I saw that..."
"You didn't need to do that," she said.
Her voice was icy. I was confused. "I know, but it seemed like you needed the help."
"I don't need help," she said through gritted teeth.
"No, I know but..." How did I keep fucking this up with her? "We just wanted..."
"What do you mean 'we'?"
I rolled my eyes inwardly. Fucking amateur mistake, Finn. "Me and Jackson did it. This morning."
She straightened up and squared her shoulders. "Thank you both," she said stiffly. "But I can take care of myself."
And without another word she turned and headed into her shop.
CHAPTER NINE
Jackson
Time stands still in the kitchen. Or maybe, that's not exactly right, because time sure as shit moves fast, too. That's the peculiarity about kitchen time that I've never been able to fully understand. Things stretch out, so that you know precisely when your food needs to be timed to, right down to the nanosecond, but it also compresses so that a full service can feel like it goes by in a flash.
I used to be confused by this. Because rather than exhausting me, a good night, with good service, only served to energize me. I used to leave work hyped up, ready to take on even more work. Because if I wasn't exhausted, then that meant I hadn't worked hard enough, right?
It was a long, and frankly difficult process to train myself not to seek out more work at the end of the day. But not before it cost me my engagement.
Now I was right back there in the trenches. Some chefs are too high and mighty for this shit. But me? I love the act of cooking. I love food, and I love the preparation of food, bringing it up to something higher.
I wanted everything perfect. But in reality, perfection isn't something you can attain, it's something you are always working towards. Because if you achieve it, that means you need to move the goal post. It was never actually perfect at all.
And when I had my head down, working through the menu, fine-tuning the execution, a whole day could go by, without me even knowing. I'd lost weeks this way before, forgetting to sleep, forgetting to eat even though I was surrounded by food.
Finn was the one who stepped in when this happened.
"Did you eat today?" was the first question out of his mouth when he came back in the door.
"I'm fine," I teased back. "But it seems like you have an appetite still."
His eyes flashed back to Bee's shop. "Cock-blocked by my best friend," he huffed. "You're like, the opposite of a wingman."
I shrugged innocently. "Hey, I just wanted to make sure your food didn't get cold."
He rumbled something profane that I chose to ignore, but he sat down with Kyle and our new sous-chef Javier at a makeshift table Kyle had built out of boxes. "This isn't the first time you're eating today, right?" he asked again.
I rolled my eyes as I carried out the plates. "We need to get you a puppy so you have somewhere to focus your maternal energies," I said as I put his plate down. "Or you need to get some chick knocked up, pronto."
His eyes flickered over to the bakery again. I smirked. "She shot you down pretty hard out there," I observed.
"You were watching?"
"I wondered where you'd gone, is all."
Kyle squirmed like an uncomfortable child caught in a fight between mommy and daddy. "Hey chef, this is really spectacular," he piped up in his reedy voice. "This should definitely go on the menu.
Finn lifted the fork to his mouth. "What is it?"
I sighed and pushed it back. "A variation on osso bucco," I sighed. "But it's shit." Anger flared like a match
in my chest, igniting my bloodstream. "Everything I'm doing is shit!" I shouted, throwing down my napkin.
I don't know what I was thinking, heading back to the kitchen to be alone. There was no way in hell Finn would let me get away with an outburst like that without making me talk it out. When he said my name, I sighed and stared at the ceiling.
"It's like...writer's block," I exhaled. "But...with cooking."
He was silent, knowing I needed the silence to gather my thoughts.
"All my ideas are jammed up in my head," I said slowly. "Like now that I know I have complete creative freedom..."
"You do," Finn added.
I nodded. "I know. Which is what I always wanted. But..." My hands were moving now, trying to force the words out. "But instead of finally breaking free, I'm stuck. My food is stale..."
"Tasted good to me."
"It's stodgy," I corrected. "Fucking old-fashioned shit, and amateur too. I was cooking this shit in culinary school. I'm past this."
"Yeah," Finn said slowly. "You are."
I grimaced. "Don't sugar coat it, man."
"Thing about you is..."
"Oh, here it comes. Finn Walker, amateur psychiatrist."
"I know you." He blew out an exasperated sigh. "You need to have something to fight with." His lip curled up in a rueful grin. "Hell, that's why we work well together. Two bullheaded idiots. I give you a rule and then you get pissed off at me and break the rule."
I snorted.
"That was your genius," he pressed on. "Back when you were working for other chefs. Remember? You'd get pissed at them and end up creating incredible dishes out of sheer spite."
I snorted again, but he was right. "So what do I do?"
He lifted his chin. "Fight me."
"What the fuck?"
"Not really, asshole. No punches or anything. But, I'm willing to be the hardass here if that's what it takes to make you work better." His eyes flashed and his mouth spread in an evil grin. "I'm cutting your budget."
I sputtered. "What the fuck?"
He raised his eyebrows. "Yup. I'm pulling the rug. No more unlimited funds to piss away back here getting nothing done."
"You're just pissed at me for cockblocking you."
