STUCK AROUND way after her shift, even went so far as to contemplate sleeping in the front corner booth in order to avoid Gabe.
Maybe he’s left, she thought hopefully. She longed for her home, her couch. Her scotch.
Her promise not to drink had evaporated in the heat of Gabe’s smile. She needed a drink after today. She’d barked at Trudy—who only ever tried to be kind to her, even when she was a nag—she’d burned her hand and screwed up two tables of food. And now, as penance, she mopped the tiled floor around the stainless steel prep table as if her life depended on it.
Maybe I should not be a chef, she considered. Maybe she could get into the cleaning profession. Work in one of those big high-rises after hours.
She imagined going back to her home and telling Gabe that she couldn’t be his chef because she was making a career change.
She almost laughed thinking about it.
“Alice?” Darnell poked his head out of the back office that adjoined the main prep area. “Can I speak to you a minute?”
She set the mop back in the bucket and propped it against the wall, making sure it wouldn’t slip, and stepped into the minuscule manager’s office.
“Go ahead and shut the door,” Darnell said from behind the cluttered desk. She had to move boxes of recipe and conduct manuals out of the way in order to shut the door that, as long as she’d been here, had never been shut.
She guessed Trudy had tattled. Again.
“Have a seat.” He gestured to the one folding chair beneath the giant white board with the schedule on it. She had to move a stack of staff uniforms in order to sit.
“If you wanted me to clean your office, Darnell, you could have just asked.” She thought it was a joke, but Darnell didn’t laugh. His brown eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses were stern and a little sad.
Maybe she’d have to up the apology to Trudy. She could buy drinks for the whole staff after work sometime. That should put her back in everyone’s good graces.
“What are you doing cleaning the kitchen?” he asked. “Did you, by chance, not notice the staff we have for that?”
“I was just helping out,” she said. “I’m a team player.”
His mouth dropped open in astonishment for a brief moment, and then he sat back, his chair creaking. “I can only guess you’re kidding.”
She sighed, pulled off her hairnet and yanked out the clasp that held her hair back. She scratched at her scalp. If she was going to get lectured, she was going to do it in some comfort.
“Do you want to be a chef here?” Darnell asked.
No. “Of course.”
“Is that why you show up late, take too many coffee breaks—”
“Everybody does that.”
“And order your coworkers around?”
“No, I just do that for fun.”
“Trudy doesn’t think it’s fun,” he said through pursed, white lips. “I don’t understand why you pick on her. She’s the nicest—”
That’s why Alice picked on her. Nice made her feel mean. Kindness hurt. “I’ll apologize—”
Darnell leaned forward on his desk. “I hired you based on your reputation and the few amazing meals I had at Zinnia.” Her gut clenched at the name of her failed restaurant, her baby, her reason for living after Gabe and she ended. “I thought you’d make this franchise something special.”
Her mouth fell open and she grabbed a recipe manual from the stack at her knee. “I cook from a manual, Darnell. It’s against corporate policy to do something special.”
“But you haven’t even tried, have you? We have nightly specials and I gave you carte blanche.”
“Right, and I’ve—”
“Served the same thing for two weeks, despite the fact that no one orders it. Our customers don’t like duck, Alice. But those ribs you made two months ago were amazing, and you served them for two days. That’s it. It’s like you don’t want to succeed.”
Darnell watched her expectantly and Alice dropped her eyes to the recipe manual. She didn’t want sympathy. She didn’t want to talk about her problems. She wanted to work, pay off the outrageous amount of money she owed the bank and annoy Trudy. That’s it.
And drink. Dear God. I need a drink.
“Alice, I don’t know the whole story behind what happened at Zinnia—”
“I’ll talk to Trudy and I’ll put the ribs back up on the specials board.” She stood, stared at Darnell with tired eyes. “I have to be back here tomorrow for—”
“No.” Darnell shook his head. “You don’t.”
She slumped.
“You’re fired.”
ALICE’S CAR rolled slowly down Pape and she could see the dim lights, the shadow of someone moving through her kitchen window. She knew it wasn’t Charlie.
He’s still here, she thought and hit the garage-door opener on her dashboard. An itchy anger chugged through her bloodstream like a drug, making her head spin.
Gabe was the last thing she needed tonight.
The heavy white door lifted and she drove into the parking spot between the empty freezers and the golf clubs Gabe had left. She tried to gather whatever resources were left in her tired, drinkcraving, jobless body.
After the day she’d had, there weren’t many left. Gabe reentering her life dredged up feelings she’d been managing, longings she’d been subduing.
But tonight those feelings were here in force, like weights on her heart.
I wish I wasn’t alone.
I wish I had a family.
And he was in there with dim lights and probably tomato soup, something she lost the taste for after he left.
She chewed her beleaguered thumbnail and watched the door between the garage and kitchen as though it might open and Gabe would come running out throwing knives at her car. Not that she was scared of him, just scared of what they were when they were together.
“I don’t need anything,” she whispered her oftrepeated mantra that eventually got her through the worst days. “There is nothing I want.”
But the fates had conspired tonight. Her mortgages—both of them—were due at the end of the week and she had only enough money to cover one.
Am I too old to sell my body? she wondered. But that was a bit drastic, even for her.
She felt raw and panicked, like a trapped animal. Gabe was going to make her an offer she couldn’t refuse and she wanted to punish him for it. She wanted him to pay for coming back here and rubbing his success in her face.
She wanted to pick the scabs between them, scratch at old wounds.
I want to fight. Alice smiled, feeling feral. And there’s nothing in this world that Gabe hates more than a fight.
She opened the door between the garage and the kitchen and Gabe looked up at her from the bread he sliced at her kitchen table. He was too handsome for words in this light.
“You’re still here,” she said, unbuttoning her dirty chef’s whites. “You make yourself at home?”
His smile dimmed a bit, no doubt startled by her biting sarcasm. She came out swinging, hoping to get a few licks in before he made her that offer and she had to take it.
“Did you take