Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 81113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Look, I appreciated Dora getting me this job on such short notice and so I tried not to talk to anyone about it or complain. And it was working under a prestigious chef, Robert Macintyre. Everyone oohed and aahed over his restaurants, his dishes, hell he’d been a judge on various cooking competition shows for years. This was a damn good job to have and I knew that a lot of people would chop off my hand if it meant they got to replace me in the kitchen lineup.
But fucking hell, I was so bored and there was no fucking inspiration, no room for personal creativity, and the dishes were - frankly, they were fucking mediocre.
I wasn’t the head chef here. And I know that sounded arrogant. Like I wanted to be in charge. But to be honest, what chef didn’t want to be making their own dishes, or at least be given a little fucking leeway in how they made them? I was just making the same few dishes over and over again. If I’d wanted to do that, I would’ve signed up to be at the Cheesecake Factory or another chain restaurant.
We weren’t using fresh ingredients. Macintyre didn’t care about that. I’d tried, tentatively, to bring it up with him when I first started working at this restaurant a month ago and he’d shot me down faster than you could say ‘shut up’. I wasn’t normally a tentative person, but I’d shut up, because I had a baby to support. Quitting one job and then getting fired from another wouldn’t look good on my resumé, and it wasn’t a risk that I could afford to take anymore.
The whole atmosphere in the kitchen was exhausting and frustrating. Macintyre didn’t care about us, or about making it a fun place to work. He just cared about looking good, maintaining his image as a top chef. I wondered if this was what it was like when Theo was in charge of the kitchen as well, and I cringed.
Of course, if this was how you thought it was no matter what, if you didn’t know a better way, then you’d put up with it. But I knew there could be a better way. A better way to run a kitchen, and to make food, all of it.
I’d experienced that better way, with Michael. He’d let me run the kitchen how I wanted, he’d trusted me with the menu and ingredients. I still couldn’t understand how something that had been going so wonderfully could fail like that. Was I delusional?
The hard work in the kitchen also made my pregnancy more annoying. Or maybe it was the other way around. My feet and my back ached, and I felt like I had to pee all the time. Of course I couldn’t just constantly run out and pee, and it wasn’t like I really had to, but it just felt like it and it was the most frustrating thing. It made me twice as exhausted, and made me irritable, and I didn’t want to be that way to my coworkers who were just trying to get by same as I was.
Through it all, I missed Michael. I’d finally gotten what I’d yearned for, for so long, and it had been better than I’d imagined. He made me feel good - not just sexually, although hell yes he did, but he also told me I was beautiful, told me that I was smart and capable. He listened to me about the kitchen and praised my education and my determination. He made me feel valued, like I could do anything.
I missed that. I missed how handsome he was, how damn sexy he was, sure, but I also missed his smile. I missed the way he made sure to check on the kitchen every night, and how he knew every employee personally, and how he always checked the host stand to see how we were doing on reservations. I missed how much he cared, how he wanted to understand and be a part of all aspects of the restaurant, how passionate he was about all of it.
I tried to put him out of my mind. Michael had treated me wonderfully because that was just the kind of person that he was. It wasn’t because he thought of me as special to him. I was his business partner, albeit briefly, and I was his daughter’s best friend. Of course he would treat me kindly and thoughtfully. And he would treat any of his hook ups the way that he treated me, I just knew it, because he was a gentleman.
None of it meant that I was special to him. None of it meant that he actually had the deep feelings for me that I had for him. I had to accept that, as much as it made my stomach twist and my eyes get hot, and move on.