Cole freezes, the glint in his eye dulling as he looks at me. “You can’t be serious. You really want to stay a line cook? You’re better than that and you know it. If you’re anxious we can take it one day at a time, have you move forward at your own pace—”
“No,” I say, my stomach dropping as I realize that this is it, that there’s no turning back. “I can’t be your line cook anymore either. I have to hand in my notice. You see I’m…well, I’m starting my own restaurant.”
Cole’s face hardens, his eyes squinting at me as if trying to read between the lines of what I just said. “You can’t be serious. You’re starting…your own restaurant?”
“Yes.”
I see his jaw shift a little as he grinds his teeth. “Why didn’t you say anything? How the hell did this come about? When did you even have time to—?”
I squirm on the chair a little, until I’m so uncomfortable I just stand up.
“Well…when I came to L.A. I…it’s complicated. I have this friend, right, and…look, forget the ‘how,’ the thing is—it’s happening. I didn’t think it would, but now it is, and it’s all been so crazy. We have investors and a location and we—”
“We?” Cole snorts, everything about him taut and angry now. “Who’s ‘we’?”
I take a deep breath, struggling to find the best route through this explanation.
“A friend. Tony, I think I mentioned him to you,” I say. The words come out sounding pathetic, too common and familial to reflect just how bad I feel, just how much I recognize the tragedy of what I’m doing to him.
Cole shakes his head and looks up, laughing darkly before he turns away, moving behind his desk as if he can’t stand not to have a barrier between us.
“Oh, this is too good,” he says, sarcasm and anger mixing in his voice.
“I didn’t want things to turn out like this,” I say, moving close to the desk now as if to keep him close. “It just happened so fast, it all got way out of—”
“Hold on,” Cole says, his smile grim and heavy now, as if clinging to his shred of irony in order to comprehend this. “So the night you came to my apartment, the night I made you that snack you liked, and you came back from a phone call with Tony all confused, leaving in a hurry…” Cole leans over the desk. “You knew then?”
“I…that wasn’t…”
Words fail me, every explanation I come up with sounding even more incriminating in my head. All I can do, finally, is nod.
Cole’s head drops, and for the first time I see the small, book-sized gift on the desk beside him, wrapped in pink paper and tied with a red ribbon. He raises his head again, eyes even darker now, even more distant.
“And when I took you to the beach,” he says, voice slow and thudding, as if he knows the answer already, “and I told you about how Jason betrayed me, scarred me so deep I couldn’t trust anybody else until I met you—” He stops himself to take a breath and find his words again. “And you sat there, all sympathetic and concerned, telling me it was a ‘lonely way to live’ and ‘so sad’ that I didn’t trust anyone. Did you know then?”
“Look, Cole, it’s not like that—”
“Did you know?”
He doesn’t shout, but the words are as powerful as bullets, impossible to ignore.
“Not really…I mean, kind of. It wasn’t really…” I wince and get frustrated with myself for not being able to express this. “It was just an idea…I didn’t think it would really happen. I mean, maybe in a few years or something, but never this soon. This is what I came out here for, though. It’s my dream. Aren’t you even…a little bit excited for me?”
I know even as the words come out that they’re the wrong thing to say. Cole drops himself back into his chair, muscles slumped, his fingers drumming on the table, as if impatient to see the back of me now. After a few tense moments where I mentally toss and turn to find the right words, the right angle on this whole situation, Cole lifts his hand and makes a tight fist, professional and guarded.
“You have a location already?”
“Yes.” I take a deep breath again, pausing before I have to deliver another hit, like a reluctant boxer. “It’s…a couple of streets away. On the way to Santa Monica from here.”
Cole closes his eyes.
“The corner building? The one that used to be a gallery?”
“Yeah,” I say quietly.
“So…” he says, looking at me again, “not only are you leaving me—you’re about to become my competitor.”
“No!” I say, unpersuasively. “Of course not. The food we’re going to make is completely different. And the whole vibe—”
“Knife is the best restaurant in L.A.,” he interrupts. “Anyone anywhere close to us wouldn’t bother with any other restaurant. Other places exist in our shadow. Except now you’re going to give them a choice to make. Because even though I feel like I don’t know really know you anymore, the one thing I do know is that you’re a killer chef.”
“Oh come on, Cole,” I say, starting to feel desperate, “it’s not like Knife is going to go out of business.”
Cole smiles, his expression like ice.
“Alright,” he says, drawing himself upright in his chair and pulling himself toward his desk. He picks up the wrapped gift and drops it in a drawer, sliding it shut forcefully. “I’ll have Martin reach out to go over your final paycheck with you—”
“Cole…”
“—and I’ll have someone come in to cover your shift today.” He pulls his phone from his pocket and gestures at the door, avoiding my eyes. “So if you wouldn’t mind.”
Suddenly, with all his walls back up, Cole becomes a stranger, somehow even more shut off from me than the first time I met him. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Don’t apologize. You’re just following your dreams. I get it. I’ve trampled over people to get to where I am.”
I shake my head. “It’s not like that.”
“In this business, it’s always like that.” He stands. “You know your way out.”
I start to say something else, but the understanding that anything I say beyond this point is just another stab, another punch in the gut for both of us, stops me. Damage done, wounds raw, even being this close starts to hurt.
I turn my eyes away, and make for the door.
We’re over.
19
Cole
“Are you kidding me?” Martin says, nervously pushing back his hair like a man quitting cigarettes.
“You think I like jokes where I’m the punchline?”
It’s after midnight and we’re sitting at a table in the dining room of Knife, the sound of the dishwashers singing Spanish songs lifting the silence just above unbearable. Between us are a few leftover gougères, though Martin only managed a bite of one before I told him the news and he dropped it on the table.
“So we’re back to square one,” he says, exasperated. “Square zero, since the ship has sailed on the candidate I was chasing.”
“Looks that way,” I say, before sipping long and slow on my wine.
Martin shifts in his seat uncomfortably. He picks up the pastry, brings it to his mouth, then decides he can’t eat again and drops it.
“So with Michelle going to Vegas and no replacement, we’re down a head chef and a line cook at Knife now. Meanwhile Fork is opening in less than a month so you can’t be here to supervise.”