“Nah. Just another by-product of neglectful parents,” she says. “Lots of days to escape here, get good at swimming on my own.” She dips below the surface, legs barely making a splash. When she resurfaces, she wipes the water from her forehead. “I’m gonna miss this place when I go,” she says.
A silence settles in, smoothing even the ripples of the lake so that it’s a perfect mirror, despite the fact that we’re still kicking to stay afloat. We haven’t yet discussed the future, and I’m not ready for it to interrupt this. “How could you not?” I say.
Fireflies dance at the edge of the lake and wispy clouds pass in front of the waxing moon. Emma swims over to me and we kiss. A breeze picks back up, like a breath, like the island itself is sighing in pleasure.
*
On my seventeenth day of training, Chef eats the entire omelet. Except she doesn’t offer a compliment. She pushes the plate away again, holds up a finger and says, “Wait a sec.” She comes back about five minutes later with a cup of coffee, and it almost looks like she was on the way to her office, like she’d forgotten I was there at all. “Big fucking whoop, you can cook one omelet at a time. Anyone can do that. Make me five.”
Another paycheck disappeared into these morning sessions, but I’m somehow okay with it.
That night, Emma and I go bowling with Brandy and Reggie. It’s loud, it’s fun, it’s normal. It’s silly, with stupid trick shots when we get a little bored of the scores. We eat nachos, instead of potato chips covered in hot sauce and lime like we would in Mexico. There’s another group of teens a few lanes down, people Emma and the others clearly know from school.
I keep looking around, expecting someone from the restaurant to walk in, discover us. Matt taking pictures on his phone so he can blackmail me. Chef trailing us, suspicious of me from the start, just waiting to catch me in the act.
At one point, when Brandy and Reggie are laughing, changing our names in the scoreboard, Emma tugs on my sleeve. I was looking toward the door again. “Hey. We’re all right here,” she says. In her eyes I see the sadness of a kid too used to being alone, and I promise to myself to stay present. I remind myself how quickly joy can be undone.
*
On my twentieth day of training, I finally manage to plate five omelets at the same time. Except they’re all different levels of doneness; one’s flat-out burnt, one’s still kind of runny, the other three are somewhere in between, each somehow a different hue on the yellow scale. It’s like Chef is fucking with the laws of thermodynamics or something. On this island, I’m not so sure that natural laws hold steady anyway. It’s easy to believe that Chef of all people could manipulate heat.
That night, Chef gets on a ferry to the city, so Emma invites me over. I’m uneasy about it, though, not sure when Chef will come back, so I ask if we can hang out at my place. She shows up an hour late, her words terse and her touches light in a bad way.
“Everything okay?” I ask. Elias was on the couch in the living room, so we’re on my bed, a popcorn bowl between us, Emma’s laptop set up at our feet.
“Sure,” she says, in a tone of voice that makes me tense.
Usually, we make out before movies. Now she leans over and clicks a few times until the credits start to roll. She’s quiet, withdrawn, and I tell myself she’s just tired. Maybe her dad pissed her off again. We watch the movie quietly, wonderful weight of our bodies pressed against each other. I try not to ask myself if we’re as close to each other as usual. I try not to think of August.
*
July’s nearing its end, and I’m nearing a month into my training with Chef Elise. Felix is in the kitchen with me, hovering over the five pans I’ve got going, little fairy wings on his back. “Looking good,” he says, but Chef is hovering nearby too, scrutinizing my every move.
I turn off the burners and start to plate the omelets, starting with the one that I know has been cooking the longest, even if just for a few seconds. Five golden omelets at a time, each identical. I stack the pans I used on top of each other, look around to make sure nothing’s out of order.
Chef leans in, takes her fork to the corner of each omelet. I swat at Felix, who’s buzzing irritatingly by my ear. “You’re not a cook,” she says. “You’re a kid playing pretend. You’re just fucking around, wasting my time, wasting yours, wasting food.” She slides them into the trash. Five omelets, three eggs each. I’ll need to buy another dozen for tomorrow’s session.
Felix climbs out of the trash can, all five omelets on a plate. “The food waste feels particularly sad in this situation,” he says. “You’d think someone in her line of work would revere food a little too much to chuck it in order to make a point.” I haven’t seen much of him lately, and it’s just now that I realize that.
Later that day, when our breaks line up, Emma and I don’t sneak away for a rendezvous. We don’t steal kisses in the walk-ins the way some of the servers who are hooking up do, muffled moans emanating from within that everyone either ignores or draws attention to for kicks. We don’t text each other across the room, because I feel eyes on us all the time, and I’m terrified they’re Chef’s. Emma looks annoyed, and she leads us to the back.
“This shit is getting old,” she says. She pulls a berry from the meadow from her pocket, digging a nail into the rind and pulling it free from its fruit. “I’m all for sneaking around. But I barely see you. When I do, you’re constantly nervous, your mind on other things.”
I fall quiet. That perfect view of the island and the ocean grows a shade darker, and I look overhead for the cloud that caused it, but the sky is clear.
“It makes me feel lonely.” She takes a bite. A trail of juice leaks down her chin, and she uses the back of her hand to wipe it away. “I want to spend time with you, Carlos. You get that, right? If I didn’t...” She trails off, finishing the berry with another bite. “Which, you know, whatever. I’m not someone who needs to spend every moment together. I know the kitchen means a lot to you, but the summer’s gonna end eventually and then...”
“You’re right,” I say, before she can finish the thought. I don’t want her to go down that rabbit hole. “I’m sorry. Let’s go on a date. Let’s go to the city, spend a whole day together.”
Emma smiles halfheartedly, puts a hand on my cheek and quickly pulls it away. She walks over to the Dumpster and tosses the rind inside. “Okay,” she sighs when she comes back. “Just...you know, I heard empty promises from my parents a lot. I know what it’s like to lose battles of importance to a restaurant.” I try to cut in again to argue, but she interrupts me. “I’m not saying you’re doing that. I’m just saying that my parents made promises too.”
I nod eagerly. “I won’t do that. I couldn’t live with myself.”
“You could,” Emma says. We stand side by side with our backs against the restaurant wall for a bit, looking out at the water, legs touching, beauty surrounding us. Tightness clutches at my chest.
CHAPTER 24
OMAKASE
A ton of sushi