ALL the inner peace and strong emotional muscles I’d flexed the night before had completely disappeared by the morning. I felt weepy as I showered and got dressed. I never should have watched The Notebook. That movie always messed me up for days.
Gulping down a carafe of French press, I talked to myself. My voice was loud in my apartment.
“You’re going to be fine,” I said to my fridge as I opened it to get the cream. “You just need to get to work early, start in on prep, and act like nothing happened yesterday.”
I tried for levity as I brushed my teeth. “Hey,” I said through a mouth full of foaming paste. “Who cares? So you had a public breakup! In front of your bosses and a room full of people with smart phones!” I spit out the excess paste. “So Kai won’t return your calls or texts! You feel like a loser, right? Well, shake it off! No biggie! Life happens!”
I looked long and hard into my reflection on the elevator door as I waited for it to reach my apartment. “You are a professional. Act like it and people will treat you like one.”
That last bit of advice was what helped me gather my courage to open the back door of Thrill and face whatever stood behind it. Turns out, nothing stood behind it right at that second because the kitchen was running at full speed. I frowned at the chaos, confused as to why people were acting as if it were 7:30 p.m. and mid-rush when, in fact, the clock had just inched past noon.
Stepping into the room, I corralled the arm of a passing line cook. “Hey, what’s going on?”
The kid could not have been older than twenty-one. He had a beautiful head of black curls and flawless brown skin. I had the fleeting impression I had seen him on a commercial for a men’s aftershave. “Hey, Chef Garrett. Sorry about the breakup.”
I tried looking dignified, which, in this case, probably meant I looked like I’d sucked on a lemon. I tried repeating my question. “Why is everyone freaking out?”
“Oh,” he said, his perfect smile fading into a studied seriousness. “Killian McGuire is supposed to be dining during the first seating tonight.”
“Killian McGuire the restaurant critic?” I felt the tips of my fingers tingle at the thought.
“The very one,” he said. “Well, we aren’t positive, of course, since he made the reservation under a pseudonym. But Chef Michaels is pretty sure it’s the same alias he used at Wu Tang and at Bonne Femme, so we’re assuming it’s McGuire.”
I pushed through the crowd, eyes on Avery, who was issuing orders from the pass.
“McGuire?” I said before I’d come to a stop before him. “Are you serious?”
While it was true that any good review from a restaurant critic could double, even triple, a restaurant’s exposure, Killian McGuire—feisty, opinionated, and a man with two million followers on Twitter—held unparalleled influence. A good word from him could put a restaurant on a completely different map. In fact, some chefs considered a favorable review from him to be more coveted than a Michelin star. Most twenty-five-to-thirty-five-year-olds—a big chunk of the dining demographic—couldn’t care a whit about the stuffy and ancient Michelin guide, but many of them kept track of where McGuire was eating and drinking. And those same people talked incessantly to their friends, furthering his reach. A McGuire endorsement was gold served up on white china.
Avery took my elbow and walked with me toward my station. He lowered his voice. “Vic said that Margot said that Tiffany Jacobs and Macintosh Rowe are good friends of McGuire and that they probably put in a good word.” Avery’s eyebrows were darting toward his gelled hairline, a long-time habit that marked him as supremely stressed out.
“This is big,” I said, my own stress level climbing steadily upward to a jagged spike. We began a slow walk toward my station. “I need to do inventory. I hope he orders the strawberry and sweet wine gelées with candied pistachios. I read somewhere that he has an obsession with strawberries, and the berries we’ve been getting from Shisler Farms are perfectly—”
“Charlie.” Avery stopped just inside the pastry area. No sign of Tova.
I met his gaze.
“I’m sorry about yesterday. I know you really liked Kai.”
I swallowed, sorry to remember what I was trying so hard to forget. “Thanks. It just wasn’t meant to be.” Feeling in my pocket for my phone, I retrieved it as a recently perfected reflex. No message, no voicemail.
“He hasn’t called?” Avery spoke quietly, even though the film crew was busy catching the chaos in the main kitchen.
I shook my head. “Not yet. Probably never. I don’t know. I guess we don’t really know each other that well when it comes down to it.”