Page 93

I straighten the towel beneath my cutting board.

Heather smiles. “Good boy.”

I scowl. “The fuck I am.”

“No,” she says. “You’re still an asshole.”

I want to ruin her next dinner just to hear how precisely she tells me off.

Heather takes another bite. Her eyes drop to the stained towel over my shoulder. “Change that. It’s filthy.”

I pull it off immediately.

Heather smiles.

I throw the towel into the bin harder than necessary. “Eat your dinner.”

Heather finishes everything I put in front of her. By the time I take the plate away, the rush has broken, and the tickets still hanging on the rail have space between them.

She reaches for her bag.

“Don’t leave.”

Her hand rests on the clasp. “Ask me properly.”

The rail is nearly empty. There’s no noise left to hide behind, and she’s waited all night for exactly that. “Stay, please.”

She takes her hand away. “I’ll decide when I leave.”

I go back to work. I’ve had chances to sit with her, and I burned every one of them correcting other people’s plates and counting what was left in the walk-in. Tonight the kitchen can survive five fucking minutes without me.

I make one dessert, because I know how this goes. She’ll eat three bites, declare herself finished, and watch me eat the rest.

When I set it down, she considers the single spoon. “You forgot something.”

Mara hollers my name from the back. The walk-in has picked tonight to die, and apparently it needs me at the bedside.

I point at the plate. “Don’t finish it.”

Heather turns the spoon over in her fingers and inspects it. “Go help your chef.”

When I come back, the dining room has hollowed out enough to let the music in. Heather sits exactly where I left her, and one corner of the dessert is gone. The spoon rests beside the plate facing the empty stool. I strip off my apron, throw it over the counter, and come around to her side.

Behind the counter I have knives, tickets, and an excuse for every silence. On the stool beside her I have nothing, and my hands keep trying to find something to straighten.

She loads the spoon and holds it out. I look at it.

Her eyebrows rise. “Now you’re shy?”

“Fuck you.”

“Ask for it.”

“Give it to me.”

“Properly,” she says.

The word sits in my mouth like a bone. “Please.”