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Heavens forbid!
That love was meant for my Mr. Right (wherever he might be).
After that conversation, we had gone to bed, in our separate rooms and I had lain awake all night, wondering what on earth had just happened. When Will said he loved me too, I knew he didn’t mean it the way I did.
He meant it the serious way. The let’s-be-together-and-plan-a-future way.
I wasn’t ready for that.
I really liked him and everything, but that was not what this was.
But what was this?
I didn’t know and I found it very confusing.
As soon as I dropped off Zoë for the morning, I went into the city to find Simone. I knew where her fancy new restaurant was and even though I knew I shouldn’t bother her at work, I hadn’t seen her for a while. I went in round the back, almost colliding with a kitchen staff member coming out with a huge plastic bucket full of waste.
“Sorry!” I said, quickly getting out of the way.
Restaurant kitchens were war zones. I knew this very well. Simone had often regaled me on stories of how people stormed out in tears, had plates thrown at them and had to hear the most horrific insults. They were sworn at and yelled at all the time. The pressure was insane. I peeked around the door. It was still early, I figured they would be cleaning up after breakfast but prep for lunch was still a while off.
I saw a group of people standing around and realized there was a staff meeting taking place. A man was talking in a serious voice and every now and then I caught a word like “imperative” and “vital” and once, even, “make or break”. It sounded like he was giving a motivational talk to a basketball team or something. At the end there was a lot of clapping and then I heard a girl crying, sniveling quietly. Someone came out, pushing past me to get some fresh air. I was relieved to see that it wasn’t Simone.
“Are you okay?”
The girl nodded quickly, wiping her face with her hands, smearing her mascara across her cheeks.
“You’ve got…” I pointed to her face, and she rolled her eyes.
“I’m so stupid! Thinking I could do this!” She rubbed at her face with her sleeves, and I felt very sorry for her.
“I’m sure it’s not you,” I said, not having the faintest clue what was going on.
The girl looked up at me suddenly.
“Patrice says I burnt the roux, I mean, it didn’t burn, I was watching it the whole time!”
“The what?”
“The sauce!” she barked at me, fresh tears spilling over her cheeks.
“I was whisking it and looking at it, but you know…” her voice faltered. “My head, I don’t know, my mind was wandering because of my boyfriend, and you know…” she looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time.
“Excuse me, but who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Nikki, a friend of Simone’s.”
“Simone?”
“She works here, right?”
“Works,” snorted the girl. “Slaves away, wastes her life, kills herself slowly; those would be more appropriate words to describe what happens here.” Then she straightened up, wiped her face clean and gave me a big smile. “I’ll go get her for you, yeah?”
I couldn’t believe the transformation. She’d been so upset only moments ago and here she was, grinning at me like nothing had happened.
Simone came out a short while later, her hair scraped into bun, her face all serious. When she saw me, she smiled briefly and gave me a hug.
“What’s up?” she asked.
