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Whoever had appointed me head chef needed their head examining. Well. Mark had. I was going to have to kill him. One day.
“What’s the issue then?” Hugo’s voice was firm. The guy had nerves of steel, I would give him that, despite him pushing his whole body into the back of the chair. Luckily, our chairs were made of sturdy stuff. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Well, firstly, you don’t like my food, which is insulting, but fair enough. I’m not going to force you to eat anything you don’t like the look of. I admit that the canteen food is sometimes below par, but that’s mostly due to it being sat out up there for hours on end. Even I wouldn’t eat it.”
I tried to smile.
He didn’t smile back.
I took another forkful of cheesecake. It tasted sour in my mouth.
“If you’re trying to flirt, I can tell you right now…” He moved closer over the table, his face almost in my face. “Not interested. And I know about the bet the lads have going on. I’m not the kind of person who does afterwork drinks or nights out or getting drunk and messing around with people I work with.”
“Noted,” I said flatly. Fuck.
“I don’t shit where I eat.” His eyes were black, full of anger.
I needed to say something, lighten the mood, but my brain was once again doing its thing, and my head felt like it was full of soufflé.
Hugo got up and pushed his chair back under the table. I hated the sound these chairs made against the floor. Metallic scrapes against hard tiles.
“And if you’ll excuse me, I need to go back to work.”
I sighed. Yeah. This had all been uncalled for, but honestly, I was trying to help.
***
The night went on and I left early, popping over to Mark’s with some more boxes of food. Not that Finn couldn’t use his legs and ensure his boyfriendwas suitably fed, but Finn had worked doubles over the weekend, and Mark was being a complete pain. Still, he was up, showered and flouncing around in a purple silk kimono as I walked through the door.
“Finn’s in bed,” he informed me in a hushed voice. “I’m trying not to be a nuisance.”
“Okay,” I said, but being me, and not being a nuisance was incompatible, and my arm was aching from carrying the boxes, so I completely missed the cupboard shelf. The red wine and a dozen eggs shattered on impact and immediately transformed into some kind of purple scramble on the floor.
“Oh, babes.” Mark sighed and sank onto the sofa—the one in the kitchen. Even without Mark’s mental health stuff, sharing a small flat between two people doing insane shift work wasn’t easy. I got that. So did the pillow and the obscene number of blankets on said sofa, but at least Finn had finally sold his flat and moved in with Mark. Small mercies and all that.
“Come. Sit.” He patted the seat next to him.
“I give up.” I stood there like a big lemon.
“No, you don’t. You’re tired and flustered and your brain is on strike.”
Trust Mark to put it like that. He tugged me down until I was sitting beside him. I was glad I was freshly showered and my tracksuit was cleanish, as he grabbed my hands and inspected them.
“That’s a new burn.”
“Missed the hotplate with the scraper,” I admitted.
“You should have a plaster on it.” Mark was my private nurse. He’d been responsible for healing most of my scars. Tapes and creams and bandages and food-handler’s plasters were part of his uniform at all times.
Technically, I shouldn’t do the hotplate cleaning. I was banned from the blenders or using pretty much anything sharper than a butterknife. Being a chef? Yeah. I didn’t always follow Mark’s rules.
He clicked his tongue at me and pulled me into one of his embraces. One of those where my head was on his chest and I lay there like an amoeba with my arms and legs sticking out at every angle.
“What’s up, mate?” he asked.
“Not your mate,” I huffed back. He laughed. I loved when he laughed.
“Remember that first night in the dorms at college?” he said. “When I fell asleep in your bed and you woke up in the morning with me drooling on your shoulder?”
