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He held his hands up in front of himself defensively, mirroring my glare.
“Do you need something?” I asked, making it clear with my tone that I was not in a giving mood.
“I need you to get back in the kitchen, tickets are piling up,” he ground out, his dark eyes boring into mine. I opened my mouth to argue, but I knew that he was right and time was wasting, so instead I just shoved past him, cramming my hat down over my hair as I pushed through the swinging doors back into the kitchen.
As soon as I looked around, delayed guilt washed over me. Ronnie was harried, trying to turn a pair of steaks while overseeing the pot of soup that was her actual job. I rushed up beside her and took the tongs from her hand.
“Thanks,” I said sheepishly. “I appreciate you covering me.”
I’d only stepped away for a couple of minutes, but things had been so crazy lately that we didn’t have time to take any breaks during shift. The labor board would shut us down if they knew, but that was the reality of kitchen life.
Lola’s message ran through my head as I got back into the swing, yanking down tickets and serving up plates, only pausing to wipe away my sweat so it wouldn’t drip into the food. Before I knew it, the night was over and it was time to clean up the kitchen. Ronnie went to work scraping the grill while the dishwasher clanged plates and pans in the sink and I pored over my scribbled plans for tomorrow’s specials.
“No chicken,” Thacker said. He’d come up behind me and was reading over my shoulder. I jumped and snatched up my notes, stepping away from him.
“I’ll bring this to you for approval when I’m finished with it,” I said coldly. He blinked at me and then shoved his hand through his shaggy salt and pepper hair and heaved a bitter sigh.
“I’m just trying to—”
“I get it,” I said quickly, brushing him off. “No chicken.” I went to wave him away, and that’s when his hand shot out and closed around my wrist. I turned toward him, gearing up to tell him to go to hell, and then I realized what he was doing and it took all the wind out of my sails.
“You burned the hell out of yourself,” he said, frowning as he twisted my arm gently but firmly, exposing the underside where a fat, long blister had formed. I held up my other arm to show him the matching burn on that side.
“Twice,” I said. “So what?”
“So, have you put anything on it?”
I fixed him with a frosty stare.
“The only time I left my post tonight, I got my ass chewed.”
His eyes darkened and his jaw twitched as he studied my face.
“Hope—”
I wrenched my arm out of his grasp and held up a hand to stop him.
“Don’t,” I said. “I’ll put aloe on it when I get home. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” he said in a low, urging voice that caught me off guard. Now it was my turn to study him. His moods were all over the place these days. I never knew which Thacker I was going to get.
“What do you want instead of chicken?” I asked, desperate to change the subject. The way he was looking at me, his dark eyes swirling with concern, was making me uneasy. I felt too…seen.
“We’ve got double lamb,” he said, begrudgingly switching into business mode. “I fucked up the order. Let’s do lamb curry.”
I shook my head.
“Stuffed lamb pinwheels would be easier to prep on the fly, I’ll have to come in at the crack of dawn tomorrow to start cooking if we do curry.”
For a second, he looked like he was going to argue the point. Then he shrugged.
“Whatever you say, chef,” he said flatly. He turned to walk away but then stopped and looked back. “Oh, by the way, we need to do a detailed inventory of the walk-in on Sunday. Can you be here at ten?” I gritted my teeth. Sunday was my only day off, and more often than not, he came up with some reason why I needed to drop in for a couple of hours even though the place was closed. I kept my irritation to myself and nodded. He gave me a curt nod in return and then went into his office and shut the door, leaving me even more confused and conflicted than I’d been before he interrupted me.
I squinted down at my notes, trying to make sense of them.Spinach salad, creme brûlée.
I marked outchicken divanand penciled inlamb pinwheels. Usually, getting my menu together for the next day made me feel settled and even relaxed at the end of shift, but tonight I felt as unsettled as ever. I just wanted to go home, curl up with Jamie, and listen to him tell me that everything would be okay.
I left instructions with Ronnie to start grating cheese and chopping kale as soon as she clocked in the following day. She nodded with a grin, enthusiastic as always. Usually her love of the job was contagious, buoying me on days when I felt low, but as I said goodnight and walked to my car, I realized that this was a vague, persistent dread that not even Ronnie’s sunny disposition could dispel.
