The last two weeks had been nothing short of miserable. Business had been terrible—Michael was right. People weren’t coming in, having heard from the critic what he thought and deciding to give us a pass.
It was absolute bullshit, of course. I knew it. I didn’t know exactly what bug had crawled up that guy’s ass but it had to be something big because there was no way that he was giving my food a fair trial. Was he just so enamored with the insanely complex, tiny bites of eight-course tasting menus that were all the rage nowadays? Or was he one of those annoying hipsters who wanted everything from duck l’orange to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich deconstructed on a ‘rustic’ plate?
Whatever it was, he’d come after my restaurant unfairly. But people trusted him. People still trusted critics, it seemed, or at least trusted them over the recent Yelp reviews we’d gotten. And y’know I understood to a certain extent. Critics were paid to review that kind of shit, this was their career, so theoretically they were better at it than the foodie wannabes who flooded the internet with their usually spoiled and uptight and often unwanted opinions.
People listened to the experts, even in this day and age of crowdfunding, and constant blogging, and everybody with a phone having thoughts to share. And they sure as fuck were listening now, and they were saying that they didn’t like what this critic was saying one bit. They were going to take him at his word and stay the fuck away.
I wanted to write back to him, to the newspaper, and demand to know just who the fuck he thought he was. Like my God, as if anyone who’d already been to our restaurant couldn’t see through that pack of fucking lies. Fuck him! Seriously! He wasn’t giving an honest review, he just wasn’t, he was blinded by his judgement, he had to be.
But of course I couldn’t say that. Nobody would believe me. They’d think that I was just being bitter or something, a vindictive harpy, blah fucking blah, I could read the headlines already.
Shit like this, though, that was why I’d wanted to revamp the restaurant. Once as a kid I’d been just as dazzled by the fancy dishes that Theo and people like him would make. Michael would bring food home from the restaurant for Brooke and me, and I’d adored it. But now I understood that all flair and style with no actual substance behind it was crap.
Good luck revamping the entire restaurant industry just to undo a bad review, though.
The restaurant had been struggling these past two weeks, was the result. There was no avoiding it. As much as I wanted to change things, to undo that review or erase it or what the fuck ever, I couldn’t. And we were all feeling it.
Michael had to let two servers go this week. I’d felt so shitty. I knew that it wasn’t my fault, I was a good cook—but could it be? I mean, who else’s fault was it? Maybe I shouldn’t have rushed to push the menu. Maybe I should have waited, and just pushed for smaller changes instead. Making some menu items less complicated, changing a few things in the lineup in the kitchen, insisting on the same dishes but with fresh local ingredients.
I’d tried to bite off more than I could chew and look where it got me.
I woke up in the morning on Monday and just… lay in bed. Didn’t get up for hours. Scrolled on my phone, looking at social media and generally making myself feel worse as I saw all my classmates from culinary school off being successful, all the food they were making at these famous restaurants.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t had offers to work other places. But I’d given that up. I’d fought instead to be at Michael’s place, because I loved him and I loved the restaurant, and I wanted both to thrive.
Of course, social media was skewed. Nobody posted about the times that they were upset, or failing, or the time that they looked like shit, or when their girlfriend broke up with them. No, they only posted the good things, the successes. So of course when you looked through it you only saw that good shit, thought that their life was nothing but that good shit, and ate yourself alive with envy and self-loathing.
I knew all of that. And yet, I still wanted to throw my phone at the fucking wall.
Around noon I got up and migrated like a sloth to the couch, where I put on some trashy television and let it play in the background. Usually I would put on the Food Network but I knew that if I did I’d get too invested and start yelling at the contestants on Chopped or something.
God, I felt like such shit.
When I’d seen what Virginia had done to Michael… it had changed everything about my plan for myself.
Before that, my plan had been to go to culinary school and get a job across the country, or possibly in Europe. Far away from Michael, in other words. I’d take some more time and see if I couldn’t get over him. I’d been an idiot teenager but even I’d known that if I’d caused her parents to split, Brooke would’ve murdered me. She’d loved her mom, gone on girl dates with her and stuff all the time.
Then Virginia had fucked Theo and fucked over Michael and I’d had to stand by, helpless, and watch this man that I knew to be so vibrant, full of life and vigor, just turn into a depressed shell of himself.
As a teenager I hadn’t had the emotional maturity to really help him with that, and I’d hoped that while I was in culinary school that he could have at least helped himself out of the pit a little. And he didn’t seem to be in full despair anymore, but he was… coasting. He wasn’t being the person I knew he could be. Okay sure of course he was still amazing. I wouldn’t be in love with him if he wasn’t. But I knew there was so much more to him and I wanted him to be happy and goddammit, he wasn’t fucking happy.
So I’d tried to swoop in and be the savior and look what happened.
I made it all worse.
Virginia and Theo did their fair share to ruin it all. Fuck them, honestly. They better hope - the both of them - that they never met me. But I’d come in and put the final nail in the coffin myself. I’d pushed too hard and too fast, convinced that I could do it all, like some kind of fucking superwoman.
What the hell, Stevie?
His business meant everything to him, aside from Brooke. I had promised to turn that around for him and instead I had made everything worse. I had all but assured, thanks to the changed menu, that the restaurant would fail.
All right, maybe it wasn’t as bad as sleeping with his head chef and cheating on him. But it sure felt damn close. It felt like its own kind of betrayal.
I felt like such shit.
I just kept lounging on the couch all day. I ordered pizza, which actually I had never been a huge fan of, but I was suddenly craving it like nobody’s business. With tons of pepperoni and pineapple. Yeah, weird combination. But comfort food, sometimes, was just what the doctor ordered when the patient felt like a shitbag who’d just tanked her one true love’s chances of keeping his dream job.
Oh God, one true love? I was getting sappy and that meant I was really in trouble.
The pizza arrived, I cried over a fucking dog commercial, because it was just that kind of day, and then in the afternoon there was a knock at the door.
Huh. I wasn’t expecting anyone. Andy could be, since he sometimes had friends over, but he was always good about letting me know ahead of time and besides, he’d been gone all day. Spent the night at the apartment of the girl he picked up the night before, and then went to play football with friends in the park, now they were doing some kind of movie marathon. I was just glad he was texting me periodically so that I knew he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere.
I didn’t think the person knocking could be Michael, but… maybe?
My heart fluttered with stupid hope anyway. Maybe things were turning around, impossible as it seemed. Or maybe he just wanted to apologize for the harsh words we’d exchanged two weeks ago.
I knew that I regretted them. Even though what I had said was true and I knew, in hindsight, that what Michael said was true, it had all still hurt. But I didn’t know how to apologize, or at least how to start. And there never seemed to be a right time. I was busy in the kitchen constantly and Michael was m
aking himself scarce… either out of anger, or guilt, or shame, or some combination, who even knew anymore. I had thought I could read his mind after so many years paying such careful attention to him but it was apparent that I couldn’t. That I’d been a fool.
“Coming,” I called. There was no time to clean up the apartment and make it look nice and hey, if it was Michael, he’d see evidence that I really was feeling like shit about this whole thing. Maybe I could finally find the right words to say that I was sorry.
I opened the door…
It wasn’t Michael.
Brooke stood there, two pints of Ben & Jerrys in hand. “I couldn’t remember if you liked Phish Food or Chocolate Devotion better, so I got both and I’ll just take the one you don’t want.”
Her smile was so gentle and knowing, plus the ice cream… “How’d you know I was having a bad day?”
“Best friend radar, duh.” I opened the door further so that she could enter. “Oh, and uh, your brother and my dad both texted me. Dad said things were going bad at the restaurant and that this was your day off and then Andy said that you’d been weirdly quiet lately and down on yourself, so I thought, hey, ice cream!”
To my own horror, I burst into tears. Brooke immediately set the ice cream down and pulled me into a hug. “Oh my God, Stevie! Honey! Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”
I don’t usually cry much, but especially not like this. Culinary school is three years of verbal abuse and it gets fucking tense in kitchens. You have to be able to let shit slide off your back, because when the head chef is yelling profanities at you and insulting your mother, it’s not really personal. Tempers just get really high.
And like hell was I going to be the girl among all the guys who cried. Fuck that shit.
Brooke led me over to the couch, and took my hands. “This is about that awful review, isn’t it? Dad tried to hide it from me but the restaurant was doing so well and then things went downhill, and… well… I might not be in the restaurant business but I’ve been a hostess and sort of office assistant there for years, and I grew up listening to Theo and Mom and my dad. I know that when things turn around this quickly it’s a bad review. It wasn’t hard to find it.”
“Oh great, it’s not hard to find, so the entire fucking internet can see it.”
“Honey, I didn’t mean it like that! Do you want me to call your mom?”
“Fuck, no, don’t!” I snatched the phone away from her and quickly shoved it under the couch cushions. My parents were so proud of me, the last thing I wanted was for them to hear about this. Especially since they had appreciated my loyalty but hadn’t understood why I was going to work with Michael instead of under some prestigious chef elsewhere.
I was already feeling fragile enough. I didn’t want to deal with my parents’ well-meaning confusion and suggestions for problem-solving. I just wanted to lounge around and let myself feel like shit.
Brooke nodded. “Okay, I understand. It’s okay.”
I sniffled, feeling pathetic, and reached for the tissues. “Thanks, hon.”
“No problem. What else are best friends for, okay? Now, dump it all on me.”
I couldn’t dump all of it on her, of course. Guilt stabbed at me like a hot poker in my stomach. Brooke didn’t—couldn’t—know about how I had been sleeping with her father. She’d lose her mind and that was the last thing that I needed right now, even as I felt guilty for hiding it from her. Taking comfort from my friend while holding back on this big secret felt like its own kind of betrayal.
But what else could I do? I had to deal with one crisis at a time. Michael and the restaurant had to be resolved first. Then I could see about telling Brooke the truth.
So I told her everything about the new menu, and fresher ingredients, and how things had been getting better at the restaurant but then they had taken a turn for the worse after the review. I told her about my argument with her father, and the things that both of us said, and how we’d been going back and forth about changing the things that Theo had put into place.
I left out the bits about our relationship, of course, but luckily both Michael and I were professionals. Our personal issues didn’t go into the kitchen and our professional issues didn’t go into the bedroom, and vice versa.
When I finished, Brooke passed me the ice cream, and I dove in. She helped herself to the last remaining piece of pizza. I didn’t usually eat an entire thing but I was starving. Crying will take a lot out of you.
“First of all, Dad’s great but he’s not always right. He’s not perfect. I think you’ve got the wrong idea on this. That traitor was good ten years ago but things have gone stale, the chefs who’ve come after him have just made everything worse along the way, trying to imitate him, y’know?” Brooke finished her pizza and wiped off her hands, grabbing her own ice cream.
“And the thing is, look, you know my mom, okay? She helped Dad and Theo with running the restaurant but she’s a ‘live fast live hard’ kind of person. She likes the finer things in life. And if you ask me, I think part of why the place got so into the red so quickly wasn’t Theo leaving, it was the way Mom handled things finally catching up to us. But she wasn’t there anymore to take the fall, and the timing made it look like it was all Theo leaving and all on Dad.” Brooke paused. “Don’t tell him I told you this. I don’t have proof or anything. It’s just what I think after all I watched.”
I nodded. It made sense, but good luck getting Virginia to admit it.
“That review sucked.” Brooke nodded at me. “It really did. But you can’t give up. Your food is good! I’ve been your taste tester for how many years now? And you know that I don’t lie and say it’s good when it tastes like shit.”
Brooke had a really soft, high pitched voice, so it always threw me for a loop when she would swear. I laughed a little and kept tearing into the ice cream. Fuck this tasted good.
“Things are going to get better,” Brooke went on. “Okay? I know that they’re taking a dip right now because of the critic but it’s just a dip. People will see that your food is actually good, the good reviews will outweigh the bad, and you’ll get more customers again. It’s going to be okay.”
She noticed how I was eating the ice cream like I’d been in the desert for ten years, and she laughed. “Honey, I know things are bad but there’s no reason to tear into your ice cream like you’re on your period.”
I froze.
My period.
I tried counting backwards in my head—then realized how suspicious that would be if I kept staring into space with a goggle-eyed look on my face. I quickly swallowed and shrugged. “Maybe things will perk up but maybe they won’t. You don’t know.”
“I do know, okay? Have you talked to Dad about inviting some other critics to come and eat there and give their opinion?”
“I haven’t really had the chance to talk to him since the fight. I need to apologize.”
“Well, so does he.” Brooke patted my knee. “I know you both, remember? You’re both stubborn people. He’s going to calm down soon, he knows that you’re the best thing that’s happened to this restaurant in ages. Maybe ever. I think you’re better than Theo, anyway.”
“Thanks, hon.”
“Dad needs someone who’ll give him a kick in the pants like that. Trust me. He appreciates you, I know he does.”
Yeah, if only she knew how much. But did Michael really appreciate me professionally? Could he, after how I’d failed him?
“He can’t invite critics,” I said. “I mean, I don’t think it would work. People could accuse us of paying the critics off, since we invited them. They’ll say we staged it somehow, something. I just, I know it. We didn’t know that critic came in or who he was so we served him just like we served every other customer, that’s the point.”
Brooke sighed. “I suppose so. But it does seem rather unfair.”
“Life’s unfair, hon.” I’d learned that at a young age as I’d had a massive crush on an older married man who,
oh yeah, happened to be the father of my best friend. Talk about unfair.
That one comment that Brooke had made was circling in the back of my mind like a shark, complete with the Jaws theme. “Hey, hon, I’m all tired from crying. I think I’m going to take a nap.”
“Of course!” Brooke sprang to her feet. “Hey, you text me, all right? You keep in touch. This will all be over soon, the storm will pass, yada yada yada.”
I nodded and hugged her tightly, then saw her to the door.
Holy shit. My legs nearly gave out as I closed it behind her and I had to rest my forehead against the wood for a moment, breathing deeply, trying not to throw up or hyperventilate.
My period. When was the last time that I had my period?
Brooke was right. Normally I only got a massive ice cream craving—and huge mood swings—during my period. I didn’t get extra cranky or anything but I did cry a lot more. Holy shit.
My mind was racing and blank at the same moment, somehow, and I dashed into the bedroom to put on some clean clothes.
The drug store was just around the corner, but I cleaned up the food and ate the rest of the ice cream while I waited just to be sure that Brooke had really left. I’d told her I was taking a nap, I couldn’t have her see me walking around right after, and going to a drug store of all places. She might not put two and two together but if she did…
It’s okay, I told myself. My period had been late before plenty of times. It didn’t really mean anything. It was all going to be fine.
But the fact was, we’d never had sex with a condom. I hadn’t cared, so out of my mind with desire and pleasure, and I trusted that Michael wouldn’t do anything if he wasn’t clean. I was clean, and I didn’t plan on being with anyone else.
Of course my dumb stupid overeager horny ass would forget that having sex without a condom wasn’t just a way to get an STI, it was a way to get fucking pregnant.
I got to the drug store and grabbed a pregnancy test. No, wait, two. No, three. Just in case. Three. Yeah. That was the magic number, right?
Best Friend's Daddy (Forever Daddies Book 3) Page 13