Love On the Line: An Enemies to Lovers Standalone

by Adriana Peck

  We soak in the moment, but it’s interrupted when Mason asks: “Hey, isn’t that your friend from the other night?”

  I turn around. Someone was peering inside The Slider Shack, hands cupped together to get a better look. I couldn’t make out his face, but I recognized the leather jacket and black tee instantly.

  Before I can speak the door bursts open, and the not-so-stranger is suddenly inside and standing in front of our table.

  “Rosa! I thought that was you!” Dylan exclaims. I can’t help but cringe when he shows up after the night out with Paige. I knew he was trying to make a move on me that night, and I just felt so gross after our run-in with Mason where Dylan tried to play the role of a protective boyfriend who doesn’t really exist. I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with this for a while. This is too much for me right now, and all I want to do is curl up into a ball and disappear into nothingness. But I can’t, so I have to deal with Dylan the troublemaker, Dylan the bad boy and Dylan the playboy all while keeping Mason out of the loop to our shared history.

  This should be easy.

  Dylan sits down at our table before I can object, pulling up a chair and sitting side-straddle, the back of the chair between his legs in what is clearly a power move meant to faze Mason. Mason doesn’t react at all to this, and keeps eating the last of his burger.

  “Mason, isn't it? How are you, buddy?” Dylan hits his shoulder a little too hard, I can see Mason managing to grimace politely.

  “Why are you here?” I ask, scowling at Dylan.

  “I was just passing by. In the neighborhood, you know. Happened to look in and see an old friend. Rosa, you know how much fun I had the other night. Why didn’t you call me like I asked you to?”

  I can’t explain to Mason that Dylan and I haven’t slept together (well, not in years) and that this vagueness is just one of his crazy games to try and keep me single by scaring off any potential boyfriends. Dylan made this his move in college. I’m upset with myself when I think back and realize how many times it worked. I wasn’t going to let it happen again.

  “Dylan, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Nothing happened between us, and nothing will.”

  “Nothing happened?” Dylan says, making an exaggerated effort to cock an eyebrow. Dylan smiles as I grit my teeth. “Defined ‘happened.’ College happened, Rosa. You tell our new guy Mason about that yet? Huh?” he jerks his thumb over at Mason as if he’s not even there.

  Mason just keeps eating his burger, washing it down with some soda as he looks to see what I’m going to say next. He’s wearing his waiter mask. I can recognize it by now. It’s stiff, solid. Oaken. Like a suit of emotional armor that nothing can penetrate. I’ve seen customers scream and berate Mason over a dish that I screwed up, and his face was always concrete. And now he’s wearing that same face.

  This has gone on far too long. I decide to end it all now.

  “Mason, please excuse Dylan’s rude behavior. He’s an old friend I’ve been meaning to get rid of as of late. Dylan, do you have anything else to say? Because we’d really like to get back to our lunch before Mason has to go back to work.”

  Subtle. Dylan looks horrified at my declaration of independence, utterly dismayed that someone like me would grow tired of him. The look of cognitive dissonance on his slack-jawed face sucks away any fraction of a percentage of attraction that still remained for my freshman-year fling. Now, he looks downright ugly. Mason smiles at this, and we share a moment in my victory over our intruder who couldn’t take a hint.

  After a pause, Dylan finally aligns his jawline and speaks in a hushed tone. “No. I don’t have anything else,” he mutters. He gets up slowly, turns his chair around and pushes it in. He leaves without a word, his tail tucked in between his legs. It’s dark, but it takes a lot for me not to laugh at his bark being so much worse than his bite. I really can’t believe it was that easy to get rid of Dylan the ‘bad boy’.

  When Dylan’s out the door, Mason breaks down laughing. The dam bursts, and I start laughing too.

  After a while, we settle down and get back to business. Mason takes my paper tray and throws it out as he wipes his hands. He sits back down and looks me dead in the eyes.

  “Rosa, I can’t wait anymore. I want you to be my head chef. To hell with the two weeks. I need to know your answer now.”

  Holy smokes. It’s a lot to consider, but what else do I have lined up?

  “I’ll take it,” I grin.

  Mason grins, too. “Good. We’re going to spend a lot of time together,” he says.

  Twenty

  When I officially join Mason’s staff, he gives me an update that construction’s about eighty-five per cent finished. That means all the tables are in a set place to divvy up into sections for servers, the chairs all have space to move in and out, and the lobby’s decor has been picked out and set aside for the future. All that Mason has left to do is paint the walls and hang up the decor that fits whatever theme he’s planning for the space. And he’s still got to pick out a name for the restaurant. I’m surprised he hasn’t done that yet, and I’m sure that selection needs to come first before we start hiring on a new staff.

  As for the kitchen, there’s work to be done still. The gas lines all work, the hookups for ovens and stoves are ready to go, and our walk-in freezer gets cold enough to make you shiver right through to your bones. We just need to install a few dozen things here and there, organize everything in a space that can contain chaos, find a trainable staff who knows how to operate everything we’ve installed…aaaand we still have to build an entire menu from scratch. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy.

  The menu-building part is going to be entirely up to me as the founding head chef. No pressure, right?

  Today, I’m helping Mason out with his kitchen appliance setup. The contractors can only do so much, and that leaves the two of us alone together to figure out how we’re going to get everything up and running before we can build the menu.

  “Rosa, how are things coming along with the oven wiring?” Mason asks, breaking me out of my half-planning, half-panic attacked state. I’ve been meticulously wiring the back half of the wall that’s going to house an oven in a couple of days. You have drill holes evenly spaced to make sure the wires have space to…breathe, I guess. So you don’t start a fire, electrical or otherwise. I worry about a lot of little things like that, and I figure it’s probably why Mason wants me as his head chef. After all, a job like this requires an ability to multi-task and worry about a million different tiny things all at once, all while managing a (let’s be honest, probably under-staffed) team of people all rushing together towards a shared goal. If I’m being frank, Mason should be happy I get so lost in my own head. Really.

  “Rosa?” and I realize I hadn’t answered him the first time.

  “It’s coming along. Almost done here,” I say as I finish screwing a sliding mechanism on the side of the housing unit. Just in case we need to pop the oven out for cleaning or maintenance. “You doing okay over there?”

  Mason’s installing a countertop and placing it all by himself. He had the contractors cut and treat some heavy sheets of stainless steel for us to slam our cutting boards on, and for other various meal-making activities that can really cause some damage.

  He hoists up the giant rectangle, twice as big as he is tall. He’s straining, I can hear him grunt as his face turns red from the strain. Honestly, it’s really hot watching him strain like that, I just can’t explain it. I can’t take my eyes off of him as he’s got the sheet halfway up, propped halfway across the skeleton of the future countertop. It looks really heavy, and I wonder how on earth he’s managing to do this alone.

  “You okay over there?” Now it’s my turn to ask again. I’m just here hoping he won’t drop the thing on his leg and break a bone or something. I really don’t know how much help I’d be if that happened.

  “Doing—urrgh—just—fine—hmmph—over here!”

  Mason grunts a heavy grunt, slams the counte
rtop forward to balance it on the skeleton. With a bang, the countertop slips to the left, off-center but still balanced enough to stay up where it needs to be. That comes with a price, however, as I hear Mason yelp as he jerks his hand back in obvious pain.

  I rush over and immediately take his hand. Pure instinct, I swear. Something inside me just tells me to take it, inspect the damage. Mason looks at me and calms down instantly as I turns his hand over in mind, playing the role of a careful doctor.

  “How’s it feel?”

  “Smarts.”

  “Anything snap?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Can you wiggle your fingers for me?” and Mason does so. It’s cute, and I don’t think he’s hurt at all. I think he’s just playing along now, so I roll with it. “This one hurt?” I take his middle finger and put it in my mouth.

  Mason laughs, but keeps his finger still. He’s into it, I can tell. For a moment, we hold eye contact without breaking.

  I take his finger out of my mouth and go in for the kiss. Mason’s lips are as soft as I remember, his scruff on his chin as prickly. It’s so familiar, yet still exciting and new in so many ways. I feel his arms wrap around my waist as he pulls me in closer. The world around us disappears as all I have to think about right now is right in front of me. The kiss lasts forever, and yet it’s over in an instant as we pull away and look at one another. I can see want in his eyes. I know he sees it in mine, too.

  It just takes that one single look, and we both know it’s on. I jump back up to him as we embrace again. As Mason and I jack the intensity up to eleven, we stumble our way around the new kitchen, looking for any surface we can lean on. He picks me up, sets me down on the new halfway-installed countertop before we spin around again and I’m up against a wall somewhere, close to a door. Mason opens the door, and it’s the walk-in pantry that we’re suddenly inside. Mason closes the door. We’ll have plenty of space in here, after all.

  ◆◆◆

  We begin to sit down with candidates the following day, as soon as Mason’s picked out a name for the restaurant and put up a help wanted ad online.

  He’s decided to call his place Sebastian’s Eatery, named for his father. It’ll be a gastropub-type place, and I’m more than excited to start interviewing candidates. It’ll be fun to be on the opposite side of the process for once.

  Well, I’m dead wrong about running interviews. It’s not fun at all to be the host, it’s actually a mind-numbing experience having to have the same conversation with thirty-plus applicants in a row. Mason put a now hiring notice out on social media, and we heard back from nearly a hundred people in an hour after it goes up. We called fifty, and managed to schedule thirty interviews for today. A group of applicants sit out in the lobby of the restaurant as we call them back, one by one.

  This next resumé looks promising enough. Jerry Johnson’s the name on top. This kid left BestCorp, one of the biggest companies in town so he could pursue a career in food service and apply here, and I’m sure he’s probably got a story to tell about that. As we sit at a makeshift table in the center of the kitchen, I give Mason a nudge while he calls the candidate in.

  “This one looks good,” I whisper as the applicant Jerry Johnson passes through the double doors meekly into the kitchen.

  “Jerry?” Mason asks, standing up from his chair and extending a hand.

  Jerry nods, shakes Mason’s hand. He’s a teenager, no older than nineteen, with a patchy beard and a messy mop of jet-black hair atop his head. Jerry sits down after Mason while I take out a fresh sheet of paper.

  “This is Rosa, the Head Chef,” Mason says. “She’ll be taking notes while we talk. That cool?”

  “I don’t mind,” Jerry shrugs.

  “Okay then. So, what brought you here?”

  “The ad you put online.”

  “No—I mean, why restaurants? Why here?”

  And Jerry tells Mason about his time at BestCorp, where project managers were few and far-in between. Projects got dumped on him, he felt overwhelmed, he quit. Jerry says working in a restaurant is always what he wanted to do, and if things are going to get stressful, why not have it be in a place where he knows he can function? I take extensive notes for Mason, like I’m back in school copying a lecture for a classmate getting ready for the big exam.

  After Jerry wraps up his testimony, Mason says we’ve probably got enough to work with here. Mason nods, shakes Jerry’s hand. But before Mason can tell Jerry he’ll call him with any updates, the double doors of the kitchen burst wide open.

  “Hey, wait your turn—” Mason starts to say, but then he stops all of a sudden. I look up to see what all the fuss is about.

  It’s a woman, no older than thirty, dressed in a stunning blouse with a leather jacket draped over one shoulder. An overeager applicant, I think to myself. She’s got a baseball cap tucked under one arm. She stands confidently, her perfect summer-blonde hair tied up neatly in a bun. Before I can tell her to wait her turn, Mason throws me in for a loop.

  “Carly?” Mason asks, shocked. “We’re in the middle of—”

  “I know,” Carly says. “I heard about your new place. Thought I’d come in for an interview.”

  Mason looks dumbfounded, and I realize I probably look that way, too. After all, I’ve heard whispers and rumors about the two of them before back at the Porto. Carly is Mason’s ex. She disappeared without saying anything, quitting her job as the Porto’s Head Chef on the spot and leaving Mason’s life for good.

  Until now.

  Mason looks back over at Jerry and shakes his hand. “I’ll call you if it’s a good fit,” he tells the applicant, and then sends him on his way past Carly and out into the lobby.

  “Rosa, can you excuse us for just a minute?” Mason slowly asks, standing up from the table. I’m shocked, but I understand. I nod, and Mason and Carly walk out the back door of the kitchen into the adjacent alleyway.

  Just as the two of them are stepping outside, Mason looks back over at me grimly. I know he’s conflicted over the return of his ex-girlfriend, but I can’t help but feel jealous, or like I’m his second choice.

  I’m left alone in the kitchen with my just thoughts. It’s quiet in the restaurant, and I wonder if I should call another candidate in from the lobby to interview on my own. After all, I’ve seen Mason do it twenty times already today. But I figure the owner should be the one to evaluate all the candidates, so I just keep on sitting. Waiting.

  In the two times we’ve been out together, Mason hasn’t mentioned Carly once by name. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’m sure I’ll find out soon.

  And before I know it, the kitchen’s back door re-opens. Only it’s just Mason by himself that re-enters, and he looks at me solemnly as he sits back down next to me at the table.

  “Do I want to know?” I ask. Mason stares blankly ahead.

  “I’m going to have to put a hold on the rest of these interviews,” Mason says. “Carly and I have to talk. About things. I just need to…” and he trails off and sighs heavily through his nose.

  “What’s up?” I ask, careful not to prod. But I’m curious half to death, and whatever Carly told Mason out there has clearly affected him.

  “I never exactly told you what happened between me and Carly.”

  I don’t say anything.

  Mason continues, “She and I broke up the night she stormed out of the Porto. I nearly lost my job doing it, running after her like that. Gambio got into her business for burning alfredo sauce during a rush. But I was the one putting pressure on her to get it done faster. We were in one hell of a rush in the kitchen, and I kept going over to tell her how we needed the dish now. She got it done, but we paid the price that night. She reached her breaking point. She told me to go to hell, and then balled up her apron and stormed out. I’ve never really told anyone about that. Sure, the rest of the staff knew I was telling her to speed up, but I think everyone pinned it on Gambio. But it was my fault.”
>
  I take a deep breath. This is all so much to deal with, and I silently pray that we’re done with interviews for the day. I’m not sure how we’d continue otherwise.

  Mason sighs before finishing his story. “Anyways, I followed her out of the restaurant that night. She was out in front, practically bawling. Asked me how I could stress her out like that. And if she was the first girl I’d ever truly been in love with. I couldn’t believe I was hurting her like that, and something broke inside me when I learned what I’d done to her. She told me we were through. ‘Shit happens,’ that’s what she said to me. And like I said, I nearly lost my job over that, too. Gambio had my head for it when I got back in, moved me to wait staff immediately after. Well, Carly went back to my apartment, left her spare key there after clearing out her stuff. She’d been in the process of half moving-in, you know? When someone leaves a toothbrush at your place, and things escalate. I saw just how much stuff she had when I got back to a half-empty apartment that night. And I never saw her after that. She blocked my number, I think. Her friends told me she changed it, but I don’t buy it.

  “And now, she’s back.”

  “What did she want from you?” I ask carefully.

  “She wanted to apologize. For leaving me so suddenly. And wanted to know how I was doing. She heard I was opening a place up downtown.”

  “Is she applying for a job?” I ask, shaking my head with disgust. “Don’t tell me you hired her on.”

  Mason shakes his head no. “She wants to see me for coffee tomorrow, so I said yes.”

  “Oh,” I said. And there was nothing left to say. “Well, I hope you two can work things out.”

  Mason sighs. “Let’s see.”

  And we sit there for a while longer in the kitchen. I can hear some applicants leaving in the front. I guess they know we’re done for the day, too. I give Mason the list of remaining interviews and offer to call them tomorrow to re-schedule. He nods, and gets up to gather his belongings.

  I throw on my jacket and grab my purse. Mason starts toward the back, but I stop him.