Yes, Chef

by T. Neilson

  “Very pretty,” Luke murmured.

  “It’s a goddamned mess,” Simon answered. “But we make it work.”

  They worked their way methodically across the patch, stepping carefully on the boards Meghan had laid out between what had once been neat rows. Halfway through the herb garden, as the sun dispelled the mist and the birds started up in earnest, Simon carted the first basket up to the office to let it rest in the shade and then took another basket from the stack.

  He paused to pick a cobweb from his arm as he closed the garden gate behind him. Pigeons cooed in the dovecote, chickens clucked their way across the yard. Luke had paused in picking to straighten up and stretch his back. Simon watched him arch just a little. The sun turned Luke’s skin to copper and gilded that black hair. It softened his edges, as though he were an image in a photograph, and the fondness Simon had always felt for him suddenly shifted. For his whole life, a peg had been trying to slot into position, and in that moment it turned just right and dropped soundly into place.

  I’m in love with him.

  He wished it came with a warm, contented feeling. He wished it came with joy. But instead the revelation came with a rush like the blast of air running ahead of a subway train, and he staggered. Luke turned around.

  “You okay?” he called.

  Simon found his voice. “Yeah. Tripped.”

  “Your plants need some discipline,” Luke teased, but Simon couldn’t find it in him to tease back.

  He’s going back to Argentina. He’s leaving.

  He felt as though the earth had shifted under him and the heavens were no longer in the right position. An instant later he found himself on his ass in the oregano.

  “Simon!” Luke jumped over a hedge of lavender and dropped to his knees at his side. “What happened?”

  “Sorry,” Simon answered, his head still reeling.

  But I’m not….

  Except I guess I am….

  And so is he.

  But….

  Luke’s warm hands on his arms were firm and steady. His soft brown eyes looked concerned. Simon could kiss that mouth. All he would have to do was just lean forward. It would be no effort at all.

  He’s leaving.

  Luke was scrutinizing him and frowning as he did. “You’re not smelling toast, are you?” he asked. Simon felt the laugh burst out of him like a firework crackling across the sky.

  “I’m not having a stroke. I’m not that old. I just tripped again.”

  Luke’s frown got deeper. “Your legs went out,” he said quietly.

  Simon sighed. “I’m just tired,” he lied. “You know how it is. Big events take it out of you.”

  Luke nodded and said nothing, but Simon could see it in his eyes—I know what that’s like. “And having a food critic in your place the other night probably didn’t help.”

  Simon shrugged. Of all the things, that was, weirdly, the least of his current worries.

  “Give me the list.” Luke held out his hand. “I’ll get the rest.”

  Any other day Simon would have protested. But his head felt heavy and jammed, and his thoughts, half-finished, were running over one another. He handed the list of herbs and flowers over to Luke. When Luke took it from him—fingers brushing fingers, skin on skin—it was like nothing Simon had ever felt before.

  THEY sat together that afternoon over the new Luminara tasting platter and savored the sweetness of the nasturtium, the perfume of the borage, and the nose-stinging pepper bite of the rocket. Then they moved on to charcuterie and the saison that Luke had brought. Simon watched as Luke poured it out. He’d never noticed the dark hairs on Luke’s arms before, or the lines, almost fine enough to be a stray hair or two, that creased at the corners of his eyes when he smiled.

  Luke passed a glass of beer over to Simon and saluted him with his glass. “To the success of Luminara,” he said.

  Simon inclined his head and clinked his glass against Luke’s. He sipped the beer. It was cold, yeasty, floral, and bright. He looked at the glass and didn’t bother to hide his surprise.

  “Is there a frog in it?” Luke asked, looking amused.

  “I don’t usually like beer,” Simon confessed. “But this is nice.”

  “Saison is a French farmhouse style. Since we’re at a farm, it’s thematically appropriate.” He narrowed his eyes at Simon. “Is that why you and Hiro have the ongoing battle about the beer?”

  Simon shrugged. His brother ran a brewery, and he was never going to disparage Nate’s product in front of anyone, let alone a world-class chef with an important food critic for a friend.

  “Snob.” Luke tossed the word like a dart.

  “Bull’s-eye,” Simon murmured.

  “You should come to Argentina.” Luke sat back in his chair, and God, now that Simon was looking at him, really looking, he couldn’t stop. The long torso, the way his jeans hugged his hips and thighs, and the bulge down there—Simon suppressed a shiver. If he had to guess, he’d say Luke had all his clothes tailored, and suddenly Simon had a good idea why. “In Argentina, we have excellent beer,” Luke continued.

  Simon tore his eyes away from his friend’s crotch and tried to look anywhere else. “I need a vacation,” he agreed. “Argentina sounds amazing.” He poked the place where he’d felt hurt, just to see if it still felt bruised. It did, but he kept poking anyway. “I bet you can’t wait to get back. When do you leave?”

  “I was going back for September, but my uncle needs help in August, so I go back on Monday. I’ll wrap up the last of my business affairs and then”—he mimed an aircraft taxiing down a runway and then taking off—“back to the land. Maybe for good,” he added.

  Simon took a long pull of the beer. “So you’re really out,” he said at last.

  Luke nodded. “I am. It was the right choice. All I need to do now is say goodbye to the people I like”—he tipped his beer in Simon’s direction—“and put my condo on the market.”

  “You’re not even going to wait till it sells?”

  Luke wrinkled his nose and shook his head.

  “Can’t wait to be gone, huh?”

  Luke shrugged. He let his head roll to one side just a little and looked at Simon as though he were trying to figure something out. When he answered, his voice was low and quiet. “You know, we had this roundsman for a while. Brilliant lady. So good. Really skinny. After she fainted on shift, we found out she was anorexic. She checked herself into a clinic, and I think she’s doing okay now, but….”

  “She was working in a kitchen?” Simon asked quietly.

  Luke nodded. “She told me that she made the decision to work in the kitchen deliberately, because she wanted to see if she was strong enough. If she could stand it.”

  “Jesus,” Simon whispered.

  Luke nodded. “I think maybe I understand that impulse. I think… maybe I’ve been doing something like that myself, in a way.” He shrugged. “There are things I want like a man in the desert wants a drink of water. I keep them in my sights, but I can’t ever have them, and I know that. And I know that I’m being stupid. I’m forty. Maybe it’s time I stopped torturing myself.”

  Simon let out a long breath. “Luke,” he whispered, “you’re a genius in the kitchen. Another star isn’t impossible. Not for someone like you.”

  Luke laughed softly. “First of all that’s a hell of a nice thing to say. Second it’s not that. I miss this sort of thing.” He gestured around them at the little farmhouse office. “I miss having friends and time to see them. I miss the outdoors, the horses, and the cattle.”

  “You can get cattle, if that’s what you want,” Simon protested. “Look at Blue Hill. Hell, look at us. And we’re getting a dairy herd.”

  Luke laughed. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. I’m going this afternoon to look at them.”

  Luke gave him a flat look and said nothing.

  “I know,” Simon agreed. “But there’s nobody else who can go look at them, so it’s up to me
. Before you ask, no, I have no fucking idea what makes a good dairy cow.” Something occurred to him. “Do you?”

  “No,” Luke answered. “But at least I know what end of a cow does the chewing.”

  Simon laughed. “Oh, come on.”

  “I’m serious, Simon. You’re very good at a lot of things, but buying cows?”

  “Well, are you offering?”

  Luke sucked his teeth and scowled. “Sure,” he said, as though Simon had needled him all day. “Why not?” He shook his head. “When?”

  Simon whispered, “Yessss,” and Luke chuckled.

  “I’ll pick you up at 4:00 p.m. I’ll pick you up. You can’t ride over there on horseback.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s ridiculous.”

  Luke shrugged. Then he leaned forward and pointed at Simon with the edge of his glass. “Do you know what adding a dairy herd is going to mean to your overhead?”

  Simon groaned and rubbed his eyes as though they were full of sand. They felt like they could be. “I costed it,” he answered. “We’ll be doing our own cheese, butter, yogurt, sour cream—all that—so it’ll… it’ll work out.”

  “Even with the additional staff?”

  Simon nodded and didn’t add hopefully.

  “Well I guess you are in,” Luke murmured, and he sounded impressed. “And I think that means you’re also insane.”

  Simon shrugged. “Maybe,” he admitted. “But we’ve had problems with dairy supply in winter because of the mountain passes. Plus Mark and Jenny have been on me about getting raw milk for two years now, so….” He shrugged.

  Luke leaned forward, evidently interested. “What do they want raw milk for? What are they making?”

  “I have no idea,” Simon answered. “Why don’t you ask them?”

  Luke sat back and scowled. “You keep trying to get me back into the kitchen,” he accused with a half smile. “You and everybody else. The world isn’t short of chefs, Simon. Nobody needs me to cook.”

  Simon leaned forward with both arms on the table. “Listen to me. You’ve changed what beef means in the US. You know that’s crazy, right?”

  Luke threw an arm over the back of his seat, and the wood groaned. “All I did was cook the kind of beef my grandmother liked to eat.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to do that my whole life. I want to do something more.”

  Simon wanted to grab him by the lapels and shake him. Beef? The bedrock of the American dinner since the dawn of the damn twentieth century? And for Luke it was no big deal.

  “What else could you possibly want?” he asked, exasperated and awed in the way only Luke could ever make him feel.

  Luke waved one hand, as though the question smelled bad. “I don’t know. No, I do know. I want a change. I want—” He looked at Simon almost searchingly. For an instant, Simon felt as though there were something huge and heavy and unseen above them, poised to fall. Then Luke laughed, and the sensation vanished. “I value your friendship so much,” he said softly. “After all these years, after all the distance, after the way you just… disappeared from culinary school, I thought it might be strange to see you again, but it’s not.”

  Simon felt his chest tighten. The memory surfaced—the alley, the line of Luke’s neck, the noises he made. Christ. How had he not known then? Ten years had passed. They could have built a life together in that time. They could have had a family. But neither of them was young anymore, the time for building a life was past, he was rapidly approaching an age that was too old for starting a family, and Luke was going to Argentina. How had Simon been so stupid for so long?

  “I’m glad it’s not weird,” Simon said quietly. He licked his lips. “And I’m glad you came.”

  “So am I,” Luke answered. He raised his half-empty glass. “Your health.”

  “Your health,” Simon answered quietly, and they knocked the glasses together.

  LUKE resaddled Kit Kat, waved goodbye to Simon, and turned Kit Kat toward the driveway and its long line of crushed dark rocks and hedging trees.

  The day was well and truly up now, the sun high in the sky. While they were at the farm, he could imagine it was still early in the day, what with the shade thrown by the tall pines and by the barn. But when he rode out from the shelter of the farm and back into the pasture and fields, all yellowing wheat and haymow because summer was at its end, the heat pounded down on him, as merciless as a hammer.

  Luke kept Kit Kat to the side of the road as much as possible, kept her pace slow and easy, and guided her from pocket of shade to pocket of shade. About ten minutes out from the farm, he saw a deer trail running down from the road and toward the lake. He grinned at the sight, impulsively opened the reins, and nudged Kit Kat to follow it.

  The narrow path had probably been a game trail once, but it was well-beaten, probably used by all kinds of people heading to the lake but keen to avoid the packed public beach. Because of her small size and big hooves, Kit Kat had no trouble with the tight turnings or the big stones that jutted into the path sometimes. She seemed almost as eager as Luke to find the end of the trail.

  And they did. Eventually it ran out at a muddy embankment, where, judging from the wet paw prints in the mud and the abandoned stick that still bobbed on the water, someone had recently been running their dog.

  Kit Kat nodded her head at the water and whickered. He patted her on the neck.

  “Want to go for a swim, girl?”

  In answer she stretched out her neck, took the bit between her teeth, and started toward the water. Luke had to scramble to get a shirt over his head and throw his phone to the bank before Kit Kat plunged in. All at once he was up to his thighs in water cold enough to steal his breath and make him yelp. His skin bunched all over with goose bumps, and his nipples felt hard enough to cut glass. He touched one and winced. Then he realized that, though the place wasn’t heavily populated, he was still in public. Good thing Simon wasn’t around to see him.

  The thought of Simon brought him back to reality with a thump. That fall in the garden. That was really strange. Simon said he tripped, but he hadn’t. Luke had seen the whole thing. One minute he’d been standing at the gate, and the next his expression changed from thoughtful to pained, and his legs buckled under him.

  Back in culinary school, Luke would’ve made a joke about the whole thing—getting old, got the forty-ounce flu, something like that. But they were older than that, and jokes about age were starting to sting. As for alcohol? Well, if Simon drank very much at all, he would be very surprised. Luke had heard the change in Simon’s voice as the beer took hold at lunch, and he still felt a little bit bad that he was sending Simon back to work tipsy. Still, if anyone needed a break from the stress, a wasted day, it was probably Simon, especially if he had really collapsed like that for no good reason.

  He thought about Simon’s youngest brother, Tristan, and wondered if he should mention it to him. Then he shook his head. The last thing Simon needed was someone laying the groundwork for rumors about his health failing. Shit like that could sink a kitchen.

  No, he’d keep his mouth shut. Instead he would personally keep an eye on Simon. He wasn’t leaving for Argentina yet, and Daniel and Cole had plans to stay until after Luminara, so Luke would be able to keep an eye on Simon, by proxy at least, for a little while. If everything seemed fine, then he would let it go. If not… well, he wasn’t sure. He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

  Kit Kat waded farther into the water and swam for a little, neck stretched up, nostrils flared, and huffing as she went around and around, treading big circles, apparently content to keep Luke on her back as she did. Luke wondered briefly what Adrianna would say about the state of the saddlery when he returned. She hadn’t minded the time before, but if he kept it up, she was probably going to make him put down more of a deposit, and he couldn’t blame her.

  Well, he’d sold his restaurant, and it turned out people pay big money for the right place and don’t necessarily need the
chef to be associated with it. Luke chuckled as Kit Kat continued to tread circles in the water. If he’d known all he had to do was use his name to franchise out, maybe that’s what he would’ve done—go all Guy Fieri, brand absolutely everything, and then sell it all. But Luke could never get the hang of being a businessman. It was part of why work had been so difficult.

  He was terrible at sharing, for starters, no better than a two-year-old. He had no business acumen and no ability to manage staff unless it involved screaming at them. He had become a monster in those years when he took the restaurant from nothing to two Michelin stars. He ought to have quit long ago.

  Kit Kat seemed to have had enough and started back toward the shore. Luke’s legs were chilled enough to make him shiver, but the sun was hot on his shoulders, and he was broiling. He turned his face toward the bleached-out August sky and thought about Simon and Luminara and all the work Simon was doing to put everything together. No wonder his legs gave out. He was almost certainly exhausted. He looked like he was running at the end of his rope. And Luke had no right to take up so much of his time and pile stress on stress.

  So he would go help Simon with the cattle and be on call to advise about the Luminara menu. It was the least he could do to help Simon out. And then he would leave Cole and Daniel in their diabetes-inducing snuggliness, leave Simon with his work, and stop mooning after the man. Then he would go home—to his real home, the place he had always loved most—and he would start over.

  IT was nearly 2:00 p.m. by the time he got back to Adrianna’s and so hot that even the crickets and grasshoppers had given up their stridulating and the sun had dried Luke’s clothes and Kit Kat’s coat. The ranch shimmered under the sun, and at the far end of the stables, he could see dust rising from the paddock where someone was working on drills.