by Nikki Chase
“How the hell do these come pre-dampened? Like, is it on purpose? Are we trying to make them grow mold? I don’t get it,” I lament.
My coworker, Brett, snorts. He’s working the line alongside me today. “Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me. I mean, if you’re buying a burger that costs less than two bucks, you can’t possibly expect it to resemble actual, edible food.”
I slap together a double cheeseburger and wrap it in parchment paper printed with our logo, then slide it over to Brett, who drops it into a paper bag along with a hefty scoop of greasy fries, covered with some chili and more Day-Glo orange cheese.
“Sometimes I feel like we’re actively killing people with this food,” I mutter to him. “Just one of these burger patties must take, like, ten years off someone’s lifespan.”
“The way I see it, anybody who chooses to come here, of all places, has got to have at least a little bit of a death wish, you know?” he jokes back.
I bite my lip to keep from laughing, not wanting our manager or—God forbid—a customer to hear us.
Not that I care too much about what any of them think of me. This is just a paycheck to me, nothing more.
After graduating from culinary school, I can’t help but feel a little bitter about the fact that I’m stuck flipping burgers instead of working in a proper restaurant. It’s my dream to one day have a chef’s kitchen of my own, where I can create beautiful, ground-breaking dishes fit for a magazine spread.
I’ve been working here at the Patty Hut for years, as it was the first job I got back when I started college and stopping accepting my parents’ financial help. I couldn’t keep them from paying my tuition, but I drew the line at letting them pay my rent and bills.
I pass the rest of my shift doing what I do best: keeping my head down, following orders, and quietly commiserating with my coworkers. I drink cheap coffee after cheap coffee, thinking maybe this time an overdose of caffeine would suffice as a substitute for actual sleep.
When my shift ends just after nine o’clock, I change out of my ketchup-stained smock, whip off my visor, and slide behind the wheel of my car to head home. It’s been one hell of a long day, and I’m already fantasizing about ordering some take-out Chinese, eating lo mein in bed, and falling asleep while watching game show re-runs. Perhaps it’s not the most glamorous way to end the night, but right now, it sounds pretty heavenly.
On the way home, I decide to call my best friend, Tessa, for a chat. The line only rings once before she picks up with a cheerful, “Hey, girl! What’re you up to?”
“Oh, you know, just driving home, smelling like old cheese and cheap beef. The usual,” I reply.
Tessa laughs. “When are you going to finally quit that job? You don’t belong at the Patty Hut, Claire. You should be in some swanky restaurant with a bunch of Michelin stars and whatnot.”
“I know,” I sigh. “But it’s hard to find a real restaurant job these days. The industry here in Vegas is just so over-saturated. Trust me, though, the second I find a better job, I’m out of here. It’d be nice to finally have a chef’s hat instead of a visor. If only I could get work as a chef like the one at Ben’s restaurant.”
“Ben?” she chirps excitedly, and I wince, realizing I’ve made a mistake by mentioning his name. As expected, she continues, “Who’s Ben? Some guy you met? Oh my God. Did you finally meet someone nice on Tinder? You have to tell me.”
“Don’t get too excited. Ben is . . . Ben is nobody, okay? Just some guy my parents want to set me up with or whatever. You know how they’re always trying to do that. And it just so happens this guy has his own fancy restaurant.”
“Is he hot?”
I groan. “Yes. Very.”
“Very hot and he has his own restaurant? Score!” she exclaims. “You have to date him.”
“Not gonna happen,” I say firmly. “I hardly have time to put together a resume, so I definitely don’t have time to date right now.”
“Claire, don’t take this the wrong way but maybe it would be good for you to get laid. All that stress piling up can’t make you look good at interviews. The Claire I know functions best when she’s well-rested and well-f—”
“Tessa!” I gasp. “You’re a mom now. Watch your language around my god-daughter.”
“Relax, Kayleigh’s taking a nap.” Tessa sighs with an almost audible eye-roll. “I’m just worried you might be losing your mojo. I gave you Brock on a silver platter, and you didn’t do anything about it. I’m kind of disappointed in you.”
“You used to complain about me leaving you alone to get it on with some guy at the end of our night out. You should be glad I’m all career-oriented now.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t do me any good, does it? It’s not like we’re going out much these days.” Tessa pauses. “You know what? I’m starting to think you went off with those guys specifically so you could ditch me.”
“You got me,” I say without missing a beat. “I did it for you, though. You wouldn’t have married Luke on a drunken whim if it weren’t for me.”
“Thank you for your service,” she replies in a flat tone that makes me grin.
“How’s Brock doing, by the way?”
“He’s doing great, actually,” Tessa says. “Luke told me he’d met this girl. . . his friend’s sister, I think? They also work together now. She’s his assistant.”
“Ooh, office romance.”
“Yeah. I don’t know if they’re officially together, though, so you might still have a chance,” Tessa teases.
Laughing at her unrelenting determination, I tell her, “Brock was a great guy, really. I just didn’t feel like jumping his bones for some reason. We did have fun talking about you and Luke, though.”
“Damn it. I was hoping you could get together with Brock and move here to Denver.” Tessa lets out a faux sigh. “Anyway, I’m just sayin’, you deserve a break once in a while, alright? You work your ass off. You pay all your own bills and stuff even though your parents could totally afford to cover it. Why not just relax for once?”
I know she’s right, to an extent. My parents are quite well-off, and the amount I pay in rent and bills every month would be hardly a drop in the bucket for them.
But despite growing up surrounded by luxury and comfort, they had also instilled in me a fierce sense of independence. My parents like to remind me that they’re there to catch me if I fall, like a safety net, but they want me to be able to stand on my own two feet and make my own way in the world.
I can respect that. I hate being dependent on anyone for anything. I don’t want anyone to be able to accuse me of riding my parents’ coattails.
If I’m going to be successful, I want it to be on my own terms. Which is why I live in a modest apartment with two roommates and work a fast food job. Sure, I can get help from my parents if I ask for it, but my pride won’t let me. Especially because when I was growing up, my peers often picked on me for being “the rich girl.”
Everyone always tends to assume that because my parents have money, I must be stuck-up or spoiled, but that couldn’t be further from reality. Still, I have kind of a complex about it, admittedly, and I’m determined not to give those naysayers any more ammo to use against me.
If I succeed, it will be my own success. And if I fail? Well, then at least I tried.
So I live a frugal lifestyle. I can’t remember the last time I bought a new outfit or spent more than twenty bucks on groceries for the week. It’s hard for me to justify spending money on myself. It always makes me feel selfish. Like I haven’t earned the right to have nice things.
In fact, the last time I splurged at all in recent memory was when I took Tessa on a getaway girls’ weekend at a reasonably-priced hotel to cheer her up during a rough patch in her life. She had been recovering from the loss of her husband and was in the process of transitioning into a new job at the time.
Of course, my parents somehow caught wind of the whole thing and insisted on paying for a much fancier hote
l for us. As a result, most of my friends tend to assume I’m just another spoiled rich girl with unlimited access to my parents’ fortune.
I don’t exactly want to shatter the illusion and make my friends feel bad about all the times I’ve spent a lot of my own hard-earned money on them, so I just let them believe it. After all, I genuinely love spending money on my friends, so I want to make sure they don’t feel guilty about it.
“Just promise me you won’t work yourself too hard and get burned out, okay?” Tessa asks, more seriously now. “You’re a good person, Claire, and you’re an amazing chef. Don’t let life beat you down too much. Don’t forget to actually live. And yes, I know I sound just like some yoga guru or whatever, but I mean it.”
I smile. “Thanks, babe.”
My phone buzzes with a text message from my mom, which is unusual, considering the fact that she’s normally in bed asleep by now.
“Hey Tess, can I call you when I get home?” I ask. “I need to check a message from my mom real quick and make sure everything’s okay.”
“Oh, yeah! Sure. Talk to you later.”
“Later,” I say, hanging up.
At the next stop light, I glance down at the message and my heart skips a beat.
What the hell?
My mom’s asking if I’m interested in taking an opening at a swanky restaurant here in town.
But not just any restaurant. It’s Ben’s restaurant.
Ben
“Well, what do you think?” my mom asks as I look over the stack of papers in front of me.
We’re standing at the bar of the Blue Mojave before opening hours. It’s early morning and the Blue is a lunch and dinner place, so there’s only a handful of employees bustling around in the back, leaving my parents and I to discuss the proposal in front of me.
I raise my eyebrows as I read over everything for what must be the fifth time. It’s a rental agreement for a commercial property in downtown Vegas, which—I have to admit—would be beyond perfect for Ocotillo.
“I think it looks . . . almost too good to be true.” I look up at them. “And you say the Madsens have already approved this?”
“Oh, don’t make it sound so official,” Dad says, waving a hand and taking a sip of his Bloody Mary. “Look, you know we’ve known them for longer than you’ve been around. This is the kind of thing they’d do without even thinking about it.”
“And we’d do the same for them,” Mom adds with a pointed smile.
Mom is one of the most successful attorneys in Vegas, so it’s no surprise to me that the art of keeping up useful friendships has always been second nature to her. But when it comes to the Madsens, I know there’s more sincerity in the friendship for both of them than they usually display. They go back a long way.
“You should have heard Castilla on the phone as soon as we left brunch the other day. She was head over heels at the idea of renting the place to you,” Mom adds.
“They’ve been looking for the right person to take that property for a while now,” Dad adds. As an influential banker, saying that he has an eye for how property moves in Vegas is an understatement. “The Madsens really care about Vegas, you know. They don’t want to see their property turn into some tourist trap. And whether you knew it or not, you really impressed them with your spiel about giving locals like us something to really be proud of.”
“They’d be more than happy to see the place go to someone like you,” Mom goes on.
This is a damn good venue. My chef and I have been going over locations for a while now and we’ve seen this one before, but it was way out of my budget.
The fiasco in LA has turned me skittish. I’m really careful about where my money goes, and that means taking only the risks that I know I can afford. Of course, it’s almost impossible to find a good venue downtown within my rent budget—well, it has been, until now.
The price on the proposal my parents brought me is an insane discount. The Madsens are practically throwing the property at me. It’s cheap enough that I almost feel bad for considering it, but they seem to really want me to have this place. That, and I’m not in a position where I can afford to turn my nose up at an offer like this—not that I’d say that out loud.
“You’re sure this price is right?” I ask, glancing up at them. “Have you talked about it in depth at all?”
“Who do you think helped write it up?” Mom asks, smiling smugly.
“Fair enough,” I say. “Well, it’s good. Very good, I’ll give them that. There are three hotels practically across the street, some of which gets so much air time on travel channels that it’s booked up year-round. I’ve scoped it out a few times, and the floor plans look like everything I could want.”
“So why hesitate?” Dad asks.
Because it is too good to be true.
I thumb through a few pages of the proposal until I come to the line I glazed over, and I tap at it thoughtfully. “Well, this, for starters. It says I’d have to hire the Madsens’ daughter as part of the deal, is that right?”
“Oh, come on, Ben,” Mom says, shaking her head. “What’s with all this ‘their daughter’ talk? You know Claire!”
“I don’t, really,” I say, stroking my chin. “We were just kids, Mom. You’re a completely different person at fifteen than you were at ten, and another different person at twenty. I’m twenty-five. We might as well be complete strangers.”
“Not a complete stranger,” Mom insists, smiling in that way she always does when they’re trying to persuade me of something they know I don’t want. “She’s a new culinary graduate, and she’s interested in your vision for the place.”
“Her and everyone else in Vegas,” I remark, peering at the proposal.
“Come on now, Ben, I don’t think that’s fair,” Mom says.
“I don’t doubt she’s a fine graduate,” I half-lie. How the hell am I supposed to know how good she is? “But you know how much of a risk this whole venture is. Both of you. Every chance I take puts the success of the whole thing in danger, so I need to limit the number of unknowns I’m dealing with. Claire is nice, but she’s an unknown. Worse, she’s young and inexperienced. Call me crazy, but I don’t like the idea of putting a Michelin-star chef shoulder-to-shoulder with a family friend I have to babysit.”
Dad takes a long drink of his Bloody Mary and Mom rolls her eyes.
“Well,” she says finally, letting out a deep sigh, “when the Madsens generously made this offer, I thought it was only natural to offer to have Claire working with you in return. It was a no-brainer. So if you want to be upset at someone, be upset at us.”
“I’m not upset, just cautious,” I say.
“Honestly, son, what are you complaining about?” Dad chuckles. “You should be thanking us. Great location, unbeatable price, and a gorgeous employee working under you.”
Oh, God. This again.
“You can say you’re supporting local chefs in training,” Mom adds swiftly. “I chatted up a few of her old instructors. She comes with glowing recommendations.”
I had my eyebrow arched, glancing between the two of them as if I knew exactly why they were pushing this angle so hard. I have no idea why all four of our parents had it in their heads to set us up, but they’re relentless.
A part of me doesn’t mind. Claire is drop-dead gorgeous, I have to give her that. It’s almost a shame that our careers mean it’d always be too awkward for us to make anything work. I don’t want to tell my parents that, of course.
“It’s still a big risk,” I say frankly, setting the proposal down on the bar and heading behind it to whip myself up a Bloody Mary of my own. “I’m going to need more than just a recommendation to take it.”
“I know you’ve been on edge since LA,” Mom says, and I feel my neck tensing. “Scott didn’t do right by you, and that would leave a bitter taste in anyone’s mouth.”
“He didn’t just ‘not do right.’ He stole the business out from under my nose,” I say, adding an extra shot
to my drink. I need something strong for this conversation. “That asshole was playing me from the second he met me in college, and I was too naive to pick up on that. That’s why I’m so cautious about this. I’m not saying Claire’s going to run off to some hip, new neighborhood in LA with my chefs and all my interior design plans and cut me out faster than I can blink, but you can see where I’m coming from.”
“Of course we can,” Mom says. “And that’s why this deal is too good to pass up. A price like this would surely make up for the risk of taking Claire on, wouldn’t it?”
I frown. I can’t argue with that; not immediately, at least.
“My head chef is Jorge Alonso, one of the most talented men to walk out of Mexico City in my lifetime,” I say. “How could I explain to him that he’d be working alongside someone who just graduated and wouldn’t even have the job if it weren’t for her connections?”
“We’re not telling you how to run your business, and you can always turn this strong offer down if you really want to,” Mom says. “All we’re asking is that you give it some thought. It could be better for you than you think, Ben. Both for the business and for you personally.”
“Exactly. You’re too wrapped up in work all the time. You never know what might happen with a couple of young professionals working so close together,” Dad adds with a wink. “You might end up liking her more than you expect.”
I cross my arms, drumming my fingers on a bicep as my eyes flit from my parents to the contract, then back to their expectant faces. They’re waiting on an answer from me.
Claire
I cannot remember ever being so nervous is my entire life.
It’s just after ten o’clock at night, and the usual front and back crews of Ben’s popular restaurant, Mojave Blue, have gone home for the night already.
I have to admit, I never even knew this place belonged to someone my parents know. Of course, I should have probably guessed that, considering the fact that my father is kind of a big deal in Las Vegas.