“Oh.” Becca formed a soft smile on her lips. She hadn’t anticipated her crossing the boundary line of telling Kimberly to be a better parent would somehow miraculously turn into her being a better chef and even better at her job. Pursing her lips, she still wasn’t sure that had been the best course of action. “Wasn’t quite what I meant.”
“I know.” Kimberly grinned again. “But it’s how my brain works. Anyway, I remember from the other night that you like Chinese, so I started with those recipes. Here.”
She shoved a bowl toward Becca, insisting she take it, even when she hesitated. The heat from the food inside warmed the ceramic and seeped into Becca’s cold fingers. When she dared to look down, she saw fried rice with ground meat on top and an over-easy egg on top of that, with scallions sliced on the angle and sprinkled with a few black sesame seeds.
“What’s this?”
Kimberly shrugged. “Egg roll in a bowl. Mostly healthy, somewhat not, but still needs perfecting.”
“Oh.” Awkwardly, Becca continued to hold the bowl, realizing she didn’t have a fork and wasn’t really hungry. Kimberly must have noticed because she was about to say something, but Becca cut her off. “It looks delicious.”
“Still not perfect.”
Becca stood stock-still, not sure where to go from there. Kimberly was being overly bubbly, excessively friendly and very uncharacteristic of the woman Becca had come to know in the last two-and-a-half months. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of it except they had slept together and neither of them were talking about the consequences of their actions or having had sex at all.
Giving in to the smell, Becca shifted her backpack on her shoulder and rounded the kitchen to grab a fork. When Kimberly gave her a questioning gaze with one thick dark-brown eyebrow raised, Becca raised the fork into the air and wagged it back and forth.
“I’ll just eat this in my room.”
She didn’t wait for an answer as she scooted down the hall toward her sanctuary. She shut the door behind her, locked it and collapsed onto her bed, glad the initial conversation was done and over with but confused that they hadn’t actually talked about anything. No matter what she did, she would have to find a way to focus on Michael, teach him and push through until she could start her student teaching in the fall. She had to make this work. Moving to a whole new house, starting up with a whole new family, was not an option at this point. Three months and two weeks. That was all she had to get through.
* * * *
When morning came, Becca dressed carefully and modestly, then she plastered a smile on her face. If Kimberly could play bubbly, so could she. Becca left her room, ready to see Michael again for the first time in days. She had spent the night planning how to teach him to read—mostly through play and phonics—and planning her own future.
As soon as she reached the living area, Michael bounded out of his seat and wrapped his arms around her waist, shouting her name. Becca hugged him and smiled. “Did you have fun at your daddy’s?”
He shrugged and pulled her toward the kitchen table. “Mama cooked! Look!”
Placed on the table were plates of food—eggs, waffles, sausage, breakfast casserole. It looked as if Kimberly had been up all night cooking. Becca had heard her in the kitchen until very late, but she’d drowned out the sound with her television and gone to sleep.
Kimberly popped up from somewhere in the kitchen, startling Becca. “I did cook.”
Michael’s eyes were wide. “Mama never cooks breakfast.”
Becca gripped Michael’s hand and sat next to him at the table. He was already halfway through his plate. She took one of her own and piled it high with a little bit of everything. Michael grinned around the maple-syrup-covered waffle in his mouth as he stared at her.
“It’s so good.” His eyes widened.
She took one small bite and nodded, agreeing with him. “It really is. Did you tell your mom that?”
“Mama! You’re the best cooker ever.”
Kimberly blushed and came over to join them. She ate in silence while Michael chatted with Becca, telling her tall tales of his weekend with his dad. It wasn’t until Becca was grabbing seconds of the casserole that she realized Kimberly was more pushing her food around her plate rather than eating it. Normally she would have said something, but in light of everything, she kept her mouth shut and focused on Michael.
It wasn’t long until Kimberly begged away from the table, saying she had to get ready for work. It was early yet, but she claimed she had paperwork needing to be done at the restaurant that couldn’t be done at home. After she’d left and Michael and Becca had cleaned up and miraculously found a place for all the food in the suddenly overcrowded fridge, she got him dressed and they started on his reading lessons for the day.
He picked up on the individual sounds rather quickly but struggled a bit with how to put them together into a full word. It wasn’t unexpected, and when his frustration level rose, Becca decided it might be a good time to switch gears. She finished out the lesson and put the book away.
“Do you want to build something with Legos?”
Michael’s eyes lit up. “Yes!” he shouted before running toward his bedroom. He came back dragging behind him a large plastic tote filled to the brim with the plastic bricks. Becca had discovered that Legos were one of his favorite things to play with, and he particularly liked to build all different kinds of robots. They spent the next hour building and destroying, building and destroying.
It wasn’t much longer until Becca realized Michael needed to burn even more energy. She grabbed his hand and asked, “Want to clean this up after we go for a walk?”
“A walk?”
“Yeah, we can go around the neighborhood and look for bugs.”
“Bugs?” He pulled a disgusted face. “Bugs are gross.”
“No, they’re not. Bugs are very good for the earth.”
He gave her a look like he didn’t believe her.
“Wanna go for a walk or not, kiddo?”
“Yes. I get my tennis shoes.”
They both slipped their shoes on and headed for the front door. Becca made sure to lock it behind her and set the alarm. They spent over an hour walking through the neighborhood, looking at the different kinds of plants and flowers, and yes, bugs, much to Michael’s disgust. Soon enough his stomach rumbled, as did hers, and they headed to the house for lunch. They spent the rest of the day playing, practicing writing, prepping dinner and taking naps.
* * * *
Kimberly enjoyed the quiet of Gamma’s for hours before anyone else joined her. But it wasn’t long until her head chef and sous chefs showed up to prep for lunch, and her still quiet was displaced into the chatter and joyous jokes of the crew. She hid away in her office until Zechariah knocked on her door. Turning to face him with a glum look, she didn’t even pretend to be pleasant.
“What do you need?” Her tone was sharp and harsh, but she didn’t feel the need to explain herself. She wanted her peace and quiet, the focus that was her paperwork and the joy that was her restaurant. Instead, all she could think about was Becca and the conversation they hadn’t yet had. The one they needed to have.
“Carter called out. Stomach bug.”
Cursing under her breath, Kimberly rolled her eyes. “That’s the fifth time this month.”
“I know. I told him as much when he called.”
She glanced at the paperwork, then went back to the computer. “I told him if he didn’t work well with you and the crew, he wasn’t going to last. What do you think?”
Zechariah shrugged nonchalantly. That was why she was the boss, she supposed. He never wanted to make these decisions, and she always had to. She was pretty strict when it came to attendance, although illness was something she’d always let slide, but someone having the stomach bug this often proved to her they really didn’t want to be there.
“I’ll deal with it,” she muttered, knowing the conversation would end in a firing. Luckily, private non-cha
in restaurants had a bit more autonomy than a lot of other retail places. She wasn’t going to put up with someone who didn’t want to be there, and she certainly wasn’t in the mood to deal with anyone’s funny business.
Zechariah hadn’t left, though. He stayed by the door, staring at her. It didn’t take her long to look at him with a scathing glare, daring him to say something. He put both his hands up and straightened his back. “You okay, Chef?”
She scrunched her nose in a sneer. “Could be better.”
On one hand, she felt kind of bad about treating him poorly, especially since he wasn’t anywhere near the person who she was really mad at. On the other hand, they had worked together for twelve years, and by this point, he knew when to give her a wide berth and when not to, and he probably knew she wasn’t mad at him.
“You want on the line this afternoon?” he asked.
Her heart jumped. Being on the line would be her best distraction. When she was upset or unsure, it was best for her to bury herself in the kitchen and the oven—literally—and get to cooking. It made her feel that much better. She leaned in her rolling chair in her tiny office filled with piles of papers and crossed her arms, debating. Being on the line would make her feel better, but being on the line would also make her crew not feel better, especially with the mood she was in, and she was still technically on light duty because of her wrist.
“Lunch only,” she answered, finally. “I need to be home tonight for the kid.”
“Gotcha, Chef. We’ve got you.”
She smiled sweetly as he left. Twelve years was a long time to work with anyone, and they had formed some sort of pseudo-friendship in the process. He had been there through her divorce. He had been there when Michael was born. He had been there when she’d caught the kitchen on fire. Grinning at the last memory, Kimberly turned to the work at hand. She would let them do the prep then show up for cooking.
With her paperwork almost done, she joined Zechariah in the back of the kitchen and waited for the first order to come in. She’d already run through the rest of the restaurant and double-checked that everything was ready for service. She didn’t have to. Her team was well-oiled, her front-of-house managers did their jobs and did them well, as did her back-of-house managers and her head chef, Zechariah. But sometimes she couldn’t help herself as she double-checked. It was, after all, her name on the line if they did mess something up.
The ovens were already going, the stoves were hot and pans were warming as they waited until an hour before noon for the first ticket to come in. The sous chefs chatted amicably as they chopped vegetables and broke down the chicken. They told joke after joke until Kimberly’s head spun.
She wasn’t there for the conversation. She was there for the distraction. Sneering, she heated up some oil in a pan for no reason because she didn’t have anything to cook and tried to push the waiting game to the next level. She slid some onions into the pan, shifting them back and forth with small flicks on her non-injured wrist until they became translucent. Then she took some garlic greens and slipped them in. Soon enough, she heard Zechariah call out orders for appetizers. She’d guessed correctly, and the order was coming in for the very thing she was making.
Kimberly continued to sauté the garlic greens and onions until she put in the sliced chicken and bell peppers. This was one of the newest items on her menu, with a bit of a Mexican flair—‘build your own fajita’ as an appetizer. She wasn’t sure how well it would go over, but it seemed to be doing okay for now. It’d only been on the menu for all of one week, so it was hard to tell if it was going to flop or succeed.
Either way, she was determined to make the dish look perfect. When she finished plating, she put it on the warmer and called out to Zechariah, letting him know the dish was done and perfect. Even still, when he grabbed the plate, he checked it over to make sure. If she’d been in a better mood, she would have teased him about it, but in her foul demeanor, she gave him a death glare. Rightfully so, Zechariah ignored her.
As the afternoon and lunch rush wore on, she became more and more petty in her responses. It was only two hours in when Zechariah took her by the arm and pushed her into her office. He towered over her, his added height a bonus in some situations, but in this one, it was to her disadvantage. She crossed her arms as she waited to see exactly what he was going to say.
She’d just made a snarky comment to one of the busboys who was rather new to the job and had dumped—rather loudly—the dirty plates into the sink. She’d told him quite shortly that he didn’t need to be so loud that the President could hear it all the way at the White House.
Zechariah’s temperament softened. “Look… I don’t know what’s going on, Kim, but I think it’s better if you just work in your office and not on the line. I’d like to still have a team tomorrow.”
Huffing, she nodded. “You’re right. I’ll apologize before they leave.”
He lifted one singular eyebrow at her. “What crawled up your butt?”
Staring at him, she sighed in resignation. “You don’t even want to know. I’ll apologize later.”
Zechariah jerked his head up at her in agreement and went to his station, leaving her alone. Now not only did she feel guilty for everything she had done to Becca, but she was alienating her crew, something she most certainly didn’t want to do. Her restaurant was her life outside of Michael, and she had to keep it. It was what gave her the most joy, and she would need it to rely on for the next few months while she waited out kindergarten.
After washing her hands of the grease that had spat back at her and the food she’d cooked, Kimberly went to her office and sat in her chair. Whatever mood she was in, it was not good for anyone, least of all her.
Finishing out her paperwork, she helped prep for dinner, made her apologies then headed home to hopefully a much calmer house. At the very least, she would be able to entice Michael to help her cook dinner, give her a few more ideas for her cookbook and spend some quality time with her leading person. She just needed to find a way to keep Becca employed and happy until Michael went to school. Then she could deal with whatever it was she was feeling. Until then, she had to play nice.
Chapter Twelve
Four semi-awkward weeks had passed, but Kimberly had managed to tame her anger. Everyone at Gamma’s clearly appreciated it and probably so did Becca. Michael had taken a better attitude as well, not fighting her on cleaning his room or anything she asked him to do.
She’d felt torn between spending time at home, which meant being in Becca’s vicinity or spending time at Gamma’s, which meant time away from Michael. While Becca wasn’t in every moment of her day when she was there, Kimberly felt her presence in the house, the energy she had that Kimberly seemed to lack most days. Spending a lot of her nights up well past when she should be, she worked tirelessly on her cookbook. It came together wonderfully. She’d pulled back on the home cooking and tried not to overwhelm their fridge, and she had even tried to teach Michael how to cook, which was an adventure in and of itself.
Four-year-olds simply did not have long attention spans. After trial and error, she realized most of the recipes she ended up doing with him that were very successful were in up-front prep. He enjoyed that. He loved mixing anything together and dumping the different spices and ingredients into the bowls. When it came to the actual cooking part, he was less enthused by the task and the waiting—not to mention she really didn’t want a preschooler near an open flame.
She was home for the day. It was Becca’s designated day off, as it was hers. She hadn’t seen much of Becca, but she had also tried to avoid her at almost any cost. She and Michael had driven to the grocery store and spent an hour there. Kimberly could have stayed longer—grocery shopping being one of her favorite things to do—but Michael was hungry.
Then they drove to the farmer’s market. They ate until they could eat no more, stopping at nearly every booth that had snacks, but also toting around a wagon full of fresh vegetables, as well as some meat
s. The meat producers were new that year at the market, and Kimberly thoroughly enjoyed getting as much local food as she could. Farm-to-table was certainly a popular trend, but for her, it meant the cleanest, best cuts and supporting the little guy—just like she had been when she’d started up at Gamma’s.
When they got to the house, Michael fell asleep on the couch while he tried to avoid taking a nap in his room. Eventually, Kimberly covered him with a blanket and went to the kitchen to debate what to make for dinner while putting away the majority of their finds from earlier in the day, as well as separating out what she was going to take to the restaurant.
She was in the midst of sorting when Becca came out. Her hair was mussed, sticking up in the back, and she wore thin sleep shorts and a baggy and obviously very old T-shirt with the Pink Floyd logo on the front. Smiling to herself, Kimberly focused on her work. Becca rummaged in the fridge then in the pantry for a few minutes before turning to the counter that was completely covered in fresh produce.
“Guess I’ll take this to the table,” Becca muttered.
“Sorry!” Kimberly called, a little louder than she’d expected, but being alone with Becca without Michael as a buffer ratcheted up her nerves. “I’ll have most of this gone as soon as he wakes up. I’ll have to take it in tonight so they can use it for dinner.”
Becca shrugged and plopped down at the table with the chips and dip she’d chosen for her snack. Kimberly moved around a few more pieces of yellow-neck squash before she turned to Becca. They had to make amends somehow, figure out how to exist in the same room without all the tension. It had been weeks that they hadn’t talked about what had happened, but they had to work through it.
Rolling her eyes, Kimberly knew that if she said what she was thinking she’d be labeled as crazy. Michael was due at Bradley’s for the weekend, which meant forty-eight hours without her main distraction and buffer. Confrontation was not something she was normally fearful of. That was what usually got her into so much hot water in the first place.
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