Page 87 of Cocky Brutal Sinner

I clear my throat and pretend I’m reciting a very serious monologue. “Everything good up there? Eden eating enough? She said her heating doesn’t work. Does her heating work?”

“Ugh! I told them the thermostat was confusing, not broken. Now they’re going to send a space heater by courier.”

Despite everything, I find myself laughing. “They have our address?”

“They have the café’s address, my address, and I’m pretty sure they have the local fire department’s address. Just in case.”

I tap my chin thoughtfully. “Think we could get them to send us some hot chocolate to go with that space heater?”

“Good idea,” Eden says. “Tell them I refuse to eat anything else, and I’ll die if they don’t send a dozen boxes immediately.”

“I thought you didn’t want your brothers meddling in your life.”

She shrugs. “If they’re going to meddle anyway, we might as well get some beverages out of the situation.”

We giggle together, and for the first time in a long time, I feel normal.

31

BEAU

Of course, today’s the day the building gym is closed for maintenance. The day I most need to disappear from the world, my escape route is blocked by a team of contractors replacing the floor. I stare at them through the glass doors, laying down pieces of vulcanized rubber while my soul drains out of my body.

I’ve been fully cut off. The guy group chat is completely dead. No messages. No poker night invites. No casual check-ins. It’s like I’ve been surgically removed from the daily rhythm of the family I chose for myself. Suddenly, I feel eight years old again, and my parents are dragging me to yet another new town with a new restaurant and nobody I know.

Except this time, it wasn’t my parents who did it. It was me.

Since I don’t have the gym, I take the stairs up to Terrace instead. Nobody needs me there. The lunch rush hasn’t started yet, and besides, the restaurant runs without me. I have managers, sous chefs, bartenders who handle the day-to-day. Nobody needs me, but I need a knife, or a mixing spoon, or a slab of meat in my hands if I’m going to pretend to be a normal person today.

When it feels like the world’s against me, I have to remember the one thing I could always do right—feeding people. No matter where we moved, the kitchen was the only place where I knew I belonged. With the gym closed, for now, it’s the only thing left.

No one bats an eye when I show up in the kitchen. They do, however, give me sympathetic smiles that tell me everyone knows what happened. Even the building maintenance guy replacing a lightbulb throws me a pitiful, “How are you?”

At least my sous-chef is chronically offline. Tomasso has no idea that Peppermint or the Toronto Tea exist. He has also never downloaded TikTok, making his brain 70 percent more intact than mine.

“Hey, Boss,” Tomasso says in greeting. “What’s happening?”

“Thought I’d work on the line today, if you’re not overstaffed.”

“Nah. Victor’s back is giving him trouble. He’d appreciate the second set of hands.”

I hum sympathetically. Working in a restaurant takes it out on your body, especially if you’ve been doing it as long as Victor. He started working as a dishie when he was sixteen, and has been working in a kitchen in some capacity for almost forty years.

After I wash my hands, I join Victor by the stove.

“Hey, man. How can I help?” I ask.

Victor nods knowingly. He’s seen me stress cook my way through a crisis before.

“If you could get working on the braised pork for tonight, you’d be saving my ass,” he says. “Yesterday, I was running around searing pork in the middle of the lunch rush. It was fucked.”

I nod. “Heard.”

It’s the perfect task to keep me busy for hours. It helps that I originated the dish, adding daikon and giving it a Japanese twist. I disappear into the work, cutting and seasoning the pork, automatically transferring it between heat. Occasionally, Victor pulls me out of my trance to help out during a rush or to pick up something heavy for him. Otherwise, it’s just me, doing what I do best.

Before I know it, dinner service has started. I plate the pork myself. If I weren’t slightly afraid of being recognized, I would bring it out to the tables myself. There’s nothing better than delivering food you’ve spent hours on to people who can’t wait to eat it.

Tomasso taps me on the shoulder while I’m in the middle of whipping cream for the desserts.