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Tristano
Shit, shit, shit.
Evie isn’t answering the phone, I have a restaurant packed with people for a party, and my best line cook is home with the flu.
Who gets the flu in June?
“Are you ok?” I ask the newest member of my kitchen staff. A young man, just out of culinary school, he seems a bit rattled.
“He’s not used to the owner of the restaurant running the pass,” Brax says.
“Five out,” I yell as the smooth operations continue despite being one man down. Normally I’d be in the front of house, but not today. Nothing matters if the food isn’t perfect.
“Can you run?” Brax asks Jen, who’s come in to check on a non-catering order.
“Sure,” she says. “Boss?”
I look back.
“We need to eighty-six the filet special.”
“Already?”
I make a mental note to put that on the menu more often. In the meantime, I tell her to instruct the others to kill it.
“Last one up,” Brax calls.
And so it goes for hours. I stop only to check on the front of house when my party, which happens to be the mayor of Bridgewater’s family, leaves. Finally, things start to calm down, the typical Sunday night turning into Monday morning.
It’s well after midnight, and I’m at my desk, never having gotten through to Evie, when I can finally stop to think for two seconds.
She’s pissed.
And I don’t blame her.
When Gian texted me to get my ass down to the restaurant this morning, pronto, in a suit, I had no idea what he’d been planning.
An hour later, a microphone was being shoved in my face, the press he’d arranged not as welcome as Gian had expected.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he’d asked when the reporter finally left. “Because Evie didn’t get nominated, you can’t capitalize on the fact that you did?”
He’d been pissed.
“You’re thinking with your dick and not your head.”
That hadn’t gone over well.
“Don’t be an asshole, G. Evie isn’t just some woman I picked up at a bar last night.” And then I thought better of it. “And if she had been, you’re still out of line.”
Gian paced the restaurant.
“Out of line. I’ll tell you who’s out of line, Tris. You are. Instead of thanking me for doing my job, you’re whining about not being able to talk to your girlfriend before going on air? If she cares at all about you, she’ll be happy for you. And if she’s not, then maybe she’s not the one for you.”
“G,” I tried to warn him.
Thankfully, Lusanne had come in to diffuse tension. She’d been stopping by to grab food for a baby shower that I’d prepared personally the night before when she walked right into the land mine that was Gian and I arguing.
“What the hell is wrong with you two? I can hear you from the street.”
