Salmon could be as delicate or as easy as one wanted it to be. I could spend hours marinating it with the perfect sauce; even longer depending on how I cooked it.
From my right, Willow groaned and slumped against her chair. “Holy fucking shit.” Her words were muffled as she chewed. Apparently, table manners had gone out the door. “Price, you made this?”
“You know he did.” Crew piped up from my left, an almost proud-looking smile on his face. “I told you his cooking was orgasmic.”
Willow shook her head, the red streaks in her hair falling into her face as she righted herself in the seat. “No, this is more than orgasmic. This is like magic on my tongue and it’s just a fucking fish. What else do you cook?”
The attention was a bit much if I were honest. Willow was still new to me, and our first interaction painted her as quite an intimidating personality.
Fiddling with my glass of water, I focused on it rather than her scrutinizing gaze. “Um, I like to cook fancier stuff in my free time, as Crew puts it. Gourmet, fine cuisine, that type, if I have the time and resources. It’s been a passion of mine since I was young.”
“Is that so?” She looked to Crew, who nodded.
“Yeah, he’s made some shit you’d see on those fancy cooking shows we watched growing up. It’s literally to die for.”
Willow turned her attention back to me after shoveling another bite into her mouth. “Jesus, this is so good. If you got skills like this, why do you work at The Arch?”
I set my fork down mid-bite. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. The Arch doesn’t cater to what you can do, and from what I’ve heard, you barely cook there anyway, which is a total waste. Have you done any culinary courses?”
I huffed a snort, shaking my head. “Nah, that’s more of a dream too far from reality. Right after high school, I moved here and started working at The Arch. I barely had money to live, nonetheless culinary school.”
Willow frowned. “But you do have a dream, right?”
“Um, yeah?” I questioned. I didn’t know where the conversation was going, or if I was going to like it.
She shrugged. “Just asking. So you’ve got a dream, passion, and talent, but its all misplaced and neglected. I’m guessing the fancy places around here won’t take you since you don’t have the education?”
“You’d be right. And I can’t exactly juggle my position at The Arch and school all at once.”
“Okay, then open your own restaurant.”
My first reaction was to laugh at the absurdity. As it turned out, that was the wrong thing to do because Willow was scowling at me now, and Crew had stopped eating to stare at me as well.
I looked between the two of them, chuckling nervously. “What?” They both spoke at the same time, their voices the same steel tone.
“I was being serious.”
“She was being for real.”
Blinking at them, it took a moment to gain my bearings. “I don’t think I’m qualified for that. Besides, if I ran a restaurant on my own, I’d be too busy with management to cook, and it’d just be The Arch all over again.”
Willow’s teeth scraped against her fork, the sound grating in my ears. Did I dare say something? No. I knew her Southern wrath all too well.
She gave me a pointed look anyway. “Respectfully, you don’t knowshit about owning a restaurant. Every establishment is different. You could have someone handle finances, hire staff for management and the back of the house, and be a chef slash owner. You’d cook alongside your staff.” She tilted her head and looked away, staring at the wall while she thought. “Though, you’d have to trust the people who did that stuff. It’d be hard to cook if you were worrying all day about the other shit.”
Sam told me years ago that I should open my own place. I’d laughed in her face, telling her it was a pipe dream a million years and dollars off. She was adamant, though, claiming it was a real possibility.
She was the last person who’d believed so wholeheartedly in me. Hearing Willow ponder a future I’d secretly wanted my whole life was jarring.
“Hey.” Willow propped one of her arms up on the table, pointing at Crew. “You’ve got Crew. He’s really good at all the math and financial shit. Dude was a whiz in high school. Did a lot of my homework for me.”
“Yeah, and I would’ve let you fail if I knew you’d be such a pain in my ass,” Crew clipped back.
Willow waved the air as if she were brushing away his comment. “Sure, sure. You love me. I only got good at math when I started this job, and that was because I had no choice.”
Math had always been my downfall. Money was easier to keep track of when it came to spending, but throw in interest rates, graphs, or anything else, and I was done for.
