She turns to leave as if the threat of her leaving will convince me to change my mind, but I don’t say shit. I turn the hot water tap hotter and scour until I think I’ll rub a hole in the stainless steel.
Sassy hesitates, and then I know I’m in trouble. My mother’s close-knit friends treat me like family, but tonight, I’m not in the mood. I’m just not interested in sharing all the ways I’ve fucked up with Sassy. Not tonight.
“Benito,” she starts, but I stiffen and don’t look up. She knows me well enough to know that when I go silent, it takes an act of God or threats from my ma to get me talking. She sighs softly. “Get some rest, sweetheart. See you tomorrow.” Her voice is gentle, a lot less probing, and I hear the care buried under the sass.
I wait until I hear the solid clack of her sturdy shoes before I go back to scrubbing as though I could clean the shit feelings away if I just worked the pot hard enough.
A second later, another voice breaks me from washing. And I’m just about to lose my shit when I see it’s Rita.
“Benito?” she calls. “You in here, honey?”
I drop the scouring pad in resignation. “By the sinks, Rita.” My voice is flat, and I know I sound like a damn child. But I can’t help it. I just want five minutes alone with my thoughts in my kitchen. Alone with my failures and fuckups. I’m still responsible for this place, no matter how out of control I feel. It should be fucking obvious that I need to be left alone. But for Rita, I pull back my temper and draw in a breath.
Rita walks up to me, and I feel her small hand on my back. “Honey, could I ask a favor?”
I crane my neck to look back at her. I’m immediately concerned that something’s up with her. Rita never asks me for anything. Hell, she didn’t even want me walking her to the car last night in a torrential downpour.
“What do you need?” I ask, turning off the faucet and giving her my full attention.
She motions toward me with both hands, gesturing for me to bend down. Puzzled, I do what I think she wants. She takes myface in her hands the same way my ma does. She closes her eyes and squeezes my face lightly in her veined, knobby hands.
She draws in a deep breath and then sighs. “Benito, I’m not your mother. But if Lucia were here, she’d want someone to be honest with you.” She presses her neon-pink lips together—a bold and dramatic shade for a woman of any age. “Take a goddamn day off, would you? You look like you’re about to blow. Go for a run, go get laid. Whatever you young people do these days. Play some of those violent video games I hear so much about.” She frees my face and nods. “I’m worried about you. And a lot of other people are too. Even if we don’t all know how to show it.”
I scrub a wet hand across my eyebrows, the tenderness and her lack of prying freeing me up a little. “I…I fucked up, Rita,” I admit quietly. “With Mags. With a lot of things.”
She shrugs, pushing heavily bejeweled glasses onto her forehead. “Who doesn’t? So what?” She taps her chest. “We all know your heart, Benito. Say you’re sorry and get back to doing what you do so well.”
What is that?I wonder. I’m not sure I even know anymore.
Instead, I say, “We need a new fucking roof before winter, Rita. You got a rich boyfriend we could hit up for some cash?”
She barks a laugh. “Baby, I’m good. But I’m notthatgood.”
I wink at her. “You’d school me, Rita. You’d teach me things a man could only dream of.”
She shakes her head and points a neon-pink nail at me. She must paint her nails every day to match her lipstick. “If I were thirty years younger, Benito…”
“Thirty!” I exclaim. “Rita, I’m thirty-one. You’d still be, what? Fortysomething?”
“Fortysomething,” she confirms coyly, not willing to reveal her real age, even though she knows I’ve got that informationon her employment paperwork. “Nothing wrong with a little age gap.”
I wave her away. “Goodnight, Rita. Samuel picking you up?”
She nods and blows me a kiss. “I locked the front doors. I’ll go out the employee entrance.”
I dry my hands and pat my pocket for my keys. “It’s dark out back. I’ll let you out the front.” I walk her out the front, waving a hand at Samuel, who’s idling in the lot with his brights on. Then I lock up and head to the kitchen.
I take a long, deep breath. I’m finally alone. The restaurant is quiet. Even the heat has turned off due to the automatic timers Mags set up last year.
She said we’d save a shit-ton on utilities with the smart controls set to heat and cool on a schedule, and of course, as always, she was right. But that means not even the old furnace is knocking as I get back to work. It’s peaceful, being here alone. The place I’ve built at thirty-one years old. My dreams, my sweat. Even my tears.
After a little more listless scrubbing, I finally give the old stockpot a break. It’s nearly ten before I head into my office, throw the card Mags tossed onto the floor into the trash, grab the damn flowers, and head out to my SUV.
I make the drive home, thinking about how the hell I’m going to apologize to Mags. Maybe I can reach out to the SBA and ask for a meeting. See what I missed in the presentation about the community development grant thing that Mags wants me to apply for. Maybe I should call out sick for a couple days. As long as Mags is there, the kitchen will run fine. I spend every waking minute there. It might do everybody some good if I took the damn break everyone seems to think I need. I don’t know. If I stay home, I’ll check my email. I’ll worry. No, fuck that. I’ll obsess. Over the roof, the bills, the paperwork.
I love being in the kitchen. I love cooking. Maybe I could take a day off and test out some new recipes at home. Call up my pops and see if he wants to head into Cleveland for a trip to the specialty markets. Pops. I didn’t reply to my mom’s text earlier, so that’s something I can do if I take a day off. Go visit my parents. See if I can get to the bottom of what’s up with Mario and Lucia.
I pull into my assigned underground parking space and juggle the flowers in my arms. I ride the elevator to the top floor of the building before I realize that I don’t want these damn things. I should have known the card would have fallen someplace inside the plastic. I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have tried to regift them to Mags. So many should haves and shouldn’ts.
