ELIANA
plat·ing: /'pladiNG/: verb
1: the artful arrangement of food on a dish.
2: when all your careful preparation finally comes together into something beautiful; that moment before service when you step back and think, “holy shit, we actually pulled this off.”
May arrives with unseasonably warm weather and the kind of optimism that makes even a cynic like me start to think everything’s going to work out after all.
Because Project Olympus is finally,finallycoming together.
Frank’s disaster list has been whittled down to almost nothing. The freezers are freezing. The gas lines are gassing. The HVAC system is HVACing. The fire suppression system got signed off by the inspector with zero notes. Even the custom bakery ovens—which arrived damaged and became the bane of my existence for a hectic little while there—have been replaced and are working beautifully.
It’s enough to make a girl believe in miracles.
Bastian and I have been working overtime, which sounds miserable but honestly isn’t. Most nights, we’re the last ones in the office. He’ll order takeout from whatever restaurant he’s currently obsessed with, and we’ll munch at the conference table while we work side-by-side.
Sometimes, he reads aloud to me when my eyes get too tired to focus on the screen. In his honey-edged voice, even supplier invoices sound like Shakespeare.
Other times, we don’t talk about work, or at all. We just sit there in the quiet, his hand on my thigh, my head on his shoulder, and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
It’s nice. Really nice. Which is why, when Frank texts on May 8th asking if we can do a final walkthrough of the site, I actually feel excited instead of anxious.
This is it,I think as I pull on my boots and grab my wide-brimmed hat.We’re actually going to pull this off.
Bastian meets me at noon by the Range Rover, looking annoyingly put-together in dark jeans and a crisp white button-down with the sleeves rolled up. His usual flawless uniform. I, on the other hand, am wearing my rattiest pair of jeans and a Hale Hospitality t-shirt I stole from the test kitchen.
“You look good,” he croons when he sees me emerge from the elevator.
“In this?” I ask incredulously. “Sometimes, I thinkyoumight be the one who’s going blind.”
He laughs and reels me in for a kiss when I get close enough to where he’s holding the passenger door for me.
And if that kiss gets a little sloppy and a little moany and the hands do a ton of roaming beneath the belt—well, sue me. There are no cameras in the parking garage, anyway.
When we pull into the construction lot, Frank is waiting by his trailer, clipboard in hand. He looks tired. More tired than usual, actually. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his shirt is wrinkled like he slept in it.
“Everything okay, Frank?” I ask as we approach.
He startles, like he didn’t hear us coming. “What? Oh. Yeah, yeah. Just been a long couple of months, you know?”
Bastian pats him on the back. “Tell me about it. But we’re in the home stretch now. Should be smooth sailing from here.”
Frank gulps and nods. “Right. Smooth sailing.”
I exchange a glance with Bastian. He shrugs, and I can read the thought on his face:Frank’s just exhausted. Aren’t we all?
“Anyway. Shall we?” Frank gestures toward the building.
We follow him inside.
The transformation is stunning.
Last time I was here, maybe two weeks ago, the space was still a chaotic construction zone. Disconnected wiring, unfinished floors, scaffolding everywhere.
But now? Now, it actually looks like a restaurant.Twelverestaurants, to be precise.
The main entrance spills into an atrium that steals the breath from my lungs—acres of marble flooring polished to a mirror-like sheen, three-story-tall windows that make me feel like an ant, gargantuan chandeliers dangling from forty-foot gilded chains. The Korean concept, Somssi, sprawls to the left. To the right sits State & Madison, Bastian’s love letter to Chicago cuisine, which is one of the ones I’m most excited about. I even forced him to put an elevated, deconstructed deep dish pizza on the menu. He still hasn’t forgiven me for it, though he did admit it was delicious.
