I tensed, waiting for the harpy cry that was about to emit from her throat.
‘Line up!’ And with that, she turned and went back into the formal dining room, her hair on a two-second delay.
‘What did she say?’ I asked Ava.
‘Not sure, I was too distracted by you drooling over some boy’s name next to yours.’ She tapped the lineup sheet and walked past me. And, no, she was right. I definitely didn’t need to be distracted by relationship shit – relationshit? – when I had more important things to focus on. Like my letters of recommendation and the supplemental video for my culinary school application. Especially when I had no idea if Gabe was even gay.
But, like making an éclair, that was so much easier in theory than in practice. Especially since tonight was a slow night, which meant there was nothing to distract us from the decidedly un-recommendation-letter duty of talking at the back service station.
It was a risk, standing there and talking between each step of the service. If Natalie came back to see us not actively working, she’d launch into an ever-changing list of duties wecouldbe doing instead.
‘So you were, what, fourteen when you started here?’ Gabe asked.
‘Fifteen,’ I corrected, checking around the corner that our residents were still eating their dinner and no new tables had snuck into our section. ‘They’re strict about the hours that anyone under sixteen works.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘So by law I had to be clocked out by seven. Which I hated because I wanted to work in the kitchen.’
‘How come?’
‘I’m applying to culinary school. I can do kitchen support right now – that’s what James and Sean G. are doing in there.’
Gabe nodded, showing he was paying attention. ‘Calling out the dinners and stuff.’
‘Yeah, but I’m not allowed to actuallycookanything until I’m eighteen. Which doesn’t happen until February. But I’m hoping Chef Roni will let me do some kitchen work then. I only get to use the good knives when I’m cutting up lemons for the KS – or Ms Kitchen Support if you’re nasty – opening jobs.’ I sighed, pretending to be forlorn. ‘The closest I’ll get before February is being a caller.’
‘It’s culinary school – why would they need you to work in a kitchen when they’re going toteachyou to work in a kitchen?’
‘Because it’s not justanyculinary school; it’s La Mère Labont.’
Gabe frowned. ‘This is a good school?’
My eyes went wide. ‘It’s, like, the Harvard of culinary schools.’
‘Sacré bleu!’ he said in a shitty French accent that still managed to make me laugh and my cheeks burn. ‘What makes it so special?’
‘So, this woman, Eugénie Brazier, was a super-famous French chef – she was the first person to ever get six Michelin stars.’
‘And that’s impressive?’
‘Absolutely. Her restaurant – La Mère Brazier – is still open in Lyon. Back in the eighties, one of the chefs, Élode Labont, couldn’t find a sous-chef she felt was up to snuff, so she decided to start a school and named it La Mère Labont as an homage to the restaurant, La Mère Brazier, where she got her start.’
‘Oh, anhomage, very French.’
‘Now there are six campuses, in Paris, Sydney, London, Tokyo, LA and New York City.’
‘So why this place?’
‘I mean, I have backup schools. Le Cordon Bleu is similar – but a little stuffier, if I’m being honest –’
‘We love honesty, go off.’
‘– and there’s Johnson & Wales, too. But my dad went to La Mère, and he always used to talk about what an amazing experience it was, seeing the instructors do all this stuff he had never imagined.’
Gabe tilted his head, and the dimples indented his cheeks again. ‘Your dad’s a chef?’
My heart sank as it always did when my dad came up. Four years after his death, and it still hurt.
‘No,’ I said, trying to push the thoughts away. ‘He had to drop out his sophomore year. My uncle, his older brother, died, and my grandfather needed help with the family business.’ The family business that was now shuttered because my grandfather and dad were both dead. That was, I think, the worst part. He always talked about how sad he was that he never got to finish school. How he thought about selling the business when my grandfather wanted to retire and maybe he’d go back and finish his degree. Then he never got the chance.
‘That sucks, I’m sorry.’ After a moment he pivoted the conversation. ‘So, anyway, you need kitchen training to stand out on your La Boner School application?’
