Not once.
The orders won’t stop coming in, his cooks are swamped, and this god-awful pain in his chest every time Eden ignores him just won’t go away.
He knows he needs to apologize. Hewantsto apologize. For his behavior, for being standoffish, for being an irredeemable asshole. He knows he shouldn’t have yelled at her, made her feel like she wasn’t worth letting in. It’s just that he can’t find the time to pull her aside and explain himself.
And then there’s Sebastian. His unannounced appearance has thrown Alexander through a loop. He desperately wants to ask Eden what they talked about, what was said. She appeared quite shaken when she returned from her one-on-one with the restaurateur. All he wants to know is if she’s okay, if she needs him for—anything, really.
He only gets more and more frustrated as the night goes on. He can’t help it. Nothing’s going right. Dishes are sent back, customers are dissatisfied with wait times, and the dishwashing machine in the pit keeps getting clogged up with all manner of food scraps and bent straws.
Things with Eden are off-kilter, too. He can feel it. They’re working on the same sinking ship, trying to bail it out, but they’re not working together. He talks over her, she talks over him, sometimes giving conflicting information to the other cooks. She sends out food before Alexander’s ready, he holds back when she needs to clear chits. He can’t count the number of times they’ve almost had run-ins with one another, literally stepping on each other’s toes.
They need to be better than this. Should be better than this. What’s supposed to be an organized dance is now a free for all.
His eruption is inevitable. A long time in the making. All the signs are there: the piercing headache behind his eyes, the tension in his shoulders, the rage boiling in his stomach. Part of him—the weaker, pathetic part deep down—wants to curl up into a ball and sleep it all away.
The other part of him knows that it’s easier just to explode.
It just so happens that Rina is the unfortunate soul caught in his line of fire when he finally does.
“What are you doing?” he hisses at the top of his lungs. “I can’t serve this when it looks like pig slop.”
Rina tenses, very much a deer caught in the headlights. “But I’ve been making the sundaes this way all evening.”
“You’re drowning the damn thing in caramel sauce. Who the fuck approved that?”
“I did,” Eden hisses.
“It needs to be consistent,” he snaps back. “We can’t have people come in one week expecting a goddamn caramel river, and the next week only receive a drizzle. That shit is what makes people think we’re skimping on ingredients.”
“It’s not that big of a deal. We need more caramel to balance the sweetness.”
“That’s not for you to decide. We’re going off the goddamn recipeIwrote.”
“Maybe your recipe needs to be revisited because the wayyoumake it tastes like ass.”
“The fuck did you just say to me?”
“You heard me. It. Tastes. Like. Ass.”
“Take that back.”
She crosses her arms. “No.”
Peter tries to step in between them, trying to ease some of the tension. “Mom, Dad. Let’s not fight, okay?”
“Shut the fuck up, Drenton!” Alexander and Eden both shout at the exact same time.
Eden rolls her eyes with a huff, turning on her heel to stomp off to the walk-in. Alexander follows without hesitation, unwilling to let this go. The door closes shut on them, trapping them in the small confines of the refrigerator.
“Go away.”
“What the hell is your problem?”
She whips around with alarming speed, forcing his back against the frigid door. “You. You are my problem.”
“Jesus, you’re impossible.”
“I’mimpossible? You can’t make it two minutes without berating your employees.”
