“Sure,” she says with a shoulder lifting. “That too. But you can’t complain about having your chef make delicious food, Lex. That’s where I’m gonna draw the line and call you out.”
She’s infuriating. Impossible to argue with. An annoying response to anything I throw out there.
Petty insults that don’t bother her anymore and years-old resentment is all I have against her.
For all our physical similarities, Rory’s oval-shaped face is thinner than my heart-shaped one, and happiness looks like it lives beneath her skin, even when she’s bickering with me. My RBF would need to be surgically removed if I wanted it gone. I wonder if I fell in love, if I’d look as peaceful as she does.
“Let me know what you think when you check him out,” she says, taking a big bite of food.
I grumble for a minute, the voice in my head mocking her, until curiosity gets the better of me and I pull my phone out of my jeans pocket to look a little closer at his résumé. Thumbing up the original email from Rory, I click open the attachment and scan it as I eat, eyes flicking across the PDF as best they can on the small screen.
A lot of words I don’t understand, and names that mean nothing to me. Scrolling back to the beginning of his work history, I try to look a little closer.
First job listed on here is as a line cook in upstate New York. No name, number or reference listed.
As I flick through the couple of pages, it jumps out at me that no references are given on any of these places.
How am I even supposed to vet him? He’s not even giving me the possible out of “bad references.”
I try to remember the name of the most recent restaurant he was at and type it into Google. My nostrils flare when the results populate.
Worse than I thought.
The place looks like somewhere you’d see celebrities dining in the tabloids. Exactly the way I imagine Rory’s life was those years she ditched us for her precious big city. The kind of glam the Heights will never have to offer.
If that’s the background he’s coming from, what draws him to Heights Bites? If he wants to be a hotshot chef, we’re not just a step down, we’re a whole damn ladder down from a place like that.
The itch oftoo much but still never enough for anyoneburns beneath my skin as I flick through the images for the restaurant. The nausea has me closing out of the tab and going back to the résumé for the name of the bodega.
Now the pictures of that place look a lot less intimidating. You definitely couldn’t eat off the floor of it, which is a step in the less snooty direction by my standards.
It’s got over two thousand reviews and it’s rated 4.7 stars, which is a little hard to sneer at. Tabbing through those reviews is a lot funnier than the ones for the other place, that’s for sure.
The general consensus seems to be it’s the best food for blocks, but the guy behind the sandwich counter talks way too much. Sounds about right.
If I didn’t already know I was on the right listing, a few decidedly feminine profiles praised the view while you wait for your food.
I feel eyes that look just like mine on my face, watching for my reaction, and I make sure to leave an unimpressed look glued in place as I keep tapping on my phone, refusing to look up and give my sister the pleasure of being right, yet again.
I already knew the man could cook. I tried his food. There’s no denying he’s talented on the line.
It’s his personality I can’t stand.
But if his talent he’s clearly so passionate about could bring us a loyal following like he had at these places…
I sigh, trying to stow my personal feelings about the man aside and swallow down what the proximity to him will mean for my blood pressure, if it helps the restaurant.
If he makes our recipes, it won’t feel like the place is being taken from me and turned into something else. I just need to keep him on a tight leash is all. Keep him from branching out and changing the place too much. Making it too New York, instead of the best the Heights has to offer.
Resigned, I decide to google the man himself and see if that gives me a reason to hate him a little less.
Result after result populates on my phone’s screen, but nothing that seems to be about him. Apparently there’s a hot dog vendor off Wall Street named Amante. Another article pops up about some other Amante with ties to a notorious crime family, which almost makes me laugh, but I don’t want Rory to see and I bite down instead.
Amante must be a popular last name.
Let me narrow down the search results.
I type in his name, a plus sign and the name of the bodega.
