Rafael scoffed. “You mean you seriously think everyone in that kitchen couldn’t figure out what you were doing when you went into the walk-in earlier?”
I thought back. Had he already suspected back then that I was taking pills? How? I’d been careful until now. I hadn’t been this desperate before.
Rafael shook his head with disgust at me, and I felt my resolve crumble.
I was tired. I had given everything today. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I told him what was really going on and admitted my one weakness. Even though we were rivals, I had a feeling that Rafael would never be the kind of person to use it against me.
I opened my mouth to answer, raising my head –
And realized that Rafael was gone, stalking out of the storage room and back through the corridor toward the exit.
I didn’t have to follow him to know where he was going, but I did anyway. By the time he got to Grey’s office, I had to have something prepared. I needed to deal with this before all hope of winning the Head Chef position slipped away.
But the pills had made my reaction times slow, and – just as I was thinking to myself that maybe, on this dosage, I had better not drive myself home after all – I reached the office’s back door as Rafael was coming back out of it.
“Here he is,” he said with some triumph.
“Drake,” Grey said, pronouncing my name like a sentence. He clearly still hadn’t calmed down from his earlier confrontation with Luca. “You’d better come inside.”
Rafael
I slumped down on a low bench against the wall where we often sat to rest during quieter service days, letting my head rock back onto the cool surface of the white-painted brick and closing my eyes for a moment. I rubbed my hands over my face. What a night.
“Chef?” Beau asked quietly.
“What’s up, Beau?” I asked. I didn’t try to hide how exhausted I was from my voice. This had been a night as intense as any I’d ever experienced in my career as a chef.
“Luca came back in when you were gone.”
I nodded; I’d seen him rush past me while I was heading for the office. It had been fast, but I could have sworn I’d seen tears on his face. With the mission I’d had in mind, I hadn’t had the time to go after him first. “Is he fired?”
Beau nodded and sank down on the bench next to me. “So, I guess someone needs to finish the dishes.”
“Right,” I said and sighed.
“Ainslie went home,” Beau added. “He said he wasn’t going to get stuck doing it since you’d already told us to leave.”
I looked sideways at him and smiled briefly. “You’re a good one, Beau. Thanks for staying. But, forget about it. We all deserve a break. We’ll take care of it before service tomorrow.”
“I don’t think the plate was dirty,” Beau said.
I looked at him.
“I was helping Chef Drake plate up all night,” he said. “I mean, I wasn’t actually doing the plating, but I was bringing stuff back and forth for him and laying out the plates. I never saw any dirty marks on anything. And he was paying a lot of attention. I don’t think he would have missed it.”
Possibilities flew through my mind. Maybe he was wrong; maybe Drake was strung out or high and he’d missed a lot of things. But then again, Beau was right about one thing for sure. Drakehadbeen paying a lot of attention to his plating. I hadn’t seen a single vegetable mosaic that was anything less than perfect every time I’d had a chance to glance over.
“Well, I don’t know how this is all going to shake out,” I said with another sigh. “We might be down both a dishwasher and a chef by the time we come in tomorrow.”
Beau gaped at me. “Who? Not me?”
I looked at him and could almost have laughed, except that the fear in his eyes was genuine. “No, not you, buddy. Sorry. It’s Drake. He’s in with Grey now.”
“What for?” Beau asked, his indignant and surprised voice coming out like a squeak.
I hesitated. How much was okay for me to say? If Drake didn’t get fired for this, he would be at work tomorrow and Beau would know more about him than he needed to. Was this a confidentiality issue, or should I tell Beau everything so that he could help me watch out for more signs of Drake being high?
Or was it all a moot point if he was going to be fired anyway?
