Beau was walking into the kitchen now, shrugging off his coat and greeting Rafael and Ainslie, who both said hello to him.
So, they weren’t deaf. They just weren’t hearingme.
“The sink,” I tried again. “Who’s washing up?”
Beau opened his mouth but then closed it again at a sharp look from Ainslie. He gave me an apologetic glance and then pressed his lips together as if he needed to remind himself not to open them again.
I sighed.
Right.
Yesterday, I had gone against the group. I’d stayed on the side of my boss – the side that was going to get me into the least trouble – while they had all stuck their necks out for Luca. From what I’d gathered during the rest of service, the customer had come back in and been caught red-handed trying to pull the same scam again. Luca had been vindicated.
But I had stood apart and refused to defend him.
Could they really blame me? It wasn’t like I really knew anyone here. None of them would have put their jobs on the line for me, I was sure of it. I was just acting in the interest of self-preservation.
Was that so hard to understand?
“Fine. You’re all being children,” I said in a bored and unaffected tone. I was hoping that pretending it didn’t affect me would make them stop doing it because I was secretly hating it. There was no way you could run an effective kitchen if the line chefs weren’t communicating with the Head Chef. “But the dishes still need to get washed.”
“Then as the person who did not try to keep our dishwasher, perhaps you’d better roll up your sleeves,” Rafael said in a very deliberate tone, looking up to meet my eyes boldly for a second with his eyebrows raised. Only a second, and then he looked back at his clipboard.
Was it because, like me, a second was all he could take?
Was it because the memory of our heated kiss flooded through him and he knew that keeping my gaze for any longer would allow me to see it written in his own eyes?
“Fuck this,” I muttered. Team spirit? I could show them team spirit. I did exactly what Rafael suggested, rolling up my sleeves and walking towards the dishwashing sink with purpose.
He couldn’t have known, surely, that a bath in warm water was exactly the kind of thing that would relax the muscles in my wrist and make it feel better.
I barely got the time to immerse it, however, before a series of cheers went up behind me, making me turn and look out of the dishwashing nook and down the kitchen.
Luca was standing there, near the entrance from the hall, grinning sheepishly as all the other employees rushed around to slap him on the back and shoulders and ask him whether he was back for good.
“Mr. Monaghan called me and said he made a mistake,” he said, smiling from ear to ear. “He said did I want to come back and I hadn’t got another job yet, so I came.”
“Thank god!” Ainslie exclaimed. “We were threatening to go on strike, you know.”
“What?” Luca asked, looking around with a puzzled but dazzling smile.
“Of course,” Rafael said. “We all had your back.” His eyes slid sideways to where I stood, still apart, as if he wanted me to know that he still knew. Apparently, he didn’t want to upset Luca by bringing up the fact that not quiteallof The Crow’s staff did, in fact, have his back.
I slunk behind the group to go back to my own station, fetching and carrying most of the dirty things from that side of the kitchen across to the sink instead of actually washing them myself now that Luca was back. When he’d returned to his normal place and was rolling up his own sleeves to begin work, I put a stack of pans down next to him and gave him a quick nod.
“Glad to see you back,” I said.
“Thanks, man,” Luca said with another big grin – one that almost ate me up inside with guilt.
I turned away and went back to the tasks I needed to complete today. I had to get them done. Today had to be about sheer focus and determination.
It was the only way I was going to be able to push through the pain I was feeling, even with the painkillers taking the edge off. Ifelt like I could barely move. With Rafael and the rest shunning me on top of everything else, what I really wanted to do was go back home and draw all the curtains closed and go back to sleep. Wake up when all of this was over.
Instead, I concentrated on carefully cutting pastry rounds for the construction of the pies we sold on the menu, cursing under my breath and sweating with each twist of my wrist that was needed to free the pastry from the cutter.
It was becoming too much to handle, and I’d barely started.
Tears sprang to my eyes at the realization that today was going to be the hardest service of my life. Not only was I going to have to do everything with minimal help from my coworkers in the kitchen, but I was already physically broken. I wasn’t even sure I was going to make it to family dinner, let alone through service.
