“He’s right,” I said. We both faced him with our arms crossed over our chests. “You and Grey. What is it? Are you on his side over everything now or something?” I remembered how he’d almost spoken to Drake this morning, despite the agreement we’d made in the group chat.
Was he ganging up on me? Was this how it started? Drake slowly siphoning off the whole team to join his and Grey’s side?
“I’m not on anyone’s side,” Beau said, with a flustered little move of his hand that would have convinced absolutely no one. “I’m just trying to get through the service, okay? Haven’t we all got a lot to do tonight?”
Ainslie and I mumbled and muttered under our breaths, but Beau was right. I was supposed to be leading this kitchen, so it chagrinned me a little that he’d been the one to point it out.
But when, even in the thick of service as we were rushed off our feet, he started humming a nice little tune, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“What is going on with you?” I demanded over the clatter of pans and serving tools. “You’re dreamy-eyed and grinning in the middle of one of the worst services we’ve had in ages. What’s going on?”
Beau flushed bright red again. “Nothing, I told you,” he said.
“I know that look,” Ainslie said suspiciously. “That’s the look you had after that night at the club. That’s the look you have when you’re getting laid.”
There was a long, horrified moment of silence between the three of us.
“No,” I said.
“Oh, no,” Ainslie echoed, staring at Beau with a piece of wilted spinach forgotten between his thumb and forefinger.
Beau ducked his head and looked at the plates he was working on. “It’s new,” he said.
“No, come on,” I said, shaking my head. “You have to tell us we’re wrong. We have to be wrong. Grey?”
“It’s not like what you’re thinking,” Beau said defensively.
“Oh, so you’re not sleeping with your boss, who is notorious for sleeping with anything that moves and breaking hearts wherever he goes?” I asked.
“You’re not falling for the one person in this place who is absolutely guaranteed to let you down?” Ainslie called and raised.
“It’s not like that!” Beau insisted. “He’s changed. He’schanging. He’s different with me.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I’d thought Beau was smart, that he wouldn’t fall for this kind of thing. At the same time, though, part of me was surprised this hadn’t happened sooner.
Beau was exactly the type of man who would fall for someone like Grey. He had a complex about the way he looked – every now and then he’d comment about his own weight in such a hateful way that it made my heart hurt for him, but he wouldn’t hear any of us telling him that he was good-looking and that his weight was fine – and Grey was a charmer. The kind of person who could turn his attention on you and make you feel special. That was dangerous for someone like Beau.
Someone who dreamed of being treated like he was special, but inwardly believed he would never deserve it.
“He says he’s changing every single time,” I told him sadly. “That’s just what Grey does. We’ve all seen him do it time and time again. Beau, he’s not the one for you.”
Beau shook his head emphatically. “Why do you want me to be unhappy?” he asked. “Is it so crazy to think that Grey might actually like me?”
“It’s not that,” Ainslie began, but Beau wasn’t done.
“Well, he does like me!” he exclaimed. “He really likes me. He told me. We slept together. And we’re dating now.”
“You’re dating?” I repeated incredulously. Grey didn’tdate. He slept with someone and then never called them again. We’d seen it happen so many times, and he had never cared before if that person happened to work in his own kitchen.
“Yes!” Beau said. He threw his arms up in the air, splattering food from the spatula he was wielding onto the wall at the side of the kitchen. “Is it so hard to believe that someone might actually want to date me?”
“No, of course not,” I tried, but Beau was already off in his own head, making his own conclusions about what we were trying to say. He shook his head, stomping off to the other side of the kitchen and noisily clattering about with pans and dishes to show how annoyed he was.
I exchanged a look with Ainslie. This wasn’t going to go well. Beau was going to end up getting his heart broken, and then what would we do? We couldn’t lose him. He was a good chef.
There wasn’t much time to sit and talk about it or plan a way to rescue Beau from his inevitable doom. We were in the middle of service. We all returned to our respective tasks, and silence settled over my kitchen once again.
It wasn’t a good silence. It wasn’t the silence of chefs hard at work, flowing around one another so well because they had worked together long enough to cut out the need for communication. It was awkward, and angry, and nervous, and I hated it.
