“As normal,” I said. “I’m your Head Chef today, just as I have been since Jesse left. Drake will watch me until I’m reliably convinced he has the hang of everything.”
Boring. I rolled my eyes, knowing he couldn’t see me. “I think I can handle prep,” I said.
“You haven’t cooked our dishes yet.”
“Actually,” I said, turning to grin at him, wanting to see the look in his eyes. “Grey shared the full menu with me a couple of weeks ago, along with the flashcards you made for everyone to crib from. So, I’m pretty familiar with everything.”
The glare he fixed me with could have burned a hole in the sun. “You didn’t want to mention this when I wasted my time showing you the menu earlier?”
“It’s always good to check nothing has changed,” I said innocently, practically purring it.
From the way his nostrils flared, I could see Rafael wanted to get into it with me. But he pushed whatever he was feeling aside and a slow, cold smile crept over his face instead.
It chilled me to the bone.
“Okay, Chef,” he said. “Since you don’t need the practice, maybe you could pitch in some other way. We’re down a dishwasher at the moment, since Ainslie was recently promoted. Maybe you could deal with the plates from family dinner. They’re just sitting out there waiting, and our waiters have enough to do as it is.”
I felt my jaw clench with tension as I tried to fight to keep the smile on my face, not letting it turn into a grimace. I wouldn’t lethim see he was getting to me. Let him think that no matter what he did, I gave zero fucks. I would take psyching him out over actually beating him in the kitchen if it meant I got the job.
“Anything I can do to help,” I said. “A clean kitchen is a happy kitchen.”
The look on his face as I swanned past him and back into the restaurant was enough to make up for the humiliation of actually having to clear the plates.
Stepping back into the empty restaurant on my own – I had no idea where the waiters had gone, but they weren’t in the room – I was able to take a minute to take stock of my new workplace. The neon lights on all of the walls hadn’t turned out to be a problem for the food; some kind of clever lighting trick made it so that every plate ended up looking the color it was intended, so I needn’t have worried about that.
But the coding of the place made me stop for a second and look around again, seeing it like a customer this time. The neon everywhere, the saucy phrases it spelled out, the colors and the vibe… I’d been to plenty of gay bars in my time, but never a gay restaurant.
It was a strange feeling, to be in a place where everyone not only knew I was gay but shared the same orientation. It was freeing, in some ways. Flirting openly with Grey, teasing Rafael even if I wanted to kick his ass out of this place – knowing there would be no repercussions, at least not the kind that came from straight men. Most of the customers that came in tonight would be gay. It was strangely overwhelming to think about. Not being the minority anymore.
It was a very specific business model, but apparently, it worked: The Crow wasn’t only surviving but thriving, and it had become a renowned spot to visit for the gay community from even outof state. Now, I was going to be a part of that. When I thought about my legacy as a chef, this is what I wanted to see. I wanted to know I’d been a pioneer in a restaurant that was the best of its kind, taking a theme to the highest possible level of quality.
And it wasn’t going to achieve that if they carried on serving beat-up-looking plates like the shit Chef Rafael had served us.
I swept up all of the plates in one go – almost all of them were empty, so balancing them wasn’t a problem – and headed back into the kitchen. It was already heating up into something starting to approach the chaos that I knew would reign later tonight when customers were in their seats. Ainslie and Beau were hard at work batch-prepping all the raw ingredients we would need for the night, while Rafael was already starting on some of the more complex processes and desserts.
I’d gathered the guy who left before was a pastry chef, moonlighting as a real chef to get more experience in running a kitchen under his belt. I’d imagined that I could beat Rafael easily if he’d only learned under a pastry chef – my skills would be so much better than his for all other types of cuisine.
I wasn’t expecting him to be messy and bad with the desserts, too.
I snorted under my breath as I walked back from the dishwashing station, my fingers wrinkled from the water, watching him pipe cream that should have been beautiful but instead looked like an afterthought.
“Something I can help you with, Chef?” he asked without looking up.
“No, Chef,” I replied. “I was thinking I could help you.”
It wasn’t until he looked up at me with the slightest flush on his cheeks that I realized it had come out more flirtatious than I had intended.
“You can look over Ainslie’s work,” he said, after a long moment. “He hasn’t been in his position for long. He was trained well, but he could still do with a bit of extra support.”
I nodded and moved away, trying not to be unsettled by how gorgeous that light dusting of pink had been over Rafael’s cheekbones.
I wandered over to Ainslie’s station and looked over his shoulder.
“Do you always cut the onions that thick?” I asked, making him jump half out of his skin.
“Chef!” he exclaimed.
“Behind,” I said belatedly with a grin.
