But my days of being a carefree girl were long over. They’d died the day my mother had beendiagnosed.
I liked to split my life into two epochs—Before Cancer, and After Cancer. Before Cancer, I’d been a cheerful college student, working in my mom’s restaurant part time while I took pre-med classes, and hanging out with friends during my sparetime.
The last time I’d gone to the beach with my friends had been over a year ago. Before Cancer. Before my mom had received the terrible diagnosis that changed our livesforever.
By the time the doctors identified the leukemia, it had already progressed to Stage III. She’d originally gone in thinking she had anemia. I knew I should have forced her to go sooner—she’d been suffering from fatigue for months, and had grown far too thin. But my mother had always been a workaholic, and she’d refused to listen to me until the day she collapsed and nearly spilled a tea tray on acustomer.
That was truly the day that After Cancer began, before we even really knew what was going on. While Mom had been on bed rest, in and out of the hospital as they tried to figure out what was going on, I’d switched to online classes and taken over running the restaurant. She’d already groomed me for it—I’d been by her side from the day she’d first opened it when I was four years old. I knew how to handle the books, how to deal with the vendors and manage theemployees.
I just hadn’t expected to be doing it for quite thislong.
“Aika!” Janet, one of our waitresses, exclaimed in relief as I entered the restaurant. She was Japanese, like me, but smaller, and her fine black hair was dyed a honey brown and styled into corkscrew curls that bounced around her heart-shaped face. “Thank goodness you’re here. I thought something had happened toyou!”
“Just a case of dead alarm clock,” I said, glancing at the clock—twenty minutes until opening time. “Sorry I left you hanging. Where are theothers?”
“Sanji and Matthew are in the kitchen, as usual,” Janet said, referring to our chefs. “Mihoko called insick.”
“Damn.” Being down one waitress on a Saturday wasnota good thing. “Guess I know what I’m doing today,” I said, stalking to the closet behind the counter. I shucked off my jacket and hung it up, then grabbed a spare apron and tied it around my waist. “Let’s finish getting setup.”
Janet and I hurried around the orange-colored tables, testing the hot pot burners to make sure they were working and putting out silverware and condiments. Once I was certain she had that in hand, I went into the kitchen to check on Sanji andMatthew.
“You are late,” Sanji said, not bothering to look up from his workstation. He was cutting a loin of Kobe beef into very thin slices, while Matthew chopped up vegetables. Matthew was a culinary student who worked part time, and Sanji had worked for us for close to fifteen years. He was close to fifty, with silver threaded through the goatee jutting from his chin and faint lines creeping in on his thinface.
“Sumanai,” I apologized, biting my tongue at the thinly veiled belligerence in Sanji’s tone. He had a lot of respect for my mom—me, not so much. Not since the day I told her, nearly four years ago, that I had no intention of continuing the family business. “My mother needed a little extra help this morning.” A white lie, but I didn’t need to give Sanji yet another reason to doubtme.
Sanji’s face softened a little—he and my mother had become good friends over the years. “Is she doing any better?” he asked as I went to taste the pork stock that was keeping warm on one of the burners. “I was very worried when I went to visit her in the hospital lastweek.”
Mom had given us all a very nasty scare recently. The leukemia had gone into remission for a while, and she’d even been spending more time in the restaurant, giving me more time to hit the books and even relax a bit. But last week, she’d collapsed in the middle of making dinner. I’d come home to see her lying on the kitchen floor with a knife clutched in her hand and a pot of soba noodles burning on the stove. Chills of horror still raced through me every time I thought about how close a call that had been—if she’d landed on her knife, or if the place had caught on fire, she could havedied.
“She seemed stronger this morning,” I told Sanji, not wanting him to worry. “I think she’ll be starting chemo again soon.” I hated the idea of her going through that again, but dying was farworse.
“Good.” Sanji nodded decisively. “I will go to the shrine and pray for her this afternoon. Thekamihave smiled down on Hamako before—surely they will do so again. It is not her time to passyet.”
I nodded as a sudden lump settled in my throat. I didn’t believe in the old gods, but Sanji did, and there was no point in telling him otherwise, especially since he meantwell.
Swallowing back my tears, I pasted a smile on my face and went to unlock the front door for the lunch crowd. There was already a small crowd of people out front—Shabu Shabu House was a popular spot in Japantown, known for our cook-it-yourself Japanese hot pot dishes. Within minutes, the place was packed, and I was too caught up in the hustle and bustle to think about my troubles. Taking a deep breath, I stationed myself behind the counter and focused on greeting customers and getting themseated.
A good three hours passed before the crowd finally began to die out, tourists and regulars filtering out to go about their business or continue touring Japantown. Exhausted, I leaned against the bar counter for a minute to catch my breath. Maybe I could even sneak into the back and grab a glass ofwater.
“Hey, Aika.” A familiar voice, smooth and with just the slightest hint of mischief, snagged my attention just as I was sending a couple off to their table. My pulse quickened and my nerve endings tingled as I turned to see a man saunter through the front door. He was tall and lean, close to six feet, dressed in a white chef’s coat, black jeans, and high top sneakers. He swept his wind-tossed, shaggy caramel hair out of his almond-shaped eyes and grinned at me. “Still serving the same old stuff around here,huh?”
“Better than your second-rate sushi!” Janet retorted, instantly appearing by my side. She leveled a scowl at the intruder even as she struggled not to eye the black box in his hand. “You’re not welcome here, Mr.Hayasaka.”
“Is that any way to talk to a customer?” Shota Hayasaka pressed a hand to his heart in mock offense. “I’m amazed you keep the doors open with such a rude waitress,” he said to me in a loud stagewhisper.
Janet gave him the evil eye. “You’re not a real customer. You’re just a money-grubbing, second-rate chef trying to steal ourbusiness!”
I rolled my eyes. “Enough,” I said, putting a hand on Janet’s shoulder. “I don’t need the two of you clawing each other’s eyes out in front of the customers. Go do your job,Janet.”
Huffing, Janet flounced off toward the tables. Shota watched her go, an odd look in his eyes that gave me pause. I’d seen him looking at Janet like that before, and it wasn’t the way a man looked at a woman when he was attracted to her. It was more like the way you looked at someone when there was something off about them. Like their eyes were set a bit too far apart, or there was something funny about the way they walked. Except that didn’t make sense, because Janet was flawless. She got more than her fair share of male attention, and went out on datesall thetime.
If only I had some of hermojo.
“Don’t you have fish to fillet?” I asked, drawing Shota’s attention back tome.
“My junior chef can stand to be away from me for a minute or two.” Shota leaned against the counter as if he had all the time in the world. He placed the box on the countertop, drawing my attention to his muscular forearm. His sleeve was rolled up to the elbow, and I caught a glimpse of akanjitattoo on his inner wrist. “You’re a lot more interesting to look at than he is,” he teased, his dark eyesgleaming.
“If you think that bringing me lunch is going to convince me to accept your business proposal, you’re dead wrong,” I said, even as I fought to keep the blush out of my cheeks. Shota had this kind of magnetism about him—an air of carefree confidence that drew me to him like a moth to a flame. The only problem was, I was smarter than a moth. And I had no intention of going down in flames for the sake of a prettyface.
