2
THORNE
“Order up.” I hit the bell three times to let Lela know that their order was up, and I went to plate the next round of burgers.
Growing up, I thought I was going to be a world renowned chef and a huge-ass deal on the fine-dining scene. I was going to have a fancy restaurant where people would book their reservations months in advance. They would pay exorbitant amounts of money just to be able to eat my food. I’d star in my own television show on the food channel.
At the time, I’d mistakenly thought being a famous chef was as simple as loving to cook. How wrong I was. I still loved to cook, but the international culinary school I’d been eyeing was outside my budget. I didn’t give up, signing up for a local school, but that didn’t get me any closer to my goals. The best jobs I’d been able to get were working at a chain restaurant and Kyle’s diner.
I chose Kyle’s. I still liked to make fancy food and play around with ingredients, but I paid the bills by slinging burgers, flipping pancakes for drunks at three in the morning, and washing out grease stains from my uniform.
It was fine, but for years it had just been me I needed to worry about. I could work my insane hours and live in a shoebox-sized apartment and the only person it affected was me. And as far as lives went, it wasn’t half bad. The people were great. My boss, Junior, always let me come up with the specials, nothing too fancy or out of the ordinary, because this was diner fare, but it was enough to keep my creativity going. And he treated me like one of his own grandkids, so much so that he gave me dirt-cheap rent on the apartment above the diner.
I’d made the right choice, taking less money than the chain restaurants had offered. They constantly ran ads for new staff, and six years in, I was still one of the newbies here. There were no complaints on my end.
But then the call came.
The one that changed everything. The one that told me that my brother Harvey was dead. I remembered standing there on the street in front of the diner waiting for the bus downtown when it came in. I never answered my phone when I didn’t know a number. Something told me I needed to answer that one. I cried out, everything past them saying “dead” no longer registering. It was Junior who heard me and brought me inside, and helped me through the initial shock.
Losing my brother was a pain I wouldn’t wish on anyone. We’d been inseparable growing up. He’d play restaurant with me, and I’d buy things from his imaginary shop with money we drew on index cards. He told me about his first crushes, and I told him about ingredients he couldn’t care less about but pretended were fascinating beyond belief. He was the one person I could count on to try all of my over-the-top food experiments.
And now he was gone.
I didn’t expect him to leave me. We were supposed to be old men together, sitting on the edge of a pond as our grandkids listened to stories we’d weave just for them the way our grandfather did for us. There were days I was angry with him for not being here anymore and days the loss clung to me and made my next breath feel impossible, and there were days when I was numb.
Those initial weeks were a blur. At first, sheer panic hit me. What if they gave Harvey’s son, Rupert, back to Bodie? What if that piece of shit got him? Would he be safe?
Back when he knocked up my brother, the pair were still teens, barely out of school, and he told my brother to, quote, “get rid of it” and never see him again. My brother only obeyed half of that and made sure never to see him again, never put his name on the birth certificate, and never told a soul but me who the father was. But that didn’t keep the fear at bay, not when there was no one else.
It was Junior who told me to take a big breath and not bite off trouble that didn’t exist. He was the first person I told about Bodie and the one who, behind my back, looked him up. Bodie had left this planet years earlier due to a fire. I hated the guy for what he did to my brother and nephew, but that was a horrible way to die.
At first, I thought my parents were going to be asked to keep Rupert. They had him for the first month or so as an “emergency placement,” and it would make sense he stayed there, despite their age. But then I got the second call that changed my world, the one where child services asked me to become his guardian. Unbeknownst to me, my brother had asked me in writing, in a letter he kept with his will, one I didn’t know existed, to take his place if anything happened to him.
I immediately agreed, not thinking through what it would mean for me. How could I turn his last request down? If he thought I was the best person to take care of Rupert, then I needed to be that person.
As it was, my life wasn’t what he deserved. Working at 3 a.m. one day and 9 a.m. the next, with no consistency for piss-poor wages, that wasn’t going to cut it. I gave it time and myself grace, just like Junior said I should, but as each day passed, the reality of how unfair this life was for him became more and more evident.
I ticked off all the boxes, making sure he got to school on time, that he was picked up on time, that he had a sitter when I was working. But a one-bedroom apartment where I slept in a recliner because there wasn’t enough room for a couch… I couldn’t let him have this life, and at this job, I couldn’t afford to do better.
“Order up.” I placed the next round of plates on the ledge and tapped two times for Susie.
“Hey, man.” I turned to see Junior standing there, his face serious. He wasn’t supposed to be here tonight, which either meant his husband was out at the BINGO parlor and he was bored or he had something on his mind. It was the latter.
“You need to get out of here.”
“Huh?” I looked at him, trying to figure out what he meant. Was he taking over the grill? He hadn’t done that in a long time, but it was the best I could parse out. “I still have another hour.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “You’re getting old. And before you say it, yes, I’m the old man. I know this. But that’s not what I mean. You’re aging quickly. Thislife is killing you. You can’t keep it up, and I can’t make this job what you need it to be.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Everything he said was true, but at the same time, it wasn’t like I had much of a choice.
“Check your phone. I sent you something a couple minutes ago.”
I reached into my back pocket and pulled it out. He’d sent a job listing.
He tapped my phone screen. “This hockey team is looking for a team chef. Didn’t you take some nutrition courses or something when you went to school?”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t part of the requirement for the degree I have.”
