Bliss (29 page)

*   *   *

“There she is!” boomed Aiden whenever Demi arrived at the restaurant. She smiled on cue despite herself. Aiden was a dancing bear of a man. Seeing him lifted her spirits, too.

“Good morning,” she said, going into the kitchen to unload some groceries in the fridge. She'd gotten in the habit of shopping at Whole Foods on the way to the restaurant for ingredients to make dinner for them. They worked late so often, it only made sense to eat in. And he let her bring home the leftovers for Sophia.

“Demi, meet Chester Fangs—not his real name? Yes, it
is
your real name? Wow. Okay. Chester, meet Demi Michaels. She is my brilliant marketer, permit wrangler, and all-around, all-purpose right arm.”

Chester Fangs nodded at her. He was skinny (always suspicious in a cook), tall, with a faux-hawk, a neck tattoo that was a crossbones of a knife and fork, and a “don't fuck with me” stare. Demi thought he looked familiar. “You were on
Top Chef
, right?” she asked.

“
Top Chef Baltimore
,” he said. “I made it to the final four and then Colicchio booted me because he doesn't know what al dente means.”

As Demi recalled, Chester threw a steaming bowl of tom yung goong soup at another cook during Restaurant Wars and was voted “the most hated cheftestant of all time” by fans.

Aiden asked, “What's
Top Chef
?”

“It's a cooking competition on TV,” said Demi.

“It's rigged,” said Chester. “Here's my résumé. You also asked me to make a sample menu.” He handed a few neatly typed pages to Aiden, who sat down at the kitchen stool to read them. Demi scanned the pages over his shoulder. The résumé included big-name restaurants in LA and Chicago, and claims of tutelage under famous chefs. He'd won a few awards and had once cooked for the president, along with a team of other cooks from his then restaurant. The guy had chops, but did they want to rub shoulders with him every day? It was all coming back to her now, Demi remembered Chester making odious sexist remarks to the female chefs, how they should stick with noodle casserole and baby making, and leave cooking to the men, along those lines.

Aiden said, “Very impressive résumé. I love the TV stuff. We can get a lot of publicity out of this, right, Demi? Look here, Chester has two hundred thousand followers on Twitter!”

“Nice,” she said. No doubt he was a talented chef and everyone knew those shows were edited to make people look bad. But he made a soft-spoken Japanese chef cry when she overcooked salmon on a team challenge. He called a chubby lesbian chef a “tranny who can't soufflé her way out of a paper bag.” That was a quote, not a bad edit. He'd once said, “Unless they're washing dishes, women in a kitchen are bad luck.”

“Menu looks good,” said Aiden. “High-end ingredients, complicated flavors. It's perfect for an upscale restaurant or a four-star hotel. But we're right on the beach. We want families to come in for a bite after swimming all day,
and
we want the foodies. Fine dining in a super casual environment. It's a delicate balance. Fish and chips should be on the menu, but they should be refined, light. Not the leaden greasy shite you get at fast-food places.”

Demi added, “Ideally, Dory will get a reputation for having the best fish tacos on Venice Beach.”

“I can do it,” said Chester.

“Great! Let's see,” said Aiden.

“I'll come back with a revised menu next week,” said Chester.

Aiden said, “No.” With his accent,
no
sounded like
nawr
. “Let's see what you can do on the fly.”

“Like a
Top Chef
Quick Fire challenge!” said Demi. “Thirty minutes to make the best fish taco ever, starting now. It'll be fun.”

Chester scowled at the idea. “That's not how I operate.”

“You did it on the show,” said Demi.

“That was for
money
, honey,” he said. “I'm not going to cook on command because this girl thinks it'll be ‘fun.'” Air quotes. The douche.

Demi couldn't resist trying to put this sexist prick in his place. “Let's make it interesting,” she said. “We'll each make a taco. If Aiden likes yours better than mine, we'll hire you.”

“We will?” asked Aiden.

Chester snorted. “Does she even know how to cook?”

“Take a chance, mate, and find out.”

“Do you have ingredients here?”

As it just so happened, Demi had just put two mahimahi fillets in the fridge.

“I'll just step outside,” said Aiden, standing up. “I'll be back in forty-five minutes.”

When Aiden was gone, Chester said, “I'm not doing this.”

“You refuse to share a kitchen with a
girl
? Only one of us is afraid of losing.”

His face turned bright red, misogyny flared up. “You have no idea what you're doing, do you?” he asked.

Saying “Bring it” would have been superfluous. They both ran at the fridge and rummaged through the pantry. It wasn't fully stocked, but close enough. Demi's strategy was to make the kind of fish taco she always wanted but had never had before. Traditional taco with citrus, corn or salsa, turned the tortilla into a soggy mess that fell apart in her hand. Why couldn't a fish taco be eaten neatly, like a falafel? Inspired by that idea, she went about baking tortillas, mixing homemade cilantro cream, baking the mahimahi, and making her own recipe for a red cabbage coleslaw.

Over at his end of the kitchen, Chester grilled the fish, and diced perfect little pieces of mango and pineapple. By her estimation, diced fruit first appeared on a taco around the time fish grew legs and crawled out of the ocean a billion years ago. In other words, if Chester thought it was original, he didn't eat a lot of tacos.

They plated their dishes. Demi's taco wasn't nearly as pretty and refined at Chester's. Compared to his perfectly, artfully arranged construction, hers looked amateurish and thrown together. Demi started to doubt her rash suggestion that they do a Quick Fire. If she lost, she'd be stuck with this jerk.

Right on time, Aiden wandered back in from the beach with a beer in hand. “Can't have a taco without a beer,” he said, sitting at the kitchen counter, looking at the two plates in front of him. “Looks good,” he said.

He took bites of each taco. Demi was thrilled that hers didn't fall apart. She was even more excited that Aiden had to use a fork to eat Chester's.

“Well, they both have great flavor,” he said, sounding eerily like
Top Chef
judge Curtis Stone. “The grilled mahimahi is fresh and light. But I'm going to give it to the baked fish with the cilantro sauce and cabbage slaw. I can picture every kid on the beach eating one of these, and Mom and Dad ordering it, too. It can use some refinement, but the flavors hit every part of my tongue. Congrats … Demi?”

“This is horseshit,” said Chester. “You knew it was her dish and picked it so you can fuck her. Screw you both. You can have each other and your amateur-hour baked shit tacos. I hope this place burns to the ground.”

And then he made an inglorious exit, flinging his plate against the wall on his way out.

“Please pack your knives and go,” said Demi at his back.

“Useless as a bag of smashed assholes!” said Aiden, making them crack up.

“Did you really like mine better?”

“I think we should open with it,” he said. “It's fantastic!” He picked it up, and shoved the rest of it in his mouth.

“Don't choke!” she said. “We haven't put up the CPR posters yet.”

He said, “It's easy. You just put your arms around the person's waist, like this”—he moved around to wrap Demi in his arms, and hold her back against his front—“and squeeze.”

She spun around in his arms, threw hers around his neck, and kissed him. He accepted her kiss like her food, with gusto. “Thanks for liking my food,” she said. Okay, she might've been flashing back to the rush she felt when James relished her cooking. Feeding people gave her a lot of satisfaction. But there were other kinds of satisfaction to be had, too.

Aiden said, “You kiss me if I like your food? What'll you do if I put you in charge of the menu? No, I mean it. You know what you're doing. You know what we're going for. We'll do it together.”

“Okay,” she said, registering the surge to her groin. “But I expect a raise. We'll talk terms after.”

“After … we fuck each other's brains out?” he said, lifting her butt on the counter. “I've been hard since you said ‘fish taco.'”

They went at it like starving people. Hungry mouths tasting each other, licking and savoring all the textures, the soft tongue, smooth teeth and swollen lips. Hungry hands skimming under clothes, grasping at skin and bones, like they were holding on for dear life.

Aiden unbuttoned her jeans and pulled them down over her butt. Then he stripped them off her legs. They fell onto the kitchen floor.

“Hey! Those are my favorite jeans!” Seven for all Mankind, and not cheap.

“They look great on you,” he growled, “but even better off you.” Aiden unzipped his own pants and grabbed her thighs, lifting them around his hips before he moved in, all of him, all the way in. Demi gasped, and clasped her ankles around his broad body, feeling a bit like she was being mauled by a bear, and absolutely loving it. At some point, he'd lifted Demi clear off the counter, like she was weightless, and lay her back down from the lengthwise end so her whole body could rest on it. He leaned over her, making the entire table shake, the wares stored underneath clanging away chaotically, like the rhythm of her heartbeat as her hunger for him grew, and grew, until the sweetness came.

A few minutes passed as they both recovered. Demi sat up, and looked around to find pots and pans all over the kitchen floor. Aiden was staring at her, grinning with wild eyes at her, nothing on his face but pure bliss.

“You're pretty,” he said. “Did I ever tell you that?”

“And you're … lucky to have me,” she said, beaming back at him, surprised by the uncomplicated joy she felt. Being with Aiden was easy, natural, just
fun
. Sophia would say sleeping with her boss was a recipe for disaster. But she didn't care. She deserved this.

“Damn right,” he said, agreeing to her spoken and unspoken thoughts.

 

demi's fish tacos

SERVES 4

ingredients

red cabbage slaw (see below)

cilantro crema (see below)

4 fillets white fish

salt and pepper

cayenne pepper

1 avocado

12 small corn tortillas

sriracha hot sauce

feta or queso fresco

RED CABBAGE SLAW

1 head red cabbage

1 small bunch cilantro

¹
⁄
₃
cup lime juice

salt and pepper

CILANTRO CREMA

1 bunch cilantro

1 clove garlic

3 tbsps veganaise or low-fat mayo

¼ cups nonfat greek yogurt, plain

2 tbsps lime juice

½ tsp himalayn salt

½ tsp cayenne pepper

instructions

1. Start with the slaw. Thinly slice an entire red cabbage, chop a small bunch of cilantro, and put it all in a bowl with lime juice and salt and pepper to taste. Toss the ingredients and set it to the side.

2. For the cilantro crema, add all of the ingredients into a blender or food processor and combine until there are just flecks of the cilantro and it is a nice light green color.

3. For the fish, salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste both sides to add some flavor and heat. Either grill or bake the fish for the proper cook time.

4. While the fish is cooking, slice the avocado into thin slices (a quarter per person, approximately 3 slices each).

5. Once the fish is done, warm the tortillas by wrapping them in tinfoil and either sticking them on the grill or in the oven for 5 to 10 minutes.

6. Toss the slaw a bit and make sure the cabbage is marinating in the acid of the lime juice; taste it to make sure it is seasoned correctly.

7. Put the cilantro crema in a basic dressing bottle that you can get almost anywhere (make sure it is squeezable). If you don't have one, put the crema into a little Ziploc bag, cut off the tip of one corner, and you have yourself a perfect piping bag.

8. Assembly time! Start with a warm tortilla, add
¹
⁄
₃
to ¼ of the fish fillet, top with some slaw and a piece of avocado. Then drizzle on the cilantro creme and sriracha (if you like things hot), and finish with just a little crumble of feta or queso fresco.

 

20

after the bomb

Sophia rode to work in her short-term-leased Ford Escape. She was superstitious about buying a car until she knew
The Den
's fate. If she jumped the gun, and bought one now, surely the show would tank. The morning and evening rides gave her time to pull herself together before she had to act. At night, she acted to Demi like she was tired and stressed out, which was true. During the day, she acted for her costars, director, and the showrunner. No one would question that she was thrilled-beyond-thrilled to be part of the show, which she was, and the complete opposite of a diva/troublemaker/needy starlet. Her goal was to be easy and to give one hundred percent every day. She transmitted confidence. She was a positive force on set.

Inside her own head, it was like a bomb went off, and she was trying to piece herself back together.

The roofie maybe-rape was three weeks ago. Scott had told her to forget about it. But Sophia had been obsessed with remembering what happened. No matter how hard she tried, her mind turned to wool. She'd figured out who the actor at the bar was: Brody Reno, the star of a short-lived sitcom about an airplane pilot and his family called
What's Up?
Brody played the stud-muffin teenage son. Sophia only knew about the show because her brother watched it in high school to make fun of it. Reno's IMDB filmography began there and continued to limp along with bit parts on TV and in indie movies. She couldn't prove that Brody had drugged the shot he gave her, although it was likely. Whatever his role, he wasn't the guy she woke up with, but he was the only person who could shed light on her dark hours. She searched Brody's public pages for his friend's identity, but came up empty.