He doesn’t ask why I’m here. He doesn’t tell me he’s going to call my mother. He looks back at the door, like he’s contemplating making an exit. I wouldn’t blame him. But when he looks at me, his body relaxes and he throws his hands up in surrender. I’ve caught him, too.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” I say, calling the kettle black.
He nods, reaching into the cabinet for a matching mug that says Kiss The Bartender.
“Doesn’t this violate our agreement to stay away from each other?” I ask.
He answers by pouring himself some of my stolen wine. God, his smile is so hard not to look at. Even from across the table I can smell him—that delicious suntan scent.
“Well?” I urge him to talk. Say anything. Something.
“Lucky.” Anything but my name. It makes my wet head spin. James holds up the mug and waits for me to clink my drink to his. “Truce?”
“Truce isn’t exactly my middle name,” I say.
I hold my mug of wine steadily, but make no effort to clink glasses. After all, why should I? Even before realizing he was my mother’s pet chef¸ when we were in the coffee shop, he wasn’t the most outstanding character. Unless you count his soft black hair and the way it frames his cheekbones, because they’re
definitely
pretty outstanding.
I hope he didn’t see me sniffing his jacket like a creeper. Maybe he did. Maybe that’s why he’s smiling. It feels like someone threw a wrench in my guts.
He leans forward and clinks his mug to mine, forcing me into a silent agreement. We’re both at the Star after hours drinking the wine that should be for the opening. Or, if not the opening, then at least for the restaurant. I’d hate for my mother to think that I’m already messing up, which I’m not. I’m working. But he doesn’t know that.
“What
is
your middle name?” he asks, pulling up a metal barstool. He sips from his mug and makes a face.
He doesn’t smell the sweet dark cherry. He doesn’t stick his nose in the mug and let the deep purple wine fill his senses. Chef James doesn’t like wine. I take a big swallow of wine, let it coat my tongue.
“Look, Lucy—”
I choke, spraying him across his white shirt for the second day in a row.
“Lucky!” He grabs a towel and rubs the wine splatter off his arms, then throws it to me. “That was an accident. I’m—”
I take the towel and wipe it across my face, before realizing someone was probably using this to wipe down the kitchen counters. Ugh, whatever, I’ve had worse things on my face.
I stick an accusatory finger on his chest. “My name is Lucky. Not Lucy, not Luck. And contrary to every boy in the fifth grade, not
Lick-y
.”
He holds up his hands defensively. “Can we agree it’s been a long day?”
I sit back on the barstool, putting an entire metal table between us. “Then why aren’t you still at the party with my mother? Or at a bar somewhere downing more Jägermeister than should be legal for anyone not in college?”
James takes another sip of the wine, but this time doesn’t struggle against the dry taste. He’s settling in. “I’ve had my fill of bars.”
The way he says that makes me want to ask why. I’ve been in this business long enough to know when someone has something in their past they don’t want to talk about. Before I let my brain wander off into fabricating some elaborate James Hughes history—a love child (not unlikely), a gay lover (not a chance), a wanted criminal (perhaps)—okay, so my brain
is
going there.
“So you just left the boss lady all alone?” I say it with mock surprise. We both know my mother shines best when surrounded by people who adore her. That, and champagne.
He looks down at the table and smirks. “She’s in good hands.”
I want to change the subject. The idea of a Husband #5 makes me more nauseated than my new birth control pill.
“Look,” He holds his arms out so I can get a good look at his entire body. His shirt isn’t so tight that it makes him look like a Jersey Shore reject, but tight enough that I want to trace the lines of his muscles under the seam. I bet he’s the type that wakes up with a morning workout, and then eats like a pig because the world is unfair and boys get the fast metabolisms. “I’m not a bad guy.”
“I didn’t say you were,” I shrug. “But that’s exactly what a bad guy would say. No one looks at themselves and thinks, ‘I’m a douchebag,’ but sometimes it just happens.”
“You think I’m a douchebag?” He presses his hand to his chest defensively. “You stole my coffee!”
“That wasn’t a coffee.” I drink my wine. “It was a twelve year old girl’s dessert.”
His beautiful green eyes widen. I wonder when the last time a girl put him in his place. As much as I’d like to turn his biceps into
my
dessert, I can’t back down in whatever
this
thing is. “Has anyone ever told you you’re not a people person?”
I hide my face in my mug. “Every manager that’s ever fired me.”
He drinks a little more, this time smacking his lips the way I would when eating sour candy. “Then why do it? Why work in this business? Stella spent the car ride
and
the party telling me all about you.”
My insides warm and it has nothing to do with the delicious fuzziness of the wine. “Wonderful things, I’m sure.”
He goes to the sink and washes the stickiness of the wine off his skin. He has the walk of someone who holds their secrets close to their heart, someone who’s used to watching his back. Also, the kind of walk of someone who does squats. Often.
I bite my lip hard to pull myself together.
Get a grip, Lucky.
When he comes back, he pulls his barstool closer to me. “She said that you started out in culinary school and then you quit. You went to Simmons College for journalism and then you quit.”
“Can you stop saying ‘quit’?”
“That’s what you did.”
“I didn’t
quit
, I changed my mind and then left to find something I was more interested in.”
He purses his lips but decides it’s better not to counter me.
Good boy
. “After Boston it was some university in Miami, but then you—changed your mind. Then Montana—who even goes there that isn’t a bear trapper or searching for gold?”
I nearly choke on my wine. “You do realize the gold rush is over, right?”
James takes the bottle and refills our mugs. “Then after Montana it was New York.”
“Go Yankees,” I say smugly.
He makes a gesture with his hands, like he wants to choke the air. “You know, you have to stop saying that. Sports aren’t a joke in this town.”
For the first time in a few days, I laugh. Really, truly, can’t-help-myself laugh.
James shakes his head. So this is what he’s like when no one is around. He says, “And now you’re here. Why are you here?”
And without hesitating I say, “Family stuff. Not the restaurant. I didn’t even know about The Star until I got here. It’s not like she ever answers her phone when I call. We’ve had an understanding since I left the nest—I have to be with her this time of year no matter what I’ve got going on.”
I let that settle like the dregs of our wine. But I don’t want to talk about me. I don’t want to talk about my father’s death, or that it’s been ten years and somehow it feels like yesterday, even though there’s not a single trace of him in my mother’s perfectly see-through life.
“Now that you know so much about
me,
” I say, “let’s do you.”
“Jeez, at least let me buy you dinner first,” he says coolly.
I slug him in the chest, though it hurts me more than him. “You know exactly what I mean. Where have you been, Chef James Hughes?”
James smacks his lips and laughs and shrugs. “Around.”
“I’m not talking about beds,” I say, smiling. “I’m talking about states and countries. Don’t chefs go a little bit of everywhere to learn all the cuisine and all that crap?”
He moves the barstool closer. His face has a red flush of drunkenness. When he smiles, a real smile with all beautiful teeth, the wrench in my stomach fucks everything up.
“I guess New Hampshire. Good chowder.”
Chow-dah.
It’s the first trace of an accent I’ve heard from him, like he guards it. “I went to Italy with my sous-chef, Nunzio. He’s loud. You’ll meet him soon enough.”
“That’s it?”
“What?” His voice is loud. “Some people
like
where they live. Not everyone wants to run off like a wild thing. Some people like having a place that’s home, that’s familiar.”
“I’m not a wild thing!”
He lifts his mug to his lips and says, “That’s disappointing.”
Heat blooms in my chest and spreads until I’m sure I’m blushing. “Yeah, well… At least I’m not afraid to try new things.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I hold up the print out of the tasting menu. “Emulsified greens? Are you feeding a rabbit farm? It’s like every snooty restaurant menu ever.”
I don’t realize I’ve crossed a line until he slams his mug on the counter. The handle breaks clean in his big hands. The storm in his green eyes goes away as quickly as it started when he looks at the shock on my face. Temper, temper.
He takes the broken handle and the handicapped mug to trash, but first he polishes off the rest of the wine. His phone buzzes. He looks at the screen and a frown wrinkles his forehead. He closes his eyes and ignores it. “Wine’s out. I should go.”
“I should go, too.”
I can feel James’s eyes on me like the beam of a lighthouse. Truth is, I don’t want to go. I’ve only just started seeing who James is. I’ve seen the face he puts on when flirting, the face he puts on at work, but what about the face that’s there after-hours? He’s funny and flirty and there’s a pain that he keeps close to his heart. I can feel it in him because it’s in me, too. For reasons beyond my self-control, I want to know what that is.
“Be right back,” I say. I go and get another bottle of wine. My heart hammers in my chest from the sprint, but it’s ten times worse when I come back and James is gone. Would he really leave without saying goodbye? Then I realize his blazer is still on the table, his cellphone right beside it. The screen lights up and buzzes over and over again.
If that’s not a booty call, I don’t know what is. I set the wine down and edge closer to the screen. I’m not going to touch it. Curiosity is a curse. It makes you think you want to know, until you do know, and then you wish you hadn’t looked.
But with my head pleasantly dulled with wine, I decide I’m going to look. The phone buzzes for the fifth time. A toilet flushes in the emptiness of the restaurant. The name reads: DO NOT ANSWER with five text messages and a missed call. I wonder who this person is that would warrant the phonebook kiss of death. I have a few DO NOT ANSWERs on my contact list.
James’s boots announce him before he enters the kitchen. He fumbles with something in his pocket. The jingle of keys hit the floor. There is no way in hell he’s getting on his bike after downing half a bottle of wine.
“Do you have a death wish?” I dive for the keys before he can get to them.
“Give me my keys,” he says. “I’m fine.”
I throw them in my bag along with the snooty restaurant menu. So much for working on a wine list. Why are guys so stubborn?
He steps closer to me, holding my wrist in his hand, then brushes our palms together, like we’re about to start a drunken waltz. I can feel calluses that line the base of his fingers, working hands, from something other than a knife. I wonder where he got them. I wonder why he smells like the beach when New England beaches are cold and brown.
Snap. Out. Of. It.
“You won’t be fine!”
“Lucky…” He steps away and shakes his head, like he’s trying to get a grip of himself. “I’m sorry. Lets start over. I always mess things up. I just,
do
this all the time.”
“
Oh-kay.
Come on,” I say, letting him drape his arm around my shoulder.
He stubs his foot on a chair and snorts. “I’m glad your mom was right about one thing.”
I push the door that leads to the opposite side of the street. “Oh yeah, what’s that?”
“You’re stronger than you look.”
I bark a laugh, and I wonder why I surround myself with guys who are such lightweights.
“Stand still and act sober,” I tell James when not a single cab will stop for us.
When one does, I have to plead with the cab driver to take us as passengers. In the cab, it takes James three tries to remember where he lives.
Having worked at so many bars and restaurants I know there is nothing as binding as helping someone home after a night of drinking. With the passing streetlights, I find myself wondering why I’m the one who always ends up being the sober one. Or rather, sober in comparison.
My head pulses the way it does from too much drinkity drink drink and not enough water. I hope to god that James doesn’t fall asleep. Moving dead weight is the last thing I want to do.
The thought brings back a memory of my mom. I was in high school and we went to a fundraiser. I can’t remember if it was during husband #2 or #3. They blend together in my mind—short, bald, horrible coarse mustaches that made them look like seals begging for another fish. Stella had too much to drink and my stepdad was too embarrassed so he left without us. The driver wouldn’t touch her, something about wanting to avoid a lawsuit. So it was just me, supporting my mother’s weight. She’s skinny, but skinny doesn’t matter when a drunk person passes out. It’s like trying to pull a wet sack of sand. I cursed her, yelled at her, smacked her face. But she could barely open her eyes and every word that came out was a Cheshire riddle. I got her to the couch and brought out a giant bowl from her wedding china. I sat on the chair next to her and wished I could get as far away as possible. The next day she’d wake up and not remember a thing. I’d go to school, still reigning as the kid with the fucked up mom. Sure, lots of the rich kids I went to school with had drunk parents. It was my mom who liked to do it in front of everyone. Stella, the star of the show, the giant ball of burning gas that wrecked everything around me.
“Hey, lady. Is this it or what?” the angry cab driver yells at me.