She felt all in one amazing moment when their eyes met; she’d understood exactly how he felt and what he wanted from her. She wanted those same things from him. And it was on her now to prove it.
She knew her hold on this was not firm. As soon as the ecstasy was over, he’d seemed wary. And here they were, lying in her bed, and they hadn’t spoken for five whole minutes. Lindsay knew Brad was awake even though his face was turned away from hers. His breath was too erratic for sleep.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Okay.” There was wariness in his tone, like he expected not to like the question.
She sighed and considered how to word what she wanted to ask. “I understand full well that continuing to relive the past doesn’t do any good for us in the present, and that things are different now. But I just want to say this one thing.”
“Uh-huh. Okay.”
“Back in culinary school, I used to have this fantasy of opening a restaurant. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel or anything, but I wanted to serve good food people liked and become one of those neighborhood places with regular customers. I mean, the kind of place that’s like… Well, there’s a bar up the street here and there’s nothing unique about it. They have an above-average beer selection and make a decent hamburger, but the decor is very thrift store, and I always figured the lighting was dim to hide a few sins I don’t want to know about. And, like, this bar has been there for twenty years, and it’s always packed on the weekends. All these trendy bars and restaurants have popped up around it and opened and closed, but this place is a neighborhood staple. That’s what I always wanted to create.”
“That’s a nice dream. It’s what we used to talk about.”
“Yeah. I used to imagine we owned this place together. And we were creative enough to put a few standout dishes on the menu to attract new guests. But I don’t need to do fine dining. A midprice restaurant with reliably good food and, well, a killer dessert menu. That’s what I wanted. And I figured we’d be one of those powerhouse couples. Like, you know, Dean and Stacia?”
Brad was silent for a beat before he said, “Yeah.”
Dean and Stacia Lang had become legends in the last decade for being a restaurant power couple. They’d each won TV chef competitions on their own. They’d owned a restaurant in Manhattan together for ten years and had recently started expanding to other cities. They had a dozen restaurants now. Plenty of people in culinary school had told Lindsay that there was no way two chefs could go into business together and also be together romantically. That was a lot of together time, wasn’t it? Wasn’t a couple like that bound to implode?
Not if they liked each other and had a solid business model.
She said, “Part of me thought we could be them. A solid couple who loved each other and loved the work they did together.”
“I can see that. Again, it’s a nice dream.”
“Did you never see that in our future?”
He rolled and held his head up to look at her. “I mean, back in culinary school, I didn’t think much past graduation. I assumed we’d be together, but I hadn’t given much thought to the future beyond that. Like, sure, sure, the restaurant we talked about back then, I saw that as part of the ten-year plan—well, the twenty-year plan—but it all felt hypothetical and not like a real plan.”
“And what about now?”
“Now, I don’t know. The cat café gig is temporary. I love it, but it’s not what I want to do forever. I mean, I wanted the opportunity to make my own menu, and I got that here, I proved to myself I could do it. Lauren’s letting me have fun for now, but I’m going to need to design a more regular menu. Once I’ve got all the recipes I want in place, there’s no reason the assistants or another pastry chef couldn’t come in and make those pastries. And then… I don’t know.”
“Do you want to open a bakery?”
“Not especially. Somehow, I miss French pastry. I’d been working up to executive pastry chef at a fine dining restaurant. That’s what I really want to do. The kinds of people who come to a bakery want the basics. They want vanilla birthday cakes and chocolate chip cookies, and there’s nothing wrong with those things, but they aren’t really challenging to me in a satisfying way. Figuring out how to make cat treats was actually really fun for me because it was a weird challenge. I like the idea of using unexpected ingredients, doing something a little avant-garde.”
As if he’d been summoned by Brad’s cat-related talk, Fred Astaire ran into the alcove and hopped up on the bed. He settled at Lindsay’s side and started purring, so Lindsay petted him.
“So you want to be innovative,” Lindsay said.
“Yeah. Or at least have discretion over what I make. Like, say I worked at your midprice neighborhood establishment. I’d have to make some dessert staples. Cheesecake, chocolate cake, a brownie sundae, that kind of thing. But I could have a couple of oddball things on the menu, too. And some of them wouldn’t even be that weird, because everyone watches those British baking shows on TV now.”
“Well, like I said, at this imaginary restaurant, we’d have to have a couple of unusual things to attract customers. Like, sure, we’d have to put a burger on the menu.”
“Or those sliders from tonight. Those were good. Did you use a recipe?”
“No. I just decided to make sliders and figured I’d have to do beef, turkey, and veggie and then flavored the meat accordingly. But you’re right. I could do a pork-belly slider and serve it Filipino style with some kind of salty-sweet sauce.”
“Filipino style?”
“Yeah. When I was in San Francisco last year, I ate at this Filipino fast food place that is apparently a California chain, but it was so good I went back twice. The trick is to combine flavors that shouldn’t go together but totally do, like taking something salty like fish sauce and combining it with something sweet like mango.”
“That does actually sound good.”
“Or, like, I want to try to re-create the cream sauce for seafood that the one chef used on the show tonight, because that tasted incredible.”
