Play Me (22 page)

I didn’t have
much time to think about how to fix my relationship—the first
time that word didn’t give me hives—with Ella, because we
had a busy night. Apparently Matt Metcalf’s review had made
people so curious about how terrible the food was, that we had quite
a few people looking to “hate-eat” our unoriginal fare.

But even though the
restaurant was busy, the owner was not pleased. I got pulled aside at
the end of the longest evening of my life to get my ass handed to me.

“We have a
reputation to uphold.” Marilyn, the owner was a wealthy, old
school restaurateur. She specialized in finding new talent and
fostering them. But she had never really warmed to me. She seemed to
prefer finding chefs doing their own thing, rather than promoting
within. Trying to get her to take me seriously had always been an
uphill battle. It probably didn’t help that I had been a real
pain in the ass when I was first hired. But I had changed a lot since
then. I had changed a lot in just the past few weeks, in fact—though
it wasn’t evident in the work I did in the kitchen. I just
needed a chance.

Marilyn stood in front
of me, her blonde hair neatly pinned back, her lips pressed tightly
together. “Jake, I’m sure you know that I was very
reluctant to promote you, and with the review from yesterday, I am
wondering if my instincts weren’t correct. But Patricia
promised us that despite your age and inexperience, you would be able
to take on her responsibilities.”

Of course I knew that,
I literally heard it every time something went wrong.

“I understand,”
I responded, wanting nothing more than to go home and pass out for
several days. Unfortunately, I had to come back tomorrow and the next
day and the next day and continue to cook Patricia’s
recipes—which were great, but they weren’t mine.

Then I remembered what
Dakota and I had talked about last night before my argument with Ella
had eclipsed everything else.

“Marilyn.”
I stopped her just as she was about to leave. I hadn’t planned
on making this pitch before I had a menu to suggest, but I couldn’t
just let Matt Metcalf’s review stand. “I know you are
very proud to continue Patricia’s style of cooking, but have
you considered that people might want something different now that
there’s a different chef in the kitchen? I mean, that’s
what the problem was in the review, right? Repeating something that’s
already been done.”

“What are you
suggesting?” Marilyn crossed her arms.

“Let me try my
own menu,” I suggested. A look of doubt crossed her face. “One
week,” I quickly amended. “We’ll do a brand new
menu for a week—something different and fresh, but still living
up to the Grassfed name. Allow me to make a statement as head
chef—one that’s my own, rather than imitating my
predecessor.”

“One week?”
I could see the wheels turning in her head.

“We’ll find
some fun name for it, something that takes the negative review and
makes it seem like we’re not bothered by it. Like, A Meal at
the Court of Public Opinion.”

Marilyn smiled. “I
like that,” she said, and I gave myself a mental high five.
“Okay,” she agreed after a moment of thought. “One
week. We’ll do some stuff on social media—nothing too
big, more word of mouth, like it’s almost a secret VIP event.
But I want to see your menu suggestions first. End of week.”

“You got it,”
I told her, my brain recharging, adrenaline pumping. There was no way
I was getting any sleep tonight. Finally I was going to get my chance
to show this city what I could do.

Jake

As it turned out,
putting together a menu comprised of completely original recipes was
a lot harder than I had imagined. I had to go back, way back, to some
of my old culinary school recipes just to have a place to start from.
And it didn’t help that every time I started experimenting with
them in my kitchen, I inevitably thought about Ella and the brownie
batter. How it had tasted on her skin, and the thin material of her
bra against my tongue, and the feel of her mouth around my cock.
Then, of course, there was the occasional sound of Ella’s piano
floating up through my floorboards, reminding me of our time on the
piano bench. Her body pressed against mine, her hips rolling as I
stroked her clit, her moan as she came in my arms. Fuck. Everything
in my apartment was giving me a melancholy hard on. It made for a
very horny, very frustrating test kitchen set up.

Eventually I gave up
and went over to Dakota’s smaller, but less distracting
kitchen. I just needed to be away from my apartment and all those
memories. It also reminded me that I still had no idea how to win
Ella back. She had been practicing non-stop all week, the same piece
of music. But instead of irritating me, like it had that first
morning, I found myself listening and longing for her. Occasionally,
I even lost myself in the music, captivated by her playing and
hearing a little bit of her in each note. Somehow she had turned me
into a classical music fan. Or just her fan.

I was thinking about
her and the music when Dakota snapped her fingers in front of my
face.

“Dude.” She
pointed at the stove where my sauce was boiling over. “Get it
together,” she ordered.

I rushed over, but the
sauce was ruined. Not like I had high hopes for it anyways.
Everything I made seemed to be wrong and I couldn’t figure out
what I was missing. Not to mention, I couldn’t help thinking
there was something important I was forgetting. Not with my cooking,
though, but with life. Some sort of event I had forgotten, like a
birthday.

“Fuck.” I
threw the saucepan into the sink, frustrated with my cooking and
frustrated with myself. Bad enough that I couldn’t concentrate
because I was thinking about Ella, I had to go and convince
Grassfed’s owner to give me that chance I had been waiting for
ever since I became head chef. Perfect timing.

“You’re a
mess,” Dakota stated the obvious.

“Yeah, thanks.”
I glared at her. “Your support is always appreciated.”

She shrugged. “I
am
being supportive. You think I just let anyone come over and
destroy my kitchen? My ass is on the line too, you know.”

I hung my head. “I
know. I’m sorry.”

“You’ve
just lost your mojo.” Dakota clapped me on the back. “So
you just have to find it again.”

“Just like that,”
I responded wryly.

“Just like that.”
Dakota smiled at me encouragingly. “Look, you’re too much
in your head.” She flipped through my pages of potential
recipes. “You need to get back to the basics.”

“You’re
right.” I began cleaning the saucepan. “Hey, is today
your birthday?” I asked Dakota even though I was 99% sure it
wasn’t.

She gave me a strange
look. “Uh, no,” she informed me. “You forgot when
my birthday was?”

“No, it’s
just—” I couldn’t shake that feeling that I was
forgetting something important. “I just feel like today means
something, but I can’t figure out what.”

“Well.”
Dakota scrunched up her face, thinking. “It’s not your
mom’s birthday, or the anniversary.”

“No,” I
would never forget that.

“Not your dad’s
birthday, or a grandmother’s?”

“Nope.” I
rubbed the back of my neck. “Maybe it’s not a birthday
I’m thinking of.”

“I’m sure
it will come to you.” Dakota had returned her attention to the
recipes. “Okay, what about this?” She waved one of them
at me.

I grabbed at it and
shook my head. “Nope, that’s one of Patricia’s old
recipes.”

“Really?”

“Yep,” I
crumbled it up. “One of her failed ones that I thought I could
improve on. I couldn’t.”

I leaned forward and
put my forehead on the counter. “Work brain, work,” I
ordered.

“There, there.”
Dakota gave me a not-very-reassuring pat on the head.

“Every idea I
have has already been done before,” I mumbled into the tiles.

“Yeah, but so
what? You don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” Dakota was
still flipping through the recipes. “Just make it taste good.”

My mom would have known
what to do. When I was really young, I had been the world’s
pickiest eater, my tastes changing daily. I didn’t know what I
wanted, just what I didn’t want, and somehow she had always
found something to make for me. Something that I always loved. That’s
what made her a good chef—she could just look at someone and
know exactly what they needed. Or if she couldn’t figure it
out, she knew how to ask the right questions to figure it out. God, I
missed her.

Sometimes I wondered
what it would have been like for me and my dad if my mom was still
around. She had been the glue, I suppose, the thing that kept us
together, and once she was gone, we just didn’t know what to do
with each other. I wanted to hold on to her memory, to keep her alive
in some way. He just wanted to forget, to move on. Even years later,
when I started cooking like she had, he didn’t want any part of
it. After a while, I just stopped trying. Those occasional phone
calls between us were the only thing that connected us now. Even
though we lived in the same city, I felt like there was an entire
world between us. A world I hadn’t even been able to conquer
with food.

But still, even if my
father didn’t believe it, I knew that food had a special
ability to help people. I mean, it had helped Ella, hadn’t it?
Okay, sure, my first real attempt to feed her hadn’t really
resulted in the reaction I had been looking for, but it had opened
the door, at least.

“Let me see
those,” I requested, taking the recipes from Dakota. Surely
there had to be something in here. Something that would make someone
like Ella, someone like my dad, happy. At least for the length of a
meal.

Then I found it: stuck
to the back of one of my older recipes was something written out in
my mom’s handwriting. Her chicken noodle soup. So simple, so
basic. And yet, when I was a kid, there was nothing I loved more. It
was amazing how something like chicken noodle soup could bring you
comfort when you were—

Fuck.

The importance of today
suddenly dawn on me. I grabbed my coat.

“Dakota, I gotta
go,” I told her, pocketing my mom’s recipe.

“What?” She
pointed at the mess I had made in her kitchen. “Seriously?
You’re leaving this here?”

“I’ll come
back and clean it up,” I promised. “But I just figured
out my menu. And how to win Ella back.”

Dakota’s eyes lit
up. “In that case, what are you waiting for?” She gave me
a hug and practically shoved me out the door. “Go get her!”

Ella

I was going to throw
up. Or pass out. Or throw up and then pass out. Either way, I really,
really didn’t want to be here right now. The room seemed to
wobble and I swayed on my feet.

“Whoa, there.”
Nina grabbed my arm. “Are you okay?”

I had asked her to come
with me to the last round of the competition because I didn’t
want to face it alone. Or rather, I didn’t want to face it
alone with Mark. My instructor—soon to be former instructor, no
matter what happened today—was standing off to the side,
ignoring me and looking at his phone. Not that I had expected a pep
talk. Even when we were on better terms, even when we had been
dating, he hadn’t been one for the encouraging words. “Do
what I taught you” was about as far as he went in that
department.

But that wouldn’t
cut it today. This was the last round—the final chance to show
the judges that I deserved to win this competition. Unlike the rest
of the performances, this time I wasn’t alone. I was playing
Rachmaninov’s third piano concerto with an entire symphony
behind me. And a full audience.

I wanted to win. I
wanted to win so badly, but any confidence I had found over the last
few weeks was gone. It had left me just as I had allowed Jake to
leave.

“You look
terrible, El.” Nina guided me to a chair. “Put your head
between your knees.”

I did as she said, even
though I knew it wouldn’t do much. I was careful not to snag my
nails on the millions of tiny, sparkling beads sewn into my concert
dress. It was black, of course, but it was the most beautiful black
dress I had ever worn. It molded to my body like a second skin,
scooping low in the back, exposing my shoulder blades. My hair was
pinned up in an intricate bun, a silver comb tucked into the back,
complete with its own crystals. My black heels were higher than my
usual ones, elongating my legs, and I had worn my sheerest stockings,
the ones with a dark seam up the back. The entire outfit glittered
gorgeously under the lights, and even if I didn’t feel like a
performer, I sure as hell looked like one.

“You’re
going to be fine.” Nina knelt beside me, gently rubbing between
my shoulder blades. “You’re going to be great,” she
amended.

But I didn’t want
to be fine. I didn’t even want to be great. I wanted to win.
But this competition had taken a toll on me, and even if I won, I was
starting to realize that performing wasn’t really where my
heart was. I was starting to think I was better off focusing on
something that I liked to do. Like teaching. Teaching kids like
Jeremiah. It was the only time I was at my piano with someone else
watching when I didn’t feel like I was going to die. Okay,
there was that time with Jake, too, I thought, remembering the feel
of his hands in my hair, the way he combed through it with his
fingers. Even now, it gave me chills up and down my spine.

But then the reminder
of what I had done, how I had ruined that particular arrangement,
banished any good memories and replaced them with a whole new level
of panic and disappointment. I was such a moron for suggesting that
we break up. I didn’t want to break up with Jake. I wanted to
be with him. I wanted him in my life. On a more permanent basis.
I . . . I loved him.