Page 71 of Roses in Summer

“Eighty-six the carrots on table twelve’s order, Chef. There’s an allergy in the group.”

“It’s a fucking carrot gnocchi in a carrot cream sauce. How am I supposed to eighty-six the carrots?” I mumble under my breath, dropping my knives as annoyance settles over me. “They couldn’t have ordered something else? Like a dish without carrots?”

James, the sous-chef, grunts his response. “Pivot, Chef. They wanted gnocchi, and you’re going to give them gnocchi, so figure it out.” While the chef de cuisine runs the kitchen, the sous-chef is responsible for directing the rest of the brigade regarding what’s needed for each order. Most nights, there are few hiccups and very few disruptions to the Michelin-star restaurant’s menu. But tonight, when some idiot orders a dish they are allergic to, the process we have gets thrown into chaos.

I love chaos, but I also have my limits.

Part of me wants to flip James off, but I know that if I give in to the urge, he’ll have something to say at the end of service, and I don’t want to deal with it. Grumbling to myself, I leave my station and walk to the fridge, grabbing the ball of dough we seem to always have on hand. While both myself and the other chefs in my brigade team are responsible for side dishes, soups, and the rare egg dish Franki includes as a special, I don’t typically have to make pasta unless it’s vegetable-centric.

In the carrot gnocchi dish we developed as a special, carrots meld with the potatoes in the pasta dough, and the sauce is a walnut butter with sage, carrot broth, and fresh pecorino Romano. The dish is warm and probably better suited for the fall, but we couldn’t resist when the summer carrots came in from our supplier earlier in the week.

Now, every component has to be replaced because the person at table twelve is allergic to the entire dish but ordered it anyway.

“Fucking asshole,” I whisper under my breath, cutting into the dough with more force than necessary. Reaching in front of me, I grab a handful of flour and throw it on my cutting board before transferring a piece of pasta dough to the center. With jerky movements, I start to roll and stretch out the dough until it’s a thick rope. With my knife, I cut three-quarter-inch rectangles and push them to the side while I figure out what sauce to pair with the pasta.

“What did that pasta ever do to you, Chef?” Diana calls from beside me.

“Who orders a dish they’re allergic to?” I counter, turning around to turn on the stove behind me and heat up a stainless steel pan. “They’re getting a brown butter sage sauce, and if they’re mad by the simplicity, they can fuck off.”

“Like anyone’s going to complain about that. And calm yourself; it’s not the end of the world.”

“It’s annoying,” I complain, sounding whiny to my own ears.

“Go take a break. You bitching about pasta is going to fuck with my good mood, and if I cook while annoyed, I’m going to put out shit food, and this night will end badly. For you.” Diana drops her knife mid-cut, leaving half a potato slice whole while the other half is in perfectly uniform cubes. “What, did Gemma give you shit again? I told you that you can’t bring that into the kitchen. Fix your attitude and then come back because I’m not dealing with this all night.”

“Di—”

“No, go,” she cuts me off, pointing toward the kitchen’s left side, where a door leads to the employee locker room and break area. “Come back in twenty minutes once you cool down. I‘ll handle the orders until you get back.”

Letting out a heavy exhale, I deflate, feeling like a piece of shit for putting Diana in this position. “I’ll be back in ten.”

“Would you just go? I need to work.” Diana doesn’t spare me another look; picking up her knife, she resumes the even cutting of the potato wedge, perfect knife cuts slicing easily through the spud.

I nod at her, though if she can see my response from her peripheral, she doesn’t acknowledge it. Unbuttoning my chef coat, I hang it on a hook next to my station and leave the kitchen, reaching into my pocket for my phone as I do. I’ve never been a smoker, never much cared for the feeling of smoke in my lungs or the taste of nicotine on my tongue, but moments like this, where I need to chill the fuck out, I wish I took to the habit.

Before my shift, I turned my phone off. I told myself it was to avoid distractions, as though my phone is frequently in the habit of blowing up. But that’s not the only reason, or at least not the main reason. No, the reason I turned my phone off was because I didn’t trust myself not to check it every ten minutes to see if a little thorn bothered to reach out.

When I left her on her parents’ driveway last week, with a parting promise to answer when I reached out, I didn’t anticipate how all-consuming her sporadic texts would be. As she promised, she’s responded to every text, not leaving me on read or deleting the message before she views it. But I’d be lying if I said that it felt like enough. And how fucked up is that? After years of silence, of other partners and figuring out our own shit, two weeks after seeing her for the first time, I’m like an addict.

It’s easy to tell myself that my obsession is healthy, nothing more than an interest in a beautiful girl who cemented her importance in my life when we were barely adults. But that’s bullshit. There’s nothing healthy about how I feel about Seraphina. It’s all-consuming and a distraction I didn’t anticipate.

Maybe if I could see her in person and talk to her without having to decipher her words through a goddamn text, I wouldn’t feel so unhinged. I haven’t pushed her to get together, too afraid that if I tried, she’d bolt, and that’s a risk that I don’t want to take. Besides, our schedules are both too erratic at this point. From the little that we’ve spoken, she’s told me that she had to start at the library right away rather than at the start of the semester, and she’s been there every day, training and learning the system the staff uses.

I wanted to call her, but I didn’t. I wanted to see her, but I haven’t.

Pushing the back door open, I lean against the brick wall, blending in with the discarded orange crates thrown haphazardly around. Bringing my phone to my face, I turn the device on and unlock my screen, looking through the spam notifications. I clench my jaw at the sight of Gemma’s name on my phone. If thoughts of Seraphina have set me on edge, the reality of Gemma makes me fucking crazy.

For the most part, she cleared her shit out of our shared apartment, taking everything except a few pairs of shoes and, weirdly enough, all her lingerie. When I opened the top drawer of my dresser after returning home from my shift last Saturday, I was confused. Of all things to leave behind, why that?

I got the answer to my question the following day when Gemma started texting me nonstop, asking when she could come over to pick up her panties and the forgotten shoes. I told her I’d USPS them to her, and that didn’t go well. For some reason, Gem thought the postal worker would innately know that the box contained her underwear, and he’d be forced to open the package and inspect them. Did she think the poor guy would be inclined to sniff them? I don’t fucking know, but what I do know is that her leaving shit in the apartment was a very obvious ploy to come back, for whatever reason.

Stealing myself for the bullshit I know I’m about to read, I click on her name and start to read through the messages that seem to have come in over the last hour.

Gemma: Lincoln, I need my panties. Are you holding them hostage?

Gemma: I’m joking, of course.

Gemma: When can I come over?

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