Page 141 of The One I Hate
Actually, the entire cooler is nearly empty.
What the fuck?
“Where is all the food?” I yell as I march out of the cooler. “We’re out of eggs. Half the produce. I think we have one case of chicken left. What the hell is going on?”
No one in the kitchen makes eye contact with me. Not one of my cooks. Not the servers. Everyone right now seems to be very concerned with their shoes.
“You didn’t do the order.”
The voice comes from Mellie, who is the only one daring to make eye contact with me right now.
“I didn’t forget to do the order.”
“You did,” she says gently. “Normally you do it on Tuesday. Tuesday you…”
She doesn’t finish that sentence, which is smart for her.
“Everyone back to work,” Mellie announces, which everyone follows. She might be a ray of sunshine, but in the kitchen, everyone knows she means business. “You. Follow me.”
I don’t have a chance to protest as my best friend grabs me by the hand and pulls me toward the office before slamming the door.
“Sit.”
“I’m sorry I forgot to do the order,” I say as she leans back on my chair. “Pregnancy brain.”
She shakes her head. “This isn’t about the eggs or the food. Or your pregnancy brain. Which I know is a real thing, and if it were just you being a little spacy, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But you yelling at everyone? Acting like an asshole boss? That’s why you’re here.”
I brush her off. “I’m not acting like an asshole.”
“You know what look I just saw out there? The one we used to have when Mr. Napoli would come in and scream at everyone for shit he did. Or when Billy got on his high horse and decided he was going to make everyone feel dumb. You remember how we felt when that happened, right?”
I do. It was days like that that made me want to quit. To open a restaurant where no employees ever felt like that.
Fuck…
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll go apologize.”
“Not yet you aren’t.” Mellie pulls over the other chair and sits in front of me. “Because this wasn’t just today or the food order. You were like this yesterday and the day before too. So spill. Because they aren’t normal mood swings. This is just you acting like a b-i-t-c-h.”
I audibly gasp. “You just called me a bitch.”
“I know. And I don’t like it. So start talking.”
I knew I was on edge for the last two days, since I left Simon’s, but I didn’t realize I’d gone so far as to make Mellie use, or spell, curse words.
“Simon and I had a fight,” I begin.
“I figured as much when I saw you were sleeping at the apartment.”
“You knew? I thought I’d done a good job of hiding it.”
The look she’s giving me says otherwise. “I get here at four in the morning every day. You don’t think I’ve noticed your car is here? Or that Simon hasn’t been in here in two days, which is very strange. Add in your outbursts, bigger than normal preggo brain, and the bloodshot eyes, and it didn’t take the cast ofLaw and Orderto figure it out.”
Well, when she puts it like that…
“It was bad Mellie. So bad.”
She leans forward and puts a gentle hand on my knee. “Do you want to talk about it?”
