Page 9 of Chef's Kiss

I refuse to be the girl who’s too stupid to live. Nope, not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent, I say in my head in my best Dana Carvey impersonating a former U.S. presidents voice and almost bust out laughing. I’m not political at all, but I find good impersonations hilarious.

I move to the back office and am glad to see the door is open. “Here ya are,” Chester says, and slides a coffee across the table, but not to me, but to the far corner. Strange.

I lean to get it, noticing out of my peripheral vision he’s trying to look down my top, or hope I rest my breasts on his desk. Strike one, buddy.

This is one of the reasons why I find it so exhausting trying to interact with people. Why can’t people just be normal and not angle for something all the time? Then again this is L.A., the land of make believe and everyone is pretending to be someone they’re not, except…strangely…Christian.

With him everything flowed, and even though there was a counter in-between us yesterday it was clear one hundred percent of his attention was focused on me and me alone. I haven’t felt that, ever, except from dad.

No amount of hair flipping, back arching, kissy lip popping, and all of the other moves Alexa has in her bag of tricks drew his eye once. Not once! And she said she has never been able to capture his attention in three years. But it was almost like he didn’t even see her, and he certainly did very little to even acknowledge her presence. I would say that was rude, but this was different. It was like she was trying to interrupt us. She was the one to blame, not that I have any ill will towards her. Her manners, or lack thereof, was the problem. Not me, even though I did kinda seem like a “problem” for Christian, according to her…making him hot under the collar.

How any male customer could ignore Alexa, I have no idea. And not only ignore her but to talk to me instead.

I mean, I don’t even know how to flirt and can barely hold a conversation. Spending so much time with my dad as his condition worsened, it’s not like I had many conversations, or any at all for that matter, with anyone other than him. Sometimes if he wasn’t feeling well days would go by where I wouldn’t even speak to anyone, or even open my mouth to laugh. I was somewhere between solitary confinement, which I would never make light of, and no meaningful human contact at all for days on end at time.

But now, I’m not so sure what kind of human contact Chester has on his mind at coming up on ten minutes after five in the morning.

“Let me show you something,” he says getting out of his seat and making his way behind me. As he stands quickly from his desk it’s only then I take inventory of the things that are there. Or should I say the one thing that was there when I interviewed and is conspicuously inconspicuous now.

The framed picture of him and his family.

“Look at this stack of applications we had for your position,” he says, sliding open a filing cabinet and pulling out a thick stack of papers before thumbing over the top in one rapid sweep.

But it’s not that fast, and I notice those are invoices, and not applications.

“I knew it would be a very competitive position and I’m extremely grateful to have been selected. Thank you very much,” I say, standing and raising my coffee. “Cheers to our new working relationship.”

I am sincere about my appreciation, even though my gesture of a toast with coffee may seem a bit strange, but apparently not strange enough for him to realize that I’m getting in a position where I can throw it in his face and run out that door if he gets much shadier.

“Cheers,” he says, tapping my Styrofoam cup too hard, and the contents splashing over the top.

I jerk my feet back quickly, but not fast enough. Some hits my shoes and seeps through before I can even think of dabbing them with a towel. This coffee is hotter than the stuff they used to give at the McDonald’s drive through back in the day, from what I’ve read online, and does it ever burn.

“Sorry. My mistake,” he says. “There’s a small bathroom just around the corner outside where you can freshen up.”

“Sorry?” I say, bells going off as I try and buy time as his arm slides in front of the door, blocking it. He widens his stance and drops one hand in front of his crotch as if he’s practiced this before, as if he immediately knew what I was going to think.

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