He felt anything but hot these days. The colossal failure of his marriage had reinforced his belief that only truly disturbed individuals worked in the restaurant industry. It wasn’t conducive to a happy marriage or a happy life. But that made him think about Alex and her long-standing philosophy that long-term relationships were destined for failure. Until recently, he hadn’t agreed with her. He’d thought he could make the kind of family he’d never had.
He and April had felt like the perfect match. He was an up-and-coming chef, and she was a sommelier with a monthly column in a storied food magazine. Before they’d worked together, they’d met on a podcast, for fuck’s sake. When she’d offered to go over his wine list and “punch it up a bit,” with a sly wink and a hand on his thigh, he’d known that the chemistry between them wasn’t one-sided.
It had seemed to him at the time that they wanted the same things. As their relationship had developed, it had seemed natural and easy. They’d never fought.
Will grunted trying to deadlift 375 pounds, his personal best. Sometimes it was good to struggle. But not right now, when he was struggling to figure out where he’d gone wrong.
Overall, he’d landed on his feet. April got to stay at the old restaurant and keep his ownership share, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with the place he was opening in a month. And his new restaurant was going to be a huge success, according to the people who handled reservations. Before they’d even previewed the food for critics, no one could get a reservation for six months. His publicist had tried to set up a red carpet for the opening night. Apparently, celebrities wanted to eat his food.
And next month, he’d grudgingly agreed to meet with some television producers who wanted him to be a judge on a cooking show. Making food in his kitchen because he was depressed and he didn’t know how to do anything else was one thing. But being on television was a whole other beast. He was grateful that he’d been able to sustain himself through social media during a very dark time in the world, but he didn’t like the kind of notoriety it brought. Being sort of related to Lexi just magnified it.
Will was happy that he got to open a restaurant and that people were paying attention, but he also missed just being a guy who cooked.
Even though he was ambivalent about the kind of fame that television would bring, it would keep his name in the news. In the age of celebrity chefs, that was apparently necessary to be a success. Added to the fact that he wasn’t a creep or a screamer, he was a hot commodity in the world of food.
Although a lot of people would kill for the opportunities that he now had, he hadn’t gotten into the industry to be a celebrity chef. He was an introvert, and he’d always hidden out in the kitchen when his father was throwing parties. There had been less of a chance of walking in on adults doing drugs and/or each other if he’d had his nose firmly stuck in a book.
But one of the chefs catering one of his dad’s parties had spotted Will and put him to work. The few hours he’d spent with the exuberant German chef learning to dice, chop, and julienne had changed him. He hadn’t even minded scrubbing and drying dishes afterward.
After that, he’d started poring over cookbooks and watching cooking shows. His father didn’t notice anything until Will decided to go to culinary school instead of law school after college—even as an eighteen-year-old kid, he knew that skipping undergrad wouldn’t be an option for him. His father had expected him to go into the family shipping business like him. Every time Will had tagged along to work with his dad, they’d stopped at the corner office at the other end of the hall from his dad’s, and his father would say, “You’ll sit there one day.”
Will didn’t think the guy who used to sit there appreciated it very much.
And the last thing that Will wanted to become was his father. Michael Harkness was somehow both a narcissist and spineless at the same time. Will didn’t know how a psychologist would diagnose his father, but it had always seemed to Will that his father was addicted to the feeling of falling in love, but quickly lost interest in the hard work a long-term relationship required of him. Will had thought he could make his relationship with April work because he loved her and was willing to work to keep her happy. But it turned out that nothing Will could do was enough. And it smarted.
Will had always thought that hard work was the cure for everything—in the kitchen and in his love life. But it turned out that luck played a huge role in both. And his luck had taken him in directions that he never could have imagined.
But there was always a piece of him that felt alone. Even in his marriage, he’d felt alone. And when he was playing the role of the hot young chef, he definitely felt alone.
All he wanted to do was feed people, and instead he was playing a part.
* * *
• • •
After working out, he headed to the restaurant and worked all day with his sous chef on finalizing the dinner menu. He wanted to get everything just right so that there would be no question that he was a serious chef rather than a social media flash in the pan.
He tended to get lost in his work, and time passed without him noticing. “Do you think it might be time to call it a night?” Will’s chef de cuisine, Charlee, called from across the kitchen, which was empty except for the two of them. Earlier in the evening, they’d had a bunch of folks they’d both worked with at other restaurants come in to audition for new jobs.
Will had met Charlee when they’d both been baby chefs at a three-Michelin-star restaurant with a notoriously abusive executive chef. Will had been close to telling the guy off and getting fired when he’d locked eyes with Charlee across the prep table. They had rolled their eyes and smirked in the very comforting way they had, and the two had been friends ever since.
Even though Charlee was his rock in the kitchen, they didn’t have their whole career riding on it. If this restaurant failed, Will might not be able to get a job peeling potatoes in a decent kitchen.
So, when Charlee asked if he was ready to quit for the night, Will hesitated. His ragù wasn’t quite perfect. He’d followed all his Italian maternal grandmother’s recipes to the letter when writing the menu, but this one wasn’t as good as he remembered. And he couldn’t stand it.
“Do you think it’s the cinnamon?” Will asked.
Charlee pressed their lips into a thin line when he ignored their question about quitting for the night and kept staring into the collection of spices, hoping one of them would be the key to fixing the dish.
“No, I don’t think it’s fucking cinnamon,” Charlee said. “Go home.”
He didn’t want to go home. It was empty, and he hadn’t gotten his cable or Internet hooked up yet. So the only thing to listen to was his thoughts. And that was just about his least favorite activity these days.
Given too much time with his thoughts, he felt like a total failure. And it didn’t even make sense. Other than his divorce, he had never been more successful. If he complained about how restless he felt, the guys at the gym would laugh him off or tell him that he just needed to get laid.