“Grasshoppers?”
An alarm sounded in my head as Damien, the new owner of Suzette’s, a fine-dining restaurant tucked away in Boston’s cozy North End, dropped a box on my spotless prep table. As head chef, I should have been the one ordering the ingredients for the menu, not Damien.
At least that was the way things had been when Suzette had been alive. Now I was shouldered with dealing with her sleaze of a son who couldn’t leave well enough alone. Suzette’s was one of the hottest restaurants in Boston, thanks to my inventive, themed surprise menus, and Damien had taken his new role as an opportunity to strut his authority around the restaurant. Every night, like cock of the walk, he’d stroll through the dining room and publicly find fault with something, often reducing one of the servers to tears. We’d all been on edge for months now, and I knew that several of the staff were actively looking for other jobs.
It was hard enough to grieve the loss of Suzette, a kind woman who had shared my dream of building a restaurant that was both cozy and innovative, without having to also navigate a new boss who never bothered to learn anything about the service industry. Even worse? I woke up each night, drenched in sweat, panic gripping me that the one goal I’d devoted my entire life to was slipping from my grasp.
“Yeah, it’s all the rage,” Damien said, picking up my custom chef’s knife. The knife had been a gift from Suzette when Boston Magazine had run a feature article labeling me as the hot up-and-coming chef in Boston’s elite culinary scene, and it had been designed to perfectly balance in my palm. I cared for that knife like it was my baby, and seeing Damien’s greasy fingers on it made my lip curl in disgust. The bright side? He likely had no clue how sharp it was, so there was hope he’d maim himself shortly and I’d be left to get on with my menu for the night.
“Damien…be careful…” I trailed off as he slit the tape at the top of the box, narrowly missing the tip of his finger, and I took a deep breath in an effort to control my temper. He needed to get out of my kitchen, now, and take his insects with him.
“I ordered these specially from Brazil. Overnighted them. They’re incredibly expensive, so you’ll need to make them a Chef’s Special. I hear they’re salty, like potato chips,” Damien said, pausing to wipe the back of the hand holding the knife against his perpetually sweaty forehead. My heart skipped a beat as the tip of my knife just missed his eyes, because while I did enjoy a good maiming, even I would turn squeamish if he popped his eyeball out.
What happened next was like when a sports team wins a big championship, and the celebratory cannons explode confetti across the arena—except replace confetti with grasshoppers.
Live grasshoppers.
While typically I have good reflexes—an important trait in any kitchen—my brain quite simply could not process the catastrophe I was witnessing. Hundreds, no, thousands, of grasshoppers pinged around the kitchen, bounced off walls, and landed on any available surface.
“They were supposed to be dried, not alive,” Damien shrieked, waving his hands in the air, and I narrowly dodged the knife he threw when a grasshopper landed in his open mouth. My breath caught as the knife clattered to the floor while Damien gagged on the grasshopper.
“You idiot! You almost killed me.” I was also shrieking at this point, but not from fear. Oh no, the last few weeks of buried rage surfaced, as though someone had dropped a match on spilled gasoline, and now I let the inferno engulf me. Crouching, I snatched my knife off the floor and returned it to its case, before slamming the lid closed on the grasshopper box. Not like there were all that many insects still in the box. It was hard to put a bomb back together after it detonated, wasn’t it?
“Idiot? You can’t talk to me like that. Don’t forget who signs your paychecks, doll,” Damien had the gall to say to me with a grasshopper perched on his head.
“Look at what you’ve done,” I seethed, holding my hands out to protect my face from grasshoppers that bounced around the room like someone had tossed a bucket of superballs into the kitchen. “Everything has gone to shit since Suzette died. You keep coming in here and screwing things up. You’re ruining a good thing, Damien, and I for one, am not interested in sticking around to watch you destroy Suzette’s legacy. You should be ashamed of yourself. Your poor mother would be devastated at what you’re turning her dream into.”
“My mother didn’t know what was cool. This place is old and boring. At least I’m here to make it fresh.” Damien smashed his hand onto the prep table, squashing a few grasshoppers, as I gaped at him in surprise.
“This? This is your idea of fresh?” I swept my arms out and ducked as several grasshoppers flew past. Technically speaking, he wasn’t wrong. When the food was still moving, it was about as fresh as it could be. “It’s stupid is what it is. And I’m not sticking around to clean up your mess.”
I made to move past him, taking my knife with me, and he shouldered his way into the hallway to block me.
“If you leave, you’re fired, Lia.”
“That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?” I needed to get out of this insectarium immediately. There weren’t enough showers I could take to rid me of the creepy-crawly feeling of grasshoppers in my hair. My pulse kicked up when Damien leaned close, his breath heavy with stale cigar.
“You think you can make a name for yourself without me? I’ll blackball you in this town faster than you turn men off with your ginger hair and bad attitude.”
“Excuse me?” I couldn’t think straight, not between the rage that twisted my gut into knots and the sizeable number of insects that were currently doing their best to vacate the kitchen through any means possible.
“Screw it. I never liked this restaurant anyway.” Damien crossed his arms over his chest and huffed out a breath. “I think I’ll make it a club. Lots of young, hot women in here dancing each night. Yeah, it’s gonna be slick as hell.”
I gaped at him, honestly at a loss for words, as I thought about the beautiful restaurant that I’d devoted years of my life to.
“I hate you. You’re gross, and it makes me sick what you’re doing to this place,” I said, not caring if I burned any bridges. I didn’t want to work with someone like Damien anyway. He was as dishonorable as the day was long, and I’d rather start my own gig than take orders from a sleaze like him.
“Maybe, but I don’t care what you think, doll.” Damien winked at me. My lip curled in disgust. Being called “doll” was a pet peeve of mine. “Gingers aren’t my type anyway. I like them rail-thin with the big titties.”
He was slime. Repulsive slime, and I…I had to go. Right now. Before I did something stupid like burn the restaurant down so I didn’t have to watch him ruin it. At this point, that might be the best option anyway what with the grasshoppers taking up residence.
“Eat shit, Damien. I quit.” I went to move past him, and Damien put his arms out, stopping me in my tracks.
“It’s Saturday night. We’ve got a packed house.” Damien didn’t budge.
“Get out of my way,” I said, stepping forward. “If you think that I’ll stay and clean this up, you’re out of your damn mind.”
“You will stay. And you will cook. Because that’s your job.” As soon as Damien put his hands on my shoulders and shoved me backward, I did what I’d been dying to do for years now. I brought my knee up solidly between his legs just like my brothers had taught me. With a pained grunt, Damien crumpled to the floor, a soft keening noise coming from his lips, like a balloon letting out air.
“Big tree falls hard,” I mumbled.
“Lia! What’s going on?” Savannah, the head bartender, came upstairs with a case of beer in her arms, which she immediately dropped upon seeing the grasshoppers. The smash of glass was beyond satisfying as I stepped neatly over Damien.
“Damien’s turning the place into a club. Oh, and he wants to feed people grasshoppers.” Other servers were walking in the door for their shift, and at my words, they scattered back outside. “I’m leaving.”
“I’m with you. I knew this place would go to hell with him in charge,” Savannah said, reaching behind the bar to grab her purse. As one, the waitstaff and I pivoted and left Damien, curled on the floor and covered in grasshoppers, screaming after us.
“Screw that guy. Want to go get drunk?” Savannah asked, looking around North End. “I think this is the first Saturday night I’ve had free in ages.”
“Yes, yes, I do.” I mean, I didn’t, not really. I wanted to go home and shower for weeks on end. But I’d just quit the single most important thing that I’d done in my life, and alcohol was needed.
Savannah hooked my arm, pulling me down the street, and before I knew it, we were ensconced in a proper Boston dive bar, yelling at the Sox on the brightly lit screens, and eating delicious fried food. By the time I staggered into my building, I was well and truly numbed from the shock of quitting my job.
There, I plopped down onto my tiny loveseat in my tiny utilitarian apartment and looked around at my bare walls. There was no cat to greet me, no houseplant to water, only a pile of unfolded laundry on the small breakfast bar. My life, quite literally, had been at the restaurant. Suzette’s. My home. My baby. My everything. But it had never really been mine, had it? I’d been running my whole life, away from the little girl who wore hand-me-downs, and now fear lodged low in my stomach as the debt I’d accrued from attending culinary school loomed in my mind.
My phone pinged with a text message.
Carlo: What’s up with the picture of you and Savannah at the bar tonight and her saying you guys quit?
I rolled my eyes at the text from my brother Carlo. He was the most protective of my brothers and knew how seriously I took my job.
Me: I wish she wouldn’t have posted that until I was ready to share. But yes, I quit. Or Damien let me go. Either way, I’m done. He wants to feed people grasshoppers and turn the restaurant into a club.
Carlo: Grasshoppers? What the hell? I hate him. I’ve always hated him. Stupid move on his part. Might as well sell the restaurant. He’ll make more money than trying to run it himself.
Me: He’s ruined everything.
Carlo: Come home. Ma will cook Sunday dinner for you. You haven’t been home in months.
Me: I need to sleep. And take a moment to process this. Will call you tomorrow.
Carlo: You’d better be at dinner or I’m telling Ma you got fired.
Me: Dick move.
Carlo: Love you. See you tomorrow.
I sent him a photo of me flipping him off and then sighed and dropped back onto the cushions. I loved my family, loud and overbearing though they were. With four brothers, an Italian mother, and a Scottish father, my childhood had been chaotic, even on a good day. And there had been more good days than bad, even though we’d been dirt poor, and my parents had barely been able to make ends meet. However, what I’d lacked for in material goods had been more than made up for in love. We were a tightly connected bunch, sometimes too tightly, judging from my brother’s midnight text message.
I couldn’t move back home.
Leaving my small town to live in Boston had been an opportunity to make something of myself. Suzette had taken a chance on me, a naive and tender-hearted girl fresh from high school, and she’d been pivotal in providing me with an environment in which to flourish. I never, ever, asked anyone for help, and I’d been determined to prove myself to Suzette. Through several long years of culinary school, and late nights at the restaurant, I’d worked my way up from dishwasher to head chef at Suzette’s. When the article in Boston Magazine had come out, my mother had spent almost her entire paycheck on buying multiple copies to give to everyone she knew. I’d had every intention of framing that article myself. My blank walls now mocked me.
Blinking down at my phone, I noticed my voicemail indicator. I hadn’t heard the ring in the loud bar, and now I stared at the UK number with a shiver of anticipation. That was odd. Punching in my code, I pulled up my voicemail.
“Hi, Lia, my name is Sophie, and I’m calling from MacAlpine Castle in Scotland. We’ve heard talk of your legendary prowess in the kitchen and are hoping to lure you to Scotland to work for us in our restaurant. What do you say? Fancy a chef’s job in an honest-to-goodness castle? You’ll have free rein with the menu, of course. Please let us know. It’s quite urgent, but we’ll move on to the next name on our list if you’re not interested. You’re our top choice, naturally.” She rattled off her contact information. Surprise had me dropping my phone, and I stood up to pace my small living room. Seven steps forward. Seven steps back.
Scotland.
The thought alone made me smile. Oh, what incredible timing. It wasn’t that unusual for other restaurants to try and pry me away from Suzette’s, but I’d never had an offer from someplace as far away as Scotland. Maybe…well, just maybe. Nerves skittered through my stomach. Glancing around at my empty apartment once more, I took a deep breath and picked up my phone.
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