Skinny Bitch in Love (2 page)

I looked around the kitchen as though I’d suddenly spot a tub of Land O’Lakes. My gaze stopped on Rain Welch. Her long, dark hair was in a bun secured with two chopsticks, and she was stirring a pot of fusilli. Calmly. As though the ceiling hadn’t just caved in.

Because it hadn’t caved in on her. Just me.

Had my dear frenemy slipped a pat of butter in the sauce when I had been racing around the kitchen like a madwoman? Come on. No way. Even I wouldn’t believe that. Anyone who worked at Fresh cared about the place, worshipped Emil. And Rain was madly in love with him; everyone knew that. A couple of months ago, I’d caught them in the secret room inside
the pantry, Rain bent over the steel safe, Emil standing behind her. I’d assumed the reason I hadn’t caught them since was because they were being more careful, but maybe Rain had cut him off when he promoted me over her to sous chef last month.

Maybe she hated both of us enough to ruin Fresh.

With gray eyes colder than the stainless steel counters, Rain glanced over at me with the almost-smile of the victorious.

Holy shit. “Rain, if you—” I started to say, but my cell phone interrupted me.

Emil.

“YOU ARE FIRED,” Emil screamed into my ear. “Get out of my restaurant. Now.”

Just like that, I was standing outside Fresh at the tail end of the dinner rush, unable to move or think, until three blondes in the same L.A. weekend uniform of tiny skirt and four-inch heels said “Excuse us” and made me realize I was standing in the middle of the sidewalk. My hands were shaking. My hands never shook.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ty said from behind me.

I turned around to find Ty shoving his apron in his messenger bag. “You’ve got two more hours to go,” I said.

“Like I’d work for that ass?” he said, taking my hand. “I called Emil to make sure he knew you’d been set up. Gave him the ‘If she goes, I go.’ ”

“He told you to go?” Ty was one of the top pastry chefs in L.A. Everyone wanted him.

“Actually he offered me a raise to stay.”

“Ty—”

He held up his hand. “We’ll both have new spots tomorrow. No one fires my best friend.”

Did I mention Ty was great? He was also drop-dead hot. Six one and lanky, sweetly gorgeous, with a shock of jet-black hair and eyes so green that people often stopped in their tracks to stare at him. No one got “Are you a model?” more than Ty.

We wound our way down to the Third Street Promenade, even more crowded than usual for a Friday night in June. At our favorite juice truck, Ty got us frozen pomegranate smoothies, then we walked through the crowd.

“I can believe Rain would screw you like that,” Ty said. “But she screwed Emil worse. I thought she was crazy in love with the guy.”

“She hated my guts for getting promoted over her. And she must hate Emil’s guts for all that wasted sex.” I sipped my smoothie. “Now I’m the one who’s screwed.”

“Hey.” Ty slung an arm around me. “It’ll blow over. Emil will call you tomorrow morning when he’s calmed down, and he’ll tell you you’re not fired, that he knows ‘someone’ wanted to screw you
both
over. We’ll be back at work and it’ll be Rain who’s gone.”

“Nice try, but I’ll never work in this town again.”

He stopped and tipped up my chin. “Yes, you will. The
whole thing is stupid and conniving; anyone will know someone sabotaged you.”

“Who wants to hire a chef that people want to sabotage?”

“All chefs are both revered and despised. And anyway, Clem, you’re one of the best vegan chefs in L.A. Seriously. You’ve proven yourself at three of the hottest restaurants. If Emil doesn’t hire you back, you’ll get a job anywhere you want. Don’t worry.”

I was a lot of things, but naïve wasn’t one of them. Within twenty minutes, Ty would be named pastry chef at another top restaurant, but I wasn’t kidding about my not being able to “work in this town again.” A vegan chef who cheated to make the food more irresistible to a non-vegan critic? Through. Done. Over.

Ty spent the next half hour not answering the ten or so calls he got—clearly executive chefs who’d already heard he’d quit Fresh—and coming up with all the delicious ways that karma would take care of Rain Welch and assuring me no one would
really
believe I used butter in the ravioli. But then he had to leave. The only call he’d answered had been from his boyfriend, Seamus, who said that Pippa, their enormously pregnant Siamese cat, was about to have her kittens and could we postpone my party till tomorrow. Yeah. No problem.

Instead of going home to my own hot boyfriend who’d dumped me six months ago when he “accidentally” fell in love with a barista/model (such a cliché I’d almost laughed, but hadn’t because my heart felt like it was being stabbed by a thousand sharp stilettos), I called Sara, roommate and best
friend, told her today’s whole shitty story, and headed to our apartment.

Of course, because it was a Friday night, Third Street Promenade was full of couples holding hands. Kissing. Laughing. Happy people with jobs.

As I walked up toward Montana Avenue, I felt like all those happy people with jobs were staring at me. The dumped, fired cheat who put real butter in the ravioli at Fresh for O. Ellery Rice.

I was about to call Faye, my sous chef for two seconds, and ask what was going on, who’d taken over the kitchen, and what everyone was saying, but a text came in from Claudia, vegetable chef, who was usually hilarious.

Little container containing remnants of real butter found under asparagus in the pail at your station. WTF?

I texted back one word. Well, one name.
Rain
. And waited.

Oh.
And then a minute later.
Shit
.

Oh shit was right. Because the next ten minutes were a flurry of texts.

From Faye:
Rain swears up and down she didn’t do it, that yeah, she was pissed she wasn’t promoted, but she’d never . . . Not sure what to think, Clem.

Not sure what to think?
What?

From Jane:
OMG—Emil just fired the whole staff except the waiters, not including James, of course, dishwashers, and bus-people.

Oh shit. Shit, shit,
shit!

Then this gem, from the new guy on vegetables.
Fuck you, Clementine
.

From the juice bar:
Thanks a lot, C.

And then, from Rain herself:
Bitch
.

Did these people I’d worked with for more than a year think I’d really use butter in a recipe? Me? The one raised on the organic farm by the vegan hippie parents?

As I finally slogged onto 15th Street, the sight of the empty storefront on the corner made me stop, as it always did. I didn’t exactly forget about Fresh, about pats of butter, about being hated by everyone I worked with—
used
to work with. But the storefront
was
beautiful. The curved red oak door looked like it was from an enchanted cottage; the arched window caught the sun in the mornings and the moonlight at night, illuminating the glass brick and stained glass back wall. This was the place, my dream space. Where I would open Clementine’s Café. (I was still deciding about adding “No Crap” between “Clementine’s” and “Café.”) Ten or so tables, a combination of round and square, polished wood. I’d repaint the pale yellow a Mediterranean blue and whitewash the floor. Add an amazing juice bar. I’d be chef, of course, and hire a small but brilliant team.

Clementine’s No Crap Café.

Of course, if I opened it now, half the people I know would come and spray paint out the “No” and add in “Full of.”

Chapter 2

Because I was still in bed at eleven the next morning, Sara barged in, opened the curtains, and flooded the tiny space (it wasn’t a real bedroom) with sunshine. She whipped the covers off me and told me to shove over and sit up against the wall. She then placed a tray on my lap and sat down next to me. Green tea. Blueberries. Whole grain toast with crunchy natural peanut butter.

Incredibly thoughtful. Especially because Sara was a greasy-fried-eggs-and-bacon-and-coffee-with-four-fake-sugars type chick. She’d made me my kind of breakfast.

“Thanks, Sara. But I can’t eat.”

She twisted her wildly curly auburn hair into a bun and stuck a pencil in to secure it. “You have to eat because you need your energy. You’re going to every vegan restaurant in L.A. today and introducing yourself and explaining what happened.”

“Waste of time. Emil knows everyone. No one will hire me. I called him five times last night. Left four messages swearing on anything he wanted that I didn’t use butter in the ravioli, that someone—and he knew who—screwed me. He answered the fifth call, and before I could say a word, he barked, ‘I don’t give a shit how the butter got in the ravioli. You were chef. It’s your fault.’
Click
.”

I had been chef. I put the breakfast tray on the floor, slid down the wall, and pulled the covers up. The normal me would have been calling everyone I knew last night, ripping on the story—“Guess what that twatzilla pulled on me . . . ”—and totally confident I’d have a better job—full chef—at another hot restaurant by midnight. But the double whammy of O. Ellery Rice
and
not realizing I’d been burned by BUTTER in the first place? Sudden death.

“Clem, what do you tell me every time I don’t get a callback for a role I don’t even want? That it’s all in the trying, in the putting myself out there.”

Sara was an actress specializing in the overweight best friend or bullied outcast. She was beautiful, with Pre-Raphaelite long curls and huge, driftwood brown doe eyes, but she was at least forty pounds overweight and only occasionally got cast—as a “fat extra.”

Let’s get something straight right now. Anyone who has a problem with the fact that Sara doesn’t look like a model can go fuck himself. She’s been my best friend since we were both sweating pretzels in the hot-yoga studio we now live above. We’d both needed a roommate, and the crappy apartment
on the fifth floor with a sloping floor became available. That was four years ago. Have something to say about Sara’s weight or that “Maybe you shouldn’t be eating those fries?” like that asshole at her favorite food truck at the Pier? I’ll hunt you down. Seriously, I stink-eyed that loser very close to the water’s edge.

“I know what’ll perk you up,” Sara singsonged. “Thanks to that very good advice of yours, guess who got up the guts to ask out Hot Pete, and guess what he said?”

I whipped the covers off me. Sara supported herself by temping as an office drone. For the past month, she’d been filling in for a clerk typist on maternity leave at an ad agency that specialized in the wine industry. She’d been crushing on Hot Pete since day one—and figured she had no chance. “I know what he said,” I told her. “He said ‘Hell, yeah!’ ”

She grinned. “We were both in the elevator together, and I was like,
Do it! Do it!
So I blurted out, ‘Want to grab a coffee or a drink or something?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, sure. How about tomorrow after work because I have a gig?’ He plays bass in an alt rock band—well, they’re just getting started. And so we talked about that for like ten minutes in the lobby and now we have a date tomorrow after work!”

I squeezed her again. “That’s amazing, Sara. You should have told me last night—we could have celebrated instead of you being forced to mope around with me.”

“You needed to mope,” she said, taking a sip of my green tea and grimacing. “Anyway, Clem, you really have nothing to worry about. It’s so obvious that Rain screwed you—she had
nothing to lose since she was probably planning to quit anyway. And what happened at Fresh is
legendary
. Everyone will want you after this.”

Legendary. The chef someone took down with a pat of butter. Right.

“Everyone will want the chef who didn’t even realize there was butter in one of her signature dishes?” I asked. “I’ve made that exact ravioli two thousand times. I should have smelled the butter. I should have seen the difference in the glistening of the sauce.”

Sara took a bite of my peanut butter toast. “Trust me, Clem, this time tomorrow, you’ll be chef anywhere you want. You’re a legend now.”

The Legend of the Land O’Lakes. Ha.

I didn’t believe it for a minute. But at least it got me out of bed.