CHAPTER TWO
Amelia
The final boxes had been shipped earlier in the morning, leaving me with just a couple suitcases and the carry-on I’d take on the plane with me.
With a soul-weary sigh, I pulled my apartment door shut for the last time and locked it, my heart cracking once more with the sound of the bolt sliding into place. I loved this sunny little abode something fierce and leaving it for good was breaking me apart all over again.
Biting my lip hard to force myself to not dwell on feelings for too long, I pulled the key from the lock and turned to the elevator. I was struggling with not looking over every detail with depressing last time I’ll see this carpeting types of thoughts, but it was hard.
This was the right thing to do, I kept reminding myself. My family needed me. Mobile, Alabama did not.
It’d been made abundantly clear to me over the past few weeks, and now all that was left was to act on my decision and make my exit. It was time, and I knew I was stalling — a huge chunk of my heart didn’t want to return to Boston. The cold winters. The gruff people. The harsh accents that I hadn’t heard regularly in almost seven years.
After high school, I’d booked a ticket using the money I’d made waiting tables and moved to Savannah, Georgia to attend culinary school. My parents had been heartbroken and pleaded with me to find somewhere closer, but I’d persisted. I wanted out of our Dorchester neighborhood, out of the grind of hustling and slaving away for peanuts at an hourly retail job like all my friends had planned, and away from the violent characters I’d grown up around.
Life had taken me to Mobile four years ago to work as a sous chef in the kitchen of La Sur, a restaurant inside one of the most exclusive resorts on the Gulf Coast. Life had also taken me straight into the arms of the older, wiser executive chef, Peter, who’d quickly become my boss and my boyfriend.
Yeah, not the smartest decision of my life, but it was what it was. And for three years and nine months, it had worked perfectly.
Or so I thought.
Sure, Peter, who was thirteen years older than me, was pretty set in his ways and constantly trying to “refine” me. He could be temperamental when things at the restaurant weren’t perfect, but he loved me.
He did.
Until he didn’t.
The last two months were a bit of a blur, and even when I’d tried to explain to my mother just what happened, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the destruction of my happy little life before my own eyes.
It started with Peter.
And Kimmy.
Kimmy was a hostess at La Sur, our restaurant.
Kimmy and Peter had taken a bit of a shine to each other once Peter had decided to take her “under his wing” and tutor her in cooking. I’d raised an eyebrow at first but had been hushed immediately.
“Don’t be jealous, Amelia,” Peter had said. “You’re too good for that.”
Ha.
Turned out, “under his wing” really meant “under his expensive-ass sheets” butt naked and moaning as my boyfriend of three years hammered away at her.
Peter had forgotten I knew about his hide-a-key, and I was bringing him a catalog he’d asked for a few days earlier.
Imagine my surprise to hear the telltale sounds of moaning and grunting as I let myself in. He’d never given me a key — warning number one, my mother reminded me during the aftermath — but he’d also never minded when I used his spare key.
Well, he certainly minded that afternoon. I should have been at work, but Sully, the general manager, had sent me home early because the place had been so quiet. I thought I’d get an errand out of the way and it turned out I’d gotten a lot more off my plate that day than anticipated.
Life had exploded from that point forward. Tears. Angry words. Pleading — both on my part and his part, oddly enough. A few broken knickknacks that had the bad fortune of being within my reach.
The relationship had ended that day after I retreated to my own wisely kept apartment and burned every possession that either belonged to Peter or simply reminded me of him. Ashes.
I’d foolishly thought I could rebuild my life with just a few changes after the relationship ended, but that was the funny thing about life when you went around making plans and thinking they’d be easy.
The restaurant got slated by corporate for massive upgrades and a three-week long remodel. It was gorgeous, and I was excited for the next chapter of my professional life at least, even if I had to watch Peter and Kimmy shamelessly fawn over each other after catching them together.
It seriously made me want to retch each time she giggled, or he winked, but I did my best to keep my head down and my eyes off them. And it seriously made me think harder about moving to the West Coast. I’d always dreamed of living in California, and now might be the right time.
But my comfort zone had gotten too comfortable, even if I really didn’t like it anymore. Plus, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to pull up roots and move to a place where I knew exactly zero people.
One afternoon, a week before the grand reopening, Sully called me into his office for a meeting. I’d literally had no idea what he could want with me, and I remembered feeling stupidly and girlishly optimistic. Maybe I was due for some sort of promotion? A raise? The possibilities were endless in my mind that day.
“We’re letting you go.”
Sully’s words were efficient and brutal, much like the man himself.
I sat, stunned into silence, while he continued to pound the calculator on his desk and tally up delivery totals. Looked like I was being shoved from my comfort zone, like it or not.
Sputtering a moment, I finally found my tongue and asked him, “Why?”
He didn’t even look up at me, just kept up the annoying clacking. “Because we’re going in a new direction.”
It was bullshit, of course. I was the second-in-command. The direction would come from the executive chef, Peter. If they wanted a new direction, they would have laid him off and not me.
“It’s nothing personal, Amelia,” Sully said. I knew deep down he was a good man, but right then, I hated him. “We’ve got to make things work in the kitchen and we just can’t under the current climate. You’re young, and you’re talented, and you’ll have a much easier time finding a new gig than he will.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from lashing out. Hell, I still needed a good reference from him, and I knew it would be pointless. Sully and Peter were buddies, and their friendship went back further than my puny relationship with Peter did.
I was screwed, and I knew it. I wanted to knock shit off Sully’s desk and rage in his face, but my dad had taught me that there was dignity in the high road — leaving them nothing to disparage or laugh about when you were gone.
It was so hard, but Pop was right. So, with a tight hold on my rising emotions, I took my last check from Sully and left to clear out my locker.
As I was dumping hair brushes, clean t-shirts, and extra makeup into a plastic grocery bag, I sensed someone approaching me from behind. Glancing over my shoulder, I rolled my eyes when I saw Peter.
“Amelia,” he began, deep and dramatic, just like always. Christ, the man couldn’t even say a name without making some production out of it. “I hope that you’ll someday see all of this for what it really is — a learning experience. You’ve taught me so much. I hope you’ll come to realize that I’ve taught you as well.”
I swallowed hard as I slammed the locker shut and turned to face him.
“I’ve taught you, huh?” I growled. “What did I teach you, Peter? To bring in your hide-a-key when you’re cheating on your girlfriend?”
He blanched a little at that, and it felt good to see him a bit discomforted.
“You’ve taught me to truly honor what I’m looking for in a woman, Amelia,” he pressed on, choosing to ignore my last remark. “And to seize upon it when I find it. Without you, I wouldn’t have been able to recognize Kimmy as my true soul mate when she danced into my—”
My poor father.
I thought about his words of wisdom being wasted on my ears as I cocked my fist back and let a straight right fly through the space between Peter and me, right into the soft, squishy part of his nose.
The sickening crunch was the sign that I’d hit my mark, and Peter’s nasally, girly screams were simply confirming the fact that I’d likely broken his nose.
“Jesus Christ, Byrne,” Sully said as he stormed out of the office, seeing his friend doubled over with blood pouring from his nose. “Get out of here before he calls the cops.”
Sully shooed me to the front door in a final act of mercy, and I left La Sur behind, not looking back.
Dignity be damned.
That had been three weeks ago, and in the short span of time, I’d been released from the lease on my apartment, sold most of my things on an online garage sale site, and agreed to return to my parents’ house for a temporary “reboot” while I applied for jobs in California.
“You can get your feet on the ground and help your father out a little,” my mother had said, as though working in my father’s office straightening his books out was something I’d relish and not dread. My father, Jack Byrne, owned Byrne Brothers Construction and had built a great life for my mother, my brother, and me over the years. He’d started as a general contractor, building anything from outdoor privacy fences to remodeling kitchens. Nowadays, he had bigger fish on his line, and he had a fleet of workers and equipment that could be seen all over the streets of our neighborhood and beyond, building up the strip malls and hotels that investors were bringing to South Boston.
My idiot brother Jack, Jr., or JJ as we called him, bombed out of college his second semester and wound up working for my dad. These days, at twenty-nine, he liked to say he worked with my dad, and I was sure Pop felt bad for his only son now and then and threw him a bone — a project that he could oversee from start to finish with little oversight.
I was also sure JJ wasn’t thrilled to have his little sister moving back into the family house. We’d never seen eye to eye. But, frankly, at this point, I didn’t care. I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have a car. I didn’t have a clue as to what was next, and Mom promised me that I could stay for as long — or little — as I needed to.
She’d also hinted that Pop really needed my help. A true Daddy’s girl through and through, that sealed the deal. She wouldn’t specify what she meant, but I knew there was something going on by how she repeated it over the few phone conversations it had taken to convince me to move home for a while. So even though the golden state was calling me, I’d agreed.
On my way out of my apartment building, I handed my keys and my paperwork to Emilio, our building attendant who kept an office downstairs.
He gave me a quick squeeze. “Gonna miss seeing you around, Amelia.”
“Same, Emilio.” I shouldered my bags as my cab rolled up out front.
“Take care of yourself,” he called as I pushed through the glass doors.
“I will,” I called back, meaning both words.
I knew I’d let things get out of balance with Peter and my work at La Sur, and as I slid into the back seat of the yellow taxi, I swore that I’d never let a man get so under my skin again in all my life.
Famous last words.