Tasteless (7 page)

“This one’s filled with beer.”  Rye opened her eyes to see Damian securing the balloon in her grasp.  “Use it wisely.”  With that, he ran behind the lounge chair to take cover with Gavin, draping the checkered picnic blanket over them and the basket of balloons.

“I don’t even know who I’m against!” Rye yelled to the two under the makeshift fort.  She hugged the cool beer balloon to her chest, giggling at the sight.  It had been awhile since she’d seen a fort like that made.

“Behind you!” Gavin yelled.  Rye turned to see Sam running at her, a small water balloon wound up behind him.  She held her breath in anticipating, thrusting out the beer balloon and squeezing her eyes shut.  She could feel the balloon bursting in front of her as he came into contact with it.

“No!” Damian yelled.  “That’s my shirt!” Rye laughed, unable to see anything beyond the wet hair matted to her face.  She could feel Sam’s arms engulf her as she tried to run away, hugging her to his beer-stained shirt.

“My dress!” she squealed as he picked her up off her feet.

“Thanks for drying me off,” he said before setting her back down and charging Damian and Gavin’s fort.

“Wait, no!” Gavin said, tossing smaller balloons out like grenades.  Desperate, he didn’t bother for a proper windup, causing the balloons to bounce on the grass in front of him.

“Hold on,” Damian protested.  “I thought we were on the same team.”

“It’s every man for himself,” Sam declared before dropping a large water balloon at the entrance of their fort.  Rye couldn’t see around Sam’s large frame, but she could hear the monstrous splash and the boys laughing as they mock-surrendered.

The girls came up from behind her, equally drenched, their beautiful gowns now soaked and grass-stained.  But instead of being angry, as Rye could find understandable in their wrecked couture, they stood there laughing at their significant others, cowering in the fort as Sam mercilessly threw one balloon after another.

“It’s too bad you’re not interested in him,” Zoe said, draping an arm over Rye’s shoulders.  “We’d make an adorable group of couples.”

Chapter 4

SANDRINE TO OPEN ITS DOOR THIS FALL

Taste Buddies New York

June 22
nd

The much-anticipated nouvelle cuisine restaurant, Sandrine, will be welcoming guests to its chic Flatiron dining room this September.  Its premiere month has reportedly been booked solid but foodies can make the journey up to Hudson River Valley to try their summer pop-up at the riverside restaurant, Ripe Acre. Ripe Acre will be serving a sample of Sandrine’s menu in their greenhouse, where sources say they’ll be accepting walk-ins.

When asked about former founder and executive chef, Sam Laurent, majority investor Gail Geddes declined to comment.  Their publicist, however, released the following statement:

“We were lucky to have a talent like Sam on board for the early development of Sandrine, but since parting ways, the project has taken on a decidedly altered route and is now a much different establishment than it was at conception.”

Sam stared at the article, unable to comprehend what he should have known was coming.

His
restaurant, the one that he was so sure would fail without him, had somehow beat the odds and made it through.  To add insult to injury, they had kept the same concept, the same menu, and worst of all – the same name, while taking all the credit to themselves.

Sam wondered if the pop-up was a part of Mara’s plan to rub salt in the wound.  When he was still a part of the team, they had discussed the idea of doing summer pop-ups in the Hamptons before the opening and as far as he knew, that was what was scheduled up until a month ago.  So why then, did they suddenly decide to do it in a space so close to where he was now employed?

He sat at the diner’s kitchen counter, tapping the saltshaker repeatedly against the old wood.  Perhaps he was paranoid for thinking that a pop-up restaurant just a half hour away from where he now worked could be considered psychological warfare.  If he had said that aloud, he would be understandably laughed at.  But Sam knew how women like Gail worked.  It was well within reason to suspect that she had done it on purpose.

“Holy shit, can you stop that?” Rye said, sitting on the other end of the counter as she made notes on the menu.

“Sorry,” he sighed, tossing the shaker aside.  He slumped in his seat, putting his head down on the table.

“What’s wrong with you today?” she asked, looking at him with annoyance but also a hint of concern.  Sam managed a smirk, knowing it was probably all the sympathy she could muster up.  It was an improvement for her, considering how much she hated him just last week.  But after Friday night in Brooklyn, after showing that she was indeed capable of enjoying herself, she seemed just a little less antagonistic towards him.

He searched his head for his usual snarky remark, but instead found himself staring into space in silence.  He groaned, cringing at how off his game he was.  Sam buried his head in his arms, sealing himself in darkness.  She could hear Rye pause before laughing, followed by her footsteps over to him.

“Okay,” Rye said, poking him in the ribs.  “I know something’s bad if you squandered a perfectly good opportunity to make a joke at my expense.  So either get talking or let’s start working on the menu.”

“Both those things sound horrible,” Sam said, sitting up and rubbing the back of his neck.  Rye slid the menu on the counter in front of him.

“So I took
some
of your advice about cutting down on the existing menu,” Rye replied, completely ignoring what he had said.  “Of course, being a classic diner menu, there were like a hundred items and I couldn’t only cut it down to sixty.”

“You can’t have
sixty
items
on the menu, that’s insane,” Sam laughed.  “It’s unrealistic and it cheapens the place.  It’s like a takeout menu or something.”

“I couldn’t really think of what else to cut,” Rye shook her head as she squinted at the menu.  “I love so many of these things, I can’t imagine a restaurant without them.”

“This is why I said we should just start over,” Sam said.  “There’s no point adapting from the existing menu when there are a thousand other things we
could
be doing that is way more efficient.”

“I told you we’re not doing that,” Rye picked up the menu again.  “The point is to update this restaurant, not change it completely.”  Sam took the menu from her hands, tossing it over the counter and into the kitchen.

“And
I
told you from day one that we would need to redo everything.”

“That’s not an option,” Rye said, marching around the counter to retrieve the menu.  “What makes this diner special is its root in tradition.  We’ve been around for almost forty years.  I know that most people think this place only existed for the television show, but in actual reality, we would have never gotten the show if it weren’t for what this diner means to this town.”

“That might have been true once,” Sam replied.  “But it’s not the case now.  Now, it’s just some washed up diner that can barely hold onto its glory days.”  He cringed at his own words, realizing how easily it could apply to his own situation.  Surprisingly, Rye didn’t look nearly as affected.  She leaned on the counter across from him, tilting her head as she studied his face.

“You’re more annoying than usual today,” she finally said.  “Is this about the pop-up at Ripe Acre?” He bit his lip, willing himself not to answer.

“Before you say anything, know that I don’t want your sympathy,” he replied.

“I had no intention of giving you any,” Rye shrugged.  “From what I understand, they had good reason to let you go.”

“Because you have all the information, right?” Sam said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“A restaurant’s reputation is important.  If they want to be seen as a serious and elegant establishment, they’re probably going to want a chef that matches their vision.”

“And just like that, you’ve shown just how little you know about the industry,” Sam laughed.  “I’ve partied with every one of the best chefs in the city.  Some of them are twice my age and work at restaurants so respected that presidents eat there.  And yet those guys can drink me under the table and snort more coke than all their Wall Street patrons.  My reputation had
nothing
to do with me getting fired.”

Rye blinked back at him, twirling her shoulder-length hair around a finger as she looked on with genuine remorse.  Still, she apparently decided it wasn’t necessary to apologize.

“Okay,” she said, quickly recovering and pushing her menu towards Sam again.  “I think maybe we can knock off most of the vegetarian items and just leave one or two.  Most of the people up here are meat-eaters…”

“You know,” Sam started, rubbing at his stubble as he stared at the peculiar girl before him.  “Most people would maybe take my current state of mind as a cue to back off for a second.”

“Guess I’m not most people.”

“I think you should
try
a little harder to be.”

“Why should I do that?”

“So you can give people a chance to
like
you,” Sam laughed as Rye huffed, crossing her arms.  “I’m sure your friends and family are perfectly used to your quirks, but you’ve got to give the rest of us some time.”

Rye didn’t answer.  Instead, she lowered her eyes to the menu and walked away from him, settling in the large corner booth diagonal from him.  Sam couldn’t help but think he had said something wrong, even though he wasn’t entirely sure which part of it had bugged her.  She was definitely on the sensitive side, which he had managed to adjust to, but Rye still proved to be too unpredictable for his liking.

He turned in his stool, watching her as she avoided him, continuing to make marks on the menu.  Had she really just successfully outdone him in the crankiness department? Sam was pretty sure that
he
was the one who was having the bad day.  He stared at the top of her blondish head as she scribbled on the paper, her face propped up in her hands.  He backtracked through his words – he had said she had quirks, implied people didn’t like her, and said she should be more like other people.  He supposed they were all pretty offensive things to say, but having gotten used to his thick-skinned and resilient friends, didn’t really think to censor.

In the silence of his pondering, the chime and buzz of Rye and Sam’s phones sounded all the louder.  It was a group text from Warner, with words that would catapult Sam out of thinking about Rye’s problems and right back into his own.

Sam, Rye - Sandrine pop-up at Ripe Acre, please check out and report back.

~

Sam pulled at the cuffs of his sleeves.  He realized it was probably time that he bought himself some formal clothing so it wouldn’t be slightly oversized like when he wore Damian’s clothes and slightly undersized like it was right now, sitting in Porter’s high school graduation outfit.  Ripe Acre’s waiting area was a balcony sitting between the restaurant and the parking lot, overlooking the Hudson River at an impressive vantage point.  For as far as his eye could see, there was nothing but water, tree-covered hills, and sky.

He wished he could stand there and truly enjoy the scene but he was dealing with a dread in his stomach, heavy with the constant anticipation of running into someone he knew.  And as he had expected, there would be more than one.  The first was Kyra, a lingerie model known to be a bit of a groupie in the food industry who was
much
too excited to see Sam.  As soon as she made a scene with her greeting, she attracted the attention of Grayson, a guy he had hired as an assistant who was now working the bullshit title of
maître’d
.  Grayson quickly offered to cut the hour and a half wait and presented Sam and Rye a reserved table, which got the attention of everyone in the restaurant.

Those who recognized him quickly exchanged whispers.  As he walked through the dining room, passing them on the way to their table, he could hear some of them speculate if he had perhaps gotten his job back, some wondered if he was out to seek revenge, and others just tried to snap a photo to brag on Instagram.

“Oh boy, people sure seem to be happy to see you,” Rye said, smoothing the back of her ill-fitted dress down to take a seat in the window-side booth.  He wasn’t sure how she had managed to find something that looked like it was from a children’s clothing store that was still oversized.  Sam sat across from her, trying to remain low-key.  They were luckily seated behind a vine-covered fence that sectioned off what appeared to be a hastily put-together VIP section.  He was pleased to see it had the same magnificent view that they had outside.

“Did they really keep the menu exactly the same?” Rye asked as she glanced over it.  Sam looked down at the pebbled, cream-colored hard stock before him.  He ran his fingers over the fine paper, remembering when he had first touched it in a catalog at the paper supply store.  He was thinking of his sister when he made the selection, remembering that she had dreamed of having her wedding invitations in that same material.

Printed in navy ink was the selection of appetizers and entrees he had prepared for their summer pop-up in the Hamptons.  He spotted the foie gras steamed clams and the caviar crème-fraiche topped toasts he had imagined serving his customers as they sat beachside.

He had put every ounce of his being into perfecting the menu and now here it was, happily existing without him.

Sam managed a nod to answer Rye before a server quickly came in to inform them that they would be “taken care of.”  He removed their menus and set out champagne flutes as a busboy rolled over an iced bucket for their
Dom Perignon
and two smaller pieces of paper outlining the extensive tasting menu they would be given.

“I guess you didn’t leave on bad terms?” Rye asked, sounding impressed.

“I definitely did,” Sam said.  “This is just them shoving it in my face.”

“Can you tell me exactly why you were fired from your own restaurant?” Rye whispered.  Sam stiffened at the question, eying the server to see if he was listening.  “I feel like, as your current business partner, I sort of have the right to know.”

“Can we at least wait until we get some alcohol?” Sam sighed as the server popped the champagne cork, wrapped it in a cloth napkin, and began to pour.  He took the glass as soon as it was full, not bothering for Rye to get her glass before he tipped it back.  He set the empty glass back down, tapping on the rim to get the server to pour more.

“Table manners aren’t really your thing,” Rye observed.  “I kind of thought you’d have me beat in that department.”  Sam ignored her, chugging his second glass as the server walked away.  He looked down at the tasting menu, a ten-item demonstration of his own recipes.  At the bottom, like a proud signature at the end of a poetic note, was the name of the restaurant in a neat cursive typeface.

“What’s Sandrine exactly?” Rye asked.  “It sounds like a plant.”

“It’s a pretty popular French name.”

“Are you French?”

“Somewhere way down the line on my father’s side,” he answered.  “But he was born in Tahiti.”

“So why’d you name the place Sandrine? Who is she?”

“My sister.”  Sam watched as Rye stopped her questions, clearly searching her brain for a memory in which Sam mentioned a sister.  “You don’t have to look so confused, I’ve never talked about her.”  Strangely enough, he had never needed to mention why he named his restaurant Sandrine.  Everyone he worked with had just accepted that it sounded right for what they were going for.

“I for some reason thought you didn’t have a family or something.”

“
Everyone
has a family,” Sam said.  “They have to come from
somewhere
.”

“So where’s
your
family?” Rye asked.  “I never hear you talk about them.”

“That’s ‘cause they’re far way – they live in Oahu.”

“That’s Hawaii, right?” Rye asked.  “Sorry, I’m not great with geography.”

“Yes,” Sam replied.  “My mother and her siblings all live on one small stretch or land in Kapolei.  I haven’t gone back since I left for college, but I talk to them everyday.”