I delay by walking to the window and looking out over Casmire arrayed below me. Lines of light streak through the night. Somewhere out there, Erica is sitting in her shoebox apartment, making impossible calculations about health insurance and the price of dignity and whether she can afford to tell me to go to hell.
"She didn't just try to quit," I say finally. "She told me why."
"Well? We're all waiting."
Now, I can feel their full attention like heat lamps. "She's sick," I say almost inaudibly. "Going blind. Some genetic thing."
"Jesus." The word leaves Chase in a rush of air. "That's… Fuck, drew. That's terrible."
Carl goes very still. We don't talk about medical issues in this house if we can avoid it. He and I have spent too many nights in hospital corridors and had too many conversations with doctors who spoke in careful euphemisms about spinal cord injuries and adaptive equipment and the difference between paralysis and paraplegia. About what life looks like when a twelve- year-old boy has his lumbar vertebrae crushed by hitting a telephone pole at eighty miles per hour.
"So she wanted to quit," Carl says carefully, "to, what, make the most of the time she has left?"
"Something like that."
"And you said no."
"I said I'd make it worth her while to stay."
"How worth her while?" Chase asks, though something in his tone suggests he already suspects the answer will be ridiculous.
"A million dollars to stay through the Project Olympus launch."
Carl whistles low. Chase just stares at me.
"Are you out of your goddamn mind?" Chase sets his beer down hard enough that foam sloshes over the rim. "The woman is facing the loss of her eyesight and your response was to throw bundles of cash at her?"
My anger flares. "That's a funny fucking way to describe 'offering her financial security during a difficult time.'"
"As if you'd ever be that thoughtful! You're bribing her into staying so you don't have to deal with the inconvenience of finding a replacement this close to launching Project Olympus."
I don't particularly like being called out by my best friend and kid brother. The issue is that they're not wrong. The investors are breathing down my neck, the permits are a clusterfuck nightmare, and losing Erica now would be catastrophic.
But that's not the only reason I couldn't let her walk away.
"No one else has her experience," I argue.
"Don't bullshit me, man." Chase stands up, pacing to the kitchen island. "You could train someone new. It would be a pain in the ass, sure, but you could do it. Hell, you could poach someone from another company with the kind of money you're throwing around."
"The timeline—"
"Oh, fuck your timeline, drew. We both know this isn't about any goddamn timeline"
Carl has gone quiet. He's toying with his knee, rubbing at the old scars the way he always does when he's in deep thought.
"So what is it about?" Chase presses.
I tip the glass up and swallow the very last of the whiskey in one go, feeling the burn all the way down. I can sense their eyes still on me the whole time. Watching. Waiting.
Chase was there during the worst of it after Carl's accident, when I was barely sleeping, barely eating, throwing myself into work with manic and damn near suicidal intensity.
And Carl… Carl lived through all of it. The guilt, the overprotection. He had a front-row seat to watch as I rebuilt my entire life around making sure nothing could ever hurt him again.
"I built this company from nothing," I say. "Fifteen years ago, I was washing dishes in a kitchen that violated every health code in the book, sending every penny I could save to cover Carl's medical bills and physical
therapy. Now, we have twenty-three locations, five Michelin stars, and a valuation that puts us in the top tier of hospitality groups in the country. And I'm on the brink of taking us to the very top. Olympus will get us
there. So I'm not letting someone's petty little meltdown ruin me when I'm this fucking close to success."
"Success for who, though?" Carl asks quietly.
"For who? For us, of course! For everyone who works for us. What are—"
"For everyone who can survive working for you, you mean."
The interruption stops me cold.
"How many assistants have you gone through this year?" Carl presses. "How many people have quit without notice? How many times has Chase had to talk you out of firing someone for not reading your mind?"
"That's different."
"How?"
"Because… " I stop, realizing I don't have a good answer. The whiskey is making everything feel slightly unmoored.
"Because how?" Carl repeats, but his voice sounds distant now, muffled by the memory that's suddenly flooding back.
—————Flashback—————
I'm not in my apartment anymore, drinking whiskey and facing down the Inquisition from my best friend and brother. Instead, I'm twenty years old again, three weeks into my externship at Le Bernardin, and I'm fucking
drowning. My station is a disaster—sauces reducing too fast, garnishes scattered,
tickets piling up every-fucking-where.
The pass is backed up because of me, and I can feel Chef Ripert's eyes on me from across the kitchen. My hands are shaking as I try to plate three dishes at once, and I knock over a squeeze bottle of lemon oil that leaks across my cutting board like liquid shame.
"Stop."
Chef's voice cuts through the chaos. The entire kitchen goes silent. He stalks to my station. Pauses over my shoulder. Gazes at my mayhem and sighs.
"Look at this," he says, quiet enough that the other cooks have to strain to hear. "What do you see?"
"I'm sorry, Chef. I'm trying to—"
"I didn't ask what you're trying to do. I asked what you see."
I force myself to look at my station through his eyes. A drop of the lemon oil gathers up like a tear on the edge of the cutting board. As I watch, it falls to plink on the tile at my feet.
"I see a mess, Chef."
"A mess. Yes." He picks up one of my towels, folds it neatly, and sets it back down. "Do you know what 'mise en place' means, Andrew?"
"'Everything in its place,' Chef."