As much as I wish Alex would be supportive on this, I can see by the look on his face and the shrug he gives to my announcement that he either isn’t surprised or may even think what my father’s doing is cool.
“Thanks for being there for me, man.”
“Cade, I’m your best friend, but even I can say it’s time you stopped playing around. You’ve been back from school for almost a year. You can’t be surprised he and your mother pulled this card on you.”
Huffing my disgust at that little nugget of truth coming from Alex, of all people, I head over to the refrigerator and grab the two of us beers. I hand him his and push past him on my way to the living room.
At least I can enjoy a couple more days of freedom before I get chained to the workaday world. Leaning back, I close my eyes and take a sip of ice cold beer while the realization that I haven’t even had breakfast yet runs through my head.
Oh well. Forget doughnuts. Beer is now the breakfast of champions.
“Come on, Cade. It’s not so bad. I work, and it hasn’t made me some uptight pain in the ass who doesn’t have fun. As my father likes to say, the world is your oyster. You can work at any number of jobs. Just find something you like and do it.”
I look across the room to see he’s serious about this. “The world is my oyster? Dude. And you’ve always been a pain in the ass. You working at your job has nothing to do with that.”
“Fuck you too,” he says with a chuckle, lifting his beer in the air. “To Cade finally joining the ranks of us working stiffs.”
That toast sucks, but I take a drink of my beer anyway. “What kills me is he was even worse than me at this age. Remember hearing the stories your father and Kane were telling a few summers ago at the Fourth of July party about my father? To hear them talk, Stefan March spent all his days sleeping and all his nights partying. So that was okay for him, but now he’s older so he wants to make sure I don’t have any fun? He acts like responsibility is some wonderful thing and having a job is the mark of a good person. What a fraud he is.”
Alex nods, even though I have a feeling he agrees with my father at least a little. “By the way they were talking, all three of them were living the life. I guess time changes you, though. We’ll probably be that way when we get to be their age.”
I couldn’t be more horrified at that prospect than if he had the power to show me the future himself. “No. Fucking. Way. I’m not going to turn into that. No, thanks.”
“So what kind of job are you thinking you might want? You have a degree in business from a good school, so it’s not like you’re not qualified for a lot.”
Just the thought of what job I might want to get makes my head hurt. If I knew what I wanted to do this past year, I would have done it. While I make it seem like I’m all about living the life of leisure and enjoying myself, even to my best friend, the truth is I don’t want to do any job.
Not because I don’t want to work. Work is work. If you hate what you’re doing, it feels like a jail sentence. If you love what you’re doing, time flies. I got through four years of school just fine, so it’s not that I can’t handle work.
I just have no idea what I want to do.
“No clue,” I say shaking my head. “How did you know you wanted to be a chef?” I ask, wondering if hearing this story again might help me figure out what I should do.
Alex thinks about it for a few moments before taking a drink of his beer. “I just always did. I grew up hearing all about what was happening at the restaurant and I thought it sounded great. I found out when I started working at CK when I was a teenager that it wasn’t as fun as I’d made it out to be, but I knew I wanted to be a chef.”
“I have no idea how you work with your father. I spent last summer working at the club with my father, and I don’t know how I’m going to do it again now. I told him I’d do some shifts, but I swear to God I hate the idea more than I can put into words.”
My misery makes Alex laugh. “It’s not that bad for me, actually. My father and Kane don’t really hang out in my kitchen, so I only see them when they pop in or when I go into the restaurant after my shift is over. And Kane is my uncle, and you know how he is. I swear there are some nights I don’t hear him speak a word to those of us in the kitchen.”
I blow the air out of my lungs in frustration. “Too bad I’m not the son of Cassian March or Kane Jackson.”
“It’s not bad for me, but Cash gets most of the grief from my dad like you do from your father. I’m guessing that’s why my brother’s going to be a lawyer and not a chef, like me. He never liked hearing about how the kitchen worked, and remember the first time he saw me making a meal? He laughed in my face.”
“If only I loved something as much as you love doing what you do. I still don’t get the whole loving cooking food, but at least it’s something you’re passionate about. I have nothing like that.”
Alex smiles and gets that look of pure happiness on his face like whenever he talks about his job. “It’s an art form. You take something that’s a raw material and you create a masterpiece. Even better, people then eat it and gush about how delicious it tastes. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
“An arteest, like that Hailey girl, huh? You should be interested in her. You have that whole food thing in common.”
“I love how committed she is to making what she creates so beautiful, but she’s not my type,” he says like he’s thought about getting together with her.
From out of nowhere, jealousy rears up in me. That’s never happened before when it comes to him. We’ve dated sisters, friends, cousins—you name it, and never once have I thought he might be a rival for any woman.
But now with Hailey, he seems perfect for her compared to me. They both do that chef thing and they both love food for something other than putting it into their faces and eating. I doubt she’d run away from any conversation with him.
“What do you mean she isn’t your type? She’s gorgeous, talented, everything a guy could want. Why wouldn’t she be your type?”
“I don’t date women in the industry,” he answers flatly.
What the hell is he talking about?
“Who are you? Some big movie star? You don’t date in the industry? What kind of bullshit is that? I can’t count the number of servers you’ve been with.”
Still, he shakes his head with a definite no. “Servers are different. Fellow chefs? Never. You don’t want to date someone just like you.”
Now he sounds like a diva. I roll my eyes and shake my head at the nonsense coming out of his mouth. “That’s ridiculous. I thought having things in common was what you need for a relationship.”
He seizes on my use of the word relationship, practically leaping out of the chair when he asks, “So now we’re talking about relationships? First you have to get a job, and now you’re talking about settling down with someone? I’m guessing you’ve decided you want Hailey Canton. She’s definitely got it all.”
Under my breath, I mumble, “Which she ran away with while I tried to talk to her.”
Alex leans forward and gives me a strange look. “What did you say?”