Chef's Kiss

Clients

Violet

Food.

Everyone needs it. Our lives revolve around it and even though people truly love it, a lot of those people just fucking hate making it for themselves. Or maybe they can't. One of the two, both, I don't know. Doesn't matter. Point is, I wasn't one of those people.

I lived and breathed food. It was everything to me. If I showed up to an event and there were no appetizers on entry, I knew whatever eventually came out was gunna be dog shit. If I showed up to an event and there was a long ass table of food already served, including something cooked by someone's aunt or grandma, I knew it was gunna be fucking unreal.

I was gunna be that aunt or grandma one day. Probably aunt. I was done with men. But not food. Never food.

I'd been cooking since I could stand and speak and think so I'd been preparing to be a chef my whole life. All I had to do was spend a few years cooking, save up some money, and I was gunna open my own place. I had shit all figured out.

But I wasn't there yet.

I pulled my jeep into a parking spot in front of the building and put the car in park. It was a mid-rise office building, glass all around and not like anything I'd ever had a reason to be in before that day. But this is the world I wanted to enter, and things had to get serious sometime.

I didn't have any of my cooking tools to haul with me that day because I was meeting a new client and I was nervous as fuck. I'd barely been able to enjoy my music while I drove over. Just going over all the things I could say, or wanted to say. Responding to imaginary interview questions with my imaginary answers, talking to myself like a lunatic. But time was up and I was parked. All my rehearsal time was over. I turned the engine off, the music cutting off abruptly, and I rubbed my face in my hands. Fuuuuuck first meetings make me wanna yack. The blaring sun started warming the interior of the car so quickly that it forced me to grab my backpack and hop out.

The building wasn't that tall, but my nerves made it feel as though it towered over me. I didn't know anything about my new clients except that I'd be cooking for three men and that they had no dietary restrictions. Nothing more, nothing less. I'd never spoken to them. Didn't know their names, their ages, or anything about them. That was the nature of the business, until you were invited in. It was all very private. After all, being a personal chef was a very intimate thing.

I pushed my feet to enter the building, through the glass doors, signing myself in at the front desk. I shook out my hands as I approached the elevator, the only sound my long jeans running along the carpet, accompanying the pulse in my ears.

"Fuck me, dude," I muttered to myself, stepping up and pressing the "up" button.

I stepped back and looked around the lobby as I waited. A few people spoke here and there, a man walked past me on a call, and I was admiring the marble ceiling when my attention was snagged by what can only be described as the prettiest boy I've ever seen in real life.

Walking directly towards me, I quickly realized he was coming to wait for the elevator as well. He was around my height, maybe an inch or two taller, and his skin was pale, almost porcelain-like. The shade was made more stark by his dark hair, nearly black, that swooped around his sharp cheekbones and jaw, and held back from his eyes by a backwards hat. And his eyes... I wouldn't have noticed how jarringly blue they were if the lobby wasn't so bright. It was as though a light was being shone from behind them and two giant sapphires looked into mine momentarily, sending a shockwave of equal parts fucking terror and exhilaration through my spine. Then they flicked down to his phone as he stopped to wait a few feet away from me. Jesus Christ, I thought. I don't think I've ever seen a prettier man in my whole life. I sighed at that thought. Steer the fuck away, Violet.

The doors swung open and pretty boy let me step in ahead of him. I pressed the button for the 5th floor and turned to my companion for the ride.

"What floor?" I asked to be polite, offering to press the button for him. He saw the 5th button already lit.

"Same as yours," he responded, being polite back. His voice was interesting, kinda scratchy, kinda soft. It was warm. I nodded and stepped into the corner, suddenly overwhelmed by being so close to this guy and in an enclosed space.

After a few moments of silent awkwardness, I pulled out my phone to distract myself from this gorgeous stranger, nearly forgetting where I was heading to begin with, and quickly realized I had no signal. Right. No signal in elevators.

Just as I locked my phone, the elevator lurched as it reached the 5th floor and I approached the doors. I waited for the cabin to settle, I guess it was slow to open.

I stared at the doors.

I looked up at the screen above the buttons that read "5th Floor", turned to the guy behind me and saw the confusion on his face that matched mine.

He reached out to press the "open doors" button. We both looked up at the doors in anticipation...

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me," I breathed out as we stood in the silence. I reached out to press the "open doors" button again a bunch of times, hoping that might do something.

"Should we try another floor?" the stranger asked. I turned to look at him again and instead of feeling terrified by his gaze, I felt terrified by what was happening.

"Yeah try that," I agreed. He pressed the button for the 6th floor. The elevator continued to stay frozen. No movement, no sound.

"For fuuuuck saaaake," I groaned, pressing my palms into my cheeks. "Try the 4th floor," I suggested. He pushed the button... Silence.

"I hate to say it but I think we're stuck."