He looks at me as if listening attentively, then checks his paper again.
"You sure? I have before nine-thirty written here." He checks his watch. "And it's only a couple minutes past."
"Nine-thirty in the morning," I say, my voice low, hard, and steely with rage now. "Who the fuck has their orders delivered at nine-thirty on a Friday night?"
He continues to look at his paper, brows furrowing.
"Ah, I see the problem. My ‘am' looks like a ‘pm.'" He holds out the paper to his companion who dumps a box and looks. "Doesn't that ‘a' look like a ‘p' to you?"
"It does," the guy agrees.
"See," leather-face says, smiling at me as if everything is ok now. "Anyway, delivery's here now, so the way I see it, no harm no foul."
"No foul? I'm not serving my customers fish that's been sitting around in your truck all day!"
I launch myself toward him but find myself constricted, Shane grabbing at my hands to hold me back from doing something stupid, or possibly worthy of pressed charges.
"It's fresh enough," the man says, pointing his pencil at the box sitting on the ground.
I shake out of Shane's grip and pry the lid open, stumbling backward as the smell hits me hard. I throw my hand over my nose and glare at the man. "This is not fresh. It's not even edible."
He laughs gently. "Easy now. Squid doesn't smell like roses when it comes out of the sea, you know."
"I know what fresh smells like, and this smells like it's been out in the sun all day."
The guy gives his companion a ‘women-don't-get-it' look, then shrugs back at me, already backing away to retreat to his van.
"Smells fresh to me," he says. "And you paid in advance, so sorry-no refunds."
I launch myself again, but Shane gets there just in time, holding me back even as I flail in his grasp. The two men get into the van and slam the doors and finally Shane's grip loosens, allowing me to kick the bumper as the van revs away.
"You think anybody I know is ever going to use you again when I tell them this?!" I yell at the departing van. "I'll ruin you! You just lost a whole load of business!"
I stand there, panting as the vehicle turns the corner. The unmistakable sound of a pile of dishes smashing to the floor tears at the edges of my sanity, forcing me to release my grip on reality, threatening to make my entire being crumble. I bury my head in my hands, consciously struggling to inhale shaky breaths, willing my body to not just give up right here, right now.
"Uh … Willow? Should I-"
"Yeah, just go," I say, sending Shane back into the kitchen with a wave.
I stagger back to the door, struggling to hold it all together.
"Fuck!" I yell, and kick one of the boxes aside, sending rotting cod and melting ice sliding into the alley.
"A real chef's temper you've got there," a voice says.
It's him. Cole. Standing with his hands in his pockets in the darkening alley like some kind of comic book supervillain.
"Oh, great," I say, looking up at the night and laughing. "As if it couldn't get any worse. If you came to gloat, do me a favor and make it quick."
///
"I didn't come here to gloat," he says, taking a few steps closer.
"Sure you did. This is a fucking disaster," I say, gesturing at the fish, the restaurant, the sound of the impatient crowd rumbling just around the corner of the building. "You got exactly what you wanted."
"No I didn't," he says, looking deeply into my eyes. "I didn't get what I wanted at all."
I tear my gaze from his and point at him angrily.
"If you think this is it, that a bad opening night is going to do me in and have me crawling back to Knife, as if this proves anything, then you've got another thing coming. I'm going to make this place work if it kills me."
Cole laughs gently and holds his palms up. "I believe it."
The words draw my eyes deeper into his, wrong-footing me with his sincerity.
"So … what do you want?" I say, confused by his presence now more than anything.
Cole looks down and takes a deep breath.
"That's a hell of a big question. Took me a long time to figure it out for myself."
"And?"
He looks up at me, eyes as open as those days in Vegas, as the night by his pool. Even tangled up in the mass of conflicting emotions that the night has brought on, I feel my heart jump a little at all the warm memories I have of me and Cole connecting.