Instead, he’d found another doctor.
But he had to admit, he didn’t feel ready for another restaurant. Less than a week at Figs, and he’d been getting the headaches again, the ringing in his ears. Connor had taken one look at him and insisted they grab a beer and spend some time relaxing. You look like shit, man.
He’d felt like shit. Just being in the kitchen this morning, with the dinner service still hours away and no pressure whatsoever …
Fucked. He was fucked.
So you take yourself apart, and you put yourself back together again. It’s a mechanical process. One step at a time, like Tiger Fucking Woods.
But he was such a long way from clicking into place. Miles from being ready to have another restaurant. Leagues. Furlongs.
Light years from deserving someone like May.
“Ooh, look, a leasing office!” she said. “Let’s see what it would cost you to get an apartment around here.” She dragged him toward the window and started reading him snippets from every listing that caught her eye. “What’s a railroad apartment?”
“All the rooms are lined up like in a railroad car, with a hallway connecting them.”
“Huh. Well, it’s twenty-five hundred a month. Probably too much?”
“Probably.”
“So what’s your budget?”
“I’m not sure.”
She turned to him again, a frown between her eyebrows. “You’re going to have to figure this stuff out, right? Like, really soon?”
Yeah, he was. But he didn’t feel like telling her the rent wasn’t really the issue.
The issue was that he had no idea when he’d be able to reclaim the life he’d lost. He knew who he’d been and who he wanted to be, but when he looked at what he had to do to get there, there was this … gap. How was he supposed to pick a neighborhood or an apartment when he didn’t know what he’d be doing with himself in six months?
At least he didn’t need to worry about rent. He could live a long time on Sandy’s money. All he’d had to give her was his restaurant, his cookbook, and his balls on a platter.
“Seventeen hundred a month,” he said, plucking the number out of thin air. “But no railroad apartments. They make me claustrophobic.” He reached over her shoulder and tapped on the glass above a photograph of a building much like the three-story walk-ups they’d just passed. “How much is that place?”
“Twenty-two.”
He whistled. “Maybe a little more than I need.” He stepped away from the window. “Come on. Let’s keep walking.”
She followed him down the block, back toward the train station, but he didn’t like the expression on her face, and he liked it even less when she said, “Hey, Ben?”
“Yeah.”
“This might be a nosy question.”
She paused.
He heard himself say, “Then maybe you shouldn’t ask it.”
Great. Be a dick, Ben. Treat her like you treat everybody else, and see what happens.
May sighed.
They walked another block before his conscience lost the battle with his self-protective instincts and he said, “Just ask me.”
She didn’t, though. Not until he touched her arm and found a way to make himself be gentle. She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and said, very quietly, “If you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t.”
“Don’t be that way. Ask.”
But there was nothing about him inviting her interrogation, and he knew it. He might as well be covered in spikes. Which made it even less fair that when she backpedaled some more, it dialed up his irritation another notch.
“Because I’m leaving in a couple of days, and it doesn’t matter, really,” she said. “It’s none of my business.”
“May.”
“Ben.”
They stared at each other. He memorized the planes of her cheekbones. The short, gold-brown lashes framing her eyes, and the slight point at the tips of her ears.
She hated this, and he hated it, and he didn’t know what to do about that. Find a way out of the conversation. Avoid getting any closer to intimacy with this woman. That was the smart approach, the kind approach. That was the approach that was in line with his whole asinine theory that all he wanted from May was to help her, and thereby to help himself.
Make a joke. Brush this off.
But he didn’t feel funny. He felt as though everything he didn’t want her to know was balled up inside his chest, glowing hot and red, and he was wrapped around it, growling at her at the same time that he wanted to beg her to come closer and rescue him.
God. Even his fucking metaphors were overwrought.
“Out with it,” he demanded.