Caught Up

“Hi!” Max hollers from across the room.

Close enough.

“Hi, buddy.” Monty laughs. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

I didn’t think I’d ever be as close to a coach as I am to Monty. Before last season, I was playing for the Seattle Saints, the team I was drafted to and spent the first eight years of my career with. I respected the staff there, and I liked the field manager enough, but our relationship was all business.

Then, last season, my free agency brought me to Chicago, solely because my younger brother is on the roster—starting shortstop for the Warriors, and I missed playing ball with the little shit. When I met Monty, I instantly liked him, but our working relationship became more like family when Max came into my life last fall. I can’t thank him enough for what he’s done for me. It’s because of him, understanding the kinds of sacrifice it takes to be a single parent, that made this situation work.

He told the team executives that my son would be traveling with me this season, and he wouldn’t be taking no for an answer. Knowing if he was denied, I’d be going into early retirement. I refuse to be without my kid for half the year when his own mother abandoned him at six months old. He needs someone constant and stable in his life, and I won’t let something as trivial as a game be the reason my son doesn’t have that.

I should probably stop firing everyone we hire so I can make Monty’s life a little easier, but that’s a different conversation.

My brother, Isaiah, jogs down the hall and hops into the elevator right after us. His disheveled, light brown mop of hair is still formed into whatever shape the bed he slept in gave it. I’ve been up for hours, between waking with Max and getting my morning workout in, but I’d bet good money he just left his bed.

And I’d bet my life there’s still a naked woman in it.

“Hey, man,” he says. “Hi, Maxie,” he adds, blowing a raspberry on my son’s cheek. “Where are you guys going?”

“Gotta go beg Sanderson to watch him tonight during the game.”

Isaiah doesn’t say anything, simply waits for me to elaborate.

“I fired Troy.”

He laughs. “Jesus, Malakai. Make it a little more apparent you don’t want to make this arrangement work.”

“Troy sucked and you know it.”

Isaiah shrugs. “I mean, I prefer your nannies to have tits and a strong desire to sleep with me, but besides that, he wasn’t terrible.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Max . . .” Isaiah turns to my son. “Don’t you want an auntie? Tell your daddy that your next nanny needs to be a woman, single, twenties or thirties. Bonus points if she looks banging in my jersey.”

Max smiles.

“Wouldn’t mind being a mother to a thirty-year-old man,” I add. “Is okay with a disgusting apartment. Knows how to cook and clean since you’re a literal man-child and refuse to do so.”

“Mmm, yeah, she sounds perfect. Keep your eyes out for someone just like”—the elevator doors open—“that.”

My brother’s attention is glued straight ahead when we arrive on the lobby level.

“Shit, I missed Sanderson’s floor. Shoot,” I correct. “Don’t say shit, Max.”

My kid is too distracted to listen to me curse as he chews on his fingers and watches his uncle. Said uncle stays standing in the middle of the elevator, dumbstruck.

“Isaiah, are you getting off or not?”

A woman walks onto the elevator, standing between him and me, which makes his sudden state of shock a bit more obvious. Pretty girls tend to make him stupid.

And this one is real pretty.

Dark chocolate hair falls over tanned skin that’s covered in intricate black ink. And there’s a whole lot of skin. She’s got a little tank or bra thing under a pair of cutoff overalls, thick thighs spilling out past the frayed hem. Those thighs don’t have the same artwork that covers her arm and shoulder though.

“Hi,” Isaiah finally spits out, all dazed and distracted.

Reaching behind her, I lightly smack him on the back of the head, because the last thing he needs is another woman in another city to keep him occupied. I’ve lived the life he’s currently indulging in and now I have a fifteen-month-old on my hip to show for it. I need the added responsibility of my younger brother following in my footsteps like I need a root canal for fun.

“Get off the elevator, Isaiah.”

He nods, waving and walking backwards into the lobby. “Bye,” he says with hearts in his eyes and not to me or my son.

The woman in the elevator simply lifts one of her two Coronas in a farewell.

“Floor?” she asks, all raspy and deep before lubricating her throat with a swig of beer. She reaches past me, pressing the floor I just came from before looking back over her shoulder for my answer.

Eyes are jade green and thoroughly confused, a tiny gold septum ring shines just under the bridge of her nose, and now I get why my brother turned into a dumbstruck teenage boy because suddenly I am too.

“Should I just guess? I can press them all if you’d like and we could take a nice long elevator ride together.”

Max reaches for her, finally snapping me back into reality as if I’ve never seen a good-looking woman before.

I twist my hip to keep him from getting his little fingers tangled in her hair in a way that sounds awfully fun right about now, but this woman is not only drinking one beer at 9 a.m. on a Thursday, she’s drinking two.

I clear my throat and press Sanderson’s floor myself.

Miss Double Fisting on a Weekday flips her hair over her shoulder as she retakes her spot in the elevator next to me. Regardless of her morning beverages of choice, she doesn’t smell like booze. She smells like a cake and suddenly, I have a sweet tooth.

Out of my periphery, I catch her looking at Max with a little smile.

“You’ve got a cute kid.”

You’ve got a cute everything, is what I want to say in response.

But I don’t because, as of last fall, that’s no longer me. I no longer have the luxury of flirting with every pretty woman I pass on the street. I don’t have the chance to throw back a beer at 9 a.m. I can’t take a random woman back to my hotel room without exchanging names, intending to never see them again because said hotel rooms are cluttered with cribs, highchairs, and toys.

I especially don’t need to be throwing out flirty statements to this kind of woman. It doesn’t take a mind reader to know she’s a wild one.

“Does he speak?” she asks.

“Him?”

She laughs to herself. “I was referring to you. So, you just make it a habit of ignoring people who talk to you?”

“Uh, no.” Max goes to grab her again and I turn further away to keep him from grabbing a stranger. “Sorry. Thanks.”

My kid catapults his body across my waist, continuing to reach his chubby fingers towards her, going for either her or one of her beers, I’m not quite sure.

The woman chuckles to herself again. “Maybe he knows you need one of these.”

She offers me her second Corona.

“It’s 9 a.m.”

“And?”

“And it’s a Thursday.”

“We’re judgy too, I see.”

“Responsible,” I correct.

“Jesus,” she laughs. “You need something stronger than a Corona.”

What I need is for this elevator to move a little quicker, but she might be onto something. I do need a beer. Or ten. Or a few hours rolling around with a naked woman. I can’t remember the last time I did that. It sure as hell hasn’t happened since Max came into my life, and that was nine months ago.

“Dadda.” Max squishes my cheeks together before pointing towards the woman again.

“I know, buddy.”

I don’t know shit.

All I know is my kid won’t stop trying to throw his body off mine to get to her. Which is weird, because in general, Max isn’t big into strangers and even more so, he isn’t all that comfortable with women.

I blame it on the fact the one who gave birth to him left him to be raised by a single dad, a reckless uncle, and a team of rowdy baseball players. The only presence of a woman that’s stuck is my buddy’s fiancée, but even then, it took him a minute to warm to her.

But for some reason, he’s into this one.

“Come on, Max,” I exhale, readjusting him. “You’ve gotta stop squirming.”

“I know it’s weird to offer, but I can hold him if you wa—”

“No,” I snap.

“Geez.”

“I mean, no, thank you. He doesn’t do well with women.”

“Wonder where he got that from.”

I shoot her a pointed glance, but she just pops her shoulders and takes another swig.

Max laughs again. At literally nothing. This kid is just oddly into her, and this elevator ride is taking too fucking long.

“Did you get your smile from your mama?” she asks him, tilting her head and admiring him. “Because I don’t think your dad knows how to.”

“Funny.”

“I’ll pretend that wasn’t sarcastic and you actually have a sense of humor.”

“He doesn’t have a mom.”

The space goes eerily silent the way it typically does when I say those five words. Most people are concerned they crossed a line because his mom passed away tragically, not because she didn’t tell me she was pregnant then showed up six months post-partum to flip my world upside down before leaving.

Her teasing tone immediately shifts. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“She’s alive. She just isn’t around.”

I can physically see the relief wash over her. “Oh, well that’s good. I mean, that’s not good. Or maybe it is good? Who am I to say? Goddamn, this elevator is taking forever.” She slaps a palm over her mouth, her eyes darting to Max. “I mean, gosh dang it.”

That finally makes me chuckle, a small grin sliding across my lips.

She softens a bit. “He does smile.”

“He smiles a whole lot more when he’s not being berated by a stranger in an elevator while she’s double fisting beers first thing after she wakes up.”

“Maybe she never went to sleep.” Another casual pop of her shoulders.

Dear God.

“Maybe they should stop talking about themselves in the third person like a couple of pretentious a-holes.”

The elevator finally opens on the floor she needs.

“Maybe he should loosen up every once in a while. He’s got a cute-ass kid and an even cuter smile when he shows it.” She lifts her Corona to me before chugging the rest and exiting the elevator. “Thanks for the ride, Baby Daddy. It was . . . interesting.”

That it was.

Chapter 2

Miller

I love butter. Imagine being the person who created God’s greatest gift to mankind. I could kiss them for their discovery. With bread? Perfection. Melted onto a baked potato? Heaven sent. Or my personal favorite, baked into my famous chocolate chip cookies.

Now, you might be thinking it’s a chocolate chip cookie, they’re all the same. Wrong. Dead wrong. I might be known throughout the country for my ability to fix a Michelin star-seeking restaurant’s underperforming dessert program, but I wish one of these fancy restaurants would say “fuck it” and let me bake them a goddamn chocolate chip cookie for their menu.

They’d sell out. Every night.

But even if they’d let me fancy up a classic like that, that recipe is mine. I’ll lend out my creativity and my tips and techniques. Hell, I’ll even create an entire fresh and inspiring dessert menu for a restaurant that has a yearlong waitlist for a table. But the classic recipes, the ones I’ve honed for the last fifteen years, the ones that make your body melt into a sigh as soon as the sugar touches your tongue, reminding you of home, those are mine.

No one is asking for those recipes anyway. They aren’t what I’m known for.

But I’m fairly certain that the only thing I’m going to be known for is the mental breakdown I’m about to have in the middle of this Miami kitchen, simply because for the past three weeks, I haven’t been able to create a single new dessert.

“Montgomery,” one of the line cooks calls out. He, for some reason, doesn’t feel the need to call me by my title, so I haven’t concerned myself with learning his name. “Are you coming out with us after our shift tonight?”

I don’t honor him with eye contact as I clean up my workstation and pray that the soufflé in the oven makes it through without sinking. “I’m going to assume you forgot my title is Chef,” I say over my shoulder.

“Sweetie. You just bake cakes. I’m not calling you Chef.”

As if a record scratched, the entire kitchen goes silent, every prep cook freezing with their tools in hand.

It’s been a while since I’ve been disrespected in my profession. I’m young, and at twenty-five, it’s not easy to stand in a kitchen of adults, typically men, and tell them what they’re doing wrong. But over the last couple of years, I’ve earned a reputation, one that demands respect.

Three weeks ago, I won the James Beard Award, the highest honor in my industry, and since being named Outstanding Pastry Chef of the Year, my consultation services have been booked solid. I’m now sitting at a three-year-long list of kitchens I’ll be spending a season at, including this Miami stint, fixing their dessert programs and giving them a shot at earning themselves a Michelin star.

So yes, I’ve earned the title of Chef.

“You coming, Montgomery?” he starts again. “I’ll buy you a beer or something with an umbrella you’ll probably like. Something sweet and pink.”

How this guy isn’t picking up on the fact his co-workers are silently begging him to shut up is beyond me.

“I know something else sweet and pink that I wouldn’t mind a taste of.”

He’s only trying to get a rise out of me, to get the one woman working in the kitchen to snap, but he’s not worth my time. And luckily for him, my timer beeps, pulling my attention back to my work.

Opening the oven door, I’m greeted by blazing heat and yet another sunken soufflé.

The James Beard Award is only a piece of paper, but somehow, the weight of it has crushed me. I should be grateful and humbled that I won an award most chefs strive for their entire lives, but the only thing I’ve felt since winning is a crippling pressure that’s caused my mind to go blank, rendering me unable to create anything new.

I haven’t told anyone I’m struggling. I’m too embarrassed to admit it. All eyes are on me more than ever before and I’m flailing. But there will be no hiding in two months’ time when I’m featured on the cover of Food & Wine magazine’s fall edition, and I’m sure the only thing the article will have to say is how sad the critics are to see yet another new talent unable to live up to their potential.

I can’t do this anymore. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I can’t handle the pressure right now. It’s just a bit of burnout, a creative rut. Like writer’s block for a pastry chef. It’ll pass, but it sure as hell isn’t going to pass while I’m working in someone else’s kitchen with the expectation to teach others my craft.

With my back to the staff so they can’t see my newest fuck-up, I plop the soufflé ramekin on the counter, and as soon as I do, a hand lands on my waist, every hair on my neck standing up in alarm.

“You’ve got two more months here, Montgomery, and I know a good way to pass the time. A way to get the staff here to like you.” The line cook’s hot breath brushes the back of my neck.

“Get your hand off me,” I say coolly.

His fingertips dig into my waist, and they feel like my breaking point. I need to get away from this man and this kitchen. I need to get away from every kitchen.

“You’ve got to be lonely, traveling around the country the way you do. I bet you find a friend to keep you warm in that little van of yours in every city you visit.”

His palm slides down my lower back, heading towards my ass. I snatch his wrist, turning my body and kneeing him in the balls, hard and without a second of hesitation.

Instantly, he keels over in pain, a pathetic whimper escaping him.

“I told you to get your fucking hand off me.”

The staff is silent, letting their co-worker’s cries echo off the stainless-steel appliances as he remains folded in half. Part of me wants to make some comment regarding how little his dick felt against my knee, but his actions made it obvious that he’s overcompensating already.

“Oh, come on,” I say, unbuttoning my chef’s coat. “Get off the ground. You look pathetic.”

“Curtis.” Jared, the head chef, turns the corner in shock, staring down at his line cook. “You’re fired. Get the fuck up and get out of my kitchen.”

Curtis, as I’ve come to learn his name, keeps holding his balls and rolling around on the ground.

“Chef Montgomery.” Chef Jared turns to me. “I am so sorry for his behavior. That is completely unacceptable. I promise you, that’s not the kind of culture I’m cultivating here.”

“I think I’m done here.”

For a multitude of reasons, I’m done. The line cook who will never be hired in a high-end restaurant again was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back, but I know in my bones I won’t be any help to Chef Jared’s menu this summer.

And I sure as shit don’t need others to learn that I’m struggling. This industry is cut-throat, and the moment critics learn a high-end chef, let alone a James Beard recipient, is drowning, they’ll start to circle like vultures, blasting my name in every one of their food blogs, and I don’t need that attention right now.

Chef Jared cowers slightly, which is strange. The man is revered in the food world and is twice my age. “I completely understand. I’ll make sure you’re paid out for the entire contract, including the next two months.”

“No. No need to do that.” I shake his hand. “I’m just going to go.”

Curtis is still on the floor, so I offer him a simple middle finger as I make my exit because yes, I’m an awarded pastry chef who sometimes still acts like a child.

As if my inability to do my job wasn’t suffocating enough, the moment I’m outside, the late June humidity chokes me. I don’t know what I was thinking when I agreed to spend my summer working in a South Florida kitchen.

Quickly hopping into my van parked in the employee lot, I crank the AC to full blast. I love this van. It’s completely renovated inside and out with a fresh coat of deep green paint on the exterior and my own little kitchen on the inside.

I live in it while I travel the country for work, hair down and without a care in the world. Then when I get to my destinations, I turn on work-mode and spend the following months with my tattoos covered, being referred to as “Chef” for ten hours of my day.

It’s the weird juxtaposition that I call my life.

And if we’re being honest, it’s not exactly what I saw myself doing. I had once dreamt of running my own bakery, making all my famous cookies, bars, and cakes that I had baked for my dad while growing up. But I was lucky enough to be plucked fresh out of school to train under one of the best pastry chefs in Paris, followed by another internship in New York City.

My career took off from there.

Now, it’s bite-sized tarts, mousses most people can’t pronounce, and sorbets that we all like to pretend are more fulfilling than ice cream. And though there are parts of the high-end world that feel pretentious and ridiculous, I’m grateful this is where life has taken me.

My career is impressive. I know this. I’ve worked endless hours to be impressive, to reach these borderline unattainable goals. But now that I’ve achieved most of them, I’m floating without direction, looking for the next checkmark to chase.

And that’s exactly what my chaotic mind has reminded me over the past three weeks. I either maintain success or quickly take my spin through the ever-revolving door that names the newest and hottest chef in the industry.

With my mind reeling, I merge onto the highway headed towards my dad’s hotel just as my agent calls.

I answer on the Bluetooth. “Hi, Violet.”

“What the hell did that little prick do that made you, of all people, quit a job early? Chef Jared called me to apologize and tried to forward three months’ pay for you.”

“Don’t accept that check,” I tell her. “Yes, his employee is a raging douche, but the truth is, I wouldn’t have been any help to him this summer anyway.”

She pauses on the line. “Miller, what’s going on?”

Violet has been my agent for the past three years, and though I don’t have many friends due to my hectic lifestyle, I’d consider her one of them. She manages my schedule and lines up my interviews. Anyone who wants to write about me in their food blog or have me consult on their menu must go through her first.

And though there are very few people I can be honest with about what I’m dealing with, she’s one of them.

“Vi, you might kill me, but I think I’m going to take the rest of the summer off.”

If the Miami highway wasn’t so fucking loud, you’d be able to hear a pin drop.

“Why?” Her tone is frantic. “You have the biggest job of your career in the fall. You have the cover booked for Food & Wine magazine. Please don’t tell me you’re backing out of that.”

“No. God no. I’m still doing it and I’ll be in Los Angeles by the time my next job starts, I just . . .” Shit, how do I tell her that her highest-paid client is losing it? “Violet, I haven’t been able to create a new dessert in three weeks.”

“You mean you haven’t had the time?” she assumes. “Because if you’re needing more time to perfect the recipes for the article, I could understand that.”

“No. I mean I haven’t made something that didn’t fall apart in the process or burn to shit in the oven. It’d be comical how bad I am at my job if I weren’t on the brink of a mental breakdown because of it.”

She laughs. “You’re fucking with me, right?”

“Violet, a five-year-old with an Easy Bake Oven could make a better dessert than me right now.”

The line goes silent once again.

“Violet, you still there?”

“I’m processing.”

Taking the exit for my dad’s hotel, I wait for her to speak.

“Okay,” she says, calming herself. “Okay, this is fine. Everything’s fine. You’re going to take the next two months to breathe, gather yourself, and get out to Luna’s by September first.”

Luna’s is Chef Maven’s restaurant that I’ll be consulting at in the fall. Maven did a seminar while I was in culinary school, and I’ve been dying for my chance to work with her, but she left the industry shortly after we met. She became a mother, then came back into the food world by opening a restaurant named after her daughter and asked me to come help with her dessert menu. The interview for Food & Wine magazine will be taking place in her kitchen in Los Angeles, and I couldn’t be more excited for the opportunity.

At least, I was excited until everything turned to shit.