Reboot Required

I was elbow-deep in a hotel pan of julienned carrots when the swinging door bumped open and the noise of the line went thin, like somebody had turned a dial. I didn't look up right away. Then I did, and there she was.

Rochelle Martinez, thirty-five years old, standing in my kitchen in a gray blazer with a clipboard held against her chest like a shield. My ex-wife. The divorce had been final fourteen months, and I'd had a decent run of not thinking about it, and now here she was under the fluorescents next to the fryer.

"Rafe," she said it like she was confirming an order. "I didn't know it was your company."

"It's Liam's company. I just chop for him." I wiped my hands on my apron. "You're the VP thing, huh. The summit."

"VP of Operations. And this is our investor dinner, yes. I'm here to approve the menu." Her chin came up a half inch. "Small world."

"Tiny." I went back to the carrots because standing there staring at her was going to get me fired or worse. "Menu's posted by the pass. Chef's table sheet, third page."

She read it. I diced shallots, and I want to tell you my hands were steady, except they weren't. Little tremor, right at the start of each cut, the kind you get after a double shift or a bad phone call. She read for a full minute. The kitchen noise came back slowly, guys yelling tickets, the dishwasher running.

"The short rib is off limits," she said finally. "Two of the board members don't eat red meat. Swap it for the scallops and I sign off."

"Scallops cost more."

"Bill me. My budget can take it."

I laughed before I could stop myself, one short note. She looked over. We'd been married nine months, back when I was thirty-two and she was thirty-three, and I knew that look, it was the one she wore when she was deciding whether to spend money or feelings. Usually feelings lost.

"Done," I said. "Scallops, citrus butter, the farro stays."

"Good. Thank you." She clicked her pen twice, which she always did, and left through the same door she came in, and the rest of the night I thought about pen clicks instead of food.

---

Dinner service went long and hot and fine. Two hundred plates, four courses, one cracked ramekin that somehow held. By eleven the exhibit hall outside had gone quiet, the vendors packing their banner stands, and the kitchen was empty except for me and a mop bucket I hadn't gotten to yet.

That was when the door bumped again.

She'd lost the blazer. White blouse, sleeves rolled, hands in her pockets. She stood there with her hands in her pockets and looked at the scraped-clean station like it was a painting.

"I came to see you," she said. "A text felt cheap."

"It's eleven."

"I know what time it is, Rafe."

I put down the towel. Up close she smelled like wine from the dinner, one glass, maybe two. She looked tired in a way I recognized, the kind of tired you get from smiling at investors for six hours. I knew I looked worse. Eighteen hours on my feet and my guard was somewhere in the dish pit.

"You left the program," she said. "Culinary school. We saved for it together. You never told me you dropped out, I found out from your mother, which was a fun phone call."

"The tuition didn't exist anymore," I said. "The divorce ate it. Lawyers, two apartments, you remember. I had eleven thousand dollars in February and school wanted forty. So I took line work and told myself I'd save. I haven't saved."

The silence after that stretched like a held breath. Somewhere a compressor clicked on and off.

"You could have told me," she said.

"You were already packing. I wasn't going to add a spreadsheet of my failures to the box."

"That's not fair."

"Nothing about that spring was fair, Rochelle." I heard my own voice go flat, which was a skill I'd learned too well. "You wanted the career in the city. I wanted the truck. We both got half."

She didn't answer right away. She looked at the mop bucket, the floor, the big steel bench where I'd done two hundred covers.

"Half," she said, like she was tasting the word.

I reached past her for the sauce pot I'd left on the low burner, the one I'd been working on for a month, roasted peppers and a little smoked chile and a spoon of honey, something I wanted to put on the truck menu if the truck ever happened. I stirred it and held out the spoon.

"New thing," I said. "Tell me if it's ready."

She looked at the spoon, then at me. Then she did something I hadn't accounted for. She dipped her finger in instead, slow, and lifted it out trailing red, and she put it in her mouth and licked it clean while I stood there watching, and I'm telling you the fluorescent light did not help anybody in that room. Her eyes stayed on mine the whole time.

"It's good," she said. Her voice had gone lower. "It's really good. Sweet at the end."

"Yeah, that's the honey."

"Rafe." She set the pot down carefully. "Tell me to leave and I'll leave."

I should probably explain here that neither of us was drunk. She'd had a glass and a half of the pinot, I'd had nothing but coffee and spite since noon, and we were both standing up talking in complete sentences. This was just a decision being made in real time by two adults who had made it before and never stopped regretting it.

"Don't leave," I said.

"Okay." She stepped in and put her hand flat on my chest. "Yes? I need the yes."

"Yes," I said. "God, yes."

She kissed me first, and it was the same as it had been, warm and sure, her mouth opening against mine, her hand sliding up to the back of my neck. My hands went under the hem of her blouse to the skin of her waist, still soft, still familiar, and she made a small sound into my mouth that I felt in my spine.

"Station," she said against my lips. "The tall one. Please."

We got there in about four steps. I lifted her onto the steel bench and she pulled her blouse over her head herself, no bra underneath, and her nipples were already hard in the cold kitchen air. She reached for my belt while I kissed her throat, and the buckle rattled, and she laughed once, breathless.

"Still bossy," she said.

"Still complaining."

"Shut up and take these off." She hooked her thumbs in her own tights and underwear and kicked them off one ankle at a time, and then she was naked on my prep bench under the lights, and I forgot every word I owned.

I got my pants down around my thighs and she reached between us and took my cock in her hand, stroked it twice, guided me to her. She was wet already, I could feel it slick against the head, and when I pushed in she tipped her head back and said my name the old way, short and rough.

"Fuck," she breathed. "Don't stop, don't be careful."

I wasn't careful. I fucked her in long strokes with her legs around my hips and her heels digging into the back of