Chapter Text
Prologue
In the end, Syd not only wound up leaving The Bear, she wound up leaving the country as well.
She logged onto the internet one night and booked a flight for Italy when she was so overwhelmed with whether or not she should stay at The Bear, or go and work for Shapiro.
It wasn’t like it was going to be a permanent thing. She just needed time to clear her head, to sort out her thinking, and make a decision. She couldn’t do that at home. Carmy ‘s eyes and soulful glances were enough to make her say fuck it and let him lead her to the ends of the earth if he wanted to. It would be enough to make her stay, even if it turned out they couldn’t get the restaurant back on course. She would stand by him while the whole world burned.
And she didn’t want to think with her heart. She couldn’t afford to. Not when Claire was still in the wings, waiting for him to get his shit together, and run back to her so they could live happily ever after. Just like it was a fucking Hallmark Christmas movie.
Boy makes a name for himself away from home, boy comes back and the girl he knew his whole life was there, waiting for him.
And how could Syd compete with that?
Not that she was in love with Carmy.
He just made her crazy.
He just made her want to abandon all good decision making, her pros and cons lists. Her backup plans, and the backup plans for her backup plans, and that wasn’t directly his fault.
But it was a problem.
Because she couldn’t think clearly.
Everything was all muddled. Everything was so confusing.
So, so confusing.
On top of it, Shapiro didn’t help with decision making. He was always showing up, crowding her space. Trying to prove he was a good ally, and that he knew knew her culture. He was hip with her.
She found him completely irksome, and she couldn’t see him as someone she exactly wanted to be in business with the more she talked to him. She barely got to know him, but she knew Carmy wasn’t as bad.
But the promise of full control of the menu and creativity crowded in with all that, and made it even harder to decide what she was going to do.
So, in the end Syd wound up not only leaving The Bear. She wound up leaving the country as well.
It was out of character for her, leaving without a perfectly constructed plan, without any idea of what she was going to do next.
It wasn’t like it was going to be permanent. She just needed space. She needed to clear her head far, far away from Chicago and far, far away from Shapiro and Carmy.
But mostly Carmy.
So, it was just her luck when he showed up on her doorstep one day in mid-October, confusing her even more.
TBC…