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It was the kind of Chicago winter evening that was best spent in The Bear’s darkened front-of-house.
Sunday dinner service had come and gone with minimal bloodshed. The rest of the crew had scattered to their preferred homes, bars and – in Neil’s case – an axe-throwing alley. Even Nat had finally shut her laptop, turned off the office lights and left with a tired wave.
That left Sydney and Carmen alone in the dining room, stooped like wilting flowers and staring out the wide windows at the mingled blues and greys of Chicago at closing time.
He looked at her beside him, luminous even with the lights down low. “Sit for a while?”
“Sit forever,” she said, making him chuckle.
He grabbed two chairs that were tilted against a now-empty table, where earlier there’d been a 30-year anniversary dinner and then a surprise wedding proposal. Both seatings ordered Syd’s scallops and, though she’ll never know it, it made them feel even more in love.
He set the chairs side by side. They both sat down with nearly imperceptible groans. Outside, a fine grey mist started to drift along North Orleans. It reminded him of cigarette smoke, but where once his fingers might have twitched for a fix, now they plucked at a braid that had fallen out of her bandana.
“You killed it tonight,” Carmy said.
Sydney knocked their knees together. “C’mon, not just tonight.”
“I mean, yeah, every night, jackass.”
She huffed a laugh. “Thank you, Chef.”
“The, uh, meat delivery next week–”
“Yeah, Nat called them and I confirmed. They’re coming Tuesday, bright and early. This week was just a fluke.”
“Good, good. Just…we make these schedules, we pay them–”
“I get it.”
“--and everything depends on everything else being on time–”
“It’s handled, Carm.” She patted his hand, less gently than she would have before he’d started spiraling, but it was exactly what he needed, taking it as an invitation to capture her fingers and squeeze.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
That settled, Sydney closed her eyes. A familiar stiffness between her shoulders had started to creep upwards after lunch service, and now the base of her skull felt the vise closing in. She rolled her head from side to side to work out the cricks, stopping only when she felt a warm, large hand cup itself around her neck.
“Hurts?” he asked.
“Not more than usual.”
“That’s not good, Syd.” The hand began a light massage on both sides of her neck, digging in with just enough pressure to pull a relieved moan from her. He smiled to hear it, smiled even wider when her shoulders dropped and her head lolled forward like a marionette with slackened strings.
“Better?”
“So much. Why buildings when massage so good?”
He laughed at the now-familiar teasing. “Don’t be a dick to architecture. Architects–they’re noble, they do a service,” he said, ignoring her graceless snort. He moved his pressing fingers up her neck so they just brushed against the short, curling hairs at her nape. “God forbid a man have dreams.”
Chin nearly touching her chest, Syd murmured, “You know, architecture requires a lot of math.”
He hummed absently, drinking in the sight of her so unarmed. “Does it?”
“Uh-huh. So much math. Way more than massaging or cheffing, Chef.”
“That must be why I’m not an architect, then, Chef.”
“Must be.” With a grateful sigh, Sydney let her body fall slowly sideways and settle against him. Carmen dropped his hand from her neck, lifted his arm to wrap around her shoulders and cupped the far side of her face, guiding her head so his cheek could rest against her crown.
In the absence of lights and bodies and open flames, the temperature in the dining room was cool, nearly cold, but like this he felt warm. Outside were the sounds of the city’s night shift rousing; inside, the hum of the restaurant’s walk-in refrigerator, now regularly serviced. He could have held her like this here, forever, uninterrupted, until he remembered something.
“My mom called me.”
He felt Sydney’s body go tense, so he stroked a soothing thumb along her jawline. “What? When?”
“During service tonight. She left a message.”
“Dude.”
“Yeah. She, uh, she asked me to come to dinner and to bring you.”
There was silence for several beats before Sydney said, with a confused awkwardness that had become exceedingly rare since she became captain of this ship, “Like, to threaten me or…I mean, I don’t want to say it sounds ominous because I know you and her and Nat have made strides, but also I don’t know her like that, so, why…?”
Despite her worry she didn’t lift her head from his shoulder, which he took as a small victory. He shrugged on the side that wasn’t bearing her weight.
“I mean, I have a theory.”
“Well, is it a secret theory,” she said when he paused for too much effect, “or can the rest of the class know about it?”
“I think she thinks we’re dating.”
He felt rather than saw her brow furrow. “Huh?”
“Pete said she saw a picture of us, and then there was that magazine interview, so now she thinks…”
“Things,” she finished. “She thinks things.”
“Yeah.” He grew nervous when she didn’t say anything. “Is…is that okay?”
Sydney pulled away and he felt a clench of unease inside his chest, but she only gave him enough space to be able to watch her roll her eyes at him. “Please don’t be stupid, Carm. Obviously it’s okay.” Then she dropped back against him, as if that brief act of mild insubordination had wrung out the last of her energy.
Carmen laughed softly, bringing his hand back to rub and squeeze at her nape. “Heard.” And then: “It’s okay with me, too.”
“It’s weird, though, right?”
“Which part?”
“It’s weird that so many people think that.”
“Is it?” Carmen did a mental tally: His mom. Pete, apparently. Nat, based on her increasingly frequent and pointed insinuations. Richie, based on his increasingly vulgar and exasperated insinuations. The fish guy. The meat guy. The fridge guy. Tiff. Frank. Claire, like that time when she said that thing. The reporter who did their interview. That one Yelp reviewer.
“Are you counting in your head? Is that what you’re doing?” Sydney jammed a knuckle into his side. “Because Chantel’s said something, and TJ, and Christian, and the barista at the place, and my freaking Dad–”
“Oh, shit.”
“And the other day, Cicero did the eyebrows thing at me. You know, when he wants to say something but not with his mouth?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“It’s like he’s smizing, but in an Italian way.”
“Syd, I have no idea what that is.”
“Okay, well, he did it.”
He tugged on her earlobe; she swatted at his hand. “It sounds like they know something we don’t,” he concluded eventually.
“There is absolutely zero way TJ knows something I don’t. She’s a fetus.” But her reflection on the window showed her with a small, secret smile that she hid in his shirt when she caught him looking.
“You’re a dork,” he told her.
“Wow.”
When they were little, he and Nat had discovered a pair of birds nesting in a crawlspace under their house, one tucked so tightly under the wing of the other that they didn’t look paired so much as conjoined. If someone walked by The Bear’s window just now and saw them, he wondered what they would think.
Sometime later, after they’d returned the chairs, gathered their belongings and switched off the remaining lights, Carmen said, “See you tomorrow?”
“But excuse me?” She froze in the middle of the room and affected an expression of comical bewilderment, eyes scrunched, lips pursed. “Why, tomorrow is our day off!”
Carmen grinned. He’d never been so delighted at so late an hour. “Is that a yes, Chef?”
She dropped the pose like a cartoon anvil; she was Sydney again, and she was laughing back at him. “Dude,” she said, chivvying him toward the exit with her arm wound through his, “We are never beating the allegations.”