Personal Chef

Chapter 60

February turned into March, and March turned into April. The snow melted and throughout the city trees and flowers were blooming.

I'd finally hired a manager at my bistro. Her name was Roslyn and she had tons of restaurant experience. Between her and Paige, I was able to cut back on my hours. Instead of working all day, every day, I was down to around ten hours a day, six days a week. Yes, that was still a crazy amount of hours, but it was a huge improvement over what I'd been doing since the restaurant started serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner in early January. If I'd kept up the schedule I'd been keeping, I'd have collapsed.

Shawn and I were doing okay as friends. I definitely wasn't over him yet, and that made it a little harder. I kept telling myself that one day I'd wake up and I would no longer be in love with him. It had to happen eventually, right? Until then, I was treading water, trying to keep myself from drowning in the constant dull ache of knowing we could have had something wonderful had Kat's lies not fucked us over.

Paige and I had frequent debates about whether I was smart to not give him another chance. We were discussing this on a slow Thursday afternoon.

"Even if we were together, we're both too busy to make a relationship work," I explained.

He was gone a lot promoting his album and when he was home, he was busy rehearsing for the upcoming tour. He'd explained to me that this wasn't a full tour. He was doing sixteen stadium shows throughout the world, and would do a bigger tour that included arenas the following year.

"It sounds to me like you're justifying not being with him," she said. "You two both love each other. Why not try?"

"I can't handle having my heart broken again. Maybe that's selfish, but I need to think of myself."

"Okay. So why don't you start dating someone else? At least once a week a cute customer comes in here and flirts with you. I know you've been asked out. If you're done with Shawn, why not give some other guy a chance?"

I'd asked myself this, and the answer sucked. No one but Shawn appealed to me that way. I wasn't over him enough to start seeing someone new.

"I'm not ready," I said as I walked into the kitchen, ending the conversation.

That night Shawn texted me from London.

Shawn: I sound like a broken record in every interview

Me: Were all the questions about Jayce again?

Shawn: Jayce and his bitch of a mother

Shawn: I really just want to tell the truth about how she lied to me

Shawn: I'm sick of making it sound like she was innocent in the whole mess by not saying what she did

Me: For Jayce's sake, it's good you aren't making her look bad.

Shawn: did you see that destiny hit #1?

Shawn: of all the fucking songs

Shawn: I'm not playing it on tour

I looked at the clock and calculated the time difference.

Me: You should be sleeping.

Shawn: can't

I hated that Shawn was having such a hard time these days. The fact that the media kept hounding him about Jayce, coupled with the irony that the song he'd been forced to write about Kat was now one of his biggest hits ever, was making it very hard for him to be positive and move on with his life. He frequently texted me late at night because he had insomnia and his mood was often foul.