Lyra

“3 plates of the sunny morning, one plate of pancakes with maple syrup, three cups of cappuccino for table three.” Nadia, one of our waitresses, read the order out loud.

“1 egg and toast, pancakes with fried bacon, chicken burritos, and a cup of latte.” Jasmin, another waitress, read her order.

The mornings were the laid-back time of the entire day in our kitchen. Lunch was busy compared to breakfast. Most office workers came here for lunch, couples, ladies in their middle age, but dinner was the attraction. We started our preparation around 5 and normally our first guest arrived by 6:30. All ages of people came to our place as it was a family place.

The room on the first floor was just a hall where all the tables and chairs were arranged. Our kitchen was placed on this floor. Most tables are for four people or two. It booked three booths in the corner on this floor while the second floor was for only families.

The nighttime kitchen you could certainly compare to a battlefield. Orders kept coming one after one, and it’s your job to stay calm and finish the order within a limited time, which I ten minutes. A customer shouldn’t wait more than ten minutes for their appetizer. You could take extra minutes for the main course, but the appetizer should be in front of the table in ten minutes.

That’s how dinner went for 10 at night, sometimes 10:30 after that we started wrapping things up, cleaning the kitchen, plates, other stuff, the halls, tables.

We opened early, at precisely 6: 30 in the morning. Our restaurant manager Margaret was the one who made this rule. The most strict woman I had ever met. She moved with the minute's hand of the clock, but sometimes we felt the clock moved according to her daily routine.

If you were working in this lavish downtown restaurant in any position, whether it’s part-timer or full, if you fell under Mrs. Margaret’s authority, you didn’t have the luxury to come late at work. Even if you were dying on your way here, or some kind of major accident happened to you, and in that, you lost your hand or leg, yet you had to cross the main door which we called Hell’s border before 7 am. If it was 7:01, with a heavy heart, I had to inform you that Mrs. Margaret would eat you alive, and no one had the supremacy to save you from that.

Sometimes this place felt more like a military base camp than a family dinner where people came and had a good time. Every morning Margaret came here at 6:45 at sharp. She turned on the lights, opened the windows and kitchen doors, took a brief tour around the entire place to find mistakes, so she could inform the cleaners when they came.

By 6: 55 she took her usual seat which was beside the main (Hell’s border) door and opened her black velvet cover notebook where every one of the employee’s names was written, her glasses hung low on her nose, the bun of hair stay uptight like her personalty all day, the way every day she used hair spray it was safe to say her half of the salary money was on this single beauty product. Her clothing was amazing too, only one color combination, black and white, and that’s what she wore for the last twenty years. A white shirt and a black suit, a badass businesswoman who knew what she wanted.

Back to her morning ritual, every time an employee came to the restaurant, she crossed their name with her red fountain pen with great care, just like back in school when our teachers used to keep a report of our attendance. It was the same feeling, nothing new. But the one who came after seven was the one in danger.

Once you had achieved three stars from Margaret, congratulation you were the lucky fellow who earned a punishment that meant entry into Margaret’s office. We called that “the lion’s den”. However, we didn’t certainly know what happened when you were late. One employee, Jake, was a part-timer, young, still, in college, carefree, he didn’t take our manager seriously even when we all alarmed him about the danger, but he was chilled, and in return, he suffered the consequence.

After his encounter with Margaret in her office, he was gone; we had no clue what happened or what was a punishment she plotted for him as she loved to keep this matter under the wraps, so we all stayed in fear. With Jake gone, all of us became more intense and enthusiastic about work.

Once Margeret’s hardcore punishment was disclosed. One of the servers, Jasmin, was late three times in a row, for that she got the chance to visit “Lion’s den”. After five minutes, she was all fire and venom was coming out of her mouth when she came out.

“I don’t give a fuck what you old cranky bitch says. You don’t pay me, then why should I listen to you. Go die somewhere, you miserable bitch. No one can make do something like that. I will also see who removes me from my job.” Jasmin challenged Margaret that day and still, the feud was going on at speed.

Later, we found out Margaret told her to write an apology letter with ten pages front and back.

So yeah, you could name her the villain of this place, but for me, she was just a disciplined woman. The real rogue was the head chef, Kavin. This man was the worst of the worst. And as his sous chef, it was hard to work with him. His rude behavior, mean comments, and judgemental conduct. annoyed not only me but all the people here

Then again, I needed to tolerate the discrimination that he shouted at my ears every single day. The only thing he saw in me was that I was a woman. And that was enough for him to walk all over me whenever he wanted. Not my skill at cooking. If I suggested something on the menu, he would behave as if he didn’t hear me at all when I knew well he was well aware of my voice, just not eager to heed any attention to that.

So many times he humiliated me in front of the staff, in the middle of the lunch and dinner, for little things he would call out to me when that was nothing to create a scene. Rarely did he let me touch the food we cooked in the kitchen. I was just a sculpture in a human body standing at the corner of the kitchen, and, damn; I hated that.

Every time he involved me at work, he would go to any extent to find a mistake, as small as a chocolate drop on the counter was enough for him to roar at me.

“Just because you are a woman, that doesn’t mean I will go easy on you. Don’t even think that. Men and women are equal to me.” The usual speech he kept ready for my ears.

Joke of the century, this a-hole didn’t believe that at all. If he did, I would have been doing my job as a sous chef in the kitchen, not the dishwashing that I was doing from the time I joined this restaurant.

“You are a woman. And women are skilled at cleaning. This is the perfect job for you, don’t you think so?” The laugh of his shouted that he was the devil of Chicago, and for so many days I wanted to punch his face so badly. “You should be glad to have a modest job.”

I didn’t want the simple job; I wanted my job.

Every time I washed a plate, I would imagine that I was Kavin, and I would scrub that so harsh surface with his horrid face that the plate would shine like a star.

Another worst trait of him as he loved himself too much. Every time he opened his mouth, his words would be kicked off with his praise and end with him, too.

I had ever seen the greatest narcissist in my life.

My workplace suffocates me worse than my home. Back at the McCoy mansion, I had my safe place in the form of my bedroom, Owen, and the entire place. Dada nowadays didn’t come out of his room, from breakfast to dinner he stayed up in his room. Viola was in New York, and Owen moved out of the house a few months ago, so the house was for me. I could go anywhere in the house, roam around any room, sit anywhere I liked as a free bird, and I loved that, but this place is just too much for me.

I wished I could leave this place, but I couldn’t as Penelope Gibson, the owner, was my boss and my best friend. And that crazy woman signed me in an official paper that said I would work here for at least a year, and I had yet to survive another six months in this hell.

This place belonged to Penney’s father, Albert Gibson. At his youngest daughter’s twelfth birthday party, he gifted this place to Penny, as she loved this place’s food a lot. Before working here, I was one of the customers of this place, and I loved the food a lot. Now, as a proud owner of this place, she chose the best of the best from the food industries, with a sum that no one could refuse.

If I knew from the beginning that I had to deal with Kavin every day, I would prefer staying jobless to getting taunt about being a woman.

“Explain this.” Penny shoved her phone in front of my face when I was washing the plates in the kitchen.

“Explain what?” I asked, without looking at her. I couldn’t break these plates. Then another monologue of Kavin would be coming, and sorry, I was not that excited or a fan of that.

“Are you engaged to Nathan Hall?” She was so loud that every one of the eyes in the kitchen turned to me.

I stopped and looked at her. How did she find this out?

Of course, the twenty-century greatest innovation, the internet, was present with us last night, and thanks to her I was all over social media. The videos of Nathan announcing our engagement, our pictures walking out of the club with hand in hand.

Great. Applaud the masses of Chicago for their magic work behind the camera.

“It’s not like that,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Will you stop shouting?” I smeared my hand on the paper towel and made my way out of the kitchen.

“How did you get engaged to that man when I sent you a date with another man?” She crossed her hand over her chest. “Was there a secret relationship between you two because of your family’s animosity? Forbidden love like Romeo and Juliet. Family rivalry tears apart the lovebirds.”

“What? No. There is no secret. Whatever happened last night was bizarre.”

She frowned, and I played the entire night for her, so she could enjoy the drama that happened last night in the club.

“Oh my God.” She veiled her mouth with her hands.

“I know.”

“Nathan is a romantic. I like him a lot already.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Did she just praise Nathan for being the hero that I needed last minute?

I mean, yeah, what he did was praised worth, the way he helped me control that situation so calmly, I was thankful for that. Yet, as my friend, she should ask me first if I was fine or not. Instead, she went fangirling over Nathan.

The entire of Chicago was his fangirl, that was what I heard from newspapers and magazines. A lucky bastard with a woman roaming around him. That was how Owen described Nathan to me a year ago when I asked him about Nathan. The night after I first met him.

This girl was a hopeless romantic, and the way she was drooling over Nathan proved my point perfectly.

“He took me home for dinner. His parents’ house. Can you believe that? He introduced me as his fiancée.” I sighed. “That was just too much.”

“You two will have the best-looking baby.” She beamed.

“Babies? Where are these coming from?”

“Engagement to marriage and after those babies.” She rolled her eyes at me as if I was a kid who didn’t understand the adult world at all.

“There is no engagement, Penny. Everything is fake.”

“How was the dinner?”

The dinner was awkward, edgy, nervous energy hung in the air thoroughly. Not only for me but for every single person on the table, too. Not for Veronica, though.

She was the only gleeful person at the table with a mouth that ran faster than a train, sharper than scissors. She was the only person who talked, laughed, certainly had a great time. Apart from her, everyone on the table was too afraid to inhale oxygen. I was sure some people were holding them for the complete dinner, and I was one of them.

Everything was motionless. If you were at Hall’s house last night, you would have seen how serene things were. Even the servers moved cautiously as if they were afraid to make noise. All eyes were on me. I was aware of that attention without glancing at their eyes. I felt the heat from them straight on my soul and heart.

Sitting at the same table with the man who was in the bed with my mommy had been a different kind of experience if you asked me. I didn’t remember much about the night all these things took place. Owen and I were at aunt Rose’s house that night. Mommy called aunt Rose and asked her if she could have us tonight as she had a party to attend, and she was afraid she would be late. She didn’t want us to stay home alone.

Aunt Rose was a sweetheart just like dada she didn’t have an evil bone in her body, she gladly agreed, and we were in her house by evening. Uncle Josh picked us up from the house.

We had a fun night, we ate, played, laughed, and went to sleep, but then in the middle of the night aunt Rose and uncle Josh woke us up telling us we were going home.

Owen and I were drowsy. During the car ride, I opened my eyes a little to see what was happening. It was dark as black outside, little stars in the sky, the weather was wet, maybe it rained, that little Lyra gave little thought about that. She was clutching her little doll near her heart, her heart was blank as a night. All she could think about was going home to her bed so she could sleep.

When we came home, it was different, everything was different. Viola was crying in the living room so loudly that I covered my ears with my small, soft hands. Dada was sitting on the stairs as a lifeless human and mommy. She was nowhere to be found.

Owen yelled at the entire house, ran from one room to another to find her. “Mommy. Mommy, where are you? Mommy.”

She was nowhere in the house; she wasn’t even in the world. She was gone, away from us, to a place where Owen couldn’t follow her. No one could.

But I didn’t know anything that truly happened that night. Nobody talked about mommy in our house or about that night as we grew older. We made peace with her death. Mommy wasn’t here with us, and we moved on with our life without her. It wasn’t that she was involved in our lives, but she was there, at least for us.

I knew about Richard and mommy from Penelope. For the first time I met her, we were juniors in high school. I was fourteen when Penny shoved the truth in my face in front of the entire school. Penny laughed with other girls about my mother. I knew nothing about the things they were talking about and knew no one would answer me if I asked, so I went to uncle Josh. When I asked uncle Josh about this, he told me the truth.

That day I got two things, one of the horrifying faces of my late mother. Second, a best friend in life.

Last night, having dinner with Richard and his family was decent than I thought it would be, but that didn’t hide the fact he was an awful person. The reason for my dada’s melancholy.

The way Amanda Hall, Nathan’s mother, looked at me says a lot. That woman loathed me due to the trade that my mother did with her husband on the bed.

The past stayed in the past. We shouldn’t bother about that and think about the future that was waiting for us. True. But sometimes the mistakes that you made in the past remain with us for life, and it roofed our future with the darkness of that.

Again, sometimes you need to pay the price for something that you didn’t do, but someone close to you was the reason. That punishment was the most heartbreaking and painful. The sins that our mother did that manifest us siblings for life. We couldn’t run away from that even if we wanted to.

If I were in the place of Amanda Hall, I would have thrown away any person related to that woman out of my home. Staying under the same roof with someone who slept with my husband sickens me. She was generous enough to provide me with food.

“Lyra, how was the dinner?” she waved her hands in front of my face.

“I don’t know how to explain the dinner without using the word awkward.” I sighed. “It was uncomfortable, to be honest. Thank God Veronica was there. She made the air light with her nonsense talk. I almost fall in love with her because of that.” I smiled.

“Why was she there?” Penny drew her brows together.

“She was with Luke. They are dating.”

“Didn’t she sleep with Nathan in Greece? That was like three or four weeks ago, and now she is with Luke? Sleep with the older brother and date the younger brother? Is this a new trend that I am not aware of?”

“How do you know she sleeps with Nathan?”

“She told the world. How great he was in bed, how much they had fun, all these kinds of stuff. Hearing those things were gross. I would prefer a good horror movie instead of that.”

“You hate horror movies.”

“Exactly.” Penny held my hand and squeezed it lightly. “Be careful. We are not going to let anyone snatch your Nathan. We are going to fight.”

I wanted to scream and put some word on this woman’s brain, but I knew it was hopeless. She wouldn’t believe me. I left her to deem whatever she wanted.

But my mind went to Veronica and Nathan. What an interesting story about two of them. Did Luke know all of these? Even after knowing all this, he was so deeply in love with Veronica that I must say he was deeply in love with this woman.

What a family.

But again, Nathan and Veronica?

“This is the sixth time we met.” Again, his words came back to haunt me.

What were the other three times that I didn’t remember? Seriously, this man had been playing with my wits since last night and I am getting tired of this game now.

We needed to sit down and had a proper conversation, like two adults, about the situation that he created with his confidences and lies.