Page 3 of In Somnis

God, I miss her so damn much.

I clear my throat instead. “Mind if I sit here?”

The guy looks up at me from under scruffy brows, then over his shoulder.

Right. Valid point, sir.

Every other seat is empty, plenty of perfectly good booths where I could sit alone and pretend I’m fine, but I’m so done with being on my own. So when he doesn’t object, I slide onto the cracked red stool beside him, plastering on a smile. “Thanks.”

The waitress drifts over, hair piled into a messy bun. “Hey there. Our special tonight is⁠—”

“Yes. I’ll take that. Whatever it is.”

I’m too tired to make decisions, even if food is my specialty. Was my specialty.

Her brow lifts, but then she chuckles. “Burger coming right up.”

As soon as she leaves, the quiet wraps around me again. The unkempt man beside me stares into his glass of water like it might reveal the meaning of life.

Through the pass-through window comes the soft click of a spatula against metal, the hiss of meat hitting a hot pan, and something in my chest pulls toward it. I know that rhythm. How a kitchen breathes, the line moving as a single organism when it’s good, the bark of “Behind!” threading through the noise. The satisfaction of a ticket printed clean, how time disappears inside a busy service until the last plate goes out, and you realize four hours passed and you didn’t think about anything except the food. Months without setting foot in a corporate kitchen haven’t erased how my soul reaches for it without thinking.

I didn’t choose culinary school because I was ambitious. I chose it because it was the only place where nobody ever told me I was too much. Not because I was less there, but in a kitchen, too much is the baseline. Everyone is loud, fast, and moves like the world will end if the sauce breaks or the ticket sits too long. You don’t stand out for being too loud, you become part of the noise, and the noise is the point. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t overflowing. I was exactly the right volume.

I was Sous-Chef de Cuisine at the Gault Millau Restaurant inside The Vance, one of Boston’s most prestigious hotels, right until I traded my station for hospital corridors and Mom’s pill schedule. Spencer, my ex, was Chef de Partie then. The second I was gone, he slid into my position and acted as if it had always been waiting for him. They promised I could come back when, well… now, but I’d have to start back at the bottom and claw my way back up from nothing.

I’ve rebuilt myself from scratch too many damn times already.

At some point, it stops feeling brave and starts feeling ridiculous.

My father died when I was in culinary school. I dropped out and worked my way back up through whatever kitchen would have me—breakfast diners, hotel banquets, anyone willing to let me prove myself on a line that didn’t care about my diploma.

I burned through kitchens like some people burn through relationships. I took the worst shifts, the stations nobody wanted, stayed after to watch, learn, and fix things that weren’t mine to fix. It turns out, if you’re stubborn enough and don’t mind bleeding a little, people eventually stop asking where you trained.

I became someone worth keeping, and then I left again for my mother, and now I’m supposed to do it one more time from nothing in a state where I don’t know anyone.

I’m starting to wonder if this is just what my life looks like, or if there’s a version where I get to stay somewhere long enough to stop having to introduce myself.

I huff because that’s what this road trip is starting to feel like. Sitting at a diner in a town I can’t name, on the way to one I haven’t been to in years, with no idea what my next move will be.

So, maybe I’m a hypocrite, or maybe there’s a difference between being buried and choosing to dig.

The familiar sounds, the warmth, and the comforting smells make my shoulders sag, and my eyelids droop. Just when I’m about to pass out, a tray clatters, and I jerk upright so fast my neck pops.

“It’s nice here!” I blurt out so loudly and abruptly that I even surprise myself.

The guy next to me shifts enough to side-eye me.

I wave a hand vaguely at the peeling linoleum and the flickering neon beer sign. “I mean, you know… for a gas station.”

He still doesn’t make a sound. Not even a grunt.

The silence sits there between us, and I feel it in my bones. Then, without permission, Spencer’s voice surfaces.

“You done talking?”

He used to say it when he was tired or when I’d been going for too long. After a while, I learned to hear it before he said it. I learned to catch myself mid-sentence and swallow the rest. Somewhere along the line, the catching became automatic and became its own kind of quiet I carried everywhere.

I’m so sick of being quiet.