He's the One (22 page)

Paradiso was in a prime location, near Brighton Pavilion. Okay, even Brooke had to admit that was an impressive building – all those insane turrets and pillars and minarets or whatever Nina had said they were called – but no doubt the location would mean the restaurant was constantly busy. Sure enough, when she pushed open the door and stepped inside the place was buzzing, and it was only Tuesday lunchtime.

‘Hi there, can I get you a table for one?’ A young waiter instantly approached her.

Brooke chewed hard on her gum and looked bored. Like she would ever want to eat in a dump like this! With its red-checked tablecloths, pictures of the Leaning freaking Tower of Pisa, gondolas, the Trevi fountain and the Italian flag hanging on the wall, and some cheesy tune playing, it was so tacky and cliché-ed. The owner ought to be sued under the Trade Descriptions Act for calling it Paradiso. She had never been anywhere less like paradise in her life. It should have been called
Inferno …

Back in LA she ate at places where the food and décor were achingly stylish, where you went to be seen and had to be in with the right crowd even to get a reservation. By the look of the casually dressed clientele that was not true of Paradiso. They were here on a mission to stuff their boring faces with pasta and waddle off, loaded up with carbs. It was too tragic. And even more tragic was the fact she was going to be waiting on them.

‘Oh, I’m not eating. I’m here to see …’ Shit! She’d forgotten the manager’s name, what a great start. At this rate it would be McDonald’s here we come. Nooooooo! Anything but that. She would rather die than utter the words, ‘Do you want fries with that?’ At least this was an Italian restaurant, and she could kid herself that she was researching for future roles when she would be in some stylish Mafia-type movie. Immersing herself in that whole method acting thing.

‘Um … Mario or something.’

Waiter Guy grinned at her. He was certainly very cute, with chocolate-brown eyes, dark brown hair cut in a cute spiky style, and a sexy mouth. Too good-looking really to be a waiter, but he
was
a waiter, and
waiters didn’t feature in Brooke’s life unless they were waiting on her …

‘You mean Marco. It’s probably a good idea to get the manager’s name right if you’re here for a job interview. And to give you the heads up, he hates gum, really, it drives him crazy. I’ll go and tell him you’re here. What’s your name?’

She liked his British accent; it too was cute. But again, he was only a waiter, so it didn’t matter what he sounded like.

‘Brooke.’

‘Okay, I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Thanks,’ she muttered when he seemed to be waiting for her reply. Gee, did he expect the Nobel Prize just for doing his job and fetching the manager?

She sat down at one of the tables and got out her phone. She was halfway through sending Kelly a message, or rather a rant about where she was, when a short Italian-looking man wearing a crisp white shirt, smart black trousers and shiny black loafers, appeared. Brooke detested loafers – as far as she was concerned they were the very pinnacle of un-cool. And the fact that his were shiny made them even worse. Plus the smart black trousers looked as if they were fresh from a trouser press. Reluctantly she put down her phone and stood up. Better look as if she was making some kind of effort, even when she was wondering what the fuck she was doing here.

‘You must be Brooke.’

Wow, they bred them intelligent here. She moved the gum to the side of her mouth and hoped Shiny Shoes hadn’t noticed.

‘Yep, good to meet you …’ Shit, she’d forgotten his name already! Fortunately Waiter Guy was standing behind the manager and mouthed ‘Marco’.

‘Good to meet you, Marco.’ Brooke tried to sound as if she actually meant that.

‘So have you done any waitressing before?’

Brooke hadn’t done a stroke of paid work in her life.

‘Nope, but I’ve eaten out a lot, and I figure how hard can it be? I can do all that ‘“Hi, my name is Brooke and I’ll be your waitress today. What can I get for you?”’

She grinned at them both, rather pleased with the cheerful tone she had managed to put on, even if it did sound fake.

However, neither Marco nor Waiter Guy seemed at all impressed.

‘Well, being a waitress is probably a lot harder than you think,’ Marco replied. ‘I’m surprised your mother didn’t talk to you about it. How is Liberty, by the way? Tell her I said hello.’ He kind of went all dewy-eyed then and Brooke guessed he had the hots for her mom. Gross.

‘She’s good, thanks,’ Brooke replied, resisting the temptation to roll her eyes.

Marco glanced at her shorts, and frowned. ‘And I expect all my waiting staff to wear smart black trousers – not jeans – and a white shirt. This is a respectable family restaurant. Long hair must be tied back and any make up must be discreet. And absolutely no chewing gum.’

Damn, she’d thought he hadn’t noticed.

‘I start all my waiters on a one-month probation. So welcome to Paradiso, Brooke.’

Marco reached out his hand and reluctantly Brooke shook it. This did not seem like anything to celebrate. She felt as if she was making a pact with a devil in shiny black loafers …

‘I must get on now. Flynn here is going to show you around. I’ll see you on Saturday, Brooke – an hour
before your shift starts, to go through the basics. And please do remember to say hello from me to your mum.’ With that he walked briskly away to talk to one of the diners.

Brooke pulled a face at Flynn. ‘I got off to a fantastic start, didn’t I?’

He nodded. ‘You said it. Come on then, I’ll give you the grand tour. Just try not to give the chefs a heart attack with those shorts.’

Waiter Guy was commenting on her outfit? ‘What’s wrong with them?’

‘I don’t have a problem with them at all, but in fairness to Marco, you’re not hanging out on the beach and not everyone wants an eyeful of your bum with their pizza.’ He glanced at her behind. ‘However peachy it is.’

Was he flirting with her? He could jog
on.com
! No one who worked as a waiter could possibly be Brooke’s type. She didn’t stop to consider that she was about to start work as a waitress.

‘Okay. Whatever.’

Another grin. ‘You’re American, right? Where are you from?’

He’d spotted the accent, what a genius!

She sighed theatrically. ‘I’m from LA, living here now.’ She paused. ‘But LA’s my real home, this is just a temporary move.’

‘No need to sound so down about it. Brighton’s a really cool place, and from all I’ve heard LA is full of fakes. Fake people with fake bodies. Isn’t it, like, the plastic surgery capital of the world?’ Flynn stretched back the skin from the side of his face. ‘All those people with cat faces after they’ve OD’d on surgery. Man, I feel sorry for them. Their lives must be so shallow and dull.’

He might look cute, but he was annoying and he
knew
nothing
about things that mattered to Brooke. ‘Ever been?’ she asked.

‘Nope – never want to go either.’

‘Well, probably best not to judge somewhere until you’ve actually visited.’ It cost her some effort to sound polite when really she wanted to flip him the finger for daring to criticise her home.

Flynn seemed to want to say something else, but the look on Brooke’s face stopped him. Instead he took her round the restaurant and kitchen. She smiled and said ‘hi’ to all the other waiters, chefs and kitchen staff he introduced her to, but felt more and more miserable at the prospect of working here. This was so not how she wanted to spend her Saturdays. She’d thought things couldn’t get any worse when she’d left LA, but it seemed they could.

‘So are you going to college here?’ Flynn asked, once they’d gone through the menu together and he’d checked that she knew what everything was. Like, doh, she could actually read! The dishes here were hardly the height of culinary sophistication. Basically some kind of pasta with some kind of sauce, or a pizza with some kind of topping. She was used to eating out at top LA restaurant Koi with its mouth-watering Asian fusion cuisine, and ordering her favourite dishes of soft-shell crab and ponzu sauce or miso-bronzed black cod. She almost wanted to cry, thinking of it. When would she be back there again?

‘Yeah, it’s called Chester College or something. I’m taking drama and English literature.’

‘Hey, that’s where I’m going, and I’m doing drama as well. And so’s Mila, the other waitress you met.’

Mila the fat girl? Who looked as if she spent all her spare time scoffing garlic bread, the kind that came with melted mozzarella on top, as if bread wasn’t
calorific enough on its own? Was Brooke supposed to crack a smile over that? She would be hanging out with a cute waiter guy and a fat waitress. Wowzah! How the other students would envy her … And okay, she could admit that Flynn was good-looking, but definitely not her type. No, absolutely not. How could she ever have any respect for anyone who didn’t like LA?

‘Great,’ she managed to say. ‘Well, thanks so much for the tour. It was a real eye-opener. Who knew that restaurant kitchens were so exciting? You know when those guys were tossing the pizza dough in the air? It was like a move from Cirque du Soleil. And their skill with the knives when they were chopping up onions – awesome! But my personal favourite was the bin area. It was exactly what I would imagine a bin area to look like – not that I’ve ever wasted any time imagining it.’ She couldn’t help sounding sarcastic.

‘Do you actually want this job?’ Flynn asked. ‘Because it doesn’t exactly sound like you do.’

How could she begin to answer that? With another helping of sarcasm.

‘It was always one of my main ambitions in life to wait tables. You know, from a really young age. Most little girls dream of being a princess and wearing a beautiful dress. I dreamed of being a waitress and wearing a pair of cheap black trousers and, well, waiting on people.’

Flynn shook his head. ‘Believe me, you won’t be doing it here for long with that attitude.’

God, he sounded so serious. Lighten up!

‘Are you related to the owner or something?’

‘No, but I like Marco, and we all work as a team here.’

It was tempting to make another sarcastic comment,
Team Loser
sprang to mind, but even Brooke realised it was time to stop. ‘Sure, I’m sorry. It’s been a bit of
a culture shock coming here. And that’s an understatement. So I guess I’ll see you Saturday.’

‘Actually you’ll see me tomorrow, there’s an induction morning at college.’

She felt like banging her head against a wall. Her life just got better and better.

Chapter 25

Liberty had a meeting with her new agent in London and left the house early the following day or she might have had something to say about Brooke’s choice of outfit for her first day at college: skintight black wet-look leggings, spike-heeled ankle boots, leopard-print vest and her black leather biker jacket, worn with fake eyelashes, a ton of black eyeliner and pink-glossed lips. With any luck Waiter Boy Flynn wouldn’t recognise her and Brooke could make some cooler friends. People who would be sympathetic to her for having to live in a dump like this, and who shared her love of all things LA. There must be someone like that? Please God, let there be someone like that …

She didn’t have enough money for a taxi and nor did she think she could cycle in her heels so she took the bus. The driver very nearly didn’t let her on as she only had a £20 note and he claimed not to have any change. Her LA self would have said, Keep the freaking change! Then again, her LA self wouldn’t have been on a freaking bus in the freaking first place! This was only the third time she had ever been on public transport. In LA she either drove herself or
took a taxi. And she actually needed the change from that £20 note; she didn’t have any other money.

The college was an imposing red-brick building, much larger than Brooke had realised. And what she also quickly realised was that while her boots were fabulous for posing in at parties, which she was whisked to in a limo, they were much less fabulous for actually walking any distance in. As she tottered precariously along corridor after corridor, trying to find the class where she was supposed to be meeting her drama tutor and fellow students, she looked enviously at the groups of girls who passed her, in their skinny jeans and Converse.

She stopped for a minute to rest, and pretended to be checking her phone. By now her feet were killing her. Every step was sheer torture – her toes felt as if they were being squeezed in a vice, and she could feel blisters popping up on her heels. She would need a major pedicure after this.

Someone said her name and she looked up to see Waiter Boy Flynn with Mila. Damn, the last two people she had wanted to run into.

‘Wow, those boots are wicked, are they Louboutins?’ Mila gushed. She had been like this at the restaurant, full of questions for Brooke and ceaseless compliments.

Brooke raised her foot and showed off the iconic red sole. ‘Sure are. I’d never wear fakes.’

‘Lucky that you can afford them,’ Mila said ruefully, looking down at her own battered grey suede ankle boots that looked as if they’d seen better days.

God, the girl had no taste! She was wearing a shapeless black sweatshirt and a pair of grey leggings that did nothing for her figure. ‘Curvy’ would have been the polite way of describing it; ‘fat’ a more accurate description. In her place Brooke wouldn’t
have left the house without wearing a full Spanx body stocking, sucking everything in. Then again she would never have allowed herself to get that fat in the first place. Some people had no self-respect. Mila had a pretty enough face, Brooke supposed, but let herself down with her bleached blonde hair, cut in some kind of jagged bob with shocking trailer park roots. No one could get away with such bad hair, never mind someone with Mila’s body issues.

‘Can you actually walk in those boots, though?’ Flynn asked. Trust him to ask a question like that.

‘They’re really comfortable,’ Brooke lied as they continued along the corridor, Flynn closely observing her painfully slow progress.

‘Yep, they look it. You should watch it, wearing shoes like that. My aunt ended up with bunions because she wore such high heels when she was a teenager. She had the ugliest feet … like something out of a horror film. All the kids would scream and run away if she ever took her shoes off. Revenge of the Killer Bunions. Then she had to have them removed – the bunions, that is, not her feet – and now she has to wear flat shoes for ever.’