Scarlet

She could feel heat emanating from her face, the erratic thumping of her pulse.
    Gilles wiped the sweat off his almost-bald head and glared, his default expression. “Well?”
    “They weren’t yours,” she muttered. Which was true—they were technically hers until he paid her for them.
    He grunted. “Then I’ll only dock three univs for having to clean off the mess. Now, if you’re done with target practice, maybe you could deign to bring some of that in here. I’ve been serving wilted lettuce for two days.”
    He popped back into the restaurant, leaving the door open. The noise of dishes and laughter spilled out into the alley, bizarre in its normality.
    Scarlet’s world was crashing down around her and nobody noticed. Her grandmother was missing and nobody cared.
    She turned back to the hatch and gripped the edges of the tomato crate, waiting for her heart to stop hammering behind her sternum. The words from the comm still bombarded her thoughts, but they were beginning to clear. The first wave of aggression was left to rot with the smashed tomatoes.
    When she could take in a breath without her lungs convulsing, she stacked the crate on top of the russet potatoes and heaved them out of the ship.
    The line cooks ignored Scarlet as she dodged their spitting skillets, making her way to the cool storage room. She shoved the bins onto the shelves that had been labeled in marker, scratched out, and labeled again a dozen times over the years.
    “ Bonjour , Scarling!”
    Scarlet turned around, pulling her hair off her clammy neck.
    Émilie was beaming in the doorway, eyes sparkling with a secret, but she pulled back when she saw Scarlet’s expression. “What—”
    “I don’t want to talk about it.” Slipping past the waitress, she headed back through the kitchen, but Émilie made a dismissive noise in the back of her throat and trotted after her.
    “Then don’t talk. I’m just glad you’re here,” she said, latching on to Scarlet’s elbow as they ducked back into the alleyway. “Because he’s back.” Despite the angelic blond curls that surrounded Émilie’s face, her grin suggested very devilish thoughts.
    Scarlet pulled away and grabbed a bin of parsnips and radishes, passing them to the waitress. She didn’t respond, incapable of caring who he was and why it mattered that he was back. “That’s great,” she said, loading a basket with papery red onions.
    “You don’t remember, do you? Come now, Scar, the street fighter I was telling you about the other … oh, maybe that was Sophia.”
    “The street fighter?” Scarlet squeezed her eyes shut as a headache started to throb against her forehead. “ Really, Ém?”
    “Don’t be like that. He’s sweet! And he’s been here almost every day this week and he keeps sitting in my section, which definitely means something, don’t you think?” When Scarlet said nothing, the waitress set the bin down and fished a pack of gum from her apron pocket. “He’s always really quiet, not like Roland and his crowd. I think he’s shy … and lonely.” She popped a stick into her mouth and offered another to Scarlet.
    “A street fighter who seems shy?” Scarlet waved the gum away. “Are you listening to yourself?”
    “You have to see him to understand. He has these eyes that just…” Émilie fanned her fingers against her brow, feigning heatstroke.
    “Émilie!” Gilles appeared at the door again. “Stop flapping those lips and get in here. Table four wants you.” He cast a glare at Scarlet, a silent warning that he’d be docking more univs from her fee if she didn’t stop distracting his employees, then pulled back inside without waiting for a response. Émilie stuck her tongue out after him.
    Settling the basket of onions against her hip, Scarlet shut the hatch and brushed past the waitress. “Is table four him ?”
    “No, he’s at nine,” Émilie grumbled, scooping up the load of root vegetables. As they passed back through the steamy kitchen, Émilie gasped. “Oh, I’m so daft! I’ve been meaning to comm and ask about your grand-mère all week. Have you heard anything new?”
    Scarlet clenched her jaw, the words of the comm buzzing like hornets in her head. Case closed.
    “Nothing new,” she said, then let their conversation get lost in the chaos of the cooks screaming at each other across the line.
    Émilie followed her as far as the storeroom and dropped off her load. Scarlet busied herself rearranging the baskets