Steamed

help and kept walking away in the middle of talking to me. I know this doesn’t make me sound like the greatest guy in the world, but he pissed me off, and that’s what happened.” He paused. “But if Madeline brought in another chef to help me do my dishes, I’d probably be an asshole, too. Garrett was probably embarrassed and just took it out on me. But it sounds like he pulled off a couple of the dishes, which is better than I thought he could do.” Josh smiled sheepishly.
    He leaned back on the couch and ran his hands through his hair. I noticed his hands were covered with burns and blisters and calluses, signs of battle from the kitchen. Although his beat-up hands might have put off some women, I thought he looked manly and, for some reason, heroic. But I did start to worry about the impression Josh’s self-assurance might have created on the police. To me, Josh seemed justifiably confident about his ability as a chef; he’d probably paid his dues and deserved to gloat a little bit. To me, his attitude wasn’t arrogance; it was pride. But maybe the police had seen him otherwise; maybe his self-confidence had made him a likely suspect.
    “Look,” I started, “I don’t think it was the nicest thing to do, but I can understand where you were coming from. If you two were old rivals, it doesn’t seem to make sense to put you together to work on a menu. And Garrett should’ve known that he was reaching with those dishes and figured out something else.”
    “I do feel bad about it, because I probably could’ve helped him plan dishes he could’ve done well. But I didn’t. And I think that’s made Detective Hurley suspicious.”
    “So you were off last Sunday, the night Eric was murdered, right?” I asked.
    Josh nodded. “Yup, and that detective is still trying to ‘verify my alibi,’ as they say on TV. I’m not that worried. It’ll be fine. I was home alone, though, so he’s having trouble confirming that. My roommate, Stein, was working late that night and didn’t get home until after midnight. And there’s the problem with the knife being mine. But the detective actually seems like a nice guy, and he has to do his job. And it’s not like I’ve been arrested or anything.”
    “Josh, what kind of knife was that? I saw it, unfortunately, when I found Eric in the men’s room. I’ve never seen a knife like that before. Kind of curved.”
    “It’s just a specialty knife called a cimiter.” The word sounded like scimitar, a saber. For someone talking about an object remarkably like a sword, Josh sounded casual when he went on to say, “It’s used for cutting down meat.” He paused and looked right at me. “So, are you ready to kick me out yet?”
    Maybe it was the gin-and-tonic-induced love goggles, but all I could see was a sincere, talented, driven guy, a guy I wasn’t about to kick out of my condo. I shook my head, “Of course not.”
    “Look, for the most part, the culinary and restaurant world is not nice. Everyone’s overworked, usually underpaid, and totally chaotic. We don’t get weekends off, we work nights, it’s tough on families, it’s tough on relationships. And everyone in this business is sort of whacked in one way or another. We’re all kind of manic, which I guess we need to be to keep up with the pace. But I don’t want you to get the impression that I don’t like other chefs and that I think I’m the greatest chef. I have plenty of friends that are chefs, and there are lots of chefs out there that I totally respect. But it’s still, well, pardon the expression, cutthroat.”
    “It’s okay. I don’t think you killed Eric. I’m starting to understand how tough your chef world is, but that doesn’t make you a killer. Now we just have to convince Detective Hurley of that.”
    Josh looked up at me. “We?” he asked.
    “Yes,” I said firmly. “I just met you, and I want to get to know you better, so I’m not about to let you rot in jail.” Sometimes it happens: an instant connection. Even my recent disasters with Noah and Eric couldn’t prevent me from putting myself out there. Heather was always warning me that I fall too hard and too fast for men. I didn’t care. I hated playing games, feigning indifference, taking things slow. When I liked someone, I just went for it, and I wasn’t about to start holding back now. If Josh decided he wasn’t interested in me, then I’d survive. Maybe I’d get burned. Maybe I’d find love. In fact, maybe