Turn up the Heat

the dark circles and puffy bags couldn’t take away the sparkle of excitement. Business had been steady, and if tonight was any indication of how the spring and summer were going to go, Simmer was about to really take off.
    Josh tossed a filthy dish towel over his shoulder and reached out to shake hands with Owen, Doug, and Terry, and then circled around the table to give Adrianna a kiss on the cheek. “How’s it going, Mama?” he asked affectionately. Adrianna was almost five months pregnant but already looked about to go into labor before tonight’s dessert.
    She rolled her eyes. “Going great if you don’t mind constant heartburn, fatigue, swollen hands, and having your ribs kicked from three to five in the morning.”
    “Owen kneeing you in his sleep again?” Josh grinned, and then rubbed her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know you’re having a hard time.”
    “Yeah, it’s okay. I’m just grouchy. And starving.” She looked up at him hopefully.
    “That I can help with.” Josh nodded assuredly. “I gotta run. I think Leandra is your waitress. Order whatever you want, and I’ll comp it for you.” One of the perks of being the executive chef at Simmer was that the owner, Gavin, let Josh sign off on orders so we didn’t have to pay for anything except a tip. “I’ll try to come out again later if I can.” Josh made his way between tables to the front entrance. One couple seated near the door stopped him. Josh smiled as he accepted what I knew were compliments about his food.
    Leandra appeared moments later. I’d met her a number of times before, because Josh’s overwhelming work schedule meant that I was spending lots of time hanging around Simmer trying to catch glimpses of my boyfriend. In fact, I was beginning to look and feel like a barfly. Leandra was petite with very short white-blonde hair that somehow upped her femininity. (If I chopped off all my hair I’d look brutish!) She needed no makeup on her annoyingly symmetrical face, and Simmer’s unisex staff T-shirt and pants left no doubt that Leandra was voluptuously female. I saw Adrianna, her usual supermodel body now rounded, scowl and toss her long blonde hair back over her shoulder. I involuntarily ran my hand down my own hair, checking for any dreaded frizz.
    Leandra handed out menus. “Sorry. Hope you haven’t been here too long. I can’t believe how busy we are tonight, and they didn’t schedule enough servers. Can I get you some drinks to start?”
    “I’ll take a Kirin,” Doug said. “You want one, too?” he asked Terry.
    Terry nodded and put his hand on Doug’s knee. I still had a hard time grasping that Doug and Terry were a couple. Their homosexual relationship didn’t bother me in the least; what alarmed me was Terry’s style. He looked like a woman-obsessed rock star or maybe the host of a VH1 show on hair bands of the eighties. Every time he opened his mouth, part of me expected him to burst out singing, “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,”
    “Unskinny Bop,” or “Eighteen and Life.” With thick, wavy, highlighted brown hair and rocker clothes, Terry was a total contrast to my social work school mentor, Doug. Doug was anything but conservative—on occasion, he wore neon—but it took most people, my parents excluded, about four seconds to figure out that he was gay.
    Social work school was one thing, but I wasn’t sure how Terry’s image went over with his presumably more uptight professors and fellow students at MIT, where he was getting a PhD in physics. Studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology clearly put Terry in the category of über-intellectual. More importantly, he seemed genuinely to adore Doug.
    Avoiding alcohol out of sympathy for Adrianna, Owen ordered lemonades for the two of them. I, on the other hand, felt the need to celebrate the arrival of spring with a crisp glass of Pinot Grigio.
    Leandra reappeared a few minutes later with our drinks. As she set our glasses down, I wondered how she was going to get through the brutally hot and humid Boston summer in Simmer’s required attire. Her heavy cotton short-sleeved black shirt looked like it didn’t allow for much airflow, and the long black dress pants were stylishly tight with a slightly flared boot cut at the bottom. As if to assure a minimum of heat loss, all the servers and bartenders wore long black aprons with Simmer written across the top in white lettering.
    “Okay, we need to toast,” I said, raising my glass. “To the