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Carmy looked at Sydney. Sydney looked at Carmy.
Carmy looked away. Sydney considered closing the door in his face.
Instead, she let him in, which she only half instantly regretted.
It was irrational to be self-conscious of the state of her apartment, considering Sydney’d been in Carmy’s apartment before and it was only like one step above an air mattress and TV on the floor. Except his general aversion to eye contact and her lack of furniture meant his gaze quickly landed on the unfortunate centerpiece of the room of the overflowing recycling bin full of last night’s alcohol.
“Those aren’t all mine,” she blurted out. Stupid.
Carmy did not bother responding, which was somewhere between nice and annoying. Sydney didn’t say anything more, either - partially in refusal after weeks of conversational non-starters, partially because she was unsure of what prompted this visit. She could wait.
And waited she did. Meanwhile, Carmy rubbed his face. Pushed his hair back. Chewed some more of that gross nicotine gum. Rubbed his face again. Eventually, “Today was a lot.”
Stupid.
And if she were a little less pissed off, she’d agree with him.
Today was a lot - sandwiched between the high of partying with Andrea Terry and the low of the announcement of the Bank of Uncle Jimmy’s abrupt shutdown. Plus, the extra-low low of retreating to the alley before service to vomit and finding Carmy beating her to it, in her spot, no less.
Not to mention that fucking review.
She expected him to continue - say something insightful, apologize for being a dick all the time, or maybe regurgitate something Nat told him to say.
…alas, the awkward silence prevailed. Sydney reminisced about the brief time where they used to have functional conversations.
Well then, in the face of another Carmy Problem that threatened to become an Involuntary Sydney Problem, she was going back to her original evening plans. Carmy could decide if her departure was a dismissal or invitation himself.
He must have decided on the latter, as Carmy followed her into the kitchen. It was still awkwardly silent, but at least this way, Sydney could direct her attention to her laborious second dinner in a demonstration of how she doesn’t have time for this.
During the plate’s seventh rotation, Sydney decided, fuck it. “Carmy, what are you doing here?”
Ten. Nine. Eight.
“You never signed it.”
Four. Three. Two. Under her eagle-eye culinary supervision, she stopped the microwave with one second remaining and retrieved her creation. She was reaching to clear the timer when Carmy spoke again. The words startled her, causing her finger to slip and hit the fan button on accident.
“You gonna take Shapiro’s offer?”
“Fuck, did he call you? I told him-” Sydney asked, as she cycled through the high-low-off fan settings and slammed the microwave door shut in the quickest and totally-most-normal looking way possible.
“Nah,” Carmy said, without elaborating at all.
Super. Grand. Wonderful. Sydney shoved a pizza roll in her mouth for a reason not to answer. It was still too hot, but in the moment the panic burned more than her tongue.
Sydney was going to tell him. Eventually. The one scenario she had imagined where she up and left with just a devastatingly well-worded email had already been ruled out. Mostly, as it meant Carmy would have to then explain it to Natalie and Sydney couldn’t subject Nat to that right after giving birth to a whole child.
So, she had every intention to tell him. As soon as she figured out how, and also what her answer was.
Sydney never struggled leaving restaurants before - when she was zest-zoned for months, when all of her co-workers got plastered after every shift to cope, when she got raked over for an online order mishap at a shitty sandwich shop she put a disproportionate amount of emotional labor into. She had a bullshit threshold and once it was reached, she was done. It was the kind of soft skill you don’t put on a resume.
(Sometimes, in the privacy of her own mind, she wondered if that was also her problem - if ego trips and psyche-destroying stress and fine dining really were inextricably intertwined, and her tolerance was too low to work in the world’s best kitchens. Maybe it was hubris to think she could do it better.)
In some (many) ways, she felt it should be that easy again. Easier, even - Shapiro was offering creative control, an extra ten grand a year, and an almost assuredly more reliably calm business partner. One fuck you, fuck the restaurant, and above all fuck adding more acid to my dishes and she could literally and figuratively shut the door on The Bear.
Except it wasn’t.
Leaving The Bear meant leaving behind everything she worked to build and everyone she built it with. Starting over, again; pouring her heart and soul into a culinary venture, again, if there was any left to pour. Another chance to completely fuck up and fail and fling herself back into destitution.
The grass is always greener until you get up close. Case in point: Sydney was getting real up and close personal with her neighbors thanks to the thin walls. Not that she would be informing her father of this.
She was going to have to say something soon. Carmy was staring again, and she could only chew one pizza roll for so long.
Not knowing what else to do, she swallowed and slid down against the cabinets to sit on the floor. Carmy followed suit, legs almost touching as they sat across from each other in her small kitchen.
“I’m…”
Angry. Overwhelmed. Disappointed. Tired. Other adjectives in that realm.
Because she came into this knowing opening a restaurant was a total nightmare and how Carmy-like Carmy was. She had also thought they were doing this together. It was all I don’t even want to do this without you until he ignored all of her ideas and you’re not alone, Syd but she felt pretty fucking alone.
And today just seemed to rub it all in, with the review and Luca and the looming deadline to choose. Carmy didn’t need her, it seemed like he barely wanted her there. Carmy had all these chef friends (and siblings and pseudo-siblings and family friends who just seem to show up) and connections and the majority of the culinary world sucking on his dick, raving over a dish he couldn’t remember. Sydney had some old co-worker group chats and a dad and a growing fear that her culinary career was going to peak at a singular mention in a review about a discarded risotto and running someone else’s pass.
“I’m lonely.”
Carmy nodded again. “Yeah.”
Fucking stupid. Sydney felt like shit, Carmy felt like shit, and then they never talked about it.
A breath. “I’m sorry.”
She wished it was that easy, like one snappish comment on the line that could be soothed with a circle rubbed over the heart. She knew he was sorry. Sorry just didn’t mean much, when it came down to it. Not if nothing changed.
It was quiet then. Sydney decided, fuck it.
She had always wondered, though she was never sure what the most polite way was to ask without sounding like what was your five year plan before your brother killed himself? Last night had only spurred her curiosity. It was public knowledge that Carmy remained Empire’s longest tenured CDC and before Sydney had chalked it up to talent instead of subservience. Now, well.
“Were you ever going to leave Empire? Like, before?”
A forceful blink, the half-flinch thing he did sometimes. “Nowhere else to go, I guess.”
Objectively false; Sydney understood anyway. There was somewhere else - and it would have been something, the best CDC at the best restaurant in the country, quitting in favor of becoming a line cook at a run-down sandwich shop - yet it was that door not open for the Best New Chef around.
Face, hair, face, speak. “When I was there, I..he…it was fucked. It fucked me up, and I let it, and then none of it fucking mattered - to me, to him, to anyone.”
He swallowed. “I don’t want to fuck you up.”
You’re not fucking me up, except he kind of was. It wasn’t cruel, it wasn’t intentional, but it was true nonetheless.
So don’t let it happen again, she had said after Friends and Family and handed him hot coffee.
“So don’t,” she said, and handed him a cold pizza roll.
“It’s your restaurant. You don’t have to run it like your fucked up boss from New York, or any other egomaniac chef we’ve worked under before. You could do it better.” A pause, then she amended, “We could.”
“You want a star,” he said, like that explained everything.
Oh, this again.
“Yeah, okay, fuck. I want a star. Iwannastar. I want a star! Except I don’t give a fuck about a star that’s not based on any of my shit and is your fucking…thirtieth reason why.”
“My what?” When he didn’t get an answer, he moved on to, “What - what do you mean not based on any of your shit?”
Sometimes, she thought Carmy was on a different planet. The audacity to say that to her face, in her apartment, eating her olive branch pizza roll.
“What do you mean, dude?” She asked, incredulous. “We change the menu every goddamn day and none of my dishes or suggestions make the cut.”
Consideration. Then, “Fuck.”
“Fuck,” Sydney agreed. It felt good to say her piece, even if she had been trying to say it with her words, face, and actions for practically The Bear’s entire existence. “Look, I know you think I’m overly ambitious-”
“I don’t think that.”
“-and my dishes aren’t good enough for customers or Michelen-”
“I never said that.”
“- but if you just want someone to run your pass when you’re busy freaking out, you can find someone else. Or get Richie to do it, he was weirdly good at it that one time. I’m a good chef. I am good, even if you don’t think -”
“Of course I do.”
“- then act like it!”
“Heard.”
“...you know what Chef Terry told me last night? You have no idea what you’re doing, therefore you’re invincible . ”
Sydney wished Chef Terry had imparted that kind of wisdom to her, last night. Instead, she happened to head out while Sydney was at the tail-end of her stair freak-out session and Sydney had panicked and told her she couldn’t handle tequila shots in explanation. The only wisdom she got was the best hangover cure before service.
Carmy continued. “You’re right, Syd. We should do it. We should do it our way.”
It was dumb, probably, to get her hopes up. (Her hopes were up.) “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged and added, “What’s the worst that can happen? Jimmy bulldozes it for an Applebee’s, but he’s extra pissed about it?”
Sydney was quite familiar with the worst case scenarios for The Bear, actually. She had a list, and that was far from the worst, especially considering her backup backup post-Bear-failure plan was to work with cousin Monty, which seemed questionable even before the if it’s Boeing, I’m not going of it all and she was pretty sure Carmy’s backup backup post-Bear-failure plan was to, well, die probably.
Back on track. “I want to listen to your ideas, Syd. I will.”
“Tremendous. I’ll start now. Instead of daily menus - which are fucking up our finances, employees, and psyches - we could just not do that.”
“Weekly,” he said.
“Seasonal,” she said.
“Monthly,” they said.
That’s something. Rolling now, Sydney moved on to Point Of Contention That Makes Me Want to Quit #2.
“And you have to fix your shit with Richie. It’s ruining the vibe and I’m tired of hearing you two go at it again and again. Actually, that’s not an idea. It’s a requirement. A non-negotiable, I understand you’re familiar with the concept.”
“I know,” he said. She was just the first stop on this amends tour, then. “Yes, Chef.”
They could figure it out. Sydney had sorta-kinda accidentally stabbed the guy, and look at them now.
The quiet that fell between them was easy, now. Calm.
There was work to be done, of course, but Sydney Adamu was nothing if not a hard worker.
“Menu planning, tomorrow morning?” Carmy asked, getting up from the floor and offering a hand out to her.
“We’re going to get fucked rocked tomorrow,” she countered, catching a glimpse of the microwave clock as he hauled her up. It was late, after an already long and tumultuous day.
“Absolutely, under all circumstances, yeah, we’re fucked. Wednesday?”
“Wednesday.”
In a surprise and borderline goofy move, he squeezed and dipped their still intertwined hands in an imitation of a handshake. “Deal.”
She huffed a small laugh, looking away. “Yeah, okay. Good night, Carm. Get out.”
(And with that, for the first time in weeks, Sydney was looking forward to Wednesday.)