I met an executive chef in November 2022 at a fine Las Vegas restaurant where I worked. Sitting alone at the bar, I ordered the omakase, which meant he prepared over a dozen dishes for me. (To this day, it's the best food I've ever had.) During course #7, and drink #3, I did a swing because the food was that good.
The chef caught my happy dance from behind the bar. We smile at each other. My smile was shy and embarrassed; He assured me I didn't have to be. He was my type: slim, oozing awkward but adorable charisma (even when he was barking orders), his hair slicked back in a ponytail like Antonio Banderas in “Desperado.”
When my waiter returned with my eighth dish, I asked him if he would be kind enough to compliment the chef. He approached while I was drinking the foam of my espresso martini.
“That good, huh?” she asked.
“You couldn't have waited for me No Do you have a foam mustache? I said.
“Maybe, but then how do I know you're enjoying it?”
We smile at each other. I told him how much I had enjoyed each dish. Then, being the simple girl that I am, I asked her if she wanted to go back to my hotel room. She said she could meet me in an hour.
When he arrived at my room, we chatted over glasses of white wine, covering our career paths and what it was like to be Latino in our respective fields. Then we got into the bathtub and “talked” some more. We dried off and kissed more, had sex and held each other until I fell asleep.
I woke up to a text from the chef. It was a photo of him kissing my cheek while I was sleeping. “Good night. I'll text you tomorrow,” he said. Tomorrow arrived and I asked him if he'd be back for round two. “Hopefully. I have plans to have dinner with a friend tonight. I had a lot of fun,” he replied.
The next day, I returned to Los Angeles and my apartment in the Valley. The chef and I texted intermittently, once in January 2023 and once in March of that same year. Our conversations were always brief and we never made plans to visit each other.
The last week of April I was back at his restaurant, where he covered the bill for my sister and me. After we finished eating, the chef asked me if we would meet again after dinner. “Of course,” I said.
We returned to my room to repeat our escapades from six months earlier: the wine, the conversation, the bath, the kisses and the sex. We did it all over again and somehow it was better than the first time.
I asked him if we could go back to his house since my sister had to return to the room in half an hour. She said we couldn't.
“What? Do you have roommates who don't let you have guests?” I asked ironically.
“Yes, actually. My wife and children…”
“Good. “Let me get dressed and then we’ll go,” I said. Was sure I was joking.
“I'm serious,” he said. “I'm so sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I couldn't understand how.”
He couldn't speak between sobs. The term “homewrecker” gives me goosebumps, probably because my father was serially unfaithful to my mother, which I knew for two reasons.
First, my mom had no qualms about telling me. At family friends' parties, she used to say things like, “There goes that bitch your dad cheated on me with.” The other reason is that when he was 13, my dad sat me and my siblings down to tell us that he was going to move out because he cheated on my mom. So you can imagine my displeasure when I found out that the guy I had slept with twice was married with three kids.
All I could think was, “Now I'm a homewrecker. “I’m that bitch.” I imagined my mother's anguish at having been deceived. When I finally caught my breath, all I could say to the chef was, “This isn't so much about you as it is about my own trauma with my mom and dad.”
He stared at me before apologizing and saying he never meant to hurt me. I told her I needed to solve her problems. “Either get divorced or fix things,” I said, crying. “But please stop doing this to your wife and children.”
“I will,” he said, but I didn’t believe him, not even a little bit.
That night I cried until I fell asleep because I was so ashamed. The guilt and shame I felt consumed me for months. As masochistic as it may seem, I would choose to do it all over again, not because of him but because the fiasco taught me a powerful lesson.
I could continue carrying a cross that was not mine. Or I could find a way to lick my wounds and get back out. At first, I thought I needed to ask people about their relationship status.
After a couple of sessions with my therapist, I realized that wasn't the lesson. Instead, the way to move forward was to place blame where it really fell: the chef who left out crucial information. I took the blame only because I thought I had hurt someone the same way I had been hurt.
The harsh reality is that it was not my responsibility to avoid hurting a family or couple that I didn't know existed. Even if I had he asked, he could have lied.
I also realized that I had blamed the women my father was with for something they might have unknowingly participated in, just like I did with the chef. Thinking about that, I realized where the blame should be placed.
During that April visit with the chef, he left my hotel room around 1:30 am. I haven't seen or spoken to him since, and I'll probably never know if he was sincere. But I don't care either.
After almost a year of being bothered, I understand that the chef's mistakes are not my fault. And I have nothing to apologize for.
The author is a freelance writer and lifestyle journalist. He lives in the San Fernando Valley. She is on Instagram: @personatalieeee
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