Finding Chef's Kiss

Chapter 5

4 Hours Ago

I wake up to Fluff's typical morning routine. He usually walks on my face a few times before rubbing his nose against my head. He's always ready to butter me up before a meal service. It reminds me of someone I met yesterday. My thoughts shift to tomato stain man and how he hit on me just to score himself a review of his restaurant.

Pathetic.

I don't plan on ever visiting his place. I should've just ripped up his business card right in front of him.

Where are my pants? I'll just rip it up now. I look around for a moment and then laugh softly to myself, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. Chill girl. It's not that big of deal.

I place some tuna in Fluff's large bowl at the foot of the kitchen counter and proceed with making myself my pre-workout milkshake.

While I love being a food critic, I hate how hard I have to work to keep off the pounds. With constant eating throughout the day, I need to make sure to set aside a minimum of two hours to work out first thing in the morning. Carter mentioned once he noticed a little more weight around my belly, and ever since, I've been dedicated to my routine.

It's not so bad though when I have Enzo, my personal trainer, to help me through it. The fifty-year-old, ripped, self-proclaimed triathlete has come to be one of my only friends in the city. I look forward to my workouts as it means I have someone to talk to that isn't Carter or Fluff. But if I didn't pay him a good sum of money, Enzo wouldn't likely choose to hang out with me voluntarily. He has a husband with two kids to take care of. No time to listen to me complaining about how hard the workout is, or Carter, or an awful restaurant I might have come across.

A vibration sound alerts me to an incoming notification. I let out a little shriek when I see the headline: Perusing Port, The Hidden Haven. My article has already been posted to Eatz Online. It usually takes days of back and forth with my boss before this happens. And sometimes it wouldn't even get posted if other critics were vying for a spot. A notification for a new posting means my article got put up front and center. I screenshot it and tuck my phone back into my pocket.

Today is going to be a good day.

***

The spacious gym has one side covered almost completely with black and gray machines and the other side almost completely empty with only mats and various gym paraphernalia along the edge. As soon as I walk in, I'm greeted by my day's workout already listed out on the whiteboard.

"You're late. I don't tolerate lateness," Enzo says in a stern football coach type voice as he finishes stretching his hamstrings.

"I know, I'm sorry. I was rushing as fast as I could to get here."

"We're going to add fifty push ups for every minute that my time was wasted. Now drop and give me two hundred!"

I roll my eyes playfully. "Good one Enzo! Okay, let's go, I'm ready!"

The man laughs but I secretly wonder if he has a lifelong dream of training a big burly professional athlete and not some twenty-four-year-old petite blonde who needs to take a ten-minute rest after squats. He jokes a little too often about extreme workouts. One time he joked we were going to go scale a mountain with our hands tied behind our backs. While I always indulge him with a laugh, there's always a fear that sweeps through me that I would one day find myself scaling The Empire State Building.

"Let's start with cardio on the treadmill for your warmup." Enzo leads me to the treadmill, and I hop on. He starts me at the lowest setting like he typically does before eventually increasing my speed to a light jog.