Author's note: This is a slow and (I hope) romantic story that builds up to sex in later chapters. It's written from both perspectives.
If you've read any of my other gay stories, this is the tale of Mark and Charlie, who are Simon's neighbours in A New Life.
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Mark
It had always been my ambition to run a restaurant, since I was a child. I couldn't explain why, since I didn't enjoy cooking. I liked socialising though and I had this idea of flitting from table to table, entertaining my guests and joking with the important people as they enjoyed the fine cuisine. If I'd known when I was young how much work was involved perhaps I would have found another thing to keep my interest. I took business courses at college so I would be able to run the financial side, and worked as a waiter in my free time to keep me in beer money. That certainly gave me a taste of real life in the trade. Obnoxious customers, chefs with egos so big it was a wonder they fitted in the kitchen, long hours for low pay, and getting flirted with by old women and desperate middle-aged men.
That was the downside, but there were a lot more ups than that. There were friendly staff and customers, big tippers from time to time, I got to flirt with the customers I liked, and I lived in a strange nocturnal world, especially on days I didn't have classes, when we would finish serving late and all head out for drinks and junk food after. I figured after a day making posh food most of the kitchen staff just wanted a burger or fried chicken. I learned a lot doing the menial work, even washing up in the kitchens when they were short-staffed.
Probably the thing I enjoyed most about meeting the customers were the few, and it wasn't all that many really, that I found a shared interest with. That was my favourite extra-curricular activity, sex. There were often good-looking men having dinner and a surprising number of them would either start flirting or respond to mine. I wasn't a total slut, and I always had safe sex, but I did get my fair share. And I had some morals. If they had a ring on their finger, or were out to dinner obviously with a date either male or female, I didn't take it any further. I did take pride in the amount of phone numbers I gleaned along with my tips, but I was selective about who I called. I didn't have time for clubbing often because I needed the money from working, so I used work to find like minded people who were up for some fun.
By the time I was 25 I was working full-time in the trade and although I still did some waiting I also worked on the books and the ordering, and was assistant manager at a well-known and respected restaurant. Then the day came when my world fell apart. I would probably always remember the policemen coming in that night, assuming they were checking drinks licences or something. They came to tell me that my parents had been in a car crash. Dad was dead instantly and Mum never regained consciousness but lasted another two days in the intensive care unit. At the time they could only tell me their car had been hit by a lorry. It turned out the driver had exceeded his hours and fallen asleep at the wheel, veering onto the wrong side of the road. He got a suspended sentence for it, and I lost my whole family.
I don't really remember the next few weeks. I know I organised their funeral, and I sorted out paperwork and cleared their house. I saw the Solicitors and instructed them to deal with applying for probate. It wasn't any great surprise to learn that I had been left everything except for a couple of small legacies. It was more of a surprise that they had a lot of investments and life assurances, and I was going to be very well off. I didn't work much over the following months, drifting by and drinking too much, but it took a long time for me to come to terms with my loss.
Strangely, seeing the first big cheque sobered me up and made me think about my future. I could have just blown it on a sports car or something pointless, but I knew that's not what my parents would have wanted. Nor would they want to see me drinking myself into an early grave. I knew what I was going to do -- buy my own restaurant. I could fulfil my childhood dream. It made me smile for the first time, remembering how I would play act being the restaurant owner and organise my parents to sit down in our kitchen for dinner of chips and fish fingers as though they were in a high-class establishment.
It must have been fate, because after only a few weeks of looking the perfect place came onto the market. The owners had built up a great reputation and it was a thriving business. The head chef was not only excellent, but also not a total arsehole. He could get a bit stroppy now and again, but generally he had an easy manner and his staff enjoyed working for him and didn't live in terror that they would be hit or sacked for making a sauce wrong or overcooking something. I bought it after my first visit. When all the paperwork was complete a couple of months later I walked into my own restaurant for the first time, and just stood and stared in disbelief that it was all mine.
I could have stopped work then. I knew from the books that I could turn enough profit to live more than comfortably without having to ever set foot in the place, but I couldn't resist. Most of my friends worked in the trade as well, so I'd never see anyone if I stayed holed up at home. Also, I couldn't resist the opportunities that working presented me to meet available men. I spent the next few months much as I had been before the accident, working when I wanted but using the restaurant as a pick-up joint. There were even one or two I saw on a semi-regular basis, although one of them I had to stop seeing when he wanted something more, and I wasn't prepared to offer it. The sex was great, but I didn't want a boyfriend cramping my style.
Chef used to joke with me that I only worked for the tail it got me. I enjoyed waiting tables though, somehow more now that I didn't have to if I didn't want. It was very rare for me to need to cover a whole shift because I had a lot of good staff, and this meant if there was someone who I wanted to hook up with I could leave immediately. Sometimes I even headed back to work afterwards, so I could check on things as we cleared up from the dinner service. On those occasions Chef just gave me a wink. He was straight, but always had several women on the go and his attitude to his liaisons was very similar to my own.
In fact, Chef and I became firm friends over the following months. I was an easy-going boss and let him deal with everything in the kitchen which he appreciated, and I respected his talents both in cooking and in dealing with that side of the staffing. We went out together sometimes, getting drunk and regaling each other with stories of our latest conquests. Once in a while we would see a couple and joke about trying to split them up so he could have her and I could have him, but we would never have really done it.
We both did well for sex and didn't want more from anyone we had met so far, but in our most drunken moments we both admitted sometimes that we hoped one day we would meet someone who would make us want to settle down. I thought it more likely he would than me, but I did still hold out some hope that I could find a man to share all my life with. Little did I know then, but it was just around the corner, and more than that, it was going to be damn hard work.
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When Chef told me he needed to hire someone else to work in the kitchens I left him to it. I contacted a few agencies and got resumes for him to look through. He did the interviewing and subjected the candidates to tests in the kitchen to see what they could do. He came back to me after a week and told me he'd found the guy he wanted. He was young and talented, and had a few years experience working in professional kitchens, starting off with the most menial jobs but soon gathering more skills. I told the agency and arranged the paperwork without ever meeting him, knowing that if he wasn't up to the job Chef wouldn't have asked me to hire him.
