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Kissing Sydney is easy.
It’s like letting waves crash over his head. Just giving in to the current. For once, not fighting.
It might be the only thing in his life that’s easy.
His job is difficult, but Richie tries to perform it with some ease - no, shit, he does perform it with ease. He memorises names like he’s swallowed a phone book, works out who’s an asshole and who’s not by the slope of their shoulders and the set of their mouth. 14 likes spice - don’t hold back, quick but readable on a slip of paper no bigger than a credit card, pressed into Gary’s hand to relay back to expo. Look people in the eyes, but don’t be too intense about it. Drop their names gently, like you want them to know you remembered but you’re not trying to show them you remembered. Manage the front. Manage the back. Just as important to keep the chefs happy as it is the diners.
Being a dad is difficult. He could live to be a thousand and he’d still wake up in a cold sweat, convinced he was doing a terrible job, and Eva would be a homeless crack addict or the next Mussolini, and it’d be all his fault.
Being Tiff’s something is difficult. He rolls his wedding band on his finger like Marcus rolls out pastry - meticulous and anxious and afraid. He can’t say she’s his ex-wife, it just lodges in his throat like a peach pit. He can’t resent her for saying she loves him. She wouldn’t be Tiff if her heart wasn’t two sizes too big.
Working with Carmen is difficult. Depending on the day, Carmen’s head is like ground beef, or a ship taking on water through a canon blast in the hull, or a fucking lit Molotov cocktail. And Richie loves him. Wants to forgive every wretched word he ever said in anger. Wants to reach into his chest and scrape out all the hurt. Wants to protect him the way a big brother ought to.
Missing Mikey is difficult.
Being the one left behind is difficult.
Every time he thinks about Michael on that bridge, he wants to scream at him, who the fuck do you think you are? You think you get to kill yourself? You’re just so special and your problems are bigger than everyone else’s? You think you get to make me bury you? He wants to hold him, kiss his hair, just stand there with the blistering wind stripping away his skin until Mikey stops shaking in his arms.
All of that is so difficult.
Kissing Sydney is easy.
They get a star - Sydney gets them a star. All night, her braids are whipping that way that they do when she’s moving like lightning. Carmen’s fucking yelling because he’s anxious - anxious about the star and anxious about checking his phone to see if Claire’s returned any of his calls. The kid never did know how to let people be good to him. Richie rides it out - busing, greeting, seating, breathing, four in, four out. Cousin, I need you to stop yelling or I might do something dumb like break your nose straight-
They get the star.
Sydney vomits behind the dumpsters. It’s something that still needs work.
He grabs her one of those fancy kombuchas from the walk-in. He doesn’t know if she drinks alcohol, but her dad is sober - could be a preference, could be a sensitive subject - and alcohol probably isn’t the best additive to the potent mix of adrenaline and cortisol running in Sydney's veins right now.
Pink grapefruit kombucha. She’s trying to pull herself together by the dumpsters when he presses the sweating bottle into her hands.
“Thanks,” she manages, peaky and sweaty. She twists the screw cap, swills kombucha around her mouth, then spits it out into her vomit puddle. Richie tries not to look at it - just because he’d cleaned up Eva’s vomit plenty of times before doesn’t mean he’s got an iron stomach. He watches Sydney in silence until he’s sure she’s not going to collapse or start throwing up again, taking small sips from the bottle.
“That was incredible,” he says, jerking his head at the entrance to the kitchen. “I knew you were special, but…” he let out a low whistle.
Sydney smiles weakly. “It’s not so impressive when the comedown is me dumping stomach acid out my mouth and nose.”
“Don’t feel bad about it. We can work on that,” he says, bravely resisting the urge to wrinkle his nose.
Sydney laughs, a little hollow. “Are we gonna do meditation? Deep breathing?”
“Uh, yeah,” Richie says. He lights up a cigarette and tugs at the tie around his neck. Tastes ash and feels a slow sense of medicinal calm drip into his blood. “I’ll become a Buddhist if it keeps you doing that wizardry you were doing in there. I’ll light incense, bang gongs-“
“Will you wear the robe? The orange robe?”
“The off-the-shoulder robe? Maybe flash a little tit? Fuck yeah, I’d do that.”
Sydney is snickering into her kombucha bottle now and it’s a sound that sets him on fire from head to heel. “You’d do that for me?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Convert to a religion I know nothing about and dedicate my life to your wellbeing? Shit, Syd, you’ve got to ask?”
She gives him a smile that’s bordering on soft, and she’s so beautiful when she smiles. Warm eyes, full cheeks. “I meant the tit flashing.”
It’s his turn to snort, and the smoke he pulls into his lungs on the inhale burns a little, but nothing like the way he’s burning up under her gaze, so aware of every nerve ending in his body. “Hey, they’re good tits.”
She’s laughing. Her hand falls on his arm, now-empty bottle swinging at her side. “Don’t wear the robe,” she says. “I meant it when I said I liked the suit.”
And Richie’s forty-five. He might be a moron and a jagoff, he might know jackshit about living a happy and fulfilled life, but he knows a come-on when he hears one. Knows what a beautiful girl with big brown eyes and a kind smile means when she lays a hand on your arm, tells you she thinks you look good.
Kissing her would be so easy.
But he doesn’t.
She doesn’t need it. Not right now. Not when she’s peaky and smells like kitchen, and he’s running on nicotine and fumes. The taste would be noxious. Tobacco and vomit and kombucha. Anyone could walk out here at any time and see them.
And maybe - if he’s very honest with himself - a part of him doesn’t want it. Because kissing her would be easy, and things would start to make sense. Because he would have to make some fucking decisions, and make some changes, because life would make sense and he would be happy. No more excuses. He would kiss her and this house of cards of excuses and fucking misery he’d built for himself would topple in the wake of the fucking lightning storm of Sydney.
He takes her hand off his arm, holds it in his own, and presses his lips to her knuckles. Her hand is a little cold in his. She gives him a funny look. Somewhere between smiling and frowning.
“Can I give you a ride home?” He asks. She shouldn’t be on the L if she was sick.
She raised a brow. “Depends.”
“On what?”
Her hand leaves his but only because she has to set aside her bottle and fix her bandana, pulling her braids over one shoulder.
Richie fights the urge to tell her he could have fixed her hair for her. Instead, he drops the stub of his cigarette into the dregs of her kombucha and listens to the hiss.
“Depends on whether you’ll kiss me at the door.”
Richie gets hit with a crest of stars not unlike what Sydney must have been feeling minutes ago when she was throwing up behind the dumpster. Meet me halfway. Kindle a flame. Do something easy.
Do something scary. Let go of the past - it had already given Richie everything it had to give. Tiffany, The Beef, Mikey - they were still there, still in his soul, in his bones.
The future was The Bear. It was steadying Carmen by the shoulder and patiently giving him love until he realised he was allowed to take it. It was holding Sugar’s baby and being Uncle Richie. It was Michelin stars and long nights and fear and rage and every emotion a human body could conjure, because you can’t ask for the astronomical highs without taking the deep, dark lows.
The future was Eva’s elementary school graduation. Algebra tests and soccer games and rapidly outgrown clothes. First boyfriend - or girlfriend. Falling out of love with Taylor Swift when she was an angsty teen, then rediscovering her later and having fond memories of her dad yelling along to Love Story at the Eras Tour in 2023. Anywhere she went, he wanted to be there.
My kid would like you, he wanted to tell Sydney. Because you’re smart, and you always say what you mean, but you’re also kind. You have such a big heart. You’re brilliant. You’re brilliant, and I don’t know if I’ll ever measure up. But I’d like to try. Fuck… yeah, I’d like to try.
He’d tell her one day.
“I could kiss you right now if you want me to,” he says plainly. Simply.
She glances down at his lips. “What’s stopping you?”
He tucks a braid behind her ear. “Toothpaste,” he says, and she grins, “or the lack of toothpaste, really.”
She’s laughing again. He could spend all day every day just making her laugh. “I have some in my locker. If I use it, will you drive me home?”
He takes a breath - deepest breath he’d taken all day - and nods. She nods back and slips past him to go finish closing, brush her teeth, grab her stuff.
Richie’s heart is thumping in his chest as he closes up front of house. He feels a little nauseous as he grabs his jacket and keys and spots Sydney waiting for him, surreptitiously taking congratulations and goodnights from Tina and Marcus and Ebra.
He turns around, pops his locker once more and takes a stick of Wrigley’s from a discarded pack, because he’d rather Sydney tasted spearmint than tobacco on his lips.
Months later, Richie would realise she didn’t throw up after hellish services anymore. He’d ask her how she managed it, if it was the deep breathing? Or was there a secret gong he didn’t know about in the walk-in? She’d just laugh, say no, no incense, no gongs, no Buddhist monks, and produce a pack of gum from her pocket.
From that night on, the taste of Wrigley’s gum was enough to bring Sydney down.