I came to New York because I thought I could cook my way into a new life. I thought if I sharpened my knives enough, if I let the kitchen heat blister my hands, I could carve myself into someone unrecognizable from the girl I was. Howard restaurant...
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CHAPTER ONE ... NEW YORK. what the hell am i doing here?
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New York is nothing like New Jersey.
People who've never lived in either will tell you otherwise, as if the Hudson River is just a decorative seam between two identical fabrics. But to Gianna, the difference is as sharp as a cleaver, two cities wearing the same color but stitched from entirely different cloth. The air here moves faster, narrower, like a needle threading through steel; New Jersey's was heavier, swollen with the damp weight of old grudges.
She had been born in that weight, in a small town in France before her native french mother married American Chef, Martin. Eventually, he brought them over with a brighter future, and a permanent residence.
Her family consisted of six boys, and then her. Michael. Jonah. Cillian. Joey. Billy. Ilya. All tall, all with black hair that shone blue under kitchen lights, and nearly all with a knack for cooking that their father treated as a sacred inheritance. Nearly all because some had let life scatter them away from the flame. A couple dropped out of school. One had kids too young. Another took a job on an oil rig far from home. They'd traded knives for wrenches, ambition for the duller safety of survival.
Her father saw it as betrayal. He had wanted one of them, any of them, to wear the crown of a chef worth his pride. His obsession grew like ivy, pulling at the brickwork of their home until it cracked the walls, until it drove the boys out entirely, until it drove her mother into a silence that ended in absence. And when everyone else had left, there was Gianna.
She was the last hope, the final vessel for his ambitions. He taught her in the language of oil and heat, making her whip eggs until her arms burned, forcing her to keep a wok balanced in one small hand until the muscles learned to obey without tremor. By the time she was old enough to drive, she could command a kitchen with the kind of authority grown men flinched at.
Every cent her father saved went into sharpening her future, private lessons from chefs with names heavy enough to dent the air, enrollment in a top culinary school, trips across the country to learn the tricks of strangers. He wanted her molded into something perfect. But she could see the trap in his dream: a life bound to New Jersey, tethered to a Michelin-star kitchen that would drain her marrow and call it devotion; married to a man who spoke with his fists each time his favorite team lost.
So one night she left. A single bag, a note on the counter, the kind of departure you don't rehearse because if you do, you'll never actually go.
Her Uncle Howard ran a restaurant in Manhattan. Yes, it was nepotism. No, she didn't care. She was here to build something brick by brick, scar by scar. The work was punishing, blisters that split and bled under gloves, burns shaped like the handles of pans, a finger broken when a stockpot slipped. She could map her career on her body like a battlefield.
Culinary school hadn't been much kinder; it had driven her to therapy, and eventually to swallowing Prozac every morning just to keep the noise from eating her alive. And yet, she loved it. Passion is rarely polite, it's messy, erratic, sometimes cruel.
By twenty-three, she'd become sous chef in one of the most famous Michelin-star restaurants in the city. And she hated it. The glamour was a photograph someone else had taken; the reality was a machine that chewed and chewed until there was nothing left. Now she wanted smaller. A kitchen where she could breathe between dishes, where cooking didn't feel like bleeding for applause. Maybe she'd save enough for Colorado. Maybe not.
Her apartment was small, but compared to the rats' nests most New Yorkers called home, it was a luxury. Her brothers had pooled their money to help her get it; safe, clean, and in a neighborhood where walking home at night didn't feel like a dare. Ilya had even furnished it for her: a proper bed, drawers, soft lamps, curtains that caught the light just so. A gift from the boys to their prodigy.
When she opened the door, she dropped her bag on the couch and stood there, letting the smell of fresh paint and unclaimed air settle in her lungs. This was not New Jersey. This was not her father's kitchen. This was not the man who had once told her she was his masterpiece, and then treated her like a half-finished plate.
She had left him behind. She had left the boyfriend who turned love into a lock. She had left the mother who couldn't look at her without seeing her father.
And she didn't even have the comfort of blaming them.
She fell into the couch cushions, head tipping back, arms sprawled. Today would be calm. Tomorrow, she would walk into a new kitchen and make it hers, shaping it the way a flame shapes metal.
The phone rang. She picked it up without opening her eyes, "Yeah?".
"Hey, you get in okay?" Jonah's voice.
"I did. You guys picked this place? I'm shocked it's not a total shit hole." She smiled despite herself. "Thank you. For helping. You didn't have to."
"Yeah, well," Jonah said, "It'd be embarrassing to be living in a fuckin' mansion while our sister's sharing a room with fifteen freakos. So just enjoy it. Let us handle the rest. Go to your new job. Love you, Gigi—don't forget."
She blew a kiss into the receiver and hung up. Slid the phone into her pocket. Picked up her bag again. Stepped outside.
And New York swallowed her whole.
The sidewalks pulsed with the endless drift of travelers, natives, and the unnamed shades between; each figure a walking manuscript, their pages written in invisible ink, fluttering with unspoken joys and griefs. Faces passed like constellations across the dimming sky, some bright enough to be remembered, others swallowed by the city's ceaseless orbit.
She moved through them with no compass but her own persistence, a pilgrim to nowhere, which, by the subtle laws of all wanderers would eventually become somewhere. The cold air had teeth; it gnawed at her skin until she tucked herself deeper into the fortress of her coat. Lovers brushed past, knotted hand to hand as if holding fast against some unseen current. Children laughed like startled birds, their voices darting between the noise of honking taxis and the metallic hum of subway grates breathing out warm air.
New York was awake in every direction, its veins alive with light, its lungs swollen with the inevitability of meetings and partings. It gleamed in places and rotted in others, a jewel that had learned to keep its tarnish. And somewhere along one of its many arteries, Gianna sat on a weather-beaten bench, folding herself into stillness as if to become another shadow among the lamplight.
Her face was bowed over a book, the title catching what little light there was; Ancient Wines and Their Origins. An odd choice, perhaps, for one who would never need to drink them, but she turned each page with the quiet patience of a woman keeping herself prepared for the strange and rare occasions life might demand. In her world, knowledge was a kind of weapon; even the smallest, most obscure fact might one day be called upon, and she preferred her arsenal stocked in every direction.
Eventually when night came, she rose once more and headed back home, her boots tapping lightly against the concrete, she unlocked her door, discarded her things on the table, locked the door once more and retreated into her shower for a quick refresher while her thoughts ran rampant.
When she finished, she slipped on a dress, socks and dried her hair. Tomorrow her new life would begin.
Tomorrow, she'd lead a different life.
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A/N: this show is very triggering, hence it'll have triggering topics so please do not indulge if not ready to read that. i will also preface everything by saying, this is not a safe space for simone or simone lovers, i will bash her ass every chance i get LMFAOOO but seriously enjoy.
