After the Dream

Luke’s POV

My name is Luke.

When I first came to London, I had two suitcases, enough money to survive for a few months, and absolutely no idea what I was going to do.

I had a thousand dreams.

I just didn’t know how to achieve even one of them.

London looked beautiful from a distance.

The kind of beauty you see in photographs—the lights, the old buildings, the busy streets, the people walking as if they knew exactly where they were going.

Up close, it was different.

The city was intimidating.

Everything moved too quickly. People walked quickly, talked quickly, and worked quickly. Even the trains seemed impatient.

And nobody seemed to have time for someone who was still trying to find his footing.

I came here looking for something, but I don’t know what.

A future?

Maybe even a version of myself I hadn’t met yet.

In search of I don’t know what, I found Joel’s.

Joel’s was a small restaurant hidden inside one of those old London alleys that somehow seemed to have survived everything the city had thrown at them.

Modern buildings surrounded it, towering over the narrow street, but Joel’s looked like it belonged to another time.

The wooden sign outside was faded. The windows were old. The tables didn’t match, and neither did most of the chairs.

There was nothing particularly impressive about the place.

But at night, when the lights came on, everything changed.

The warm yellow light spilled through the windows and onto the pavement. The smell of food drifted out into the cold London air.

It felt warm.

Safe.

Like home.

The first time I walked through those doors, I wasn’t looking for a home.

I was looking for food after searching for a job all day.

I wasn’t looking for friendship.

I certainly wasn’t looking for a family.

I just needed good homemade-style food and, of course, work.

The owner hired me as a part-time waiter.

Her name was Mrs. Eleanor—or at least that’s what everyone called her.

She was in her nineties.

She was a tiny woman with soft silver hair, bright eyes, and a face full of wrinkles.

Somehow, those wrinkles only made her look more mischievous.

She insisted she was nineteen.

I’d stopped arguing with her a long time ago.

According to Eleanor, age was nothing more than a number invented by people who didn’t know how to enjoy themselves.

“You’re getting old, Luke,” she told me once.

“I’m twenty-three.”

“Exactly.”

That’s Eleanor.

Sweet.

Stubborn.

Mischievous.

And somehow capable of making you feel as though you’d known her your entire life.

When I arrived at Joel’s, there were only two other people working there.

The first was Marco.

The first time I saw him, I honestly thought Eleanor had hired a bodyguard.

Marco was nearly seven feet tall, with broad shoulders, enormous hands, thick dark hair, and deep-set brown eyes. His serious face could make a stranger reconsider starting an argument.

He looked intimidating.

Then he quietly asked me,

“Are you Luke?”

I nodded.

“Yes.”

He looked at the clock.

“You’re late.”

I looked at the clock too.

I wasn’t.

That was my first conversation with Marco.

It turned out he was the chef.

And a damn good one.

Marco had worked with Eleanor for more than a decade. He rarely raised his voice. He was always early, always calm, and somehow managed to make an entire kitchen move without ever looking like he was in a hurry.

Eventually, I learned something important about him.

The bigger he looked, the gentler he actually was.

He was also the first person who taught me that cooking wasn’t simply about following a recipe.

“It’s about knowing when someone needs something,” he once told me.

At the time, I didn’t understand what he meant.

I do now.

The other person working there was Yuning.

He was twenty-three, the same age as me, and probably the most effortlessly handsome person I’d ever met.

He had short dark hair, sharp features, beautiful dark eyes, and an easy smile that made him look even more charming.

He was slim and carried himself in a relaxed way, like nothing in the world could make him take himself too seriously.

He was from China and had come to London for his studies. He’d already been working at Joel’s for about a year and a half when I arrived.

Unlike Marco, Yuning talked enough for three people.

He started teasing me almost immediately.

Mostly about my terrible attempts at surviving London.

“You know,” he told me during my first week, “most people learn how to use the Underground before they start working.”

“I know how to use it.”

“You got on the wrong train yesterday.”

“That was one time.”

“You ended up forty minutes away.”

I shrugged.

“It was an adventure.”

He laughed.

“Sure, Luke.”

That was how our friendship started.

I came to Joel’s because I needed a job, or I just wanted to keep myself busy.

Yuning stayed because he needed one too.

Marco stayed because this place was home.

And Eleanor…

Well, I still haven’t figured out why Eleanor stays.

Sometimes I think she knows more about this restaurant than she tells us.

There are photographs hanging in the back hallway that she never talks about.

Names are carved into the old wooden tables.

There’s a locked room upstairs that nobody is allowed to enter.

And then there’s the name Joel.

I’ve asked Eleanor about it exactly three times.

The first time, she ignored me.

The second time, she changed the subject.

The third time, she looked at me for a few seconds and said,

“Some stories are better when you’re old enough to understand them.”

Then she went back to chopping onions.

I still don’t know who Joel was.

Maybe one day she’ll tell me.

When I first started working there, I was only a waiter.

Eventually, Eleanor discovered that I could cook.

One evening, I brought some food from home for everyone.

Eleanor loved it.

The next day, she asked Marco to teach me a few dishes.

Marco said no.

Then Eleanor looked at him.

Marco sighed.

“Fine.”

That was how it started.

A few dishes became a few more.

Soon, I was spending more time in the kitchen.

I wasn’t really a chef.

Not even close.

I was Marco’s assistant.

But I loved it.

There was something about cooking that I couldn’t explain.

Food made sense to me in a way the rest of London didn’t.

You could take something ordinary and turn it into something beautiful.

You could feed someone when they were tired.

You could make someone remember home without saying a single word.

Food made me feel loved.

And somehow, working in that little kitchen made me feel like I belonged somewhere.

By then, I’d found a proper job at a technology company.

I no longer needed the money from Joel’s.

But I didn’t leave.

People sometimes ask me why.

I never know how to explain it.

How do you tell someone that a restaurant is no longer just a restaurant?

That the old woman who keeps insisting she’s nineteen has somehow become family?

That the seven-foot chef who looks like he could break a wall with his bare hands quietly saves you the best piece of bread?

That annoying Chinese student who never stops teasing you is one of the first people who looks for you when something goes wrong.

How do you explain that sometimes, after spending all day trying to build a future, you just want to come back to a place that reminds you who you are?

So I stayed.

I still work at Joel’s.

Part-time.

Sometimes I serve tables.

Sometimes I cook.

Sometimes Marco lets me pretend I’m a real chef.

And sometimes, after closing, the four of us sit together in the nearly empty restaurant while London continues rushing past outside.

For a few hours, none of us are students, employees, immigrants, dreamers, or strangers.

We’re just us.

Four people in an old restaurant in a city full of people chasing something.

Because that’s the thing about London.

Everyone comes here for a reason.

And everyone eventually discovers that dreams always come with a price.

I just didn’t know yet what mine would cost me.