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My first month in Florida had taught me there was a more stressful state of existence than poverty. It was called debt.
As the proud new renter of a commercial unit near the beach in Palm Coast, Florida, I had quickly learned what it cost to get a restaurant up and running. Here’s a hint. It cost more than the roughly zero dollars I had left after paying the deposit.
So I’d stuck Griff in his best suit and dragged him around with me to go beg for business loans at every bank I could find. We made it as far South as Miami before a nice woman with owl-eyed glasses had finally taken pity on us and put in a good word with her boss.
And just like that, I was now also the proud owner of a hundred thousand dollars in debt.
Hooray.
But it had been enough to get things rolling. I had used ovens, used refrigerators, used everything—in fact. If it was dented, slightly broken, or prone to misbehavior, I’d bought it at a steep discount and said, “good enough.”
Because leaving New York and Jack behind had made my situation abundantly clear. I’d traded one life for another, and if I couldn’t make this one work, it’d be even harder than it already was to stop from living every moment in a crippling state of regret.
It was a little past noon, and my second customers of the day rolled in.
“Hi, welcome to Castille’s!” I channeled my years of waitressing to get the proper balance of excited and not overwhelming. The couple—a young pair who looked like they might be on one of their first dates—shot me a nervous glance and paused at the menus by the door.
I’d had to use part of my loan to hire a legitimate cook who put together a menu for the restaurant. My belief that I could run a restaurant mostly came from working in them for so many years, and not from my ability as a cook. Still, I liked to think I had pretty good taste, and when I’d tried all the menu items my new cook, Pierre, put together, I thought I’d hit the lottery by finding him. He was fresh out of culinary school and trying to find a place to make his mark, and his passion was bread making.
Great menu and food or not, we’d been open two weeks and the restaurant was hemorrhaging money I didn’t have.
It didn’t matter. I had to make this work, because it was all I had left.
Jack Kerrigan was probably in bed with some pretty young thing at that very moment. Just a tangle of sickeningly beautiful flesh and sweat and—ugh.
“You okay?” Pierre asked as the couple turned and left the way they’d come in.
I blew a cluster of hair out of my eyes only for it to fall right back where it had been, then sat at the stool in front of the register. “I’m sorry it has been so slow. Your menu is great, though. If people would just give us a chance, they’d realize it.”
Pierre had olive skin and long dark hair he wore too much product in. He also tasted everything he made, so he was happily plump. He smiled dismissively. “Don’t worry about me. I’m here as long as you are.”
It was as simple as that with him, and I felt deeply grateful for it. I really had gotten lucky finding him, but that appeared to be where my good luck as a restaurateur started and stopped.
Griff’s school was close enough that he could walk, and he came moping in with his backpack dragging on the ground. He took a spot at the booth in the corner and laid his head in his arms.
Seeing him like that broke my heart. I knew he was playing it up a little to make me feel bad for taking us away from New York, but I also knew he really was hurting beneath the act, too. I wanted to tell him how much I wished I could fix things with Jack, if not for my sake than his. But I didn’t have the heart to explain it was Jack who didn’t want me back.
We had a depressing trickle of business for the evening shift, which, by my calculations, meant we earned roughly way less than we needed to cover the day’s expenses.
I decided what I really needed was something to take my mind off Jack. Things were bad enough without me feeling like I’d lost the only guy I’d ever care about. So I took the deep, depressing dive into dating apps that night and quickly found someone who was willing to meet me at the restaurant tomorrow. We were closed Monday until the afternoon to give Pierre a chance to actually have time off, so it worked out perfectly. Griff was at school, and I’d have the restaurant to myself.
