I knew he was not happy with my decision, but he did not say anything. I did not want anyone’s help restoring the restaurant. I had rejected my brother’s offers several times.
“Let me give you some money to help you out with the restaurant,” Liam had said.
“No, I’m fine. I’ll manage.”
“Look, it’s not doing well. Why don’t you just sell it and come back to the city? You can run the business alongside me.”
“This is Eva’s dream. I can’t abandon it,” I had snapped at my brother before hanging up the phone.
I knew I was stubborn and arrogant. I did not want help. Yet I also refused to give up. So instead, I let the restaurant drift slowly toward its fate while drowning my sorrows in alcohol soI would not have to think or make decisions. It was a miserable kind of compromise, but it was the only one I allowed myself. I would not save it, and I would not kill it either. I just kept it limping along, like some part of me believed that as long as the doors stayed open, I had not entirely lost Eva.
The next day, I watched Jack deliver the bad news to Jiya when she came into the restaurant. I knew Jack did not want to do it, but he also did not want her to know that I was the owner who rejected her proposal.
“Jack, please,” she pleaded. “Let me talk to him once. Let me explain everything to him. I’m sure I can convince him.”
I watched her trying to persuade him.
There was no drama in her voice, no false sweetness, no manipulation. Just urgency. Desperation held together by dignity.
Jack held her hand and apologized.
With hunched shoulders, Jiya left the restaurant.
I told myself it should have made me feel relieved.
It did not.
Two days later,in the afternoon, while I was sipping my beer, two men walked into the restaurant.
“It was a close call,” the balding man in his early fifties said. “I would’ve been fired had I not thought about the idea.”
“What do you mean, Roger?” the second man asked, signalling Jack for two beers.
“It was I who authorized the transaction, David. I didn’t check the details,” he said. “My ass would have been on the line.” He took a sip of his beer. “I have a kid who is going to college. I can’t afford to lose my job, so I blamed it on the new girl.”
David gasped, “Actually, Jiya deserves it.”
My ears immediately perked up.
“She thought she was so high and mighty with all her suggestions and ideas,” David continued. “Always thinking about the employees and guests while giving us, the managers, more work to do.” He scoffed.
“She thinks she can interfere with the working policies here,” Roger said. “She doesn’t know that here the managers relax and subordinates do all the work, not the other way around. I loved taking my revenge on her.”
“What do you mean?” David asked.
“I made her clean toilets and take out the trash,” Roger said. “Once the bag was so heavy it broke while she was trying to throw it. She ended up getting covered in filth.”
Both men chuckled while continuing to badmouth Jiya. They revealed that they knew she needed the job and that she had never complained about the extra work.
Ice slid through my veins.
By the time they were done talking, the beer in my hand had turned warm. My jaw had locked so tightly that a dull ache spread through it. I could picture her now, the straightness in her spine, the quiet restraint, the effort she made to hold herself together every time she came in here. And those pathetic bastards had mistaken that restraint for weakness.
I glanced at Jack.
He was looking at me and slowly shaking his head.
I knew exactly what that meant.
