"I’m on it," I promised her, but, out of the corner of my eye, I was sure I noticed a slight smirk on her face. I glanced back at her, wondering if I had imagined it, but she had already taken off back towards the kitchen as I made my way back out into the diner to see what needed to be taken care of.
Music filled the air, from the speakers studded around the corners of the room; the place was packed, the sound of conversation and occasional bursts of laughter filling the air. I caught the eye of Mia, the owner of Ford’s Italian Kitchen, and she raised a hand to greet me. I waved back, and was about to head over to say hello when something else entirely caught my attention.
Or, rather, someone.
My feet froze beneath me as I locked eyes with him, wondering if I had invented his presence here just through sheer power of my mind. But, as I blinked, trying to clear my vision and make sense of this, he met me with that lazy, slightly crooked grin, leaning in the doorway of the diner and watching me like he had been waiting for me all along.
I glanced around; even though Pam had said the buffet needed restocking, it looked alright to me, and besides, I had bigger things to think about right now. Namely, the man standing before me, the one I had thought would already have left days before. I was in a bit of a daze as I made my way towards him, the magnetic draw to him just as intense as it had been the very first time I had seen him here.
"What...what are you doing here?" I asked him, as I finally reached his side. Behind me, the crowd seemed to fall away, nothing left here but the way he was looking at me.
"You said everyone in town comes to these things," he replied casually, gesturing around. "Figured if I’m going to stay here, I should start trying to integrate, right?”
"What – what are you talking about?"
Had he just said that he was going to stay? No way. I must have heard him wrong. Misunderstood. Because there wasn’t a chance in hell that he was actually going to stick around in this place. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it, couldn’t make sense of the enormity of what he was saying, standing there staring at him blankly as though reality might cut in at any second.
"I thought you would be gone by now," I admitted, and he cocked an eyebrow.
"Yeah, so did I," he replied.
"But you’re still here."
"Looks like it."
I shook my head.
"Felix, I’m sorry, I don’t understand," I told him, my heart thudding harder in my chest. One wrong move, and it felt like I could ruin this whole thing, lose out on everything that he might have been offering me right now. I was walking on a tightrope, and I refused to slip and fall, not now, not when I was so, so close...
"Well, there was something I wanted to give you before I left," he explained, and he reached into his pocket, jerking his head outside. "Come on, let’s get out of here..."
I followed him outside, still kind of dazed by what he was saying, wondering what on earth it was that he might have to give me. And, when we were out of the diner, he withdrew something from his pocket. An envelope. He held it out to me and I stared down at it dumbly for a moment, not sure how I should respond.
"Take it, Dina," he chuckled. I reached for it, rubbing my thumb under the flap and opening it before I tipped the contents out into my palm. And, as I straightened out the paper to get a better look at it, my eyes widened.
"Wait, this is…"
"The deed for the diner," he finished up, nodding to the building beside me. "And it’s in your name, Dina."
My jaw dropped. Shock coursed through me, so intense it nearly took me off my feet. I looked back to the diner, then to the deed, and then back again, trying to piece it all together in a way that made sense.
"I don’t understand..."
He reached for my hand, the smile widening across his face.
"It’s yours, Dina," he explained. "To do anything you want with. You can sell it, change it into a whole new business, keep the place open as it is, anything that you want. But whatever you do, it’s your choice."
"Felix, I can’t accept this..."
"It’s not charity," he told me firmly. "It’s a chance. A chance for you to do anything you want. Without having to worry that someone is going to gamble it away or that you’re not going to be able to afford it. No strings attached. Just...yours."
I felt a lump leap into my throat as I tried to wrap my head around it. It was so overwhelming, the thought that he would do this for me, the idea that the diner was mine now to do with as I pleased. I had never had anything like this to my name before, never done anything other than work at a place like this just to make ends meet. A weight lifted from my shoulders that I didn’t even know had been there, years of financial worry and burden and fear for the future vanishing in a matter of moments. No matter how big a gesture this was, I knew that I couldn’t turn it down, or the opportunity that it might have offered to my family alongside it.
"When did you do this...?”
"I spoke to Pam a few days ago," he explained. "Seems like she’s ready to retire, too. Glad to get the money and be able to relax. I asked her not to tell you, though, so I could surprise you at the Labor Day party. And judging by the look on your face right now, she didn’t."
"She didn’t," I echoed after him. I looked up at him, my eyes pricked with tears. Nobody had ever made a gesture like this for me in my life before, and the enormity of it was almost more than I could wrap my head around. He wanted to help me, to really help me. No, not just that, to give me the tools to help myself, so that I didn’t have to rely on his charity.
