Page 121 of Matchmaking On The Menu

That hits me in the gut.

Quadri folds her arms, nodding slightly. “We’ve been learning.”

I blink. “Learning what?”

“Everything you’ve been doing,” Mary says quickly. “The deep-cleaning schedule? I’ve got it mapped out. Like, fully mapped out.”

“I’ve been working on the requisition forms,” Quadri adds. “Inventory, ordering cycles, all that stuff.”

“And I’ve been tackling the financial side,” Shelly says. “Budgets, suppliers, margins. I kind of love it.”

I look between them. They’re not joking. They’re not throwing out empty reassurances. They mean it.

“Since you’ve been dating Teddy, he’s had to come here to see you. That’s not right. Especially when we get to go home and live our lives all the time. So we figured it out. We don’t need one person doing everything,” Quadri continues. “We can split it. Equally.”

Shelly nods. “You don’t have to be the lead all the time.”

Mary brightens. “We can be a team.”

My heart clenches, but not in a bad way. In a holy shit, I’m not alone kind of way. I stare at them, my throat suddenly too tight. This whole time I thought the choice had already been made. Diner or dream. Responsibility or me. And somewhere along the way, I’d decided I was the sacrifice.

“You guys don’t understand,” I say softly. “Grandma needs someone to take over.”

“We know,” Quadri says.

“And I was going to,” I admit, the words scraping on the way out. “I mean… I am going to. I already decided.”

Shelly’s face shifts slightly at that. “Dannica…”

“I can’t just gamble the diner on me maybe becoming a writer,” I say quickly, trying to laugh a little and failing spectacularly. What if I got everything I’d wanted and still wasn’t good enough? “That feels like the beginning of every terrible financial decision ever made.”

Nobody laughs, which somehow makes it worse.

I look down at my hands. “Writing that story was fun. Really fun. And for a second I let myself think maybe…”

I trail off because finishing that sentence suddenly feels dangerous.

Mary’s face softens. “Maybe you could do it for real?”

“Yeah,” I admit quietly. “Maybe.”

Quadri pipes up. “You’re acting like you’ve already been fired from a job you haven’t even started. Why does this have to be on one person?” She gestures between all of us. “Like Mary says, we can be a team.”

I blink. “What?”

“We already run this place together half the time anyway,” Shelly says. “You’re just the idiot doing all the stressful parts alone.”

“Accurate,” Quadri confirms.

Mary nods eagerly. “It makes sense.”

I stare at them. “All four of us?”

“Joint ownership,” Quadri says immediately, because of course she already has terminology ready. “Shared responsibility. Shared workload. Shared profits.”

Shelly points at herself. “I’m emotionally attached to this diner anyway. I’d fight someone for booth three.”

“You almost did last week,” Mary reminds her.