“You said I only have five minutes,” she says, a small smile on her lips.
“It doesn’t take long to drink a glass of water,” I say coldly, still not willing to budge.
She nods, looking a little stunned, but holds up a hand. “I’m good, thanks. I’ll get this out and be on my way.”
When she says that, I have to stifle the urge to tell her no, she can stay. An annoyingly persistent part of me doesn’t really want her to leave.
My fucking betrayer of a body.
My brain is furious at her.
I want to know what fucking game she’s playing. But then, I don’t know what I want. Her, maybe? I don’t like it. I don’t get it. But I get up and grab a kettle just so my hands have something to do. “You drink tea?” I ask without looking up.
“I do.”
I fill the kettle to the max fill line and start the burner. Then I storm back to my chair because she’s clearly going to wait until I sit down to keep talking.
“So,” she says gently. “The granddaughter wanted help opening a second location. We danced around different options for ownership and viable locations to expand into.” She pauses then, and I can feel her eyes on my face. I look up at her, trying to be unmoved by anything she says, anything she does. “For a lot of reasons that are proprietary, so I can’t share the specifics, Star Falls was determined to be the perfect location for a second restaurant. I spent a year negotiating the deal with the family, the county, and the city. I’m here to break ground and supervise the build-out. Then when the new place is done, the granddaughter will move here to Star Falls and possess her own small part of her family’s legacy.”
“While Culinary Capital takes a massive cut of the profits, for what—the life of the restaurant?” I ask. I can’t help myself. This doesn’t sound like a good deal for anyone but Willow’s business.
Willow sighs. “We signed a profit-sharing agreement that should make us whole on our investment in under thirty-six months. Our contracts have standard clauses with mutual audits and full transparency. We relinquish our investment twelve months after we’re made whole. If our data and analysis are correct, the granddaughter will own the restaurant outright in as little as three years. We’re not in this to screw over the little guy. My company is owned by two sisters whose father was one of the original franchisees of Papa Gino’s.”
She stops and meets my eyes when she shares that little fact. No wonder she ordered from them the other day and was so defensive of the mass-produced product.
She goes on. “We believe in helping communities create sustainable and profitable food industries. Sometimes that means we open franchises, and sometimes we work with people who have a gift for food but need a little support when it comes to all the other things that go into running a successful restaurant.”
That fucking stings like lemon juice to the eyes. “Like me?” I demand, defensive again.
It’s shockingly noble—if what she’s saying is true. I’ve heard so many horror stories. Buddies who got taken advantage of by vendors, by real estate agents, by anyone and everyone who saw dollar signs at the first hint of their restaurants being successful. I’ve never heard of a finance company helping small business owners keep their businesses.
Not like this, and I don’t trust it. I don’t trust her.
I leap out of my chair and turn off the kettle that’s just starting to steam.
Willow gets up and follows me into the kitchen. She reaches for my arm. “Benny, what I’m saying has nothing to do with you. Please, will you let me finish?”
I yank open a cabinet, pull out two mugs, and grab the honey. “How do you take your tea?” I demand, refusing to look at her.
“Just a little honey is fine, thanks.” I hear the hint of a smile in her voice, like she’s laughing at what a pouty bitch I’m being. I don’t give a fuck.
This woman is bad news, and I need to listen to what she’s saying so I know enough to keep her the hell out of my life.
She talks while I fix our tea. “We started the SBA grant program about five years ago. It was after…” She pauses and seems to consider what she’s about to say. She walks to the purseshe dropped on the floor by my front door and grabs her cell phone. She swipes the touchscreen and shows me an app. “This is what we used to do.”
I glare at her hand, but I finally take the teabags out of the mugs, dump them in the sink, and grab her phone. “What am I looking at?” I ask.
“In every community where we open a restaurant, we know we’re going to affect the local economy. In some places, the trade-off is worth it. We create new jobs in a place that needs them. We provide opportunities for people who wouldn’t have had them otherwise. For several years, when I was on the ground supervising the build of a new restaurant, I would also coordinate with the local community to give back in some very tangible way.”
The social media feed she’s showing me has dozens of pictures going back years. Willow is shown hugging people in community centers, test kitchens, and even in backyard fundraisers.
“We stopped the year we worked with children of incarcerated parents,” she says quietly. “After that, I couldn’t manage it all. The community events, the work, the people.”
I see a glimmer of something real in her eyes, and it’s brutal. As if, for just a second, she dropped the mask, dropped the facade, and the real Willow was laid bare. I look away from her and back at the phone. The more recent pictures show Willow at ribbon-cuttings and pig roasts.
“So, what, you give away money now? The grant is supposed to replace the community service stuff?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes. It’s a newer program, but we estimate that for the additional expenditure of funds, the success of the new restaurant happens even faster. It’s inevitable that some businesses will suffer and some jobs will be lost, but thegoodwill and publicity the grants give us have actually helped the restaurants we open get profitable more quickly.”
