“Busy,” Eliza amended. “That whole Trinity Park area is busy and loaded.”
This was the third piece of surprise news I’d heard today. And it wasn’t that I wasn’t excited for them. I was. But my brain had started glitching. It wouldn’t get on board with being excited. I kept telling it this was good news. But it was trapped somehow. There was a spinning circle thing that indicated the information was loading, but nothing was getting fully uploaded.
“That’s great.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” Charlie asked, sounding suspicious.
“No, it is. I’m really excited. That’s, uh, awesome.” I smiled. They took a step back. I wiped the smile off quickly because how many times was it going to take before I learned my lesson. “I’m just, um, why are you telling me?”
Will cleared his throat. “Uh, well, we can’t do this without you. Ada, you’re the glue that holds this place together, and we’ve only just got our feet under us here. I, er,werealize this is a big undertaking, so we’d like to move forward with as few hiccups as possible.”
There was white noise buzzing around in my head. Nothing Will was saying made any sense. And there was a faint ringing sound in my ears. “Okay, wait, explain slower. I still don’t get where I come in.”
“We want you to help us open the new location. Help design the space. Train the staff, eventually. Work with Case and Charlie to build the menu off popular items here, but also adding new ones so it’s not an identical twin, but more like a fraternal one.”
“We’ll pay you more,” Eliza added quickly. “If it’s the money you’re worried about. Because obviously, we’ll still need you here.”
“And nothing is out of the planning and thinking stage yet. So it will be a bit,” Will put in. “But we wanted to pitch it to you and see what you thought.”
There was silence while I wondered if I would face-plant on the bar or tip backward off the stool and hit my head on the ground.
Eliza put her hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to tell us today. Please, take your time thinking it over.”
“Something’s wrong with her,” Charlie said flatly. “She’s not okay.”
His accusation cut through my brain fog, and I jumped into action. “I’m fine.” I cut a glare at him. “Honestly, I’m fine. I’ve just had a weird day.”
They exchanged a glance. Two of them looked like they believed me. One of them looked like he was happy to call me a dirty, rotten liar.
I should really eat something. But it wasn’t like me to make a big deal out of nothing, and I felt stupid telling them I needed to have some crackers then I’d be able to have the appropriate amount of enthusiasm.
Or maybe the crackers were meaningless. Maybe it was more that I needed my dad to disappear again and my sister to break up with Shane so we could all go back to our regularly scheduled lives.
“I think this is awesome,” I said, even while I somehow lost more touch with reality. But I was nothing if not a girl who could pull herself up by her bootstraps and muscle on. “Honestly, I think it’s so cool. I would love to help you out. I’m not sure what that looks like financially. I should probably figure that out on my end, as well as get a clearer picture of how much more you’re going to need from me, but—”
“We’ll figure that out for sure,” Will assured me, cutting me off. “Lola has a lot of experience opening franchises, obviously. So this was actually her idea.”
I smiled because I didn’t know what to say.
Charlie said, “You should take the week and think it over. I don’t think you should make the decision today.”
“I’m fine,” I hissed again. I hated having to repeat myself. I hated even more trying to convince people nothing was wrong with me. I worked very, very hard to never show other people there might be something wrong. Charlie needed to back off before I found the courage to punch something else today.
“You’re not fine,” he argued, his perceptive eyes narrowed on my face.
Before I could argue with him, or punch him, Joey swept out of the kitchen like an angel from heaven. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said. Then set a plate of food down in front of me. “I made Ada a sandwich. She forgot to eat today.”
I should have been more self-conscious about what happened next, but the smell of grilled bread and sharp cheese hit my withering brain cells like smelling salts. I pounced on the sandwich in the same way a starved grizzly bear would attack fresh salmon out of a refreshing riverbed.
The English siblings tutted over me while I sank my teeth into the Michelin-star-worthy thing that was so much more than a sandwich. I moaned around the bite and let the delicious fat and carbs and calories go to work fixing my brain.
Honestly, I tuned them out for a couple of minutes. I had to focus on devouring the sandwich and the plate of fries and the double portion of house-made pickle spears. And then licking the plate clean.
Okay, I didn’t do that last bit. But only because they were watching me.
Charlie walked away for a second but returned with a glass of ice water he’d filled using the soda gun. He slid it across the bar without saying anything.
I would have refused the glass of water out of spite, but I had genuinely inhaled the food and it was either graciously accepting the water or choking and dying. Which would have been fine except there was an audience.
