Anna didn’t ask any questions, and Stella was relieved. They drove in silence for a while, past the galleries and the coffee shops and the streets that were becoming familiar now. Stella watched Laguna Beachscroll past the window and thought about the photography lab, the darkroom, the student work on the walls.
She thought about Mr. Reeves sayingwhen you enrolllike it was already decided.
She thought about Margo painting something she wouldn’t show anyone, Tyler checking on her every afternoon, the family meeting where everyone had looked at her like she already belonged.
And she thought about Fiona, thousands of miles away, waiting for a phone call that she was definitely not expecting.
The decision was made. Now came the hard part—telling the one person who could still take it all away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Beach Shack smelled like hot grease and ocean salt, which Stella had learned was actually a good sign. “If you can’t smell the grill, something’s wrong with the grill,” Joey had told her on her first day. Words to live by, apparently.
Today the grill was working fine. Joey, on the other hand, was having some kind of breakdown.
“Okay, so the napkin station.” He stood in front of the metal dispenser like a surgeon preparing for an operation. “This is critical. Forty-five degree angle on the fan. Not forty. Not fifty. Forty-five.”
“You’ve told me this.”
“I’m telling you again.” Joey pulled out a napkin and demonstrated the fold with the intensity of someone defusing a bomb. “See how it catches the light? That’s how you know it’s right.”
Stella leaned against the counter. “And if it doesn’t catch the light?”
“Disaster.” He wasn’t joking. That was the thing about Joey—he was dramatic, but he meant every word. “Customers sense weakness. They can tell when the napkin station has been compromised.”
“Right. Compromised napkins. Got it.”
From his corner booth, Bernie looked up from his tablet. “She’s humoring you, son.”
“She’s learning, Bernie. There’s a difference.”
Bernie caught Stella’s eye and winked. She bit back a smile.
The morning rush hadn’t started yet, which was why Joey had declared this a “training intensive.” Joey held a thin folder like it mattered more than it probably should have.
“You made this?” Stella had asked when he’d handed her the packet.
She flipped through Joey’s laminated pages while he reorganized the condiment station for the third time. Ketchup bottles arranged by fullness. Mustard aligned with military precision. Hot sauce in a perfect diagonal that he kept adjusting by millimeters.
“Joey.” Stella set down the folder. “You’re going to school twenty minutes away.”
“Twenty-three, depending on traffic.”
“You’re acting like you’re shipping off to war.”
Joey stopped adjusting the hot sauce. His shoulders dropped slightly, and for a moment, he looked less likethe Shack’s self-appointed excellence coach and more like what he actually was: a nineteen-year-old kid who was scared.
“What if something happens?” he said quietly. “What if the grill breaks again and nobody knows the trick with the pilot light?
“We’ll call you,” she said. “If the napkin station gets compromised or whatever.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Joey exhaled. Then he straightened, adjusting his apron, and the nervous energy crept back in.
“You’re still humoring me.”
