Executive Chef
Heights Bites
To: Wilder Amante
From: Heights Bites Management
Wilder,
The future of the diner is uncertain.
A transition period is near, and I can’t offer you permanent placement at this time.
If you got a better opportunity, you should take it.
We appreciate all you’ve done for the place.
Best of luck.
Management
Heights Bites
Alone in my office upstairs, where I’ve spent most of my time in the restaurant lately, I review the email thread with Wilder from last week like the depressed loser I’ve become.
A better offer.
It’s so perfectly my luck that I finally start to let someone in, catch something that feels uncomfortably similar to feelings, and they get a better offer.
Of course he’s going to leave.
Why would he stay?
And I can’t even ask him to, now that I’m going to lose the restaurant.
We’ve spent two more nights together since these emails, neither of us commenting on it to the other, but both quietly desperate in our need for one another. He’s the rock I can anchor myself to, the punching bag I can take it all out on. It helps, at least while I’m with him.
And for once, it won’t be me that scares him away. It’s not the fact that I’mtoo much, or more than he can handle. For thefirst time, I’m with a man who’s more than fine with every single shred of my harsh personality that’s sent others running.
It’s the fact that I can’t do more for him that’s going to drive him away.
Because I lost the grant.
Can’t keep paying the loans back for overhead, cover the cost of inventory, and make payroll without the grant funding. Even the money Dad lent me isn’t enough to cover the cost of keeping a place like this running.
I haven’t had the will to show my face downstairs.
Now that Billie is here, between her, Wanda, Tracy, and Violet, the floor is always covered. Wilder keeps the back of the house going, and I can stay up here and do executive tasks like mope.
It’s why they pay me the big bucks.
For another couple weeks, at least, by Rory’s estimate.
Once the funding gets pulled, I’m out of a job, and will have to tuck my tail and head back to the grocery store, pie on my ass and all.
Should be just in time for the grand opening of downtown, so that’s festive.
I can’t bear to think that my fuck-up could cost Billie, Wanda, Charlie, Samuel, and everyone else here their jobs.
