“Coming, Boss!” comes his deep intonation, and he jogs toward the kitchen, a shit-eating grin splitting his face as his footfalls shake the floor.
Pointing to the back door, my glower is enough to tell him to deal with the poorly scheduled delivery.
With those tall, beefy legs of his, it only takes a few strides to cross the kitchen and greet the pot-bellied driver with the bulbous nose in the back.
“What happened tobeforelunch service?” Wilder growls.
“Hit some traffic today. Do you want the delivery or not?”
“Yeah, fine. You’re lucky I’m on top of my shit and all the orders have been fired already. Let’s do this.”
Rolling my eyes, I head back to check on the last of my tables and check out the remaining guests. Weston’s panicked voice greets me before anything else registers.
“Ma!”
When I dash into the dining room I find him crouched down on her side of the booth, hands on her arms.
“Pen,” she wheezes, face puffy and pale, gesturing toward her pocketbook.
“Call 911!” I holler to the back and run for them.
A blast of wind gusts my back, hair fluttering in my face, and Charlie is by my side.
“What’s wrong?”
“She has an allergy,” Weston says, hands flying through her purse.
“Does she have an epi-pen?” Charlie asks, already reaching for Mrs. Suarez.
Her lips and cheeks have distended, filling out her thin face, but it’s the lack of color in her face that scares me the most.
Man, Rory is really going to have my ass if her mother-in-law dies in my restaurant.
Weston hands Charlie a white tube, and our resident volunteer firefighter-slash-EMT works faster than I’ve ever seen him plate a cold dish in the back to jab our guest right through her pants, administering the medicine.
I’m not sure whose heart is racing faster, Weston, watching his mother fade, Charlie, having to save a woman’s life while he’s supposed to be on the grill, or me, as the owner whose chef couldn’t just stick to the fucking menu and had to do his own thing.
Hands to my cheeks, I focus on breathing as Charlie acts the hero.
In minutes Mrs. Suarez’s eyes look brighter, her breathing less labored, and by the time the flashing lights of the ambulance arrive, her face is less puffy and, aside from seeming slightly put out by the change of plans, she seems mostly normal.
“You tell the chef it was delicious, even if it almost killed me,” she jokes, as she’s being strapped to a gurney. Then she looks at her baby boy and says, “And you better bring that lady of yours to meet me soon.”
That’s the scene Wilder walks in on after he finishes the delivery and comes back into the restaurant to find everyone inside gathered around the front door seeing her wheeled out.
“What the fuck happened?” he asks, face falling.
“Let me guess,” I say, arms folding over my chest. “Your pesto recipe uses pine nuts?”
He nods, understanding dawning across his carved, rugged features.
“It was fantastic, but I don’t think I’ll be ordering it again,” Virginia calls, holding up one arm in a wave as she is rolled through the doors and to the waiting emergency vehicle on the street in front of Bites, where a waiting crowd watches on, likely gathered from every single establishment along Main.
“Just stick to the menu,” I seethe at Wilder, shoulder checking him as I pass him by.
It’s not as easy to ignore as I’d imagined these past weeks when his shoulders slump and he curls in on himself, heading back to the kitchen.
Something way too close to guilt pangs in my gut, and I tell it to pound sand.
