The head Farzan was giving him at the time had made up for it, but still.
“Sorry,” Farzan said, blushing at the memory. “You need something?”
Ramin smiled at little Safa, dimples deep and eyes shining. “She’s so perfect,” he whispered reverently.
“She is,” Farzan murmured, pressing his lips to her head again.
Ramin straightened up. “Anyway. Arya says it’s nearly time for your speech. He also says if you ruin his schedule, he’s going to murder you.”
Farzan chuckled, bouncing Safa in his arms a few times.
“I can take her back to Maheen for you.”
Farzan transferred the little bundle to Ramin, whose smile only shone brighter as he looked down at her sleeping face. Of the three of them—Farzan, Ramin, and Arya—Ramin was the one who most wanted kids of his own. Farzan figured it wouldn’t be long before he and Todd started talking about marriage and adopting. Or surrogacy. Or who knows what. And then Farzan would be a guncle twice over, because Ramin was as much his brother as Navid was, and any kid of Ramin’s would be surrounded with love. Just like baby Safa.
Farzan slipped out of the office—his new office, in the new, expanded Shiraz Bistro. His old office had been taken over by the new general manager, but he still needed a place to decompress, to think over new recipes, to talk with Ramin and Arya about their plans for the future. It was tucked into the corner of the expanded kitchen, across from the new refrigerator.
The kitchen was humming with activity: Sheena kneeling in front of the oven to keep an eye on a batch of kookoo, Spencer rotating skewers of kabob over their new grill, Chase flicking water at the base of a pot of rice to check the heat. The staff had already had their own celebration—at Aspire, actually, last week—but today was for the community.
Their grand reopening.
Farzan emerged into a restaurant bustling with lively conversation,people shouting to be heard over the Persian music Reza was playing—apparently, when he wasn’t lawyering, he was DJ Reza Bass—from a corner of the small dance floor set up in the expanded dining room.
Arya made a beeline for him, hooking his arm around Farzan’s elbow and dragging him toward the bar.
“It’s time for your speech.” He was dressed up, too, in a shiny maroon suit with a pocket square the color of egg yolks and matching his nails.
“Do I have to?” Farzan muttered.
“You were already outvoted.”
The only bad thing about being in business with his two best friends: they tended to gang up on him.
Only when they were right, but still.
Arya parked Farzan at the edge of the dance floor, grabbed the microphone from Reza, looked at it for a moment to check that it was on, then handed it to Farzan.
Farzan stared at the mic as Reza faded out the music. The crowd turned toward him.
Arya waved at him to start talking.
“Uh.” Farzan cleared his throat. “Hi, folks. Thanks for coming tonight. Kheyli mamnoon.”
In the middle of the crowd, a familiar whistle sounded.
Farzan fought a blush and kept going.
“It’s an honor and a privilege to welcome you all back to the bigger, better Shiraz Bistro.”
Someone—Farzan thought it might’ve been Navid—began clapping, which rapidly spread. He wasn’t done, though.
“I just—I just want to thank everyone who got us here. My parents, who built this restaurant from the ground up, to share the cuisine of Iran with the metro area. To make a place where Iranians, where anyone, could feel at home.” Farzan spotted his mom and dad in the crowd, smiling at him. “The amazing team here at Shiraz Bistro, who stuck through a change in leadership and an expansion and still somehow manage to put up with me, even when I blast video game music in the kitchen.”
Most of them were still in said kitchen, but a few of the front of house staff had paused to listen to him.
“My new partners, of course. Ramin and Arya. My best friends. I never could’ve done this without them.”
He glanced Arya’s way. Ramin had sidled up beside him, his arm around Todd’s waist.
