“Good. Actually good. Breakfast worked. Dinner’s quiet but it’s the first night.”
“Did people like the eggs?”
“One person said they were really good and Tyler has been structurally altered by the experience.”
Meg laughed. “I’ll make more hollandaise tomorrow.”
They closed at eight-thirty—no one left to serve, the boardwalk gone quiet, the ocean dark beyond the windows. Tyler, Anna, Stella, Bea, and Dante stood in the kitchen and looked at each other.
Michael was still at the counter. He closed his notebook—he’d been keeping a tally all evening, covers, orders, timing. Data nobody had asked for.
Tyler walked over and held out his hand.
“Thanks for being here.”
Michael looked at the hand, then at Tyler, and shook it.
“The numbers were encouraging.”
“That means good, right?”
“That means good.”
Tyler grinned. Anna, watching from the kitchen, smiled before she could stop herself. Something about seeing Michael pulled into the circle—Tyler’s easy generosity meeting Michael’s careful reserve—loosened something in the room. Dante relaxed. Stella lowered her camera. Bea closed her calculus book.
“We did it,” Tyler said to the room.
“Day one,” Anna said.
“Day one counts.”
Michael gathered his notebook and stood. He looked at the room—Tyler grinning, Stella with her camera, Bea with her calculus, Dante looking like he might survive another shift. The Shack at the end of its longest day, still standing.
“Goodnight,” he said. To the room. But his eyes went to Anna last and stayed there a beat longer than the word needed.
He left. The door closed quietly behind him.
Joey texted at nine to the group chat.
HOW. WAS. IT.
Anna took a photo of the empty, clean Shack — tables wiped, chairs up, grill cooling — and sent it.
Joey: That’s beautiful. Also were the muffin baskets replenished at the correct intervals?
Tyler: Go to bed, Joey.
Joey: I HAVE FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS.
They locked up together. Tyler and Stella walked home one direction, Bea and Anna the other. The October night was cool and salt-smelling and the Shack sat behind them, dark and quiet, waiting for tomorrow.
Anna called Margo from the sidewalk. Two rings.
“How was it?” Margo’s voice was wide awake. She’d been waiting.
“It was good. The eggs held. The muffins sold out by lunch. A jogger was our first breakfast customer.”
“Tyler’s eggs held?”
