Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 71651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
It was another two hours before I got to talk to Dani a little more, while both of us were in the back washing dishes.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Danielle said.
“Go for it.”
“You are so much better at handling rushes than Mom and Dad.”
I snorted. “That’s not a secret. So are you, by the way.”
She sighed. “It’s just really good to have you back.”
“Thank you, Dani.”
“I know you hate it,” she said, giving me a side look.
“I don’t hate it that much,” I said. “I know I act like I do, but… I like getting the chance to be around you guys more, too. Mom wants to have a ten-minute conversation with every customer and Dad wants to complain about the espresso machine instead of learning it. But working with you is always good.”
Danielle looked down silently for a little while, washing dishes. I could tell she was deep in thought, but I didn’t press the matter.
“You know,” she finally said, “before you said you were moving back, Mom and Dad were pretty sure they were going to sell.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Like, joking about selling? Like they always do?”
“No,” she told me, catching my eye. “Like talking to other local restaurant owners and interviewing prospective buyers.”
I took a step back from the sink. “No fucking way.”
She nodded. “I thought it was going to happen.”
“You didn’t tell me any of that.”
“Yeah. You had a lot on your plate already.”
I looked around the back kitchen, glancing out toward the front like I was seeing Red Fox for the first time.
It crushed me to think about not being able to be in this diner anymore.
I’d basically grown up in Red Fox. It had been a part of my family’s life forever, and even when it went through bad years and the normal ups and downs of a restaurant, I never thought my parents were anywhere close to actually selling the place.
They rolled with the punches.
They always bounced back.
They needed to change a few things on the menu and upgrade some furniture, but I didn’t think they’d been considering selling.
“They stopped thinking about it when I decided to move back to Bestens?” I asked.
“Decided to give it another good shot, at least,” Dani said. “They lucked out when they hired Thomas to try to get some quality baked goods in here. But they also knew you would be a huge help.”
“I feel like I barely help at all.”
Dani shook her head. “You’ve always been the best worker we’ve ever had here. When you were gone, do you know how often Dad said nobody could handle a rush like Ori?”
My heart squeezed a little inside.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t know that at all.”
“I swear sometimes you don’t know how much they love you,” Dani said.
“I thought of myself as the odd one out. I still do.”
“Just because you don’t ride horses and don’t like country music doesn’t mean you don’t belong.”
I felt a little wall building up inside me, brick by brick.
But I don’t want to belong. Not here. Not in a place that chewed me up and spat me out as a kid.
I had always dared to be myself when I was a teenager, and that was something I always got punished for, here. I even got made fun of for enjoying painting, for fuck’s sake. The kids I saw on TV in New York or LA were able to flourish creatively. They were encouraged to be different, unique, or anything they wanted. So why couldn’t I?
Leaving Bestens had been my only escape route.
I’d never let myself stop to think about what I’d left behind.
The people who did love me.
“You know, Finn likes having you back, too,” Danielle said. “Even if he won’t say it like that to your face.”
“He says it in other ways. Sometimes. When he’s not antagonizing me.”
He says it with his eyes, when his mouth is wrapped around my cock.
“He likes taking care of you,” Dani said.
Something twisted in my chest.
“I guess. Sometimes.”
“You shouldn’t worry about the housing situation so much, by the way,” she said. “Finn can help you with that.”
“How so?”
She gave me a conspiratorial look. “Don’t tell him I said this.”
“Oh, God. What?”
“He told me he has his eyes on that house for sale, over by Full Moon Ranch,” she told me, waggling her eyebrows. “I think he went to go talk to them about it last week.”
I paused. “What? Does he realize the house is for sale, not for rent?”
She was suppressing a smile. “You know Finn’s made some good cash from a couple of his instructional videos, right? He’s too modest to talk about it, but he’s doing really well.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Well, I think he might be willing to help you with putting a down payment on a place,” she said. “You didn’t hear this from me. But if he can talk them into a good price, I think he’s going to offer it to you.”