Chapter 2
EVERETT
“W owww, is that so?” I rolled my eyes and rested my elbows on the front desk. There w as one old man sitting in the corner of my restaurant, eating slowly and looking out the window in deep thought.
Man, I hope it’s something important he’s thinking about, because he’s the only thing keeping me sitting in this near-empty shop.
Well, him and the lovely phone call I was on.
Her name was Grace and I couldn’t even say how we’d progressed to phone calls. She’d added me on Snap one day, and I think I was too polite to leave her on read.
And now she was telling me about how she loved that one indie band no one knew about and how her heels were bruised because of her Doc Martens or whatever. Grace didn’t even own boots, much less Doc Martens. Maybe she wasn’t aware that I knew she preferred Converses.
Or maybe she was just having fun pretending to be someone different.
We’ve never met before in person. Although we go to the same school, we run in completely different circles. It let her have complete freedom in the way she presented herself to me; she could be anyone she wanted to be. I didn’t want to ruin that little freedom for her.
“Hey, listen. I have to give someone a check, okay? I’ll call you later,” I muttered into my phone and cut the call before she could keep going. The old man had just finished the last bite of his naan . I walked over and placed the receipt on his table with a courteous smile.
“My boy, this”—he pointed to his empty plate—“was delicious. I think it may be the best Indian food I’ve had in this bland-ass country.” He had a booming kind of laughter that made me smile too.
“I’ll give your compliments to the chef, sir.”
The “chef” being me, for now .
“Oh! Please do. Do you guys cater?”
Shit.
The answer was complicated. Apparently, we used to, from what I heard.
Well, back when the store was thriving. We had the workers, the equipment, and everything to make trays and trays of food for weddings, birthdays, and the like.
But then the store was passed to my grandma, and Fragrance Spice Kitchen started handing out their sweet food at half the price of ours.
Sweet was the word that came to mind when Fragrance was brought up.
They had sweet biryani, sweet ingredients—sweet anything and everything that wasn’t supposed to be sweet.
They sold food that wasn’t Indian at all in a restaurant that tried so hard to give people a “taste of India.” They had photos of the Taj Mahal, elephants, and so much more of what people thought India was supposed to be.
Maybe it was so people would be distracted by how bland and weirdly sweet all their food was.
Whatever it was, it was working.
And it was causing us to have a need for big catering orders, a need that we couldn’t really complete even if we could land them. We didn’t have the workers, the equipment, or anything really to cook that much food.
But I needed orders like that to keep everything afloat.
And so, I found myself nodding to his questions. “Yup, we cater. Let me know what event and I can hand you a catering menu—”
“Not so fast!” He laughed. “It’s for a wedding that I’m planning, but I’ll need the bride and groom’s approval first. I’ll bring them and their family over sometime during dinner, yes?”
Nod.
“Oh! And you guys sell flowers here too? A lot of the other Indian restaurants on Devon also sell flowers, I’ve seen. I haven’t found marriage wreaths yet.”
Nod.
So...I don’t know the first thing about flowers. To be honest, I don’t know the first thing about a Hindu wedding either. How many flowers did they even need for a wreath, anyway?
“Amazing! Amazing! I’m so glad I stumbled onto your establishment today, sir!” The man still continued, completely oblivious. “The couple and I would love to take a look at a few sample marriage wreaths and their prices.”
“What price range are you looking at?” I smiled, hoping that I seemed knowledgeable about flowers and the entire process. How much do flowers even cost?
“The couple wants a more dramatic wedding, you know? I’m thinking we start off with something around three fifty to five hundred dollars for the wreath.”
For a flower wreath?
For a flower wreath?
“Sounds good!” I smiled, trying to mask the panic inside. What am I going to do? Oh my god, what did I get myself into? What am I going to do?
I let him leave before letting my smile fall. There was no way I was going to pull this one off, not alone anyway—
A sudden loud sound from across the street caught my attention.
I looked across the street at Fragrance where the sound came from, to see Jahnvi, who had just fallen over holding trays filled with dirty dishes.
One of the plates had completely shattered on impact, and I could see her eyes widen all the way from here.
My smile came back as an idea popped into my head.
The time between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. was dead, when people had finished lunch and weren’t ready for dinner yet. So, when I called Fragrance, I wasn’t put on hold or anything. In fact, I got the manager on the line within a few rings.
The manager—Jahnvi’s dad.
“Hey, Mr. Patel. This is Everett...” I explained to him about my big order and how I’d appreciate some help with it. We could split the revenue two ways in whatever way he liked. I didn’t mind; I just needed some type of money to keep everything going.
Of course, I phrased it in a way that made it seem like I already had the order locked in. But that wasn’t important. It didn’t take too much persuading. I mean, I didn’t expect there to be much opposition. Any restaurant would jump at a wedding order like this.
Plus, I know he pities me.
He pitied the way our restaurant was going. But in this situation, his pity worked to my advantage.
That meant I only needed to arrange good enough food for the bride and groom’s family to lock in the order. That would settle the food matter.
Now, for the flowers.
Across the street, Jahnvi was now aggressively using a broom to sweep the porcelain fragments of the broken plate under a bush so no one would know. The only problem was that she was doing a horrible job of it and the little fragments were still littered all around her feet.
I smiled as a plan formed in my head.
Maybe, just maybe, I might be able to pull this off.