Chapter 3
Finn
My next shift was scheduled to start in twenty hours.
Monday, five to close.
It would be another eight hours of smiling at people who treated me like furniture, while making drinks from pre-made mixes and watching Brad take credit for work I did.
Except I wasn’t going to be there.
I was going to quit.
Seriously, I was going to do this.
The only question was: How?
“You are spiraling, dear heart,” Priya called from the kitchen. “I can hear you wearing out the floor. Its tears are a lament to my soul.”
Priya Kapoor was my roommate and, on more days than I could count, my unofficial therapist. We’d met three years ago when I’d been brought into Tampa General’s ER after breaking up a bar fight.
It wasn’t my fight; I’d just been stupid enough to step in the middle of it.
Priya had been the first-year resident who’d stitched up my split lip while simultaneously diagnosing the drunk guy next to me with appendicitis and explaining to an intern why their treatment plan was completely backward.
She was the smartest person I’d ever known, earning her degree from Johns Hopkins before getting accepted into every medical school she’d applied to—and a few she hadn’t who claimed they “simply had to have her.” Who got recruited into med school? Seriously?
The night of the post-brawl patch-up, we bonded. I still couldn’t explain how it happened. One minute she was all Doctor Serious Face, the next we were giggling like catholic schoolgirls smoking pot behind the bleachers.
Two days later, she called and told me she needed a roommate. Her timing was beyond perfect. My lease was ending and every apartment I’d looked at wanted twice my previous rent. I was about to be homeless. I moved in that week, and we’d been living together ever since.
“I’m not spiraling.”
“You are pacing, sweet pea. You only pace when you are spiraling.” She emerged with a bag of chips, dropped onto the couch, and patted the cushion next to her. “Tell Auntie Priya what is wrong.”
I flopped down, blew out a giant sigh, and let my head fall back so far I was staring at the ceiling fan as I spoke. “I need to quit my job.”
“Okay.” She crunched a chip, unbothered. “So quit.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It literally is. You open your mouth, words come out, those words are ‘I quit.’ See? It is simple.” She paused, studying me. “Wait. Before you quit, do you have something else lined up? Please tell me you are not quitting without a plan. You are a smart boy, but you are also a redhead.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I huffed.
“Everyone knows gingers are impulsive.”
“Are not!”
“Do not make me list the ways you are, dear heart.”
God, I hated when she called me that. Her nicknames were endearing—all except for that one. It was the Indian equivalent of my mom using my middle name or a Southerner saying, “Bless your heart.”
“I have a plan,” I mumbled.
“What is this plan? I am a doctor. I need details. You know this.”
I sucked in a breath. I was the bug. She was the spider. This was her web.
“Mark wants to open a gay sports bar in Ybor. He’s offering me twenty-five percent ownership and . . . well . . . to pretty much run the place.”
Priya went still. Her jaw clenched mid-chew. The chip she’d been holding, waiting to be consumed next, froze halfway to her mouth.
Then she returned said chip to the bag, set the whole thing on the coffee table, and turned to face me fully.
And didn’t say anything.
Not one word.
She looked at me with that expression she got when she was working through a particularly complicated diagnosis—focused, analytical, turning the information over in her mind from every possible angle.
The silence stretched.
My underarms grew moist.
Then I chided myself for using the word “moist.”
Priya was never wrong. Not about medical stuff, not about people, and definitely not about life decisions.
When I’d been thinking about taking the assistant manager position at Riley’s two years ago, she’d told me it was a trap. She’d said that Brad would never promote me, and I’d just end up doing more work for the same pay.
Of course, she’d been right.
When I started dating a guy from my gym who seemed perfect on paper, she’d taken one look at him and said, “He is going to ghost you the second someone with bigger tits walks by.”
Two weeks later, he’d done exactly that.
With Mr. D Cup. Maybe E.
If Priya thought the bar was a bad idea, it was a bad idea. There would be no getting around her telekinesis or omnipresence or whatever the hell it was called.
But in that moment, whatever she thought, I needed her to say something. Her staring and not chewing was killing me.
“Mark,” she said finally. “Your Mark? The one who tried to fix a leaking pipe with duct tape?”
“It worked for three hours.” I could hear Mark out there somewhere . . . laughing.
“The one who adopted six dogs because he ‘could not choose only one’?”
“They’re good dogs.”
“The one who tried to learn carpentry from YouTube and built a bookshelf that looks like a Jenga tower mid-collapse?”
“It’s structurally sound! Mostly. If no one touches it and the wind never blows.”
“I am not judging Mark. He is a sweet man with a certain salt-and-pepper hotness.” She held up a hand. “I am just . . . processing.”
Another pause.
“Twenty-five percent ownership? He offered you this?”
“Yes . . . and a salary.”
“Twenty-five percent of a bar that doesn’t exist yet.”
“Technically, it exists. He signed a lease. The space is real.”
Her eyes widened. “Does he have a business plan?”
“He has . . . ideas.”
“Does he have permits? Licenses? Staff? Suppliers?”
“He has money. Two hundred thousand dollars. He wants me to handle those other things.”
Priya’s eyebrows shot up so high I thought she might damage her forehead.
“Okay, that is something.” She went quiet again, and I could practically see her brain working through every possible variable. “And your role would be . . . ?”
“Everything Mark’s bad at. Day-to-day operations, hiring, training, menu development, making the business functional.”
“So everything.”
“Pretty much.”
Another long silence. I was dying here.
“Finn.” She looked at me seriously. “This is a huge risk. Most new restaurants fail in the first year. Bars are not much better.”
“I know.”
“You would be giving up a steady paycheck and seniority. Granted, it is a shitty paycheck, but it is steady. You would give this up for something . . . uncertain.”
“I know.”
“And Mark is . . .” She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “Mark is enthusiastic. He is generous and has a good heart, but he also has the attention span of a caffeinated squirrel and the planning skills of a drunken toddler.”
“They let toddlers drink in India?”
“Finnigan! Focus.”
“Yes, doctor.” I lowered my head as though chastised by the village healer.
“You want to do this, yes?”
I thought a moment, making sure before quietly saying, “Yeah, I really do.”
Priya studied me for another moment, then something in her expression shifted.
“Okay.” She reached down, plucked the chip from the bag and shoved it into her mouth.
I blinked. “Okay?”
“Okay, you should do it.”
“Really?”
“Really.” She swallowed, then grabbed the bag and set it in her lap before shoveling more chips into her mouth.
“Here is my thinking. Yes, it is risky. And yes, Mark is a disaster at execution—but you are not. You are organized, detail-oriented, and have been managing bars for seven years even if you did not have the title. And more importantly—” She poked me in the chest with a cheesy finger.
“You have been miserable at Riley’s for so long I was starting to worry you had forgotten what happiness looked like.
When you were talking about the bar just now?
That is the most animated I have seen you in months. ”
“It could fail.”
“It could, but you know what definitely fails? Staying at a job that is sucking the life out of your soul because you are too scared to try something else.” She gave me a pointed look.
“You are twenty-nine, Finn. You have no husband, no children, no mortgage, and no major financial obligations. If you’re ever going to take a risk, now is the time.
Worst-case scenario, it does not work and you get another bartending job.
You are good at what you do, and there are bars on every corner in Tampa. You will land on your feet.”
I gulped back a few unfamiliar emotions. “You really think so?”
“I am never wrong,” she said with a sly smile. “You know this.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “Okay.”
“Okay.” She grabbed my phone off the coffee table and handed it to me. “So quit. Right now. Because if you are doing this, you need to commit. No half measures.”
I stared at her, suddenly locked in place. I tried to speak, but my mouth wouldn’t open. I couldn’t move. I wasn’t even sure I was breathing.
“I should do it in person though, right? That’s the professional thing. Schedule a meeting with Brad, give him two weeks’ notice, help train my replacement. I should to this the right way, shouldn’t I?”
“Why?”
Why? How could she ask that? She was the consummate professional. Of course this was the right thing to do. How could she ask me such a thing?
“Because that’s what you’re supposed to do?”
Priya tossed her empty chip bag down, licked her fingers, then crossed her arms. “Says who?”
“Says, I don’t know, everyone? It’s . . . professional standards? Common courtesy?”
“Finn, that place does not deserve your courtesy. That Brad certainly does not.”
My leg started bouncing. Nervous energy had to go somewhere.
“Finn, think about this logically,” Priya said, taking my hands in hers. “What has Brad done for you in the last year that makes you think he deserves an in-person resignation with two weeks’ notice?”
“Well—” I started, then stopped. “I mean, he’s . . . he’s been . . .”
“An asshole?”
“I was going to say ‘challenging.’”
“He has been an asshole. And not the kind you gays love to lick so much. He is a large hairy one that is never properly sanitized,” Priya said firmly.
“Priya!” Never, not once, had my proper little princess spoken about another person so . . . graphically.
“I can’t just—”
“Yes, you can.” She held up my phone. “What is stopping you?”
“What if I need a reference later? What if the bar doesn’t work out and I need another bartending job?”
Priya’s expression softened. “Oh, little bird, do you think Brad is going to give you a good reference either way? And if the bar does not work out—and it will work out because you’re going to make it so—you will have run a startup business from the ground up.
That is a much better reference than anything Brad could give you. ”
She had a point.
“You are allowed to be afraid,” she continued. “Change is scary. But you are also allowed to want something better. And you do not owe Riley’s or the hairy asshole anything except an invoice for all the unpaid overtime you have worked.”
“You’re very dramatic tonight. Have you been watching Bollywood films again?”
Her smile lit up the room. “I work in an emergency room. I have seen what slow soul death looks like, and you have been exhibiting symptoms no less than two years.” She handed me back my phone.
“So here is what you are going to do. You are not going to honor the hairy asshole with your voice. You will text him right now and tell him you quit. You will give him no notice and no explanation. Do this now.”
“What if—”
“No ‘what ifs.’ You are doing this. Do not argue with me or I will call on the many-handed god to slap you until you stammer more than you already do.”
“I don’t . . . st-stammer.”
She snorted and pulled out her own phone. “In fact, I am going to sit here and watch you do it so you cannot chicken out.”
I looked down at my phone, then back at her. “You’re a bully.”
“I am a doctor. We are paid to bully.” She took my hand again and squeezed. “I am also a sister who is tired of watching her brother be miserable.” She pointed at my phone. “Text. Now. Do not make me get another bag of chips.”
I pulled up my thread with Brad, my thumbs hovering over the keyboard.
The professional thing would be to go in tomorrow, ask for a meeting, and explain the situation face-to-face. Regardless of what Priya said, I should give two weeks and be the bigger person.
But doing the professional thing had gotten me nowhere for seven years.
And Brad had never once been professional to me.
So I started typing.
Me: I quit. Effective immediately.
My thumb hovered over send.
“Push it. Push it real good,” Priya said, breaking into the worst Salt-N-Pepa imitation I’d ever heard while wagging her arms like one of those car sales blow-up figures.
I hit send.
My phone rang three seconds later.
It was Brad.
I stared at the screen, watching it buzz against my palm.
“If you answer that, I will sing and dance all night,” Priya said.
I declined the call.
Immediately, a text came through.
Brad: You can’t quit over text.
I looked at Priya. “He says I can’t quit over text.”
“He is wrong. You just did. Respond.”
Me: I just did.
I stared at that last message, feeling something shift in my chest. Would I regret this? Maybe. Probably.
But I’d regret staying more.
As fast as my fingers could move, I blocked his number, set my phone down on the coffee table, and tried to breathe. Then I slumped back against the couch cushions and let out a long, shaky breath.
“Holy shit,” I said to the ceiling.
“You did it,” Priya said, sounding impressed.
“I did it.”
“How do you feel?”
That was the question, wasn’t it?
Terrified? Liberated? Like I’d just jumped off a cliff without checking if there was water below?
Honestly, I felt like I’d been holding my breath for seven years and finally, finally exhaled.
For the first time in forever, I felt alive.
“I think I just made either the best or worst decision of my life,” I said.
“That is the spirit, buckaroo.” Priya patted my knee and stood up, stretching. “I am going to bed. Try not to spiral too much before morning.”
“No promises.”
She paused in the doorway to her room. “Hey, Finn?”
“Yeah?”
“I am proud of you.” She smiled. “It takes great courage to face hairy assholes without getting floss stuck in your teeth.”