33. Charlie
“Boss Lady. We need to eighty-six eggs for about an hour while I run to the store and grab a few dozen.”
I turn to Mike, my head line cook. “What do you mean we’re out of eggs?”
“It means we’re out of eggs?”
That can’t be right. I march into the walk-in cooler, knowing that I’m going to see dozens of eggs on the shelf where they are normally stored. Except when I walk in, it’s empty.
Actually, the entire cooler is nearly empty.
What the fuck?
“Where is all the food?” I yell as I march out of the cooler. “We’re out of eggs. Half the produce. I think we have one case of chicken left. What the hell is going on?”
No one in the kitchen makes eye contact with me. Not one of my cooks. Not the servers. Everyone right now seems to be very concerned with their shoes.
“You didn’t do the order.”
The voice comes from Mellie, who is the only one daring to make eye contact with me right now.
“I didn’t forget to do the order.”
“You did,” she says gently. “Normally you do it on Tuesday. Tuesday you…”
She doesn’t finish that sentence, which is smart for her.
“Everyone back to work,” Mellie announces, which everyone follows. She might be a ray of sunshine, but in the kitchen, everyone knows she means business. “You. Follow me.”
I don’t have a chance to protest as my best friend grabs me by the hand and pulls me toward the office before slamming the door.
“Sit.”
“I’m sorry I forgot to do the order,” I say as she leans back on my chair. “Pregnancy brain.”
She shakes her head. “This isn’t about the eggs or the food. Or your pregnancy brain. Which I know is a real thing, and if it were just you being a little spacy, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But you yelling at everyone? Acting like an asshole boss? That’s why you’re here.”
I brush her off. “I’m not acting like an asshole.”
“You know what look I just saw out there? The one we used to have when Mr. Napoli would come in and scream at everyone for shit he did. Or when Billy got on his high horse and decided he was going to make everyone feel dumb. You remember how we felt when that happened, right?”
I do. It was days like that that made me want to quit. To open a restaurant where no employees ever felt like that.
Fuck…
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll go apologize.”
“Not yet you aren’t.” Mellie pulls over the other chair and sits in front of me. “Because this wasn’t just today or the food order. You were like this yesterday and the day before too. So spill. Because they aren’t normal mood swings. This is just you acting like a b-i-t-c-h.”
I audibly gasp. “You just called me a bitch.”
“I know. And I don’t like it. So start talking.”
I knew I was on edge for the last two days, since I left Simon’s, but I didn’t realize I’d gone so far as to make Mellie use, or spell, curse words.
“Simon and I had a fight,” I begin.
“I figured as much when I saw you were sleeping at the apartment.”
“You knew? I thought I’d done a good job of hiding it.”
The look she’s giving me says otherwise. “I get here at four in the morning every day. You don’t think I’ve noticed your car is here? Or that Simon hasn’t been in here in two days, which is very strange. Add in your outbursts, bigger than normal preggo brain, and the bloodshot eyes, and it didn’t take the cast of Law and Order to figure it out.”
Well, when she puts it like that…
“It was bad Mellie. So bad.”
She leans forward and puts a gentle hand on my knee. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I nod, not realizing until right now how much I need to. “He owns the diner.”
“He what? Did I just hear you right?”
“Simon owns the diner. He is Magnolia Properties.”
“Wow,” Mellie says as she sits back into the chair. “I didn’t see that coming.”
“Exactly how I felt.”
I start from the beginning, telling her about how I heard him and Emmett arguing in the office. How I made him come clean to me about what I heard, and all the things I didn’t know.
How he rigged it so I got Mona’s.
How he bought things and helped me get the restaurant ready right under my nose.
How he was fixing things behind the scenes.
How he lied to me for months when I thought we were starting our lives together.
“Wow,” Mellie says.
“Yeah. Wow is an understatement.”
“I feel like an idiot,” I admit. “How could I have missed all the signs?”
“Were there signs? Not that I’m saying there weren’t. I’m just genuinely wondering how there were signs. Because if there were, I missed them too.”
“I don’t know. Little things. A few times he tensed up when Emmett came up in conversation. There was Christmas Eve, when Emmett was acting very strange. And how every time there was a problem here, it was magically fixed somehow. Then there’s the biggest one.”
“Which was?”
“The restaurant in the first place.”
“Charlie…”
“I’m serious. I should have known something was up. It was too good to be true that not only was this place perfect, already named after my mother, and that the rent was so cheap it should have been criminal. And the apartment? I should have trusted my gut more that something was up. Nothing that good happens without something falling from the sky. Especially to me.”
Mellie doesn’t say anything, and suddenly, she looks…sheepish. Yeah. Sheepish.
“Say it.”
“What?”
“Whatever it is you’re thinking that you know I’m going to hate.”
“It’s kind of romantic…”
I throw my hands in the air. “Romantic? How about manipulative? Or conniving. Or so conceited that you think you can rig the world so you can get your way?”
“Or…and hear me out—” She pauses for dramatic effect. “That he wanted you so much, and wanted you to have this restaurant, that he’d do anything and everything in his power to make it happen.”
“Speaking of Law and Order plots…”
“I mean, he didn’t kill anyone. Or stalk you.”
I quirk an eyebrow. “Do you not remember the weeks of him showing up everywhere when I got to town? Or running past the restaurant shirtless each morning?”
Now it’s her turn to give me the questioning eye. “You can say all you want how you hated it, but I remember the stares you gave him. And they were not ones of the mean variety.”
I don’t comment because she’s right. “It’s more than that. He’s always been like this. He’s the rich boy who doesn’t like it when things don’t go his way, so he rigs the system.”
“What did he rig?” Mellie asks.
“Me getting this place,” I say. “When he found out I was interested, he turned everyone else away. Told Emmett to basically let me have it for whatever I could afford.”
Mellie sighs. Romantically.
“Don’t make that sound. It’s not sweet or romantic.”
“It kind of is,” she says.
“He told Emmett to offer me whatever I could afford so I’d sign the lease.”
“And why did he do that? Why did he want to make sure you were here.”
“He said it was because he wanted answers and he was afraid I was going to run.”
Her look goes from romantic to pointed. “Was he wrong?”
“Excuse me?”
“You would’ve run,” she says. “If you knew he owned it before you saw it, you would have never even looked. Hell, you could barely convince yourself to do it when he just lived here. So yes, you would have run if you knew the truth.”
“But—”
“No. Let me finish.” She might be the nice one, but right now she’s giving off scary librarian vibes. “He’s right. You ran when you first saw him. You ran after you slept together. He deserved answers, and you ran. So, maybe not be so hard on him for that?”
Some best friend Mellie is. I thought best friends were supposed to support the delusion.
“Quit taking his side!”
“I’m not,” she says, her voice is back to gentle, like what I imagine Disney princesses having. “I’m just trying to make you see it from a different perspective.”
“And what perspective would that be? That I can’t be mad that the man I love and the father of my child has been lying to me for months?”
“I didn’t say that,” Mellie says gently. “You can be mad. That’s a valid feeling, and no one is telling you that you can’t feel that way. I’m just saying, let’s look at his side of things.”
I pout and cross my arms. “Fine.”
“You have to admit, the running thing is valid. That’s kind of your default with him.”
“Yes.” I say sulkily. “We’ve established that.”
“Second, did he mean any harm?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said he bought the restaurant before he knew you were looking for a space, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So he didn’t sabotage you. He could have. If anything, he did the opposite. He essentially helped you accomplish your dream.”
“You say helped. I say manipulated.”
“Okay, let’s think about it like this,” she says. “Those new booths and tables. And the paint. Things you knew about. Did you consider that helping? Or manipulative?”
“That’s different. Those were gifts.”
She tilts her head at me, clearly knowing my answer was bullshit.
“Fine. We settled on it being a gift because it was the only way I could live with taking that kind of help from him.”
“And there lies the true problem in all of this.”
“What?”
“You’re so stubborn and hate asking for help so much that you’re going to let it ruin the true love of your life.”
“I…” my words trail off.
Shit…she’s right.
For years I’ve been the one hung up over the money. Not him. I’ve made it an issue at every point I could. Not him.
And they’re both right. I would’ve run.
I would’ve run so fucking fast.
“Dammit!” I moan, throwing my head back. “Okay. Fine. But…I’m still mad.”
“As you should be.
“And I love him.”
“I figured you did.”
“So where does that leave me?”
“Only you know that answer,” she says. “Should he have told you? Absolutely. And for the methods he used, you should make him grovel and beg for forgiveness and accept nothing less than him changing every three a.m. diaper. But maybe give him a pass on the outcome. Because at the end of the day, the man helped you achieve your dream. The key word there is helped. Yes, he might have thrown in a few bucks that you wouldn’t have been able to afford, but this place is still your vision. Your food. Your vision. Simon had nothing to do with that. This is all you. Simon just was your Fairy God Daddy behind the scenes.”
I laugh as I feel a few tears bubbling up. “He’ll love that.”
“I figured he would.” Mellie stands up and gives me a hug as I let this whole conversation start running through my mind. “You’ve in love, Charlie. The kind of love people like me dream about. You’re about to have a baby and start a family. So you have to ask yourself, is this one mistake worth losing a lifetime of happiness?”
She leaves the office, leaving me to sit with my own thoughts.
She’s right. I can be mad and am mad. That doesn’t change.
She’s also right that I’m living my dream, and I don’t know if I would be if it weren’t for Simon.