CHAPTER SIX
K RU
I’m pretty sure Piper has been cursing my name since our encounter outside her front door last week.
I swear I can hear her grumbling right before I drift off to sleep, like she’s whispering her complaints about me into the voodoo doll she’s no doubt created in my likeness.
I’m trying not to let it bother me, even though every time I happen to cross paths with her in the back of the building, I get an icy stare.
I don’t think she’s said one word to me since she moved the last of her things out of the apartment upstairs.
Not unless you count the things she’s said to the voodoo doll.
“Kru? Truck’s here.”
Pat tips his head toward the front of the restaurant.
Progress has been zooming along since we started a week ago.
The brand new flooring—vinyl planking in a rustic wood design—is enough to completely makeover the space, but we’re not stopping there.
The walls enclosing the kitchen are complete, and the crew is updating the interior walls right now.
Everything is getting a rustic tinge—gourmet restaurant meets hipster barn.
I think it’s going to come together nicely, and I’m assessing everything for the hundredth time this week as I head toward the front of the restaurant.
As soon as I step outside, I tip my head up to check out the new sign that was installed. Ray’s. I chose a scrawl-like font, something that almost resembles the handwriting of the man this place is named after—my father. It looks so damn good, and makes the whole thing feel much more real.
My smile fades when I notice the box truck is idling in front of the infamous curb cut. Shit. I hope Piper doesn’t see. Or maybe I do, because then she’ll say something to me for once. I can’t lie, I don’t hate it when she gets shrieky.
I jog toward the truck, waving. The passenger side window rolls down, and two incredibly large men greet me from inside.
They’re here to drop off the patio furniture I ordered.
I point out the area the furniture will go—my brand new brick patio, laid on Monday morning.
It’s turning the dead space between the front of the building and the parking lot into a vibrant extension of the restaurant.
A landscaping crew will arrive tomorrow to make things pretty and plant some privacy hedges.
It’s coming together faster than I could imagine, in part because I’ve only been sleeping four hours a night.
I’m nearly a zombie a week in, and we’re just getting started.
“Ooof. This one’s a heavy guy.” The huge driver and his even huger helper let out deep grunts as they unload six circular wooden tables along the sidewalk.
I secretly name them Hans and Frans. I can’t tell if they really think the tables are heavy or if it’s a show they’re putting on since I’m a customer, since they each carry a table by themselves without breaking a sweat.
The chairs come next. Twenty all together.
Soon my patio—and the sidewalk I share with Piper—is a chaotic maze of furniture.
I begin moving things into place while they unload, but I don’t get too far on my own.
Because that’s when I realize they vastly undersold the weight of this outdoor patio furniture.
I’m not sure how Hans or Frans moved a table without the help of the other, because this shit isn’t just heavy, it’s made out of dark matter.
I need someone from inside to help…or maybe a crane.
The delivery guys wrap things up by depositing approximately eight huge, closed umbrellas along the last available slice of space on the sidewalk. Great.
“All righty. You have a good day.” The driver tips his hat to me and clambers back inside the truck, his helper slamming the passenger door before I can even croak a thank you. The truck has barely rumbled out of the parking lot when another car pulls in.
Someone for Piper’s shop.
Fuck.
What took them twenty minutes might take me a full week on my own.
But hey. I’m young, I’m strong, and I’m delusionally inspired as a small business owner.
I can fucking do this. I’m lugging all the chairs onto my new patio, watching for the customer in case there are any issues.
An older lady sheepishly steps around my furniture mess, looking over at me with drawn brows.
“Sorry, just had a delivery.” I wave to her as she continues her consternated creep toward Cloud Nine. Once she’s inside the shop, my shoulders relax. See? No problem with entry. No medical mishap or broken bones from using the grass. I can rest easy.
Ten minutes pass in an increasingly sweaty patio workout.
I’ve got two tables moved by sheer force of what amounts to hump-pushing them across the bricks.
The camera crew is lurking near the front door, lenses aimed this way, so of course they’re catching it all.
Pat emerges a moment later, then helpfully shouts, “Take your shirt off for the next shots, okay?”
I straighten, shielding my eyes against the mid-day glare. “Seriously?”
“We’ve got an angle here and we’re running with it,” he shouts back.
I prop my hands on my hips, analyzing the bricks as I contemplate my next move. Taking my shirt off seems gratuitous. But this show is footing my loan payments for almost the first year of business so I suppose I can show a little skin for my reality-TV benefactors.
It might not be OnlyFans, but it could be OnlyPatioChairs for now.
“Nobody in there wants to help me, huh?” I finally ask before tearing my shirt off. I stuff it through my belt near my hip. Pat cheers as I flex for the camera.
“They’re all busy in there,” he calls out. “Besides, this is what we call ratings, baby! You got this, Kru.”
If every piece of furniture here didn’t weigh three thousand pounds, this would be easier.
I use every ounce of brawn I’ve got to get these things into place.
There’s a lot of grunting involved. A few guttural roars.
When I glance toward the building to see if I should keep going, Pat is all smiles.
Along the wall of windows fronting Piper’s shop, I see five different faces pressed to the glass. All women.
Maybe they like what they see. No harm there.
I’m just annoyed that a part of me wishes Piper did too—like she did last month.
“I hope you’re getting the content you need,” I force out as I begin to push one of the tables. Pat’s looking at the digital screen of the camera, nodding.
“We definitely need this,” he says. “Your abs play so well on camera.”
I grunt out a laugh. I’m not sorry for the workout. With these long days, it’s hard to get to the gym. I haven’t even started the hunt for one in Bayshore yet, and most days I just crank out a bunch of push-ups right after I wake up.
Once all the chairs are moved and only two tables remain in the sidewalk, I need a break.
Sweat prickles across the tops of my shoulders.
The sun is out but the breeze is chilly, so I’m not too hot, but a breather sounds nice.
I hop up onto one of the tables and draw a few deep breaths, looking out over the parking lot.
I can imagine all the cars that will be filling it, the regional food bloggers coming to try my specials, my family from Wisconsin driving down for a long weekend.
I can almost hear my mom’s excited gasp, the way she’d say “Your dad would be so proud…”
It's no secret that I do what I do in honor of my father. He passed away from cancer five years ago, and it still feels like it happened yesterday. I was an adult when he passed—a fresh twenty-five—but I wasn’t ready or remotely prepared, even though we knew it was coming.
He was a fiend in the kitchen, and he’d be proud as hell of the business Mav and I built together.
Prouder still of this one. Fuck, I wish he was around to see it all.
I’m lost in my feels, which means I need to get back to work or I’m going to start getting snot nosed and teary eyed here in the middle of the damn sidewalk.
I hop off the table and reach for an umbrella.
It swings around easily in my arms, and I’m still thinking about my dad when I pop it open to see how it looks expanded.
“Oh my god!”
There’s a shriek.
“The muffins!”
I spin on my heels to see what the hell is going on.
But my shoe connects with something first—a spongy muffin.
Thoughts are forming a logjam in my brain—why am I stepping on a muffin?
Whose muffin is this? Why was someone screaming?
But before I can begin to answer any of these questions for myself, Piper is in front of me.
“Are you done here?” she hisses.
“Depends on what you’re talking about,” I offer, but the way her brows draw even tighter together tells me that was the wrong response.
My gaze slides over this Cloud Nine cutie—who’s somehow even more attractive when she’s mad at me.
A frilly white apron covers her clothes, and a big white box in her hands has an open lid—with a suspicious number of muffins on the ground around her. “What the hell happened?”
“ You happened.”
“I’m just minding my own business.”
“Sure, if that’s what you want to call it. I came out here to politely ask you to clear the way for my customer, and you nearly beheaded me with that umbrella. Now I have to go bake another dozen muffins on the fly for her order.”
“Good thing you’re a baker and know how to do that.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know that was another wrong response. “Why were you carrying her muffins out here anyway?”
“She’s in the car, waiting for me to hand them over,” she seethes, slamming the lid of the box down. “She just had hip surgery. It would sure be nice if I wasn’t battling my landlord every step of the way these days. It’s like you’re purposefully making things harder.”