Chapter 6
COLE
Jack walked over to my corner table after Jiya left.
“So, what do you think?” Jack said, rubbing his chin after explaining Jiya’s deal and handing me the folder. “I think this could be a good thing,” he continued. “She seems to be optimistic and enthusiastic. I have a good feeling about her.”
Jack always had good feelings about people.
I knew the man standing in front of me did not have a single bad bone in his body.
If he did not like someone, he would simply remain civil and walk away.
That was just who he was. Jack looked for decency in people, even when life gave him every reason not to.
Maybe that was why Eva had trusted him so quickly.
Maybe that was why he was still here when everyone else had chosen distance.
A knot formed in my belly as I looked at him.
I was not convinced by anything Jiya had said to Jack.
I had watched her walk into the restaurant earlier, clutching her laptop and that folder like it was her lifeline.
Then I watched her walk out with her chin lowered to her chest. There had been too much desperation in the way she held herself, too much determination packed into too small a frame, as though sheer force of will were the only thing keeping her upright.
“I don’t think so,” I said. I turned and looked out the window. My eyes narrowed as I watched Jiya walking toward her car. “I reject her proposal. I don’t trust her.”
How could she just come in here and think she could take over my restaurant? Just because she did not have a job anymore, how could she think about pushing herself into my place?
The restaurant was heading toward bankruptcy.
I knew that. It was hard for me to let it go.
When Eva ran it, it had been a success, but now the empty tables spoke for themselves.
What once made me eager to wake up every morning and work beside my wife now felt like a burden hanging around my neck.
Every chair, every table, every dim corner of the place seemed to whisper her name.
Keeping it open felt impossible. Letting it go felt worse.
Jiya’s brake lights glowed red as she pulled away.
I watched as a mother crossed the sidewalk with her daughter.
My mind drifted back to the first time Jiya walked into the restaurant with her son. I noticed her the moment she stepped through the door. Not because she was beautiful—although she was—but because of the way she paused just inside the entrance and scanned the room before choosing a table.
A cloud of sadness seemed to cling to her.
I had watched her more times than I cared to admit.
She would stare out at the grey sky over the bay.
Sometimes she would close her eyes for a few seconds, like she was gathering the strength to keep going.
The fourth time she came in was when she told Jack she had lost her job.
I wondered what had happened that got her fired.
I remembered how she had nodded curtly while paying the bill before leaving with her chest thrust forward.
That look of determination on her face had caught my attention even though I had tried to ignore it.
It had not been arrogance. It had been something fiercer than that.
Survival, maybe. Or pride refusing to bow even after being humiliated.
Seeing her walk into the restaurant earlier with a proposal for Jack was something I had not expected.
I felt threatened by her sudden interest in my restaurant.
Anger surged through me, and I did not know why.
Maybe because her interest made this place feel real again.
Maybe because if she touched it, changed it, breathed life back into it, I would have to face everything I had let rot.
Life was unpredictable. Things fell apart in seconds.
For the last two years, my emotions had revolved around fury, guilt, and sadness. I knew nothing else. I had grown comfortable inside the loneliness of this dead restaurant because it resembled my life.
I slid the folder back to Jack. “Tell her I’m not interested.”
Jack nodded and returned to the bar.
I knew he was not happy with my decision, but he did not say anything. I did not want anyone’s help restoring the restaurant. I had rejected my brother’s offers several times.
“Let me give you some money to help you out with the restaurant,” Liam had said.
“No, I’m fine. I’ll manage.”
“Look, it’s not doing well. Why don’t you just sell it and come back to the city? You can run the business alongside me.”
“This is Eva’s dream. I can’t abandon it,” I had snapped at my brother before hanging up the phone.
I knew I was stubborn and arrogant. I did not want help.
Yet I also refused to give up. So instead, I let the restaurant drift slowly toward its fate while drowning my sorrows in alcohol so I would not have to think or make decisions.
It was a miserable kind of compromise, but it was the only one I allowed myself.
I would not save it, and I would not kill it either.
I just kept it limping along, like some part of me believed that as long as the doors stayed open, I had not entirely lost Eva.
The next day, I watched Jack deliver the bad news to Jiya when she came into the restaurant. I knew Jack did not want to do it, but he also did not want her to know that I was the owner who rejected her proposal.
“Jack, please,” she pleaded. “Let me talk to him once. Let me explain everything to him. I’m sure I can convince him.”
I watched her trying to persuade him.
There was no drama in her voice, no false sweetness, no manipulation. Just urgency. Desperation held together by dignity.
Jack held her hand and apologized.
With hunched shoulders, Jiya left the restaurant.
I told myself it should have made me feel relieved.
It did not.
Two days later, in the afternoon, while I was sipping my beer, two men walked into the restaurant.
“It was a close call,” the balding man in his early fifties said. “I would’ve been fired had I not thought about the idea.”
“What do you mean, Roger?” the second man asked, signalling Jack for two beers.
“It was I who authorized the transaction, David. I didn’t check the details,” he said. “My ass would have been on the line.” He took a sip of his beer. “I have a kid who is going to college. I can’t afford to lose my job, so I blamed it on the new girl.”
David gasped, “Actually, Jiya deserves it.”
My ears immediately perked up.
“She thought she was so high and mighty with all her suggestions and ideas,” David continued. “Always thinking about the employees and guests while giving us, the managers, more work to do.” He scoffed.
“She thinks she can interfere with the working policies here,” Roger said. “She doesn’t know that here the managers relax and subordinates do all the work, not the other way around. I loved taking my revenge on her.”
“What do you mean?” David asked.
“I made her clean toilets and take out the trash,” Roger said. “Once the bag was so heavy it broke while she was trying to throw it. She ended up getting covered in filth.”
Both men chuckled while continuing to badmouth Jiya. They revealed that they knew she needed the job and that she had never complained about the extra work.
Ice slid through my veins.
By the time they were done talking, the beer in my hand had turned warm.
My jaw had locked so tightly that a dull ache spread through it.
I could picture her now, the straightness in her spine, the quiet restraint, the effort she made to hold herself together every time she came in here.
And those pathetic bastards had mistaken that restraint for weakness.
I glanced at Jack.
He was looking at me and slowly shaking his head.
I knew exactly what that meant.
Jack had stayed with me through everything. He had been there when the restaurant first opened and stood beside Eva when she cut the ribbon. He had been there when my daughter Chloe was born. He had been the rock in my life when everything else fell apart.
And now I realized something.
I owed him.
At the very least, I owed him the chance to try.
Even though I hated the idea of Jiya taking over my wife’s dream, I also realized something else—my suspicion about why she had been fired had been wrong. I had judged her too quickly. Worse, I had judged her unfairly. The realization did not sit well with me.