Chapter Five #3
“I didn’t lose that job because I failed.
Everyone in the restaurant world knows what happened.
” Saying it aloud made the truth sound almost painfully simple.
“But I still felt like I’d walked around for months telling everyone I’d finally made it, and then there was nothing there.
I couldn’t stand the idea of coming to you before I’d decided what came next and having you build the next step for me. ”
Dad went quiet.
Vanessa reached over and touched his arm once.
He didn’t pull away.
She turned back to me.
“I wish you’d told us.”
“So do I.”
“I’m not saying that to make you feel worse.” Her expression softened. “I’m mostly relieved you were here being miserable in a very nice house instead of having an actual emergency in another country.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
Vanessa brightened slightly. “Good. I got one.”
Dad gave her a look.
“What? This is tense.”
That was Vanessa in four words.
I rubbed my palms over the sides of my shorts and faced Dad again.
“There’s more.”
His attention came back to me.
I pointed toward Dane.
“He knew I was staying here.”
Dad’s gaze moved to him.
“Before you ask, that’s all he knew. I asked him not to tell anyone I was next door. He didn’t know about the restaurant or Europe. He found out all of that about thirty seconds ago.”
Dane nodded once. “She told me she was between kitchens and that she needed some privacy. I didn’t know why.”
Dad’s expression remained guarded, but some of the tension went out of it.
“How did you two meet?”
There was absolutely no version of the hot-tub story I was offering my father today.
“He lives next door. We met Friday.”
Vanessa’s eyes moved between us.
“And he came over for the family confession because...”
“Because I asked him to.”
That answered enough.
Then, because I was apparently committed to removing every available hiding place in one evening, I added, “We’re seeing each other. And we’ve already talked about seeing each other in New York.”
Vanessa made a tiny sound of delight and immediately pressed her lips together.
I looked at her.
“Later.”
She nodded quickly. “Later.”
Dad closed his eyes for half a second.
“I leave my house empty for two weeks and somehow come back to unemployment, fake Europe, and a hockey player.”
“When you summarize it like that, I sound busy.”
Dane coughed into his fist.
I refused to look at him.
Dad exhaled and leaned both hands on the island.
“Fine. One problem at a time. If I stop making calls, what do you want?”
The answer had been sitting underneath everything else for longer than I’d been willing to admit.
“I don’t want another head-chef job.”
Dad frowned. “You worked your entire career for that.”
“I worked my entire career to run a kitchen. That was someone else’s restaurant.”
“I think that’s what I’ve been avoiding. I was so focused on finally getting the title that I never asked whether it still fit me.” I made myself hold his gaze. “I want my own restaurant.”
Vanessa’s face lit up, then she caught herself before speaking.
Dad straightened. “Then we can talk about financing.”
“No.”
“I didn’t even finish the sentence.”
“I know exactly how it ends.”
Vanessa followed the exchange. “Maybe this is the part where everyone remembers she just said the decision is hers.”
Dad turned toward her.
She lifted both hands. “I am being supportive without making a plan. Please appreciate the effort.”
I loved her a little for that.
Dad said, “You’re going to open a restaurant without investors?”
“No. I’ll need a business plan, money, and people. But the idea has to be mine before anyone starts handing me solutions.”
Dad didn’t answer right away.
“I need to know I can build something because I’m ready to build it,” I said. “Not because you made a call and somebody owed you one.”
“I never meant for you to feel that way. I’m proud of what you’ve done.”
“I know. I just need the next step to be mine.”
The silence after that was uncomfortable, but not hostile.
My attention shifted to Dane.
He hadn’t offered one solution.
“I’ve watched her cook,” he said.
Dad turned toward him.
“She knows what she’s doing. If that means her own restaurant, I believe she can do it.”
That was all.
He offered no money, no contacts, and no attempt to make it easier. He simply believed me.
Vanessa smiled at me. “I also believe that. And I can wait until you ask before I plan anything.”
“Anything?”
She considered it. “Almost anything.”
I laughed.
Dad shook his head, but the edge had gone out of him.
Then he asked, “So what are you going to do?”
I took in Dad’s kitchen—the room I had been hiding in, the father I had spent two weeks avoiding, Vanessa trying very hard not to turn my career crisis into an event, and Dane standing exactly where I had asked him to stand.
“I don’t know yet.”
That answer would have terrified me on Friday.
Now it was simply true.
The restaurant was gone. Europe had never existed. Dad wasn’t making the calls, and Dane wasn’t offering to rescue me.
I had finally said what I wanted out loud.
My own restaurant.
Now I had to figure out how to build it.