Page 73 of The Promise Of You

When Corine comes in, I hit Send on the email (“Thank you for the gorgeous flowers. Definitely brought me joy today.” I know—how original) and gesture for her to sit down at my desk, moving the bouquet aside so she has space. “I don’t know when Chef will be back, so I’d like you to work on menu costing, please. It’s one of the first things I need in order to get the restaurant on the right track.”

She dips her nose in the flowers before sitting down. “Of course.”

“Do you have everything you need to do that?”

“Yep.”

“It’s going to take some time, but if you could get started now, that’d still be progress. Use my computer. I’m going to run to Easy Monday. It’s about time I get you and Eric your coffees,” I say, smiling. “You’re in charge while I’m gone!”

She looks a little panicked.

“I’ll be gone thirty minutes, tops. Just do whatever I’d do. You got this.”

Coffee and work. This is what I need to keep it together.

I return an hour later. It’s a gorgeous morning, Millie was in an even better mood than usual. She introduced me to the owner of the general store, and we started talking about ways to promote the restaurant to locals during the week.

Yes. The restaurant will be open seven days. The staff just doesn’t know it yet.

Oopsie.

To be fair, we’ll be hiring more people. The goal is to make a profit, which means a raise for all of them. Win win.

Then I bumped into Craig on the way out. We said a quick hello, but I didn’t get to chat with him seeing as he was on his phone.

It’s best he doesn’t know yet about my plans for the restaurant.

I bring Eric his iced latte with a double shot of espresso, get to my office, and plop in the chair where officer Campbell was earlier. Corine is squinting over the computer screen. “Here’s your iced chai, dirty. How’s it going?” I don’t expect her to be done. Just to have started.

She keeps her gaze on the computer and takes a long pull on her paper straw. “Um… I might have gotten sidetracked.”

“Sure. What’s up? Anything I can help with?”

Slurp. “Remember when you said I should do whatever you would do?”

Hmmm. “Un-hunh.”

“Well, I might have answered a message for you.”

Umm. What?! “That’s… fine. What was it?”

“And then I might have entered a chat…”

“M’kay…”

“And… Okay.” She makes buggy eyes at me. “Hear me out. It’s gonna be fine.”

“Sure.”

“I promise.”

“I trust you.” What else am I going to say? I like her, I need her, and I gave her unclear instructions.

She slurps her drink, toying with a little green thingy that springs out of the bouquet, looking all dreamy and stuff.

“I was creating all the columns in Excel, and that went well. And then I started on the rows, and that’s taking me a whole lotta time, ’cause there’s stuff on the menu that we don’t ever sell, but it’s there, so I have to price it, right?”

Oh. We’ll get to that later. “Un-hunh.”

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