Page 24 of Of Literature and Lattes
Ryan looked like he’d been slapped—and figuratively, he had.
“I shouldn’t have said that. But you’ve got enough on your plate, and face it, that kid is more pulled together than both of us on our best days. The luck of birth, right?” Again his quip fell flat. “Look, he said he wanted to stay on through his senior year, so I figured he might as well take on more responsibility from the get-go. We’ve been working unbelievable days this past week. You should appreciate a break.”
“It’s your shop, Boss.” The words were right, but the tone behind them cut.
That had never been an element of their relationship before. Boss and employee. Passive aggression. From day one they’d found a brother in each other. Jeremy reeling from a childhood in which all choices were made for him; Ryan recovering from a youth in which all the choices he made harmed him. Yet the bond that felt so strong when they’d packed the last of Ryan’s boxes into the back of their U-Haul and jumped into Jeremy’s Subaru Forester for the thirty-hour drive, during which they talked nothing but coffee, felt a lifetime ago.
Ryan gestured across the kitchen to the small office tucked into the back corner. No walls divided the space; it was delineated only by a change in flooring. The kitchen’s concrete gave way to wide plank wood slats.
In the remodel, Jeremy told the contractor not to touch that corner. He loved the small office. It felt grounded and wood warm. In the six-by-eight space, with the two corner walls lined by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, sat an old heavy oak desk, probably used and left by some accountant in the 1930s. It was beat up, massive, probably weighed more than the eight-burner industrial stove, and it was too big to get out the door. All of which pleased Jeremy. Something about its permanence and utility appealed to him.
The chair tucked under it was equally large, sturdy, and sat on brass balls. The seat also held the only pillow he hadn’t removed in the remodel. It was an accountant’s green fitted seat cushion, sensible, old, comfortable. It gave the impression that anyone who calculated numbers while sitting on it would always come out in the black.
“We’ve dipped too far into savings. We won’t meet operating expenses soon.”
“Impossible.” Jeremy sighed. “I set the budget. The bank even reviewed and approved it for the loan.”
“We way outspent on the remodel, and for the budget you calculated these first weeks at 80 percent previous revenue. You said that was conservative considering how great we made this place. We’re at 50.”
“So I was wrong. Is that it?” Jeremy stretched to his full height. The move would have been far more intimidating if Ryan hadn’t been only four inches shorter and fifty pounds heavier—and all muscle.
Ryan sighed. “Not wrong. I’m simply trying to tell you what’s up.”
“Do you think I don’t know what’s up? Do you think I don’t know I overspent, and that it’s actually not 50, that instead the shop’s only pulling 43 percent of the Daily Brew’s revenues? Do you think I don’t know that my ‘cushion’ isn’t so fluffy anymore? Do you think I’m oblivious to all this?”
“No. I—”
“No? No what? You think that for all my planning I can’t work out the math behind a simple coffee shop. Revenues have to be higher than expenses, right? It’s that simple. Or am I missing something?”
“Nothing.” Ryan stared at him. “You’ve got it all in hand.” Without another word, he pushed out the alley door.
“Take the rest of the day off,” Jeremy called after him. “That’ll save me twenty bucks an hour.”
Alone he sank into the chair and dropped his head to the desktop. The pounding in his head backed off to a dull thump, and his heart soon steadied its beat. And a sliver of truth broke in so softly he let it wind its way through his thoughts.
Hehadn’tknown.
He knew Andante was in trouble. That was obvious. Only one full week open and nothing looked like what he’d expected. But he’d made up the 43 percent number. He’d made it up and thrown it out there with anger and bitterness because he had overspent and was caught off guard, and was embarrassed, and was ashamed. Bottom line, he was lost.
He lifted his head and caught sight of Ryan’s worn paperback resting on the edge of the desk. He’d worked after closing yesterday, not asking for or probably even expecting pay, baking another five batches of those semi-dreadful from-a-box blueberry muffins. He must have forgotten it when he stayed late.
He stayed late.
Jeremy repeated this reality as he bent the thin copy ofOfMice and Menin his hands.
And that was how you thanked him, he thought—and dropped his head to the desk again.
Chapter 12
Janet let the cat out the alley door and had just turned to walk back to her studio when a knock echoed through the office. She pushed the door open.
Chesterton scurried across her feet and Alyssa faced her. “He was frantic to get back in.”
“Silly thing, I just let him out.” Janet poked her head out the alley door. Other than a few teenage boys standing with Jeremy’s new hire, Brendon, at the far end of the alley, it was empty.
“What—” Janet stopped. She was about to ask, “What are you doing here?” It was the very question her own mom asked every time she visited her apartment, and it set the hairs on the back of her neck straight on end—not unlike the cat’s when Janet used to try to pick him up.
She rolled the question into a quick statement. “What a lovely surprise. I’m so glad to see you. Come in.”
