I’m struck mute, so all I can do is stand there with wide eyes and no words. Stacey actually looks amused at my speechlessness, and eventually she chuckles and pats my shoulder. Then she opens the door and ushers us both out of the room.
“Just think about it,” she finishes. “Take a week, take a month, but let’s figure out if this is something you want to do. I’m getting too old for this life—I’d like to retire and leave my baby in the hands of someone that I know will love and take care of it.”
I nod dumbly and continue onto the restaurant floor. My shift supervisor quirks his eyebrow in question but I just shake my head in disbelief and gesture for him to continue his inventory task.
Stacey leaves soon after our conversation and I finish up my last few tasks of the day, moving around the restaurant in a daze as I replay our conversation in my head and try to make sense of it.
When I’ve finally kicked out my last few servers and locked the café, I grapple for my phone so I can call Jax. He picks up on the first ring.
“Hey, baby girl.” It’s impossible not to hear the smile in his voice. “What’s going on? Are you done work?”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m calling,” I say on a rushed breath. “The owners just dropped a bomb on me.”
“What do you mean? What happened?”
“They want me to buy it,” I blurt out.
Yup, sounds just as crazy out loud.
“Buy it? They offered you the café?”
“Yeah.” I pause, nibbling on my lip. “That’s crazy, right?”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line now. Then… “Hailey, that’s incredible! Holy shit!”
My jaw drops. “Incredible? It’s not incredible, it’s crazy! I can’t run a café, I’m twenty-one and still in college!”
Jax chuckles in my ear, which only sparks my frustration. This is funny to him? “Hailey, you’re a 21-year-old college student now and you’re running the café. You just told me the other day that the owners barely do anything. That’s all you. Why wouldn’t you want to take it over?” He pauses to consider something, then asks, “Is it the price? Is it something outrageous?”
I rub my temple, a headache starting to set in. “We didn’t talk price. She said we could work something out where she gets a cut of the profits for a year or two and I pay her that way, but I’d still need to get a loan for the initial buyout.”
Another hesitation. “So she wants to make it easy on you. That… sounds like a really good deal.” My anger rises at his tone, like he specifically softened it because he thinks I’m being ridiculous. “Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted? I thought you were going for a business degree so that you could open your own business one day. Isn’t this what that is? Why do you sound so put-off by it?”
“Because it’s insane!” I burst out, losing all sense of calm. “Because it’s unheard-of. No restaurant owner sells their baby to a 21-year-old with barely any experience and barely any money. She doesn’t know what she’s asking for.” I rush through more of my complaints before he can interrupt to contradict me. “And even if she’s serious, I can’t do this. It’s too soon. I don’t even know what I want to do with my life so why would I tie myself down like that? And I’m in school, so I don’t have the time or the money for it right now anyway. And running the day-to-day like I do now is not the same as owning, so I’d have no idea what I’m doing. And…” I swallow roughly and drop my voice to a cracked whisper. “And I just couldn’t do it.”
“Hailey…” Jax murmurs soothingly. “You could do anything you set your mind to, but especially this. You’ve been doing it for two years already. And you’ve always wanted to open one. You would kill it.”
I shake my head even though he can’t see me. “I can’t. I just… can’t.”
A sigh sounds over the line, and it sounds sad. Resigned. “I wish you could see yourself the way that I do. I wish you could see how strong and capable and incredible you are.”
Hearing that just makes me even more uncomfortable than I already am, and suddenly, I just want to be off the phone. I can’t listen to how great JaxthinksI am.
“I have to go,” I say quickly. “I have homework to do tonight, I’ll just call you later.”
No sound is heard over the line, but I can sense his heavy exhale. “Okay, baby girl. We’ll talk later.”
I hang up and start to busy myself around the café. I could go through the closing tasks in my sleep, which is unfortunate because right now I could use the distraction.
I can’t get Jax’s words out of my head. I hear his voice, on repeat, telling me all these wonderful things that once I was dying to hear. Iwantedto hear that I should go after my dreams, that I could do anything I set my mind to.
That I was good enough.
For the longest time, I didn’t hear any of that. All I heard were comments that slowly cut me down and made me think I wasn’t anything special.
Over the past few weeks, I thought I had started to see myself as better than that, as worth more. I’ve been dressing more like myself, feeling more beautiful in my own skin, doing things that make me happy. I’ve been feeling like I’m finally growing into the woman I always wanted to be.
So then why did I just freak out on Jax?