Page 2 of The Intimacy of Finding You

Thankfully, there was a subway station nearby I could go to until morning. My worn-down backpack didn’t have much in it, but it was all I had. It was barely held together by a few threads along the straps, and the zipper along the main pocket was bulging and straining against the few clothing items I’d stuffed into it.

It was two in the morning, but the world kept moving. New York never seemed to sleep. It made sense, though, seeing as it stole the dreams people had for themselves and turned them into nothing more than thoughts and ideas. We couldn’t have new ones if we never slept. We couldn’t be disappointed that our old ones never came to life if we didn’t rest long enough to think about it.

Maybe that was where the monster really came from. He wasn’t from my past or my future—he was from my nightmares. The nightmares I couldn’t remember starting, but they never seemed to end. With a big, bushy mustache and the smell of Dubble Bubble Bubblegum on his breath.

His smile was horrifying to think about. It haunted me while I was sleeping. It haunted me while I was awake. But what always felt worse was the memory I had of Crew cleaning me up and tucking me into bed with a worried expression on his young face as he kept repeating the same thing over and over.

“I’m sorry, Tobi. I didn’t know he’d be so mean to you.”

It’s okay, Crew. I was never mad at you. I’d wanted to say. I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry he did this to you. I’d wanted to scream.

Crew hadn’t remembered me when we first met, despite his face having never left my head. His therapist said his brain had blocked the memory out because of all the trauma. I hadn’t been that lucky, and I was the one who’d reminded him of who I was. How stupid of me.

We shared the same monster, he and I. Whereas he had spent the last ten years healing, I’d spent them running. Running through a constant, vicious cycle I didn’t think I could fight anymore. So, I stopped running. I stopped hiding.

I let the monster catch up to me.

chapter two

Price had his head in his hands, Crew looked really annoyed, Liam looked bored, and Isaac had his arms crossed over his chest—which wasn’t unusual—but Jesse was still smiling. Like the freak he was.

Staff meetings were never without chaos.

I placed my elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Okay, so what if we opened up another restaurant?”

Crew laughed. “This is rhetorical, Callum, but are you stupid? We’d have to hire an entire new staff, not including the fact that we’d have to buy a building and all that shit.”

“Well, no one else has any ideas. Either we stop trying to accommodate expansion completely, we add a longer waitlist, or we open up a new building.”

Price sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I just feel like everyone is getting overworked again. We had that massive influx after the viral TikTok video, and it took us forever to bounce back.”

“We stayed steady after that. We adapted, but to get hit with it again at quadruple the size?” Isaac chimed in. “I hate to ever admit this, but Callum may be right. Expand the building, expand our waitlist, expand our staff, or open a new building and get even more revenue.”

I scowled at him. “Thanks for the backhanded compliment, bud.”

He only gave me a head nod and a smirk. It seemed he’d run out of words already.

“Okay, I see what you mean with the revenue.” Crew pulled open a big folder of expense reports or something super boring like that. “We make enough to get quite a good profit as it is. We’re in the positive. I can only assume we’d continue that track with another location. Unless it flops entirely and we get put into the negative for the first time since our first year open.”

I nodded. “Exactly. With how many people want to dine here, I think they’d jump at the opportunity to go to the new location instead of waiting on our current waitlist, so I don’t think it’ll flop. You’re just preparing for the worst for no reason again.”

Crew rubbed his temples. “Sorry for calling you stupid, Callum. You may be onto something with this, but it’s a bigger discussion we’ll have to have. Price and I will keep looking it over. This would never have happened if Kyra wasn’t so good at her job.”

“I say we blame Willow. She’s the one who referred Kyra for the marketing position.”

Jesse pushed his chair back, sliding down in the seat. “I think this will be a great chance to expand even more. Fire and Ice is a well-renowned restaurant, guys. I mean, shit, after Price went on Gordon Ramsay’s show for the first time, we fucking exploded. It hasn’t been the same since then, either. All we’ve done so far is adapt. I know we can do it for this. Even Gordon has multiple locations.”

“Yeah, but he’s Gordon Ramsay. We are just Price and Crew Iverson. Sorry to burst your bubble,” Price quipped.

I groaned and laid my forehead on the table. “Can this meeting be over yet? Look into buying a new location. I’ll keep managing and training the staff we have now, and I’m more than willing to train new ones. Sound cool? Cool. Because I have to go meet someone.”

“Ooh, is it a date?” Crew asked.

“No, it’s a friend.”

“Well, Price was a friend at first.”

“No, he was your manager, actually.”