So, she digs the account numbers up from the office in the back, and she wires the money to Billy anonymously, and she clocks into work just like she does every day. She takes her table assignments, fixes herself a coffee. Slaps palms with Winfield when he clocks in. Puts in an order of pancakes for table seven. Stares at the spot on the wall by the men’s room where she’s returned the opening day photo she stole.
The front door flies open, and there’s all six-feet-something of Billy filling the doorway, eyes wide, a sheen of sweat across his expansive, bald forehead.
Lucie freezes halfway out the kitchen door when she sees him, plates of pancakes balanced up and down each arm.
“What?” she asks flatly. “What happened?”
“God happened,” he says. “We got the money. We’re buying the unit.”
And, for the first time in her career, Lucie spills an order on the floor.
It’s a Saturday afternoon, but they finish up their tables and close the restaurant, Lucie nudging the last customer out the door with a free takeaway dessert to get them moving faster. The minute they’re out, she shuts the door and flips the OPEN sign around.
“Closed for private party,” she says, and she crosses to the bar and yanks Winfield into a furious kiss.
“I’ll drink to that,” Jerry whoops through the kitchen window.
August grins, joy swarming in her stomach. “Cheers.”
The whole restaurant explodes into chaos—servers screaming over the phone to people who aren’t on shift, Jerry screaming at Winfield about why he never told anyone about Lucie, Lucie screaming at Billy about where the money could have come from. Billy puts Earth, Wind & Fire on the sound system and cranks it up, and a busboy runs to the liquor store down the block and returns with a bus tub full of champagne bottles.
People start flooding in. Not customers, but longtime waiters who heard the news and wanted to celebrate, a couple of regulars close enough to Billy to get a personal call, line cooks still smelling like their second jobs at other restaurants in the neighborhood. August didn’t tell anyone about the money—not even Myla or Niko or Wes—so when she sends a message to the group chat, they’re there within twenty minutes, out of breath and in mismatched shoes. Isaiah shows up around the time the fifth bottle is popped, beaming and pulling Wes into his side, accepting a juice glass of champagne when it’s passed to him.
August came to New York almost a year ago, alone. She didn’t know a soul. She was supposed to muddle through like she always did, bury herself in the gray. Tonight, under the neon lights of the bar, under Niko’s arm, Myla’s fingers looped through her belt loop, she barely knows that feeling’s name.
“You did good,” Niko tells her. When she looks at him, there’s that distant, funny smile playing around his mouth, the one he gives when he knows something he shouldn’t. She ducks her head.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Jerry drags a crate of potatoes out of the kitchen, and Billy steps up onto it, raising up an entire bottle of André.
“All I’ve ever wanted,” Billy says, “was to keep the family business alive. And it hasn’t been easy, not with the way things have been changing around here. My parents put everything they had into this place. I did my homework on that bar.” He points to the bar, and everyone laughs. “I met my wife in that booth.” He points to one in the back corner, where the vinyl’s split across the seat and one side sinks too far down. August always wondered why it hadn’t been replaced. “I had my daughter’s first birthday party here—Jerry, you baked a fuckin’ cake, remember? And it was awful.” Jerry laughs and gives him the finger, and Billy bellows out a laugh so loud, the room shakes.
“But, anyway,” he says, sobering. “I’m just … I feel so blessed to get to keep it. And to have people I trust.” He inclines his head toward Lucie and Jerry and Winfield, huddled by a table. “People I love. So, I wanna make a toast.” He lifts his bottle, and all over the restaurant, people raise coffee mugs and juice glasses and styrofoam to-go cups. “To Pancake Billy’s House of Pancakes, serving the good people of Brooklyn for nearly forty-five years now. When my momma opened this place, she told me, ‘Son, you gotta make your own place