Trust in Me - Quinn Ward Page 0,83
as the silence dragged on. “I think it’s a good idea.”
The tone of his voice told me there was a but coming. I curled my fingers around the arms of the chair as I waited for him to tear apart my proposal with all the reasons it wasn’t feasible.
“Relax, Sam. I really do like it, but I think it would be incredibly time intensive to organize everything,” he told me. He pulled out a pad of paper and started making notes of his own. “What would you say if we do a vendor fair the weekend of Pride? We don’t have much time, but I can make some calls and I think we can get enough vendors to make it worthwhile, and it will bring people into the club. But for something more ongoing, I’d like to try a concept I haven’t seen many places, but it worked well for a friend with a club out west.”
“You can try whatever you want.” I didn’t mean to sound snarky, but at the end of the day, this was Jack’s club, not mine. He didn’t need my permission to do anything.
“True, but this is something I want you to take ownership of. With William managing the back, I wanted to talk to you about shifting your focus to take over some of the day-to-day operations,” he explained. It was exactly what I wanted, but I still doubted my ability. Even after the incident with John, I couldn’t get the staff in the back to respect me as an authority figure, and I wasn’t sure there was anything Jack could do to fix that. They rarely called me by name, thinking it was cute to call me Kid whenever they saw me. Maybe they didn’t mean anything by it, but it felt like an insult. “I see a lot of myself in you, Sam. You’re ambitious and you have amazing ideas. Eventually, you’re going to realize you’re better off building your own dream, but until then, I don’t want your talents wasted overseeing the staff.”
“Thank you for having that much faith in me.” I swallowed around the lump of emotion forming in my throat.
“Of course, this will also come with a pay increase.” He pulled a sheet of paper out of the top drawer of his desk. I gaped at the salary he was offering, shaking my head when I saw the bonuses that would be available to me. I opened my mouth to tell him it was too much, but he silenced me. “Don’t argue. The club is doing well, thanks in large part to the ideas you bring to the table, and you’re officially a college graduate. The salary is more than fair, and the bonus structure is something I would offer any manager taking on the responsibilities I’ll be placing on you.”
God, I still couldn’t believe I was done with school. I’d walked the stage a week ago and it was still surreal. My parents and siblings had come down for the day, and after the commencement was over, Daddy had insisted on taking all of us to dinner at Marino’s. I’d been tense at first, expecting one of the brothers who ran the restaurant to make a comment that would clue my family in that we all knew each other from the club, but Daddy promised they were nothing but professional when they were at their business.
My hand shook as I picked up the pen to sign my first official contract. My heart beat rapidly in my chest, and as I scribbled my messy signature on the bottom of the page, I kept waiting for someone to jump out and tell me I’d been punked.
No way was this real life.
No way did one job posting that I’d called about because of my own curiosity, turn my entire life around. I had a boss who trusted me to oversee things when he was gone, and truly listened when I had ideas to grow the business. I had friends who would always have my back no matter what. And I had a Daddy who saw to my every need and never missed an opportunity to tell me how much he loved me.
It was all a bit much for one boy to take in.
Jack slid the paper back to his side of the desk and added his signature before tucking the contract into a folder. “Now, what do you say we go take a look at the second space and figure out