The Texan's Second Chance

She had already turned on the grill. “Am I ever. You ready, Jose?”

Jose grinned as he started unloading condiments from the cabinet. “Yes, Chef!”

The next two hours flew by in seconds. Witt worked the cash register, feeding her tickets with orders. Her brain slid easily into the place where cooking became everything—where the sizzle of the meat met the warming bread under her hands and she orchestrated the movement of ingredients into place. There was nothing like this, no other place or activity that seeped so deeply into her soul and made her feel larger than life, vibrant, physically tingling from excitement and purpose.

The truck broiled from the grill heat and the strong fall sunshine. The little fans set up around the truck tried in vain to keep the air moving. She should have been miserable, hot and sweaty as she was, but Jana never noticed the heat. Only when she slid the last meal—a set of three “sliders” she’d relented and added to the menu at Witt’s insistence—across the counter, did she recognize her body’s exhaustion. It wasn’t the bad, emptied-out kind of weary, however. Instead, it was a satisfying, used-up kind of tired. The sensation of giving all she had to give in the one place she knew she was meant to be.

Jana leaned against the back counters, her headband soaked, her chef’s coat spattered and sticking to her arms. “Wow.” She laughed, downright giddy at the thought of so many happy mouths fed. “It worked.”

Witt slid the cash register drawer closed, practically slumping over it himself. “It did.” He was sweaty, too—and smiling and laughing, clearly as pleased with how their first “announced appearance” had gone. His eyes held a playful challenge as he asked, “We sold out of sliders, didn’t we?”

“That was the last one,” she admitted. He’d been right; she could craft a basic trio of the smaller burgers without feeling like she’d given in to some trendy fad.

Jana waited for him to crow, I told you so, but instead he merely offered her a warm smile and wiped his forehead with a sleeve. “I knew you could do it.”

It proved the perfect thing to say. Suddenly the long negotiations over whether to offer the sliders melted away, and she saw a glimpse of what she had hoped to find all along: a partnership. There was a long moment where they simply looked at each other, both soaked and exuberant, each a bit stunned that the whole thing had gone as well as it had. This was the last step, the truck’s final test before they went into the full swing of daily operations next week. Blue Thorn Burgers was here. They had done it. Jana wanted to dance in the tiny truck corridor, to fling herself into a group hug with Witt and Jose, and to fall into an exhausted heap against the coolness of the refrigerator, all at once. Instead, she just stood there, alternately glancing at Witt and closing her eyes, laughing softly as she tried to get her hair back up off her neck.

Jose, who’d been ping-ponging his glance back and forth between his two bosses, finally threw up his hands. “Is anyone gonna check the feed?”

He grabbed the truck’s tablet from its bracket on the wall and swiped through the menu until he found the Blue Thorn Burgers social media page. “We’re up to eighty-five followers on Twitter, a hundred and twenty-six on Instagram. People have posted three videos, and there are sixty-two mentions on Facebook. And twenty-one...wait, now twenty-two five-star reviews on Yelp!”

Witt gave a whoop worthy of a rodeo cowboy. Jose high-fived Jana with a string of Spanish exultations, and Jana felt her chest glow in gratitude. She’d worked at restaurants before, but here, now, was the first true public applause for specifically and exclusively her cooking. For her as a chef. She’d been so afraid to be “known,” to be out in the public eye for so many years, that she’d forgotten how gratifying the spotlight could feel.

Thank You, she prayed silently, her hand falling to cover her thumping heart. Thank You.

She opened her eyes to see Witt staring at her. The gratitude, the jubilant satisfaction that sparkled within her, was there in his eyes, as well. After all, he had as much at stake today as she did. “Thank you,” she said, thinking the pair of common words entirely insufficient.

“My pleasure,” he said. He held her eyes for one long moment more before sending a smirk Jose’s way. “Hang on tight. I’m thinking it only goes up from here.”

Chapter Five

Boring. The word gaped out like a sinkhole in the center of Jana’s phone screen Tuesday morning. Of all the criticisms she thought she could stomach, this was the one that cut deepest. Boring. Could internet food critic “Spatula Dave” have said anything worse? They hadn’t even invited any critics or bloggers this weekend just to avoid this kind of thing. She sank down onto the truck floor with her back against the counter. The coffee beside her tasted sharp and sour where five minutes ago she’d found the blend particularly smooth.

She scrolled through the other comments from Dave’s followers, several of whom had visited the truck during its weekend operations. There were compliments scattered among the responses from people who disagreed with his assessment. And Dave didn’t hate everything—he thought the coleslaw was particularly well-done. She noted, with an extra-sharp sense of annoyance, that he found the slider trio “a near miss.” Witt would surely note that the most positive comment about a burger was given to the sliders. Her own creations? They hadn’t fared nearly as well. The “I’m all alone here” feeling that had been fading now roared right back up with this setback.

Jana told herself to put the phone down, to stop hurting her heart by scrolling and re-scrolling across the article as if she were grabbing a hot pan over and over. It’s one person’s opinion, she told herself. Yeah, one person who has an audience of—she made herself scroll down to where the blog’s fifteen-thousand-member following was listed—too many.

They’d done a bustling business their first official weekend, and there had been plenty of positive comments from satisfied customers on various restaurant review sites. Until this morning, Jana had felt she was riding on a wave of success.

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