Page 63 of Best Laid Plans
The din of cutlery and chatter stilled, a single, pronounced second of silence before it sounded like a bomb exploded at the table.
“What?” Elle and Wyatt both said in unison, their heads whipping in the direction of their dad.
If the Pierce parents were calm and temperate, the Pierce children were chaos-personified, especially in this moment.
“Is there something wrong with your recovery?” Elle asked, her voice choppy, like she couldn’t catch her breath. She slapped her hand to her forehead and used her thumb and middle finger to rub at both temples.
Wyatt, unsurprisingly, had similar questions. “Why is this happening now? And why wouldn’t you talk to me about it?”
“Us. But Wyatt’s point still stands,” Elle cut in, her voice having risen an octave in the last ten seconds.
Cam shut his mouth and expected the next indeterminate number of minutes to be absolutely cataclysmic, especially when Wyatt stood up and began pacing back and forth between the island and the table.
Mr. Pierce ran his hand along the newspaper still set atop the table. “Heads & Tails made an offer. And it’s a good one. It would allow us some breathing room to figure out what comes next.”
Wyatt threw his hands up. “What do you mean ‘what comesnext?’ You’re both in your sixties. You just had open heart surgery, Dad. Ifnextdoesn’t include the ability to retire, then I don’t see how this can actually be a good deal.”
Elle blanched. “Are they going to take over the space? Or do they just want to push out the competition?”
Wyatt nodded at Elle. “What she said. Are they just trying to strip Pierce’s for parts?” If Wyatt and Elle as adversaries was overwhelming, the two of them on the same team was terrifying. “I thought you said yesterday went well,” Wyatt said to Cam, pulling him unwillingly into the fray.
He’d never regretted sending a text more.
“Itdidgo well,” Cam admitted, hating the look of betrayal on Elle’s face when he added, “but I’m sure this is bigger than just a single sales day. Restaurants are a tough business.” Foot, meet mouth. But he knew that Jim Pierce loved Pierce’s Lobster Co. like it was another child. The Pierces wouldn’t be considering this unless they’d fully thought about it.
“We haven’t made a final decision yet,” Mrs. Pierce said diplomatically, the faces of both her children whipping over to her like they were greyhounds chasing a lure on the racetrack.
Sadly, it did very little to control the damage. Wyatt’s face was scrunched up tightly, his hands balled into fists that dangled at his sides. Elle had also stood up, and now they were pacing in opposite directions, crossing paths before going their separate ways again.
“Kids, it’s not the end of the world,” Mr. Pierce maintained. “We weren’t going to be able to run the business forever.”
Elle scoffed, stopping and putting her hands on her hips. “But this isn’tyourchoice. It’s Heads & Tails bullying you out of the restaurant you’ve spent your entire lives building!”
Mr. Pierce shook his head, still managing to maintain his calm in the face of his children’s frenetic energy. “No, honey. What we’ve spent our entire lives building is our family. Everyone here now. The rest can come and go.”
Cam’s throat tightened, struck at the intimacy of the moment he’d found himself part of–at being included in it.
Mrs. Pierce pulled their attention again, her voice soft but measured. “I know this is a lot to take in, but we didn’t want to keep secrets from you.”
That took the slightest amount of wind out of Elle and Wyatt’s sails, though Cam couldn’t even imagine what it was going to be like back at the apartment later.
“I have an early practice tomorrow, so I need to head home. We’ll be talking about this again,” Wyatt said matter-of-factly.
Elle picked up her bag off the kitchen island. “Same.”
The Pierce parents nodded, but Cam had seen that look from both of them before, many times over the years. It said ‘we’ll hear you out and make you feel a part of the process, but this is our decision to make.’ But with kids as stubborn as Elle and Wyatt, it was really the only possible way to handle them.
Cam stood up too, knowing that staying with Mr. and Mrs. Pierce would put him squarely in the doghouse with both of his current roommates. And that was, decidedly, a place he did not want to be. “Thanks for dinner. I guess I’ll head out, too.”
Both of the Pierces gave him genuinely apologetic smiles, but they all knew that Cam hearing it directly from them was better than whatever version Elle or Wyatt would have thrown his way. It definitely allowed him to get the story with fewer expletives.
On the drive home, he wondered what the end of Pierce’s Lobster Co. would mean. It was inarguably the most important place in his adolescence, and even if he understood the decisions that Mr. and Mrs. Pierce were making better than Wyatt and Elle, it had still felt like a punch in the gut to him, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ELLE
Elle knew when she nailed an interview. It was the same feeling she got when she hit a perfect backhand down the line or when she managed to tweeze her eyebrows evenly.
