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She scrunched her face up into a mock frown, but even that looked like a grin.

Thank God the waitress came quickly, or I might have bargained away my firstborn to Alice (which she would not have taken, so it would have been a terrible bargain). I ran down my order, nearly vibrating with impatience as the waitress warned me about various spice levels. As she walked away, I turned to Alice and slapped my palms on the table. “Tell me what’s going on, or I’m going to flip this whole thing over.”

Alice folded her own hands neatly before her. “I’m desperate to see that.”

“You know I’m not actually going to flip the table.”

“Damn. Fine. Okay.” She positively beamed at me. “Kelsey and I are sick of working for the man—we’re founding our own start-up!”

I began to applaud. A few of the other diners gave me a look, but I didn’t care. “That’s amazing! Congratulations!”

“Thank you!” Her smile faltered a tiny bit. “It’s actually terrifying. It might be the worst idea ever.”

“No way. It’s the best idea ever.”

“You don’t even know what the idea is.”

“I know you had it,” I said. “And you only have good ideas.”

“Even when I advised you to give the taxidermist one more chance?”

“You have mostly good ideas,” I relented. “So what’s this one?”

I could barely keep my excitement contained as she told me. It wanted to come up in a squeal, and I was not a squealer. “It’s an app that helps reduce food waste,” she told me. “Jada actually inspired it from what she was telling me when we went out for doughnuts, so maybe she’d be willing to become a partner or something.” Basically, restaurants or grocery stores or other food establishments could sign up and pay a small commission to sell discounted packages of food or meals that would otherwise get thrown away at the end of the night. “And for users, it’s almost like a game. Maybe one or two items from each place will pop up at a time, and they earn points with each one they nab. Always wanted to eat at Sebastian but couldn’t afford it? Now here’s your chance.” And you could purchase or put points toward donating some of the food, too. “So what do you think?”

“I love it,” I said immediately.

“Good,” she said. “You know who else loved it?”

“Who?”

“Venture capitalists!”

I couldn’t hold back my squeal this time. It earned me another few side glances, but I could not possibly have cared any less. I didn’t know a ton about venture capitalists, but I did know that they were people with a lot of money who chose certain projects to give that money to in exchange for a certain percentage of the project, which ideally would grow and earn them back their investment plus a profit. Like on Shark Tank. “That’s amazing!”

“Yeah.” She let out a long, deep breath. “It’s all happened so fast.”

You know what else was fast? The food. The waitress showed up then with our order, and we had to set to arranging our table so that none of the appetizers fell off. I wouldn’t want to have lost any of the crunchy cucumbers marinated in a sweet, tangy vinegar, not quite long enough to become pickles but long enough where they weren’t cucumbers anymore, or a single bite of the candied pork belly, rich and marinated in sticky sweet soy sauce, tucked in between pillowy buns and scattered with the crunch of peanuts.

Alice pushed the third appetizer, which had only been called Fried Eggplant on the menu, toward me. “Eat this.”

I obeyed, closing my eyes to focus. The thin sticks of Chinese eggplant crunched with breading on the outside and melted creamy smooth in my mouth on the inside, made even better with a swipe of the silky, mild tofu sauce coating the bottom of the plate. Every time when I was starting to feel like it was too rich and I might need a break, my tongue would hit a sprinkle of tart black vinegar and reset the richness levels. “Heaven.”

“Jada might have been the inspiration for the final idea, but you inspired me, too, you know,” she said in the same matter-of-fact tone as she’d told me to eat the eggplant. For a moment I kept chewing, and then my eyes popped open.

“What?”

“To work in a food-related business,” she said. “I always loved food, but it was never something I thought of in a businessy way. Until you and your business. A business you’re so good at. I really learned how to love food and admire food and think about food as more than, you know, something that tastes good, through you.”

If this were six months ago, I would’ve told her I didn’t have a business, that I just reviewed restaurants for fun. Now, I just let her go on. “You honor me.”

“That’s why Kelsey and I want you to come aboard as our social media manager.”

I choked on a piece of eggplant. “What?”

She seemed to take that as me questioning their business. “We’re for real, you know. We can pay you a salary and everything. It’s a start-up, so who knows if we’ll survive for the long term, and we probably can’t afford to pay you as much as Mr. Decker does, but we can give you health insurance and everything, too.” She took a deep breath. “But probably not dental.”

“I’ve always had good teeth,” I thought aloud.