Free Tasteless by India Lee Page A

board for the early development of Sandrine, but since parting ways, the project has taken on a decidedly altered route and is now a much different establishment than it was at conception.”

Sam stared at the article, unable to comprehend what he should have known was coming.
    His restaurant, the one that he was so sure would fail without him, had somehow beat the odds and made it through.  To add insult to injury, they had kept the same concept, the same menu, and worst of all – the same name, while taking all the credit to themselves.
    Sam wondered if the pop-up was a part of Mara’s plan to rub salt in the wound.  When he was still a part of the team, they had discussed the idea of doing summer pop-ups in the Hamptons before the opening and as far as he knew, that was what was scheduled up until a month ago.  So why then, did they suddenly decide to do it in a space so close to where he was now employed?
    He sat at the diner’s kitchen counter, tapping the saltshaker repeatedly against the old wood.  Perhaps he was paranoid for thinking that a pop-up restaurant just a half hour away from where he now worked could be considered psychological warfare.  If he had said that aloud, he would be understandably laughed at.  But Sam knew how women like Gail worked.  It was well within reason to suspect that she had done it on purpose.
    “Holy shit, can you stop that?” Rye said, sitting on the other end of the counter as she made notes on the menu.
    “Sorry,” he sighed, tossing the shaker aside.  He slumped in his seat, putting his head down on the table.
    “What’s wrong with you today?” she asked, looking at him with annoyance but also a hint of concern.  Sam managed a smirk, knowing it was probably all the sympathy she could muster up.  It was an improvement for her, considering how much she hated him just last week.  But after Friday night in Brooklyn, after showing that she was indeed capable of enjoying herself, she seemed just a little less antagonistic towards him.
    He searched his head for his usual snarky remark, but instead found himself staring into space in silence.  He groaned, cringing at how off his game he was.  Sam buried his head in his arms, sealing himself in darkness.  She could hear Rye pause before laughing, followed by her footsteps over to him.
    “Okay,” Rye said, poking him in the ribs.  “I know something’s bad if you squandered a perfectly good opportunity to make a joke at my expense.  So either get talking or let’s start working on the menu.”
    “Both those things sound horrible,” Sam said, sitting up and rubbing the back of his neck.  Rye slid the menu on the counter in front of him.
    “So I took some of your advice about cutting down on the existing menu,” Rye replied, completely ignoring what he had said.  “Of course, being a classic diner menu, there were like a hundred items and I couldn’t only cut it down to sixty.”
    “You can’t have sixty items on the menu, that’s insane,” Sam laughed.  “It’s unrealistic and it cheapens the place.  It’s like a takeout menu or something.”
    “I couldn’t really think of what else to cut,” Rye shook her head as she squinted at the menu.  “I love so many of these things, I can’t imagine a restaurant without them.”
    “This is why I said we should just start over,” Sam said.  “There’s no point adapting from the existing menu when there are a thousand other things we could be doing that is way more efficient.”
    “I told you we’re not doing that,” Rye picked up the menu again.  “The point is to update this restaurant, not change it completely.”  Sam took the menu from her hands, tossing it over the counter and into the kitchen.
    “And I told you from day one that we would need to redo everything.”
    “That’s not an option,” Rye said, marching around the counter to retrieve the menu.  “What makes this diner special is its root in tradition.  We’ve been