Twelve hours into what should be an
eight-hour shift and my new uniform still feels foreign on my body. Scratchy
and wrong. Unpleasantly damp. Yesterday I’d worn jeans and a Jimmy’s Diner T-shirt.
Tonight, I’m packed into a polyester dress that looks like it came from a
catalog full of naughty Halloween costumes—1950s Pinup or Sexy Soda Jerk.
I tug at the powder-blue skirt barely
covering my ass and adjust the ruffled apron. Who thought white aprons were a
good idea in a restaurant full of ketchup, jam and gravy? Jimmy Jr. The idiot.
I wince.
Hot coals have replaced the muscles in
the small of my back; that’s the only explanation for the searing pain that
radiates with every wobbly step I take. My new management-issued shoes are as
ridiculous and nonfunctional as the dress, strappy black Mary Janes with pointy
toes, pointier heels, and some kind of no-skid treatment on the soles. Thank
God for small favors.
The whole tacky getup cost eighty bucks.
Cheap, but still too rich for my blood. The cherry on top of one very shitty
sundae. At least they’d take it out of my check in installments, because I’d
barely made a quarter of that tonight, proving once and for all that waitresses
are invisible no matter what they’re wearing. Jimmy’s Diner is invisible too,
now that the new bypass is finished and the truckers can barrel past town doing
eighty miles per hour.
The locals coming in for early bird
specials aren’t going to cut it, and no sexy gimmick will replace the volume of
being on a high-traffic truck route. Short of throwing up a roadblock and
diverting traffic, Jimmy is fucked.
I dip my hand into my apron pocket and
stroke the tiny wad of singles, reassuring myself it’s still there. Five to
shove in the coffee can I keep under the sink and then…not even enough to fill
a gas tank, let alone make a dent in the weekly rent my landlord is salivating
over. He’s already looking for any excuse to eject me from the little garage
apartment his new wife wants to use for a craft studio.
I’m pretty fucked too.
It’s not like I’m working here by
choice. If this job bottoms out…I can’t even think about that particular dead
end. Instead I focus on the present…fifteen-minute increments. I can survive
anything for fifteen minutes. I know that from experience.
Fifteen more minutes without a customer
and I can lock the doors, kick off these torture devices, and finish the last
of my side work.
I pull out the tiny funnels and the big buckets
of salt and pepper to do the most boring sand art ever. That’s my life. Boring,
painful, and thanks to the bypass and circumstance, cut off from the rest of
the world.
I can hear my cousin Harry singing in
the kitchen, and I know he’s mopping up. He always sings while he mops. Humming
along with him at the end of a shift makes me feel like a part of something.
Not a family exactly, but something.
I wouldn’t have this job if it weren’t
for him. Not that he’d done much other than tell Jimmy I needed work. Sometimes
not much is all it takes to make a
difference.
Fifteen more minutes and he’ll haul the
trash out to the dumpster and lock the back door behind him. If I time it
right, we can leave together. I poke my head through the window where he sets
the orders as they’re finished. “Can you give me a ride home tonight?”
“I don’t know, Star. I’ve got stops to
make.” He twitches and wipes sweat from his neck with a bandanna before
swishing dirty water over the floor again. Like I don’t know about his stops
late at night? Probably to see the same people that sometimes pop into the
diner, also twitching and sweating. Looking for pills or meth. I’m not sure. I
don’t even really care as long as I don’t have to walk home alone in the dark.
“But—” Harry spins around with the mop
like he’s twirling a lover and bumps the prep table. Three beer bottles crash
to the floor, and I notice a fourth is clutched in his hand along with the mop
handle. I decide not to argue with his weak excuse or to remind him we’re
family—no matter how distant. It’s not worth it.
“That’s okay, Harry. I can walk just
fine.”
Sure I can. It’s only fifteen minutes to
get home. I hobble back to my shakers.
A bark of laughter, deep and rough,
startles me from behind, and my first thought is son of a bitch because if that’s a new customer wanting dinner, all
my fifteen-minute plans have turned into an hour at least.
“Looks like you’ve got a little hitch in
your giddyup, sweetheart. Why don’t you bring me a menu and come sit on my lap?”
I whirl around to tell him right where he
can put a damn menu, and my breath catches.
I can’t process all of him at once. He’s
that big. He is scruff and muscle and a white T-shirt tucked into dusty jeans.
He looks weathered and road weary, like most of Jimmy’s clientele, but…more.
Everything about him is intense. His knife-blade cheekbones. His heavy brows.
His blue eyes flash icy heat, and some
animal instinct tells me this man isn’t looking for sass, that if he finds it,
he might do something about it, something I won’t like at all.
He’s made himself comfortable in the
booth with his leather jacket tossed on the opposite side along with a sleek
black helmet. I’m pretty sure there’s a motorcycle parked out front now to
match his accessories. If only I’d heard the rev of an engine and the spray of
gravel, but I was too busy humming and watching the clock. A warning would’ve
been nice. I might have locked the door a few minutes early, even if it did
mean Jimmy would dock my pay.
No. I wouldn’t have locked a customer
out. But I’d have braced myself better.
His hands are massive and flat on the
tabletop. Tattoos crisscross his blunt knuckles, the ink broken by spidery
scars. It takes my brain precious seconds to decipher the blue-black loops and
whirls as letters.
It’s like he’s put them there for inspection.
But not the “clean enough for
supper, ma’am?” kind of
inspection, the “how much damage
do you think these can do?” kind.
A lot of damage. That’s the answer. A
lot. Those are knuckles that have been through walls and windows. Flesh and
bone.
I want to say we’re closed, but Jimmy’d
can my ass for turning away a paying customer. I want to run back to the
kitchen and get Harry to tell him to take his business elsewhere, but Harry
isn’t any match for this man. And I’m frozen in place anyway. I can’t peel my
eyes away from his hands.
I stare harder, and it hits me that the
letters over his knuckles form words.
Lost. Soul.
Some fear inside me eases, because
that’s almost romantic. Lost souls and lone wolves. Desperadoes. If he were
really terrible, he wouldn’t have to advertise. The truly dangerous men blend
in.
“Not much of a talker, are you?” he
says.
I try for caustic, but the words slip
out as half whispers. “Not when I don’t have anything to say.”
He laughs again, only softer this time.
More smug. “I can respect that.”
Him respecting anything about me seems
like the most ridiculous thing yet. Even sillier than me standing here for long
minutes without taking his order. My gaze drifts up his colorful forearms,
across his chest, and over the hard pecs I can make out through thin cotton.
His neck, corded with muscle and more ink, flexes under my scrutiny.
Everything about him is hard, except for
his mouth.
His lips look soft. And pinker than they
should be. A sensual mouth, curled into a smile that says I know
everything you’re thinking, and yeah you’re exactly right. A smile
that says test me, please. A smile that says I’m
hungry and you look like cake.
Fuck me. I want to be cake.
