Chapter 35
Five minutes later, I was in Keith's office, giving him the vouchers, redeemed in full.
"Were they happy?" he said.
"Hard to say."
Giving me the squinty eye, he opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a typed sheet of paper. "Here," he said, thrusting it at me.
"What's this?" I asked, taking the sheet from his outstretched hand.
"The summary of what you owe. That's your official copy."
I looked it over. "Wait a minute," I said. "This isn't right."
He leaned back in his chair. "Sure, it is."
"But this shows me paying for their dinner," I said, "the one from the other night."
"No, it doesn't."
I held out the sheet, pointing to the line-item in question. "Yes it does. Right here."
"Oh, that's not for their dinner," he said with a big smile. "That's for their drinks."
I felt myself grow very still. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," he said with a self-satisfied smile," that our agreement stated you were off the hook for dinner. It didn't say anything about their drinks."
"Drinks were part of their dinner," I said.
"Nope. Sorry."
I glared at him. "This is total bullshit."
"You really do have a potty mouth, you know that?"
With an effort, I choked down the bile and a whole bunch of profanity. "C'mon," I said, "you know exactly what I meant when I said dinner."
"Sorry," he said, "I guess you should've been more specific, huh?" He stood. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some calls to make."
My fists were clenched, and my heart racing. That ass-hat of a weasel had tricked me. I didn't know who I was madder at – him for doing it, or me for not seeing the loophole. I wanted to slap the smug look right off his face, but that wouldn’t do any good, well, except make me feel better.
I closed my eyes. No. I wouldn’t feel better. Because then, I'd be fired right now for sure. The only thing that would make me feel better was money, and I wouldn't earn anything standing around arguing with this idiot. I snatched the paper out of his hand and turned to stalk out of the office.
And I'm proud to say that I didn't let any profanity fly – well, not until I was out of earshot. Then, I focused on the tables I still had, and trying to pick up additional ones whenever I had the chance.
The sun was rising by the time I walked out of the restaurant's back door with aching feet and a sore back. Sometime over the course of the night, a cold front had moved in, lending a bitter chill to the November air.
Still walking, I was fumbling for my car keys when I stopped short at the sight of my car, still a couple car-lengths away. I stared at the passenger's side window, or rather, where it used to be. I hustled toward the car for a closer look. What I saw only made me feel worse.
Sometime during my shift, the window had been busted to smithereens, leaving bits of broken glass littering the shabby gray upholstery.
What the hell? I glanced around the parking lot. I'd parked behind the restaurant, along with the rest of the staff. As far as I could tell, mine was the only car with any damage.
Immediately, my thoughts turned to Brittney. She didn't know what I drove. Did she?
Reluctantly, I trudged back into the nearly empty restaurant and gave the remaining staff a heads-up. Then I called the police, who suggested I come by the station in the morning to file a report.
Didn't they realize it was morning? I glanced at the clock in the back room. In four hours, I'd be signing paperwork for my new job. Not a moment too soon. And I had a choice to make. I could spend those four hours either at the police station, relaying suspicions I couldn't prove, or I could return to the Parkers' and get a couple hours of sleep.
It was no contest. I trudged back to my car, used the sleeve of my quilted coat to brush aside stray bits of broken glass from the driver's seat, climbed in, and pulled out of the parking lot, praying that on tonight of all nights, the car's heater would actually emit some heat.
It didn't.
By the time I reached the Parkers' house, my hands and face were numb from the icy wind, and my feet weren't much better. Even my teeth were sore, probably from all the chattering, and yeah, maybe a little cursing, but I figured I had a good reason.
Inside the big house, I took a long, hot bath, dried off, dressed in some ratty gym clothes. Then I took Chucky for the shortest walk I could manage, just around the yard, and only long enough for him to do his business and return inside.
Crouching down with him on the kitchen floor, I promised him a longer walk when I returned from my appointment. But first, I needed to sleep at least a couple hours, or I'd be no good when I got there. The last thing I needed was to lose the job before I even got it.
Lying in bed, I broke away from what had become a pattern. I didn't fantasize about Lawton Rastor, his glorious body, or the things I wanted to do to it. Instead, I fantasized about telling Keith, Brittney, and the whole lot of them to kiss my frozen ass.
By the time I fell asleep, Keith was on his knees, begging me to stay, telling me he was the best waitress the diner had. I knew it was a load of crap, but I didn't care. I drifted off smiling, and unlike the nights I'd fantasized about Lawton, that night, my panties actually stayed on.
Chapter 36
It was a fifty-minute drive from the Parkers' house to the company I'd soon be working for. Getting dressed for the appointment, I tried not to think about the broken window. I'd already checked the weather, and it wasn't looking good.
During the couple hours I'd slept, the cold front had taken a firmer hold, making me just a little more miserable as I considered my damaged car. I'd need to repair it, and soon, before winter settled in for good. But I didn't have time, and I wasn't exactly sure I had the money.
Sure, I had my tips from last night, and maybe a little bit of breathing room on my credit card. But that was it. I tried not to dwell on the extent of the damage, or how much the repair might cost. First things first, I told myself. Sign the employment papers and then worry about all that other stuff later.
When I dashed out the front door, I stopped short at the sight of someone in the driveway. It was Lawton. He was standing next to my car, peering into it through the broken passenger's side window.
He looked up when he saw me. "What happened?" he asked.
I was moving again, walking fast, head up, acting like it was no big deal. "As if you don't know," I muttered.
Yeah, I was being unfair. In truth, I didn't even know. Not for sure, anyway. But I had a pretty good feeling about my guess.
His eyebrows furrowed. "How would I know?"
I stopped at the driver's side door, but didn't open it. Our gazes met across the low roof of the car. "Never mind," I said. "It's nothing."
He glanced at the broken window. "It doesn't look like nothing to me."
"Forget it." Had he already talked to Brittney? Had she told him about the little fun she had last night? "What are you doing here, anyway?" I asked.
His gaze met mine. "You wanna make me say it?"
"Say what?"
He crossed his arms and gave me a hard look. "First, tell me what happened."
I raised my chin. "No. You tell me what you're doing here. Wait, lemme guess. You're just in the neighborhood?"
"I live in the neighborhood."
Well, that made one of us. But that was beside the point. "I gotta go," I told him.
"Where?" he asked. "To get it repaired?"
I let out a breath. "Not today."
"You're driving it like this?" His hands dropped to his sides. "In this weather?"
He had a point. But it's not like I had a lot of choices.
"I'm not going far," I said. Just a fifty-minute drive. I shivered just thinking about it.
"You want a ride?" he asked.
I'd love a ride. But I was heading out to sign those employment papers. What would I do? Ask Lawton to wait in th
e parking lot? Invite him to come in with me?
I had no idea how long the whole thing would take, and asking him to tag along was a bad idea on too many levels to count, especially since we hadn't resolved anything from our earlier argument.
"No," I said. "But thanks for the offer. Seriously."
He looked at me a long time. "What's wrong?"
"Why does something have to be wrong?" I asked.
God, why was I acting like this? I hated that whole I'm-not-going-to-tell-you-what's-wrong routine. This wasn't me. At least not usually.
He stood, lips pressed together into a thin line, looking for all the world like he wasn't going to budge until he had his answer.
"You talk to Brittney today?" I asked.
He gave me a strange look. "Brittney?" He glanced down at the window. "What's she got to do with this?"
I shrugged. "I dunno."
"She knows better," Lawton said.
I made a scoffing sound. "Really? Does she?"
"Well, she wasn't around here last night, if that's what you're getting at."
I laughed, a bitter sound that sounded fake, even to my own ears. "Yeah. Tell me something I don't know." I opened the car door. "I gotta go."
"Wait."
I paused, meeting his gaze. "For what?"
"What aren't you telling me?"
"Nothing," I said. And with that, I climbed inside.
He leaned down, studying me through the broken window. "Stop by later," he said.
He hadn't phrased it as a question.
"Your place?" I said. "Why?"
He shrugged. "Because."
"That's no kind of answer," I said.
He met my gaze. "It wasn't meant to be." And with that, he straightened and stepped away from the car.
Talk about arrogant. No way was I stopping by. I wasn't into the whole command-performance thing. I started the car and shifted into reverse. I gave him a tiny wave and pulled onto the street. Did he wave back? I have no idea. I kept my eyes on the road, looking forward, the only direction that mattered.
As I drove, the frigid air poured through the broken window and whipped around inside my car, making it hard to hear anything beyond my own thoughts, which alternated between the urge to beat Brittney's ass and fantasies of winning the lottery.
If I won the lottery, I decided, I'd buy a restaurant and make Brittney work at it. Then I'd come in and dance on the tables and make her feel cheap and stupid for working for a living.
Or, I'd just move to Bermuda.
The lottery distractions did little to help. By the halfway point, my hands and feet were numb from the cold, and I couldn't stop shivering.
With my first paycheck, I decided, I'd go shopping for a new car. Sure, it wouldn’t be a brand new car, and I'd still have to finance it, but it was time to let the Fiesta go. I was a professional person now, I told myself. I couldn't be tooling around in an old beater with questionable heat and a long list of other problems.
But what would I do until then? My first paycheck was still a few weeks off. I couldn't exactly pay for the repairs and still have money for a down payment on something newer. Was I really willing to drive around for the next couple of weeks with no heat and a broken window?
I felt myself smile. No. Not anymore. Because I didn't have to. Screw it. Right after I signed those employment papers, I'd head to the nearest car dealership and see about trading in the Fiesta for something better.
And if that dealership wasn't willing to cut me a fair deal, I'd just hit another one. If everything went as planned, this would be my last day with unreliable transportation.
Pulling into the parking lot of my new employer, I was so caught up in my dreams of a new car that it took me a minute to realize that something was different – and very wrong.
The company was located in an industrial section, crammed with old factories and warehouses. The business itself consisted of a small one-story aluminum sided office building next to their much larger warehouse facility.
There was only one problem. The spot where the warehouse used to be now contained a sprawling pile of charred rubble. Off to the side, I saw piles of twisted car parts, stacked here and there, as if someone had been working to salvage and sort anything that might still be of value.
Sitting in my frozen car, I looked out over the destruction, wondering what had happened, and if anyone had gotten hurt. Had anyone been inside at the time? My stomach clenched. If anyone had, and they'd been unable to make it out, they wouldn’t have survived to tell about it.
Vaguely, I realized that from somewhere inside my purse, my cell phone was ringing. Distracted, I dug through, pulled it out, and answered without looking. "Hello?"
"Jeez, who peed in your oatmeal?" Loretta said.
Goes to show what she knew. I didn't even like oatmeal. "No one peed in anything," I told her, trying to control my spinning thoughts. "Why'd you call?"
"You know," she said, "you really should work on your phone manners."
"My phone manners?"
"Yes, your phone manners," she said. "Try smiling when you answer the phone. It'll make you sound like less of a sourpuss."
"Hey," I said, "I wasn't the one who mentioned oatmeal and pee in the same sentence."
I eyed the destruction in front of me. The hiring manager had described the warehouse as the heart of the company. They would rebuild it, wouldn’t they? They had insurance, right?
Loretta gave a loud sigh. "Fine. Excuse me for trying to offer some constructive criticism."
I clenched my fist around the phone. "So, did you call for another reason, or just to offer the criticism?"
"Constructive criticism," she corrected. "Oh never mind. I don't know why I bother." With another loud sigh, she said, "I called to see what you're bringing."
"Bringing? What do you mean?"
"Don't be dense," she said. "For Thanksgiving. Are you bringing a side dish, a dessert, what?"
"A dessert," I answered automatically.
"Sorry. Lauren's bringing the dessert."
Oh for Pete's sake. Then why'd Loretta mention dessert in the first place? And besides, since when did it become illegal to have more than one dessert at Thanksgiving? "What kind is she bringing?" I said. "I'll bring something different. You know, for variety."
"Chloe," she said in tone of infinite patience, "I'm not going to have you trying to upstage her."
"What?"
"This is Thanksgiving," she said, "not some bake-off. Now, pick something else so I can finalize the menu. This whole thing is a lot of work, and you're not making it easier on me."
"Fine," I snapped. "Just tell me what to bring, and I'll bring it."
"In the interest of keeping family peace," she said, "I'm going to ignore your snippy tone."
In the interest of keeping family peace, I refrained from pointing out that since she'd mentioned my snippy tone, she couldn’t actually take credit for ignoring it.
"I'll bring a salad," I said.
"Now, was that so hard?" she said, then hung up without saying goodbye.
And I was the one with bad phone manners? With a sigh of disgust, I tossed the phone onto the passenger's seat and returned my attention to the burned warehouse.
While talking to Loretta, another question had been creeping slowly into my brain. Did I still have a job here? Or had that gone up in flames along with the warehouse? I felt guilty for even thinking about something so small as a job when lives might've been lost. But still, the question persisted.
Even if they did rebuild, how long would that take? Could the company survive until then? And if so, did they really need a junior accountant to invoice stuff that wasn't even available for delivery, from a distribution center that was no longer functioning?
The cold forgotten, I took a deep breath and got out of my car. There was only one way to find out.
Chapter 37
A half hour later, I was back in the Fiesta. I took a moment to give the car a good, long lo
ok, sparing myself nothing – the broken window, the faded upholstery, the cigarette burn on the dashboard. The burn wasn't mine. I'd inherited it from a previous owner, whoever that was.
I'd gotten the car for a steal, and I'd been happy to get it at the time. Of course, that was over five years ago, during my senior year in high school. According to the fantasy life I'd scripted out for myself, I would've ditched the car a long time ago in favor of something better.
Now, it looked like I'd be driving in a while. As it turned out, the company didn't need an accounting clerk, new or otherwise, when they had almost no inventory remaining and no way to process it if they did.
"If you're still looking, come back in a couple of months," the hiring manager had told me. "Depending on how things go, we might be looking to fill the position again."
Again? The way I saw it, the position had never been filled in the first place, except by that woman about to retire. Turns out, she'd been let go that morning. Happy early retirement, huh?
As for me, I needed a new job now, not in a couple months. But I didn't tell the guy any of these things. It wasn't his fault that some freak electrical accident had burned their warehouse to the ground. Thankfully, no one had gotten hurt, but the way it looked, the business was in serious trouble.
Here, I was worried about not getting a new job, while others were losing jobs they'd had for years. That had to be worse, right?
Still, there was no denying that for me personally, it sucked. What was I going to do? Waitress the rest of my life? Or maybe, I needed to move out of state. Our local economy wasn't exactly booming. If I broadened my job search to other areas, I'd probably have better luck.
But what about Josh? And Grandma? Would they be alright? It wasn't like I lived with either one of them, but I hated the thought of moving away.
Who would take Grandma's non-existent mailers to the non-existent mailing house? Would I need to invent another fictional job to keep her in rent money?
And then there was Josh. As long as Grandma lived so close to him, I knew he was safe from the worst of what Loretta dished out. With Grandma just a short walk away, Josh had a place to go, not just for his own sake, but to keep Loretta from getting too torqued up over stupid crap like multiple desserts.
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