Just Pretend

by Juliana Conners

  When I enter the banquet hall, I see that there’s an award ceremony for some rich pricks going on again. That’s about all that ever happens here. Billionaires showing off their wealth to other billionaires, and eating half their salads before demanding they be sent back for some minor imperfection. Never mind that people in the real world are going hungry.

  I don’t have time to fume, though, once I see Nathan trying to serve all the tables by himself. I stop feeling annoyed at all the injustices in the world and jump in to help the one I’ve clearly been putting Nathan through by being late.

  I head towards Nathan, hoping he’s not too mad at me.

  I can’t help but notice some guys in military uniform at one of the tables near the front, because they’re smoking hot. Maybe it’s just because of my past but I’ve always had a thing for military guys. I try not to get too distracted since I’ve already messed up big time.

  “I’m so sorry,” I tell him. “My group meeting for a big class project ran over, and…”

  “No problem, Emily,” he says, smiling his always- friendly smile. I’m grateful for his understanding after how harshly John treated me. “I’m just glad you’re here to help me out. They definitely should have scheduled at least three more servers tonight.”

  “Tell me about it!”

  “But what else is new, right?”

  “Right,” I shake my head at him as I move away with my cart full of food.

  The hotel is always trying to save money by staffing less servers to do more work, and sometimes it’s just impossible. Of course, they don’t care about that when it comes time for performance evaluations. Somehow Nathan and I are regularly expected to do the job of a much fuller staff.

  As I approach the first table, I can already tell that everyone’s mad at the delayed food. This should be fun. But at least I have some eye candy to make the evening pass by a little faster.

  Chapter 4 – Wade

  Now I’m getting hungry and this iced tea isn’t cutting it. The food still hasn’t arrived yet, and there’s talk about leaving but it’s clear that some other tables have been served. We’re just the unlucky ones that are towards the last in line, I suppose.

  “I don’t think next year’s banquet will be held here…” I start to say, but then I stop dead in my tracks as I see the waitress who is finally approaching our table.

  Holy fucking shit.

  It’s Emily Mason. My high school sweetheart. The relationship I royally fucked up. I haven’t seen her in five years, and here she is literally waiting on me.

  She nearly stops in her tracks when she sees me, but then she continues to head to our table with resolute— if not forced— confidence. That’s one thing I always liked about her. Unlike the drama queens that made up most of the rest of our class, she was always cool, calm and collected. Nothing could break her façade.

  Because I know her, though, I know she’s flustered.

  She still wants me, I think.

  And I have to admit the feelings mutual too.

  I want her too. In all the ways I already got to have her, and especially in the one way that I didn’t.

  She wouldn’t let me pop her cherry back then. And for years I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that. I’ve always wanted to change that outcome. I just never know she’d show up literally right in front of me like this.

  Her face is red and she’s obviously hurrying. And man is she hot. Her apron can’t completely hide her nice hourglass figure. And as she turns around to lift a plate off the wheeled cart behind her, I get a glimpse of her curvy ass. She looks even better than she did in high school.

  I don’t say a word to my friends at the table. If they knew this was the girl I was so stuck on when I first joined the military, they’d never let me live it down.

  I sneak a peek at Jensen to see if he looks suspicious, but he’s so mad about the late food that he doesn’t seem to be paying any attention. Or maybe he’s so caught up in Riley— whom he claims is the love of his life— that he really doesn’t notice when another attractive chic is standing right in front of him.

  “Finally!” he mumbles, about the fact that food is at our table.

  It’s a whole different kind of “finally” than I have in mind.

  “Yeah really,” says Freddy, who is sitting next to Jensen. “Sure took long enough.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Emily says, purposefully not looking at me as she places a plate full of steak and vegetables in front of Jensen and then Freddy. “I got held up and…”

  “We don’t care,” Freddy says, quite rudely. “We just want to eat.”

  “Freddy!” I hiss. “Be polite.”

  “I understand,” Emily says, but before she lowers her eyes from Freddy’s, they meet mine.

  We lock stares for a brief second and then she picks up more plates to serve around the table.

  I want to believe that she still feels the same way I do. But it could have just been in my head. I can’t believe that after all the time, she’s here in front of me again. She looks the same, but even better: voluptuous, with olive skin and dark hair and dark eyes, and banging curves I want to hold onto and never let go.

  She isn’t dressed up in thousand dollar dresses like the other girls in here. Instead she’s working her ass off for pay, same as I always had, and still do, even though I no longer need to.

  I can’t help but wonder whether there’s any way to salvage the relationship we once had.

  Relationship?

  Why had that word even crossed my mind? You don’t do relationships, I remind myself. Get a grip.

  Plus, she’d never take me back. She didn’t back then, and she certainly wouldn’t now, once she found out everything that’s been going on with me for the past five years since we last saw each other.

  Still, I can’t keep my eyes off her as she continues placing plates down in front of my friends, until finally she gets to me.

  “Thank you,” I tell her, purposefully grabbing her hands on the edges of the plate.

  “Be careful, it’s… hot,” she tells me, her words nearly trailing off as she looks at me.

  “I can handle it.”

  I wink at her. I can’t help it. And she smiles, as if she can’t help it either. It’s so sexy I can feel my cock getting hard. All I want to do is take her to some back room and rip off her apron and then whatever’s underneath…

  But then she’s back to business, again letting me wonder if I’m imagining it all in my head. I hate that she’s doing this to me. No other woman has seemed to have had this effect on me, ever, so why her again? Why now? Damn Jensen and the love potion Riley got him to swallow must be rubbing off on me.

  Or else it’s just the fact that Emily is somehow my fate. She seemed perfect for me back then, and still could be now, if only I hadn’t fucked everything up so badly.

  A rush of memories floods my mind but I purposefully push them away. I remember my tools and techniques. The whole reason I made my app and started this company. If I can’t control things at a time like this, then everything I’ve built has been a fraud.

  “Can I get anyone anything else?” Emily asks.

  I take a deep breath, relieved to feel myself returning to a sense of calm.

  “No, we’re just happy to finally be able to eat,” Jensen barks.

  “Jensen!” I snap at him. “Treat the lady with some respect.”

  “Sorry,” Jensen grumbles, and Emily looks at me in a way I can’t decipher.

  She doesn’t seem exactly glad that I jumped to her defense. But she also looks like she’s fighting against the same strong tide I am— except with less baggage, less issues.

  I hope that life has been a lot kinder to her than it’s been to me since I last talked to her.

  “It’s just that with the other guy’s slow and useless service, I’m taking it out on this poor waitress,” Jensen says.

  “No, the delay is my fault,” Emily says, and I admire her honesty. “A
nd I do apologize. I had an unforeseen circumstance arise and the other waiter was left to himself for the first part of the dinner. I just don’t want you to blame him, is all. I got here as soon as I could and I’m glad he could fill in for me.”

  “I see,” I tell her, and shrug. “Well, stuff happens.”

  “I guess,” Jensen mutters under his breath.

  I’m glad he’s letting up on her. But mostly I’m wondering if she’ll let me put my hands all over that curvy body of hers…

  The thought of getting with Emily again occupies my mind throughout dinner. Unlike Jensen and the other guys at the table, I don’t care that the food is late, or cold for that matter. I just care what Emily is doing once she gets done serving it. I know I should resist the urge but I can’t help but want to be near her, and see what happens between us after all this time.

  Chapter 5 – Emily

  Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.

  I can’t believe that I was just face to face with him. Wade Covington. My high school ex and the man I haven’t been able to erase from my mind— or apparently my body— for all this time. He had joined the military and I never thought I’d see him again, especially not here. Like me, he hadn’t come from money, had never had a lot of money.

  I grab the brochure about today’s event and can’t believe my eyes. Wade was receiving an award for starting his own company. I scan what it says about him until my eyes rest on the sentence “His start up company morphed into a multi billion dollar enterprise.”

  Multi billion?

  Wade’s a billionaire?

  Never in a million years would I have thought life would play out like this. Sure, I often fantasize about seeing Wade again but I never thought it would be like this.

  For the rest of the evening, he’s all I can think about. There definitely seems to have still been a connection between us, but I keep trying to tell myself it was just in my head. And even if it wasn’t, I can’t act on it.

  I have to remember what happened between us. I have to guard my heart from him so he can’t break it again.

  But I’m beginning to realize I’ll have to resist very strongly in order for that to happen. Every time I return to the table to bring more food, wine, dessert or to check on them, Wade’s eyes are locked on mine.

  When he thinks I’m busy serving other people and I’m not looking, I always catch his eyes all over me. There’s no denying that the attraction is mutual. I just can’t give into it.

  Do nothing about the fact that your ex is here where you work after all this time, I tell myself, as I gather up dirty dishes from a table of people who have left. You’ll never see him again after this, and that’s the way it should be. He’s had his chance and he ruined it and what’s done is done. Best to leave the past in the past.

  As I return to his table to begin clearing dishes, he surreptitiously slips a piece of paper onto his plate right before I pick it up. I look down at him, curious, and he winks at me.

  I put the piece of paper in my pocket before dumping the dishes into the bussing tray. I’m busy bussing all the other tables and I don’t get a chance to look at it for a while. I’m not sure if I’m gathering the courage to look at it or throw it away unopened, because I assume that whatever is written on it could only mean bad news for my goal of resisting my still- present attraction to my ex.

  But in the end, I know that I just have to look at it. Sometimes life presents us with an opportunity that is too good to pass up, no matter the costs.

  Once all my tables are bussed, I pause in the lobby outside of the kitchen and retrieve the small piece of paper. I open it and read the words: Nice to see you again. Meet me for a drink at Suzi’s later?

  My heart skips a couple of beats. Suzi’s is the swanky bar on the other side of the hotel, where fancy businessmen meet. I avoid it like the plague because I hate anything that reeks of money and status symbols. Such waste, such greed, when that same money could go towards more noble and helpful purposes than expensive drinks and food that will be devoured in just a few minutes’ time.

  And I’d also get in trouble at work if I was caught fraternizing with customers. Sure, it would be after hours and my shift will have ended, but that doesn’t matter. We’re supposed to stay far away from the “regular people,” and know our place as lowly servers.

  But still. I sigh as I continue to look down at Wade’s rather neat handwriting— which I remember from studying with him in high school and from all the letters he had written me after that— wishing that things were different. I wish I didn’t need this job, and I wish I could just…

  …have sex with my ex? For my very first time?

  I want to yell at myself for even thinking it. My virginity had been too important to give to him back then and it should be even more important now that I know how things turned out between us. And yet, after all this time of trying to find some connection, some chemistry, some something with anyone else after Wade, and realizing it’s useless, I often wish I would have just had sex with him.

  Sure, I’d spend the rest of my life regretting it but at least I would have gotten to do it. As opposed to just thinking about it all the time, wondering what it would have been like. No, knowing it would have been hot— just like everything else we had done together— but also knowing that I would never get to experience it.

  Except maybe now I can.

  If only I could throw caution to the wind and see what happens. I’ve never been a capricious type of person. But look where that’s gotten me— pretty far in my academic career but almost nowhere at all in my personal life.

  I’m still staring down at the note in my hand, letting my thoughts run away from me, when I hear a stern voice in my ear.

  “Still loafing around daydreaming instead of working, I see. So typical of you, Emily. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

  I jump. It’s John, of course. And he’s actually clucking his tongue at me like a hen scolding her chicks. I stuff the note into my pocket, hoping John didn’t have time to read it.

  “I’m done with the buss work,” I tell him. “I was just taking a little break before…”

  …starting to clean, I was going to say, but I don’t get to finish, because he interrupts me, as usual. And suddenly I’m angry. Because even though I was late, I’d been busting my ass for the past four hours and this is the first small break I’d taken. Yet I can’t do anything around here without incurring John’s wrath.

  “Forget it,” he says. “You’re fired anyway.”

  “Fired?”

  I clench my fists, knowing I shouldn’t be surprised, but figuring that since he’d let me work my shift— or most of it, that I had been forgiven. I should have known that he was as unpredictable as he was egotistical.

  “Clock out and go home and study or whatever else is more important to you than this job,” he commands.

  Fine.

  At least I get out of cleaning peoples’ bits of chewed-up food from the plates and the carpet— my least favorite task. I feel bad for Nathan for having to do it all on his own. But it’s not like I’m going to work for free.

  I clock out as instructed and head to the parking lot. I know I should start to head home.

  But then I reconsider. If I don’t work here anymore, there’s nothing prohibiting me from fraternizing with customers. And for once in my life I could use a drink.

  That’s all this is about, I try to convince myself, knowing full well it’s not. I just need a drink. I got fired and I have no idea how I’ll afford my bills or stay in my beloved graduate program and I deserve a stiff cocktail to help lessen the blow.

  Since I’m already at my car, I bring my bookbag in with me and change back into my street clothes. They’re not exactly Suzi’s attire, but they’re better than my work uniform.

  Then I drop my bookbag back off at my car and head back towards Suzi’s. I wonder if I’ve taken so long to get to Suzi’s that I will have missed out on the opportunity to meet Wade there. Half of me hope
s that I have, since my life will be so much easier that way. But half of me hopes that I haven’t, because I’m just dying to see him again one on one, even though I know I shouldn’t.

  Chapter 5 – Wade

  I’m nursing my whiskey sour, almost giving up hope that Emily will show up. She hadn’t appeared again at our table after I’d given her the note. The first guy came back to make sure we didn’t need anything else, and then I saw him with a vacuum cleaner on the stage, but Emily had disappeared.

  Guess you scared her off again for good, I think. Nice one.

  But I still came here to Suzy’s and waited on her, just in case, and I keep scanning the crowd for her. My friends had made plans to head to their favorite dive bar— Jensen got a wild hair and joined a motorcycle gang and they frequent this place— but I backed out, claiming I’d had a long day. They’d congratulated me on the award and told me to meet up with them if I changed my mind. And then they’d headed out and I’d headed here to wait like a long- lost puppy dog for its owner.

  This isn’t like me at all. I never fucking wait around on women. They get on board with what I want or I move on to the next one who will. But that doesn’t change the fact that here I sit, as if I have nothing in the world to do but see if this particular woman— my ex girlfriend— shows up.

  I’ll get one more drink, and then I’ll leave, I tell myself, as I try to signal to the bartender to bring me another. It’s a crowded place— and fancier than I like— but it was close enough that I thought it might entice Emily to join me. It’s on her home turf and all, although she has never been the kind of girl who would like it here, which is one of the things I’ve always liked about her.

  I’m sitting in the back corner of the bar and when I turn my head again, I’m surprised to see Emily walking up to me. She’s in jeans and a purple sweater, her hair cascading around her face instead of pulled up into a bun like it had been during the dinner.