“I could, but it won’t be as good as it would be if I were to stay.”
“Not as good is better than nothing,” Krista said.
“So you think I should leave?”
“There isn’t even a question.”
“But…”
Starshine trailed off, unsure of what to say that could be persuasive. She had no real reason to stay here. She just didn’t want this to be over. She wasn’t ready to leave this life behind. Her life here was good, and she was getting used to the mask that she wore. She liked this side of herself. She liked being Starshine rather than Stella. She had never aspired to be a waitress at a place like this, but she enjoyed it as much as she enjoyed being a reporter. Maybe more.
“Quit,” Krista said. “Or just don’t go back. From what you’ve said, this place doesn’t sound like the kind of place where you have to give two weeks’ notice.”
Starshine shook her head, her back pressed against the wall. She didn’t want to quit, even as she saw that it was the only thing to do.
“I want more material,” she said. “I could gather so much with another couple months here. We’re only halfway through the story. There’s so much left unresolved, and I want to be here when it happens.”
“You’re overthinking this,” Krista said, sounding sleepy and unsympathetic. “What you have is going to be enough for your article. You need to leave now.”
Twenty-Three
Chloe opened Jennie’s door when Kylie arrived. Kylie said hello politely. They talked more often now that Chloe was dating Jennie, but Kylie still didn’t know her that well.
Kylie hadn’t seen Jennie in a while. They had made more of an effort to hang out over the first couple weeks after Jennie had left Jubblies. Back then Jennie had still been selling to Kylie, so it was only natural for them to get together. Now that Jennie was no longer dealing, their hangouts were just for fun.
After what had happened last night, Kylie really needed someone to talk to. Jennie didn’t really know Starshine, but she knew how things went at the restaurant. Kylie could think of no one better to ask about this.
“I’ll let you two hang out,” Chloe said, heading into Jennie’s room.
Kylie and Jennie sat down at the kitchen table. “You want to smoke a joint?” Kylie asked.
“I better not,” Jennie said. “I’ve still got more studying to do later. I’ve barely been smoking lately.”
“Oh, okay. How is school going?”
Even here in the shared living space, Jennie’s textbooks were everywhere. A notebook was open, and Kylie glanced at the scribbled notes on social work. She couldn’t see Jennie sitting in class and paying such close attention, but she supposed it did make sense. Jennie had a hard upbringing, so she naturally would want to help people in the same situation.
“It’s good,” Jennie said. “I just got my first exam back. I got eighty-two.”
Kylie tipped her chair back, raising an eyebrow. “No way!” She wouldn’t have guessed that Jennie would be a top student.
“Yeah, I’m enjoying it. I mean, it’s boring at times, and some of the classes are better than others, but overall I think I’m going to like being a social worker.”
“I’m happy to hear that. You never liked being a waitress. I always felt bad for you.”
“Yeah, I didn’t make a secret out of that,” Jennie said with a laugh.
“I’m pretty sure the entire restaurant knew you didn’t want to be there.”
“So, what’s up with you? How’s everything at the restaurant?”
“Weird, actually.” Kylie fiddled with her rolling papers, eventually shoving them back in her pocket.
“In what way?” Jennie asked. “You’re not dating one of the girls, are you?”
Kylie glanced at her, surprised by her accurate guess. “Not dating, but…”
“Fucking?”
“Just once,” Kylie admitted. “But it’s confusing.”
“Shit, don’t leave me hanging. Who was it?”
“You’ve met Starshine, right?”
“Of course,” Jennie said. “She was… nice.”
She sounded like she was holding back, so Kylie decided to be straightforward. “She’s nice, yeah, but she is a little secretive.”
“I’m glad you said it. I wasn’t going to say anything, but there’s definitely something about that girl. I never felt like I could trust her.”
“That’s the thing. Even though things have happened between us, I don’t know how much I can trust her either.” She gave a quick rundown of the events. “So, with everything put together, and then what happened with that woman last night, I really don’t know what to think.”
“Well, you have to figure it out if you want to be with her.”
“Of course, but how do I do that?”
“You know her better than I do. All I can say that if you want to find out what’s up with her, you’re going to have to talk to her.”
“There’s another option,” Kylie said, putting her hand in her pocket and fingering the business card. “I could contact this ex of hers.”
“Don’t do that,” Jennie said. “Get the story from Starshine herself. She would feel betrayed if you went behind her back. If she’s going to tell you the truth, it has to come from her.”
Kylie took her hand out of her pocket and laid it on the table. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Try it. Talk to her.”
Kylie said. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Starshine seems pretty determined to not be with me.”
Jennie gave her a sympathetic glance. Now that she was blissfully taken, Kylie doubted how much she could sympathize. “It will work out if it’s going to work out,” Jennie said.
“I guess so. I should go. I’ll see you later.”
As she drove home, she thought about how well Jennie was doing these days. She was a changed person—in a good way. Kylie would never have thought she’d be in school and out of the restaurant, not to mention her perfect-seeming relationship. Kylie was happy for her. She just wished she could find the same for herself.
When Kylie got home, she went up to her room. She dropped her laptop on her knees and lay back in bed, opening up the code for her app. As she played around with it, she yawned. There weren’t many bugs left to fix. She could have streamlined the code a little more, but it was running about as well as it ever would.
To make it better, she would need to show it to people and see what they thought about it. She had no plans to do that. That would have meant more work, and it was just a fun little project for her to fool around with.
She pushed the computer away and spread out on the bed, unable to concentrate. She was still thinking about Starshine and all of her mysteries. When was she ever going to figure out the truth about her?
She took out Pearl’s card and folded it between her fingers. She unfolded it, looked at it, and put it back in her pocket. Then she took it out again and looked at it carefully. Pearl Hancock, Customer Experience Manager. She sounded pretty legitimate. She couldn’t be that crazy if she was a manager.
She had been drunk, though. And Starshine had said herself that they’d only gone on a few dates. As a disgruntled ex, she could just want to fuck up Starshine’s life. Maybe Pearl was lying about what she knew.
Or maybe she had all the answers Kylie had been missing.
Twenty-Four
By the time Starshine got up the nerve to text Kylie, it was almost six in the evening. Kylie probably had dinner plans, either with her family or with friends. Starshine doubted that she would be able or willing to eat with her.
She sent the text anyway. Hey Kylie, want to grab pizza?
The answer came more than twenty minutes later, and it was a curt one. Yeah, sure. See you in half an hour?
Starshine liked that they didn’t have to say where they were going to meet. It was just assumed. Yes, she wrote.
They were almost to the point that she had fantasized about, of going to the same place and being k
nown to the employees. She just wasn’t actually dating Kylie. Being friends was kind of nice… but she had to admit she wanted more.
Her heart pounded as she got ready. She chose her clothes carefully, wondering why she was even bothering. No matter how good she looked, Kylie was going to hate her anyway. It would have been better to choose her words with that amount of care. But she knew there was nothing she could say, no way to phrase things, that would make Kylie forgive her.
She got to the pizza place and walked inside. Kylie was already there. “I was wondering if your friend was going to join you,” said the guy behind the counter.
Starshine smiled weakly at him. He seemed like a nice guy, but she wasn’t in the mood to make chitchat with anybody. She needed to get this conversation out of the way, and then she’d know just how much Kylie was going to hate her.
She slid into the booth next to Kylie. “I already ordered,” Kylie said. “I figured you’d want the same thing.”
Starshine nodded. “Sounds good. Listen…”
Kylie interrupted her. “Are you going to tell me the truth?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“It’s about time.”
“Yeah, and I’m sorry. I hope you’ll understand that I couldn’t tell anybody before. Even now, telling you is a bit difficult.”
“What exactly do you have to say, S?”
The pizza girl placed the box between them, but they didn’t take their eyes off each other. They stared motionless at each other until the girl left. Even though the scent of the pizza drifted up to Starshine’s nose, she made no move to take it. This conversation with Kylie was much more important than any pizza.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a while,” Starshine said. “I didn’t want you to hear it from Pearl.”
Kylie nodded. “Good. I thought about contacting her, but I didn’t want to get it from somebody else. I wanted to give you the chance to open up.”
“Okay,” Starshine said.
She wiped her palms on her thighs. When had they gotten so sweaty? She stared at the white pizza box, wishing they could go back to a simpler time when eating good food was all that mattered. She hated the thought of revealing her secret. But it had to be done.
“So, you know that you’ve been calling me by a nickname,” Starshine started. “My full name is Stella Jeffries.”
“Fine,” Kylie said. “Lots of people have nicknames. What have you been keeping from me?”
“I lived in Haberdee up until a few months ago.”
“I knew that.”
“Yes, but you were right when you said I didn’t move here for a finance company. I moved here for the job with Jubblies.”
“And why did you want to be a waitress so bad?”
Starshine looked at her fingernails. “Because…” Her voice went soft, and she practically whispered the last few words. “Because I’m writing an article about it.” She glanced up at Kylie, meeting her dark brown eyes for half a second before dropping them again. “I’m a reporter, Kylie.”
“A reporter?”
Starshine couldn’t quite read Kylie’s voice, and when she looked up at her face, her features were contorted in confusion. “You’re not a cop?”
“No, I’m an undercover journalist. I’m working on an article for Snap That magazine.”
“You’ve been here all this time…” Kylie’s voice grew cold. “Spying on us?”
“Not spying,” Starshine said. “Just… observing.”
“Observing!” Kylie slammed her fist down on the table, making the friendly pizza girl look at them with alarm. “What kind of article were you going to write, Stella? Was it going to be something nice? Were you going to make us look good? What kind of article takes three, four months to research?”
Starshine grimaced, wishing she could sink into this grimy booth and disappear. “It’s an exposé. I was going to write about the seedy underbelly of places like Jubblies.”
“Dammit, you didn’t. How could you?”
“I wasn’t going to make you sound bad,” Starshine said weakly. “I just wanted to tell the world about Jubblies.”
“You wanted to come in, profit off it, and then leave. Isn’t that right?”
“That’s not something I would do. You know me better than that. I wanted to share my story with the world.”
“I don’t know you better than that,” Kylie said, staring at her with open hostility. “I don’t know you at all. Your little friend last night was right. You’re not who you said you were. I have no idea who you are.”
Starshine slumped in the chair. She was aware that Kylie was walking away, but she knew it would do no good to go after her. Kylie was pissed, which she had every right to be. She was completely right in everything she had just said.
Starshine didn’t want to make the restaurant look bad. She only planned to tell the truth, and the truth was that there was both good and bad in that restaurant. She wasn’t going to just write about sunshine and rainbows. And she had never thought about how it would affect the people she was planning to write about.
The scent of the pizza became weaker, and Starshine knew it had to be getting cold. At this point, she couldn’t care less. Kylie had been gone for several minutes now. Starshine hadn’t even had the chance to tell her she was going to be leaving.
Would Kylie have cared? She probably never wanted to see Starshine again. And that was after Starshine had planned what to say so carefully. Her reaction had been so much worse than Starshine had anticipated. She tried to think of a way that she could have done better, but it was impossible. She was in the wrong from the start, and she had no way to make this right.
When she got to the restaurant, she went directly to Tony’s office. “Good evening, Starshine,” he said.
“Hey.”
Starshine looked at him, measuring him up. Tony was brusque, but also businesslike. He had a harsh exterior, but she suspected there was a soft spot under it.
Not that it mattered, anyway. She could think about ways to phrase things for her article later. She would plan out how to organize it and what to do with it. She had plenty of time for all of it. Right now, she just had to give in her notice.
“Is everything okay?” Tony asked. “That woman hasn’t given you any more trouble?”
“No, that’s not it,” Starshine said, scuffing her shoe on the floor. “I came here to tell you that tonight has to be my last night. I can’t work here anymore.”
He looked surprised. “Why not?” Tony asked. “I thought you were doing well at this job.”
“I am, and I enjoy it.”
A ledger full of calculations lay open on the table. Starshine wondered what it would show if she were to flip through it. She had gathered all the material she was going to gather, though. She had to write her article from what she already had. It was over.
“I just can’t stay any longer,” she continued. “I have… personal reasons. I’m sorry I can’t give you two weeks’ notice. I would’ve liked to, but it’s kind of urgent.”
“I see,” Tony said. “I’m sorry to hear that. I think you’re a great waitress. You’d be welcome to come back here anytime you want.”
Starshine nodded, somewhat moved. She had enjoyed being a waitress more than she had expected. And she was decent at it, if she did say so herself. Not just anyone could have taken on this assignment. She’d done better here than she did at her actual job.
If Kylie didn’t hate her, she might have wanted to stay.
“Thank you for that,” she said quietly. “I guess I’ll come see you at the end of the night and we can talk about my salary and so on.”
“All right,” Tony said.
Starshine nodded. Her notice was officially in, and this was her last night.
This was really happening.
Twenty-Five
Kylie walked out of the dance area, aware that her performance had been subpar. The bad girl thing was easy, but doing it again and again was a
llowing her to slip into a routine. Her mind was not on dancing. It was on a certain undercover reporter who had snuck into her heart. She had been thrown for a loop, and now she had to figure out how she felt about it.
As she watched Starshine across the room, she wondered if her initial reaction had been too harsh. Starshine was still the same girl she had come to know. Well, she thought she was, but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t know anything about Starshine, and at this point she didn’t care about finding out.
Starshine had been planning to write an article about the restaurant. To expose everything about them. That was Kylie’s private life she was talking about. She also might hurt the restaurant if she wrote about the wrong things.
So yeah, Kylie was pissed, and as she thought about it, she was pretty sure she had every reason to be. She wouldn’t let herself get sidetracked by Starshine’s ridiculous good looks. She had to maintain this anger, because it was the right thing to feel.
Kylie felt silly for even having a crush on Starshine. She’d probably only go for a girl who was college-educated and had a real job. Not someone like Kylie.
As Kylie walked around the room, Starshine came up to her. “Hey, Kylie. Can we talk?”
“We can’t,” Kylie said, turning away immediately.
“Come on, don’t be like that…”
Starshine trailed off as Kylie walked away.
Kylie was being rude, but she didn’t care. She sat down with a group of customers, still fuming over Starshine’s attempt to talk to her. As the night passed, Starshine just tried more and more. Starshine was persistent. Everywhere that Kylie turned, she was there with her pleading eyes and sad words. Kylie would have thought Starshine wanted to apologize or something, but knowing her, she probably just wanted more material for her article.
She wondered if that article would include something about herself. Maybe people would like to read about the waitress Starshine had hooked up with. Of course, that was all it would be now. Why would Starshine include that they had fooled around once? Kylie obviously meant nothing to her. And she never would.
It was close to one when Starshine caught her coming out of the change room. “Kylie, I wish you would give me a chance to explain.”
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