THE CLOCK ON MY nightstand reads 2:41 AM.
I’ve been tossing and turning since ten o’clock, when I took a Benadryl and a melatonin and thought I could force myself into a coma-like sleep.
All I wanted was to shut my mind off for two seconds, to stop the spinning and the madness and the questions that’ve been playing on a loop in my head since Isaiah walked into my café yesterday morning and pretended like he’d never seen me in his life.
Sitting up and finally accepting the fact that I’m not going to get a single minute of respite tonight, I click on my lamp and reach into the drawer of my bedside table, grabbing a pen and the notebook of letters I’d written Isaiah for a brief period of time when he was supposedly out on some mission—before the radio silence.
Flipping to an empty page in the middle, I write a letter that’ll never be sent, but at least if I get it all on paper and out of my head, I might be able to catch some sleep before the sun comes up.
Dear Isaiah,
Eight months ago, you were just a soldier about to be deployed and I was just a waitress, sneaking you a free pancake and hoping you wouldn’t notice that my gaze was lingering a little too long.
But you did notice.
We spent one life-changing week together before you left, and we said goodbye on day eight, exchanging addresses at the last minute.
I saved every letter you wrote me, your words quickly becoming my religion.
But you went radio silent on me months ago, and then you had the audacity to walk into my diner yesterday and act like you’d never seen me in your life.
To think … I almost loved you and your beautifully complicated soul.
Almost.
Whatever your reason is—I hope it’s a good one.
Maritza the Waitress
PS – I hate you, and this time … I mean it.
Pulling in a long, cool breath and letting it go, I close the notebook and tuck it away in the drawer before clicking my lamp off. Lying down and pulling the covers up, I stare at a dark ceiling before closing my eyes.
My mind is barely lighter than it was before, but my thoughts seem to have quieted a bit.
In the still, small minutes before I finally drift off, I remind myself that LA is full of people who use people, people who do unscrupulous things and who have no qualms about hurting others.
Isaiah Torres was never anything special—he was just another run-of-the-mill LA asshole.
“MORNING, HOLLIE.” I TIE my apron around my waist and glance at the clock to confirm that I am, in fact, on time for work. Normally I can go a whole shift without seeing her because she’s usually hiding in the back, door closed and only emerging when there’s an issue.
But today it’s like she was waiting.
“I need to see you in my office.” My manager says a sentence I’ve never heard her say in all of my time here. She doesn’t smile.
“Everything okay?” I ask, following her to the back.
Hollie says nothing and I find myself holding my breath without even thinking about it. Every silent second is torture.
“Close the door, please, Maritza,” she says once we’re there. “Have a seat.”
Oh, god. I’m being fired.
Grabbing a sticky note off her computer monitor, she exhales. “I got a call from a customer last night.”
I glance down at my lap, realizing I’ve been digging my nails into my palms this entire time.
“He had a very unsatisfactory experience here yesterday,” she continues. “And he said you were his server.”
“Hollie, I’m so sorry and I can explain.” My gaze flicks into hers.
Her brows lift. “No need. He didn’t want to get into specifics.”
Leaning back against the chair, I peer to the side. None of this makes sense.
“Anyway, I wanted to tell you that each and every customer who walks through our door needs to have a five-star experience,” she says. “And as a server, you’re one of the many faces of this restaurant. It’s your job to represent Brentwood Pancake and Coffee in a way that’s going to keep them coming back.”
“I know. And normally I do that, but this—”
“Rachael does a fine job,” she says. “So does Harry. And Pam. And Chloe.”
I bite my tongue. The comparisons aren’t necessary and besides, I’m the one who trained all of them.
“If anything like this so much as happens again, Maritza, I’m going to have no choice but to let you go,” she says, thin lips forming a hard line. “Anyway, I don’t normally do this, but he was rather persistent and I wasn’t in a place to disappoint him since he’d just had a God-awful experience with us, but here.”
Hollie hands me the yellow sticky note where a phone number is scribbled in blue pen alongside the name “Torres.”
It’s an LA area code, but the last four digits of the number are unfamiliar—he must have changed his number.
“He’d like you to call him when you get a chance,” she says, head tilting as she exhales. “While you have him on the phone, I’d highly recommend a profuse apology.”
I nod, not sure what he’s hoping to accomplish from this phone call—or if I’ll even call him for that matter.
“Now, get back out there,” she says, rising from her desk and adjusting her blouse. “Let’s make today a better day than yesterday.”
Piece of cake.
Any day would be better than yesterday.
“JUST CALL HIM,” MELROSE says, watching me pace my room. “For the love of God, just get it over with. See what he wants. Do it for yourself because you know and I know that if you don’t do this, you’re going to spend the rest of your life wondering what he wanted. Aren’t you curious?”
“Of course I’m curious. I just can’t decide if this is worth it—giving him another ounce of my time or energy.”
Melrose pulls her legs onto my bed before bringing her knees against her chest. “Do you want me to do it? I can pretend to be you. I can talk the way you talk … I took an impressions class last year.”
I stop pacing for a second and give her a crazy-eyed glance. “Pass.”
She shrugs. “Well, the offer still stands if you change your mind.”
“I’m not afraid to talk to him. It’s not that I’m physically incapable of calling him. I just don’t want him to know that what he did got to me, you know? I don’t want to give him that satisfaction.”
“So call him and be a mega bitch,” she says. “I know you’re usually the nicest, sweetest person who ever did live, but maybe show him your super-secret evil crazy lady side. The one that comes out a few days a month … only worse than that.”
Taking a seat on the foot of my bed, I drag my thumb along my screen and pull up the keypad. The sticky note in my left hand is crumpled from shoving it into my apron after leaving Hollie’s office earlier today, but the numbers are still legible.
“Screw it. I’m calling—but only because I just want to get this over with,” I say, tapping out the numbers and hitting the green button.
Sucking in a lungful of vanilla candle-scented bedroom air, I chew my bottom lip and count the rings.
One …
Two …
Three …
Four …
“He’s not answering,” I say, a flash of panic washing over me. I didn’t even consider the fact that he might not answer, and I hate playing phone tag.
“Hello,” Isaiah answers a half-ring later, proving me wrong.
“Hey, it’s Maritza,” I say. “You wanted me to call you?”
“Maritza the waitress from Brentwood?” he asks.
I exhale, gaze locked with my cousin. “Yep. That’s me.”
The line is quiet for a split second, though for some reason that second feels like forever.
“So … what do you have to say for yourself?” I ask because I haven’t got all night. “What was that about earlier?”
“Can you meet me somewhere?” he asks. “I need to sp
eak to you. In person.”
My jaw hangs. “I don’t know. I’ve got a lot going on these days.”
“It’s important,” he says. “And it won’t take long.”
“Is there a reason you can’t tell me right now? Over the phone?” I chuff.
“Yeah,” Isaiah says. “This is just something I’d rather tell you face to face.”
“I WOULD’VE ORDERED YOU a coffee, but I wasn’t sure what you drink.” Isaiah stands when I arrive at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on San Vicente the following morning. He’s dressed in a gray suit sans jacket and his hand grazes against his skinny black tie when he sits.
“I don’t remember you being this … formal.” My discerning gaze scans the length of him before returning to his familiar amber eyes.
Everything about him is off … from the way he dresses to the way he carries himself and even the way he looks at me, but we established that two days ago.
Taking a seat and opting not to buy a drink because I don’t plan to stay long, I fold my arms across my chest and give him my full attention.
“So?” I ask. “What is this thing you just had to tell me in person, Isaiah? And I can call you that, right? Since we’re done playing this we’ve-never-met-before-in-our-lives bullshit game of yours?”
He offers a pained smile before licking his full lips and straightening his shoulders. “That’s the thing … I’m not Isaiah.”
“Ha.” I shake my head, rising and slinging my bag over my shoulder. “Right, right.”
He’s mental.
He’s completely mental.
And now he’s wasted my time.
“Maritza, please. Sit down. I’m not finished.” He reaches into his back pocket, retrieving a brown leather wallet and flipping it open to his driver’s license.
My eyes go to his photo. “Okay. What am I looking at?”
His thumb slides next to the name.
Ian Torres.
“Isaiah’s my twin brother,” he says, folding his wallet and returning it to his pocket. “My identical twin brother.”
Swallowing the hard ball in my throat, I rub my lips together, studying his face. I suppose when you’ve only known someone a little over a week and you don’t see them for the better part of a year and you don’t know they have an identical twin … it’d be easy to make assumptions when someone bearing their likeness walks into your life.
But out of all the crazy explanations my mind’s been crafting up these last few days, this one seems to be the most plausible.
And it makes sense—the way he carries himself, the way he’s dressed.
Nothing about the man sitting in front of me is familiar besides his golden stare and chiseled features.
“He never told me he had a brother,” I manage to say.
Ian smirks, rapping his knuckles against the table top. “Yeah, well, we don’t exactly speak to each other these days. He likes to pretend I’m dead.”
I can’t stop staring as I let this sink in.
“After I went back to work the other day, I got to thinking about the way you were talking to me, like I was familiar to you, and then it dawned on me,” he says. “You thought I was my brother.”
“I’m sorry. I truly am.”
He waves his hand. “Look, I’ve been cleaning up after his messes my whole life. This is nothing new. I just wanted to sit you down and tell you this in person. I just started a job in Brentwood at Cottage Financial Group so on the off-chance we bump into each other around town, I figured I should clear this up.”
“Thank you, Ian. I appreciate you taking the time to do this.”
Ian shrugs. “My brother, uh … he’s got some demons. Let me just put it that way.”
“Demons?”
“He’s not a good person, Maritza. I’m sorry you got mixed up with him.”
“I didn’t get mixed up with him. We spent a week together before he left for his deployment and we exchanged some letters and then I never heard from him again,” I say. It sounds so simple when I summarize it.
Ian chuckles. “Yep. Sounds like him.”
“What, is this his M.O. or something? Does he do this sort of thing a lot?” I ask.
His jaw juts forward as he contemplates an answer. “Let’s just say he’s a creature of habit.”
Great.
“Isaiah tends to write people off once he gets what he needs from them,” he says. “And then he moves on. I’ve seen him hurt people and destroy lives and not think twice about it. It’s like he doesn’t have a conscience.”
My gaze narrows. “That sounds nothing like the guy I met.”
“I know, right? He’s good at what he does. He’s good at seeming normal and likable and being the good time guy everyone thinks is cool, but he’s anything but,” Ian says.
We linger in silence, me soaking up this new reality and Ian reaching his hand across the table to cup mine. It’s a sweet gesture if not a little awkward, seeing how we literally just met two days ago.
“Did he come home?” I ask. “From Afghanistan?”
Ian exhales through his nose, studying me. “He did.”
My eyes burn, but I blink them away, hating that there’s an ache in my chest more intense than the one that was there before.
“Look, I can see that he hurt you,” Ian says, his palm still cupping the top of my hand. “But believe me when I say this, Maritza, you’re better off without him in your life.”
“SO YEAH, WE WERE lying on his couch last night watching Interstellar and his phone kept going off. I saw him silence it. A half hour later he got another text and then he started acting weird and said I should probably leave because he had a test to study for all of a sudden …” I tell Rachael about my night with Blake as we stand outside the back entrance to the café, waiting for Hollie to unlock the door. “So I called him on it. I refused to leave until he told me why he was acting so weird and then he confessed.”
“Confessed what?” she asks.
“That he has a girlfriend,” I say. “And he’s had one the whole time.”
“But you two weren’t dating, right? And you haven’t slept together.”
“Right,” I say. “But I don’t want to be someone’s side piece and I feel like we were headed in that direction.”
Hollie opens the door and we shuffle in, one of the chefs staying a few steps behind us with his nose buried in his phone.
“I just feel like he left out a crucial piece of information,” I say. “So we’re done hanging out. I can’t trust a guy who has a girlfriend and tries to meet girls on Tinder at the same time.”
“That eliminates ninety-five percent of men in LA.” Rachael clocks in and shoves a pen in her apron.
We check in at the hostess stand with Maddie and get our table assignments, but halfway through the morning rush, a new patron is seated at one of my tables.
“Ian. Hi,” I say, flipping my notepad to a clean page.
“Morning.” He glances up at me with a honey-brown gaze that crinkles at the sides. “Think I’ll try one of those pancakes today. The guys at work won’t shut up about them.”
It’s been a little over a week since I met with him at the coffee shop and he dropped an armful of bombshells in my lap. And I have to say, as wild of a ride as that was, I finally have some semblance of closure.
Everything makes sense now and it boils down to this ugly truth: Isaiah is a womanizer who lied and used me.
Nothing else really matters.
“Good choice,” I say, jotting it down. “And coffee with room for cream and sugar?”
“I forgot. You’re psychic,” he says with a wink and a smirk.
Everything about Ian is sweet and disarming today, and while I don’t know him, we almost have this common bond, this shared secret.
Leaving to grab a coffee carafe from the back, I return to fill up his mug, leaving a couple inches at the top. “Going to work today?”
Ian adjusts his tie. “How’d you guess?”
> “Promise I won’t make you late this time.”
His mouth curls at one side as he makes his coffee.
“I’ll be back in a bit, all right?” I ask, resting my hand on his shoulder for a brief second.
“Oh, hey,” he says when I turn to leave. I stop, spinning to face him once more. “Do you maybe … want to grab a drink sometime?”
His question comes out of nowhere and my lips part but nothing comes out until I manage to muster a quick, “Can I … can I think about it?”
“Of course.” Ian’s confidence doesn’t appear to be shaken in the slightest and he reaches for his coffee mug with a steady hand.
Returning to the back, I bump into Rachael hanging a ticket on the line.
“Ian just asked if I wanted to get drinks sometime,” I tell her, leaning close.
“What? No, he didn’t.”
I nod, biting my lip.
“What’d you tell him?” she asks.
“That I’d think about it,” I say.
Rach rolls her eyes. “Which means you’re going to say no.”
“I need a break from men,” I say. “And even if I didn’t, I don’t need to go out with the identical twin of the guy whose face I’d really love to punch right now. It’s confusing. And I don’t need that in my life.”
“Amen, sister.” Rachael laughs before heading back out to the floor.
Peering out toward my tables, I observe Ian for a minute or so, watching him scroll through his phone before tapping out a text and then turning his attention toward the sidewalk outside, people watching.
He’s so sweet and from what I can tell, genuine.
Then again, apparently I’m a horrible judge of character.
I can’t pick the good ones from the bad ones to save my life.
As soon as Ian’s order is up, I run it out to him, making sure to grab a warm bottle of maple syrup on my way.
“You’re not going to regret this,” I tell him.
“These things are like crack, I hear,” he says. “Is it true you only get one?”
“Yeah,” I say.
He spreads a pat of cinnamon butter across the ‘cake. “Sounds like a genius marketing ploy.”
[2018] PS I Hate You Page 17