He Must Like You

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  “What’s this?” Reg says, eyes narrowing.

  “I wondered if maybe you might be hiring . . . ?”

  “You serious?” Reg says.

  “Very,” I say.

  “Aren’t you Rick Stowe’s kid?”

  “Um, yes . . .” I say, wondering why he suddenly looks so annoyed. Should I have bought a coffee first?

  “I can’t hire the daughter of the man who boycotted me and then trash-talked me all over town,” Reg says, looking distinctly unfriendly.

  “Oh, but . . .” That was a long time ago and I’ve been a customer here many times since. I’d assumed he was over it.

  “All about the size of our take-out cups!” Reg says, voice rising. “He stood here, in my place, screaming his stupid head off at me. Then stood out front screaming his head off some more. And now you want a job?”

  “Well . . . yes,” I manage to say, despite my fast-warming face and all the people now staring at me.

  “No way,” he says, practically shouting. “Hard pass.”

  “Oh. Um.” If I could find a way to vanish in a puff of smoke right now, that would be great. As it is, Reg is handing me back my résumé, and all I can do is take it with a mumbled “thank you anyway,” and get out of there as fast as possible.

  Out on the street I hustle down the block, hot from embarrassment despite the icy air. I pass Just Coffee, recalling how Dad took his business there after boycotting Fancy Lattes, and briefly consider putting it back on the list of places to apply. But Dad got banned from there eventually, too.

  Right then. I take a few breaths, watching the fog of each exhale dissipate, and decide to go to Maggie’s Diner next. Surely Maggie won’t yell at me—Maggie is sweet. And she does give me a lovely smile when I pass her my résumé and ask my question about employment.

  But then she says, with a less lovely smile, “I was on Town Council with your father.”

  “Ah . . .” I say in a one-size-fits-all tone that I hope can be interpreted as anything from “Ah, yes, my dad spoke so well of you” if by some chance she’s a fan of my dad to “Ah, well, that’s unfortunate but look what a friendly, inoffensive person I am in comparison . . .” if she’s not. Because I don’t know what happened with my dad and the town council, only that his tenure was short.

  The slight wince Maggie makes before saying, “Would you consider yourself to be a team player?” tells me she’s in the non-fan category.

  “Yes, definitely. Like my mom! You know my mom, Andrea, don’t you? She’s concierge at the Inn? I worked in the gift shop there, and . . .” I trail off, feeling almost too pathetic to live.

  Maggie gives me a pitying look and says she’ll get back to me in a couple of months.

  Awesome.

  At 50 Mile, which is connected to the Inn, and where they only use ingredients that come from within a fifty-mile radius, they tell me straight up that they have nothing against my dad (as though this needs to be clarified), and love my mom, but that they only hire servers with a minimum of two years’ experience.

  At Crawler’s Pub, things start out more promising. Lyle, the string bean of a man who manages it, takes one look at the last name on my résumé, starts laughing uproariously, and says, “Rick Stowe’s kid? Your father is a first-rate shit disturber. What the hell’s he been up to?”

  “He’s . . . uh . . .” Plotting my downfall via Airbnb. “Working on a few things.”

  “The guy’s a legend. Knows how to stick it to the man, that’s for sure,” Lyle says, then points to a barstool. I sit, he pours me a soda, and then he starts regaling me with stories about my dad.

  “You know that big moose statue in front of the library?” Lyle says.

  I nod.

  “Your dad tried to unseat the mayor with that moose.”

  “What?”

  “This was maybe before you were born,” Lyle says, clapping his hands together and rubbing them with remembered glee. “Mayor was up for reelection, no one running against her, and your dad thought that was wrong. ‘Everyone should be challenged,’ is what he said. ‘Helps them grow.’”

  I roll my eyes—this sounds all too familiar.

  “But he didn’t want the job himself and couldn’t convince anyone else to run,” Lyle continues. “So he registered the moose as a candidate and ran a campaign—with slogans and a real platform and everything. ‘Mr. Moose for Mayor.’”

  “Oh my God.”

  “It was a good campaign too—pointed and kinda funny. Mr. Moose even got some votes! I thought that was great but your dad—he got a little too caught up in it all, and he took it hard that the moose didn’t win. I dunno how he ever thought that’s what would happen, but I had him in here drowning his sorrows for weeks after that.”

  “Wow,” I say, thinking that, as with everything about my dad, this story is a mixed bag—surprising, hilarious, but ultimately sad.

  Lyle continues with the anecdotes—some I’ve heard, many I could do without. It’s not a typical job interview, but I feel like it’s going well until Lyle tells me he has no openings at the moment.

  “Still, if anything happens, I’ll keep you in mind,” he says as I head for the door, trying not to let my shoulders slump in disappointment.

  I thank him and trudge over to my final destination—the bistro next to the brokerage Dad used to work for and where he used to have lunch a couple of times a week. We went there as a family, too, after Jack’s football games back when we were normal-ish and did things together.

  I’ve saved this one for last, thinking it might be my best chance. Because whatever else, Dad is always nice to servers, and a good tipper. In fact, he loves to say you can judge a person’s character by the way they treat dogs and waiters. I’m pretty sure this bit of “wisdom” is problematic for both dogs and waiters, but in this case he means well.

  My hope rises when I see the HELP WANTED sign out front, and rises further when the manager—the same one who’s been there for years—gives me a big, welcoming smile.

  But then I tell her why I’m here, and her smile wilts and suddenly she’s glancing nervously toward the wall the bistro shares with Dad’s old brokerage and saying, “I don’t want any trouble,” and then muttering something about politics.

  My heart sinks as I realize she must be one of the people who received Dad’s infamous email—the one that ended his career. Agents get fired by clients sometimes, but it takes a lot to get fired from your brokerage—they’re usually happy to keep you even if you’re a deadbeat and all they’re collecting is your desk fee. But Dad used the brokerage’s newsletter list to send out a fiery partisan email during the last election, making it look like the brokerage was endorsing one party over another, infuriating everyone, and that was it. Neither of the other two real estate companies in town would take Dad on after that, and when he tried to go independent he couldn’t get any clients, because by then everyone—even those who agreed with his politics—considered him a loose cannon.

  “We’re not hiring, hon,” the manager says.

  “But . . . the sign . . .” I say, pointing to it.

  “Oh it’s, uh, just stuck there,” she says, with the most unconvincing shrug ever. “Sorry.”

  Right.

  * * *

  —

  I’m about to give up on the serving idea and start applying for retail jobs, which won’t get me to college, but will hopefully help me pay rent, when Noah (of the stolen art on my wall) remembers the Goat.

  The Goat isn’t in Pine Ridge. It’s out on the highway, between Pine Ridge and the next town. It’s part gritty roadside pub, part failed chain restaurant, and under new ownership since last spring. I make a call, the owner agrees to meet me, and it feels like a miracle.

  It’s snowing on the day of the interview, and Noah offers to borrow one of his dad’s snowplow trucks to drive me there.r />
  I tell myself that the extra makeup and the cute dress with black tights and impractical-for-snow heeled boots, not to mention the nerves, are for the interview. I can’t even bring myself to look at Noah as I climb in, so there’s no way to notice whether he notices, which he shouldn’t because he has a completely perfect, albeit long-distance, girlfriend.

  But then, in his usual, overly blunt way, Noah says, “Whoa, you look hot.”

  He doesn’t mean anything by it.

  Well, he means it, but Noah would say the same to Emma, or our friend Yaz, or even Boris (Emma’s boyfriend, and my ex—long story) if Boris ever managed to look hot, versus wet-behind-the-ears cute. Noah tends to be a bit filter-less, but he’s also annoyingly honorable and would never cheat on Ava, so it’s not a come-on.

  Still.

  “Thanks,” I say, then finally look over at him, and in an effort to be casual add, “And you look . . . a tad scruffy, hair verging on a mullet, but clean.”

  “You don’t like my almost-mullet?” he says, putting the truck in reverse.

  I do like it. He could do whatever he wanted with his hair—dark brown, straight with tips that start to curve up at the ends when it gets long—and I would like it. Just like I like his soulful brown eyes, aquiline nose, winter-pale skin, narrowish face, and all the other features that somehow over the last couple of years transformed (in my eyes anyway, and unfortunately while I was supposed to be in love with someone else) from ordinary to remarkable.

  “I’m just bugging you,” I say.

  “Ya gotta try harder than that,” he says, starting off down my street. “Like, attack my character, or argue that Georgian architecture is better than Gothic.”

  “Oh, I would never!” I say, feigning shock.

  We lapse into comfortable silence—well, as comfortable as it can be when I’m breathing in the cinnamon soap/beautiful boy smell of him and having visions of leaning over and kissing his neck, and then mentally slapping myself for the thought.

  We turn out of my neighborhood toward the highway. I watch the big, fluffy snowflakes land on the windshield, each one just starting to melt before the wipers dispatch them, and try to chill out. It’s not too far to the Goat. Close enough that as soon as the snow melts I’d be able to save money by riding my bike there. If they hire me, that is. And that’s a big if.

  “You nervous?” he says.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, a bit. I’m just hoping they’ll give me a chance.”

  “Want me to come in and vouch for you? I happen to know you’re a very upstanding human being.”

  “No, but thanks. Any idea why this place is called the Goat? I don’t go out much these days.”

  “Apparently the goat used to be a donkey—”

  “I remember the donkey.”

  “Yeah, it’s memorable. And because it was so visible from the roof, the new owners didn’t want to take it down. But apparently, the old chain restaurant owns the right to the image of that particular donkey, so they couldn’t keep it as is. Instead, they decided to modify it. Had someone come in and add horns and turn it into a goat. It’s pretty funny, actually, though I dunno if the funny part is intentional. We’ll be able to see it in a minute or two.”

  The goat on the roof comes into view soon, and it is indeed funny—kitschy and weird and rather endearing.

  We make up a series of names for it, laughing all the way down the highway and into the parking lot, where Noah wishes me luck and waits while I go in.

  And finally something good happens: They do not know my dad at the Goat, and they don’t mind my lack of experience.

  Noah and I go to Just Coffee to celebrate (Reg was so horrible to me that I’m actually considering following in my dad’s footsteps and boycotting Fancy Lattes), and I start working two days later.

  5

  KYLE

  Within a week I’ve memorized the menu, done my three shadow training shifts, and am working as much as they’ll let me.

  The job is challenging, but mostly in a good way, and my coworkers are friendly enough once I start to prove myself. The only minor annoyance is Kyle, whom I start out disliking on principal after he tells me he’s only working “for fun” and for extra cash to “pimp” his “ride”—i.e., the perfectly good truck his parents bought for him.

  Kyle is, overall, just too carefree for his own good, walking around the Goat with his shaggy, bleach-blond hair and ocean-colored eyes, looking for all the world like a surfer who’s lost his beach. Nobody should look like that in the middle of winter.

  But . . . there’s nothing actually wrong with Kyle as a person, and despite my overall feeling that he’s too attractive/privileged/charming/chill to be real, he starts to wear me down. He works hard, he’s fun, he busses a lot of my tables in his capacity as host, and he saves my butt on multiple occasions by delivering food and drinks when I’m in the weeds.

  And then I take as many extra shifts as I can get during the March Break, and lo and behold, so does Kyle.

  “Most of my friends are on vacation somewhere,” I say to him the first Friday night as we sit in a booth doing the last batch of cutlery roll-ups. “How come you’re not?”

  “Eh,” he says with a dismissive wave, “my mom and sister went to Florida to see my grandparents, but I didn’t feel like it. I’ve been a bunch of times.”

  “Poor you.”

  “No, no,” he says, missing or ignoring my sarcasm. “I just wanted to stay home with my dad this year. We leave our dirty socks everywhere, eat pizza, binge-watch bad TV, act like bachelors. That’s its own kind of vacation.”

  “Dirty socks on the floor equals vacation? Sounds stinky.”

  “Exactly.” He gives me a dazzlingly unapologetic grin. “How ’bout you?”

  “No vacation to beg off from and I need the money from the extra shifts for school next year—tuition, books, housing. Or, failing that, for the year after. Turns out I have, uh, less money saved than I thought and now I’m scrambling.”

  “You shoulda told me! I can hook you up!”

  “With what?”

  “The best tables, obviously. I am the host,” he says the way someone else might say, “I’m the king!”

  “You can’t do that,” I protest. “Other people need the money too.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to shaft anybody,” he says, twirling a roll-up in one hand like a mini baton. “But I’m starting to know who the big spenders are, and I can send some your way.”

  “Thanks, but I’m good.”

  “Okay, I won’t,” he says, and then winks, looking ridiculous in a baseball hat with goat horns seeming to grow out the top of it.

  He does, though. He gives me fewer kid birthday parties, more couples on dates, more thirsty postgame sports teams, and lots of men, including Perry Ackerman.

  Eight days later, on my final March Break shift—a Saturday night—Noah comes in with Ava, who’s visiting from the city. Just what I need at the end of a ten-day stretch in which I’ve worked five split shifts (lunch + dinner) and three closing shifts (dinner until close—as late as two a.m. by the time the cleaning up is done), done zero homework, and had no sleep. I am haggard, smell like a deep fryer, and feel about as sexy as a dead cactus.

  Ava, whom Noah met while staying with his mom last summer, is painfully adorable and about as opposite from me in looks as a person can be. She’s short and tiny-but-curvy with curly black hair and blue eyes so big and round they could belong to an anime character. I’m not hideous or anything, but I feel like a bag of sand next to Ava. I feel very medium compared to her—medium height, medium build, and sand-colored all over. Even my eyes can’t decide between being brown and green and therefore come out looking almost the same shade as the rest of me, only shinier.

  But you’d have to have a heart of stone not to like Ava. She’s sweet and smart and tonight she see
ms a little down. They both do—probably because she’s leaving tomorrow. And so, as part of my ongoing efforts to not act jealous, or give my feelings away whatsoever, I take it upon myself to cheer them up. I’m so successful that they stay for hours, laughing and canoodling and lingering over dessert and coffee.

  Which serves me right, I suppose.

  They do eventually leave, but not before Ava hugs me about a million times and Noah thanks me sincerely enough to make me feel like the worst person on earth, since all I really want is for her to go away and never come back.

  Finally, when the last stragglers are gone, the sections are all cleared and wiped down with vinegar, ketchups are married, roll-ups are rolled, sugars, salts, and peppers are filled, and chairs are put up, it’s over. My feet and knees are throbbing, my brain feels like it’s just survived a hurricane, my heart aches, and I have that end-of-shift tired/wired feeling that sometimes takes hours to come down from no matter how exhausted I am.

  I scarf down a bowl of lemon rice made with fresh curry leaves, ginger, green chilies, and lentils. Maya makes a big pot of something simple for the staff every day that we can help ourselves to, and it’s always ridiculously tasty. (Plus I never knew until I started working here that curry came in any form but powder.) Feeling nourished and slightly less jangled, I drift over to the bar, where Nita, as she does sometimes on weekends, pours beer for the remaining staff. Kyle and I are underage, but all the customers, plus Dev and Maya, are gone, so she winks and pours each of us one too. It starts to turn into a bit of a party, but Nita’s too cautious to let it continue very long, which is how I end up inviting everyone to come over and hang out in my basement.