by Liv Bennett
“Yeah, I am.” I hurry to place the silverware on his table while he’s still standing beside me, facing me, one hand in his pocket, the other running through his hair. I resist the urge to reach out and touch him. It’s hard as hell.
“I guess I’ll be stopping by more often.” He settles back in the booth, clearly not wanting to let me go. “How’s the Legacy doing? Did you take it to a mechanic?”
“Yes, I found one, but I have no idea if they are any good.” I eye Lena who’s tapping her foot on the floor as if she owns the place, and I’m slacking. I’m merely answering questions of a patron while she wasted plenty of time pouring out lies to everyone with a wallet.
“If they can’t fix it, go to Norman’s Auto Workshop down by Arapahoe and 30th. He’ll give you a discount if you give him my name.”
Seizing an opportunity to share his opinion that no one cares about, Max joins in. “Norman is the best in town. Will he give me a discount too if I mention your name?” He laughs, amused by his own joke.
Austin responds with a polite laugh and arches an eyebrow at me, eyes twinkling. “Sorry, but that only works for pretty girls.”
Without even seeing her, I can already tell Lena is having a jealousy attack from witnessing another girl being labeled as pretty. She grabs the box of napkins and rolled-up silverware from me and carries it to the table behind Austin’s booth, effectively ending my conversation with him. I reluctantly follow her and resume placing the silverware under her annoyed stare.
How dare another girl steal her thunder? She’s breathing through her flared nostrils as if I boiled her bunny. Her overreaction tells me her little booty-shake-show a moment ago was performed for Austin.
What I don’t understand is why she’s acting like the boss when Max was sitting right there at the table. Another question to ask Erin when I get her to open up with the help of a little alcohol.
I can’t resist glancing at Austin over my shoulder at every chance I get. My eyes find their way back to his booth on their own accord, and I revel at the sight of him.
As soon as the napkins and silverware are all distributed, Lena sends me to the kitchen to load the dirty plates into the dishwasher to make sure I don’t get to say goodbye to Austin when he leaves.
Ch 4
Knights At Every Turn
Loading the dishwasher isn’t that bad, except for missing the chance to see Austin before he heads out. At least, he mentioned he’d be around again.
Fran is helping the kitchen crew with kneading dough on the long, rectangular kitchen island, while the cook and his assistant are working on ribs and chicken wings, the two protein staples in a pizza joint. My stomach growls. I can’t remember the last time I had ribs, possibly years ago when Dad barbecued during my last summer with them.
I may get lucky if a client returns a plate untouched, but I’m not holding my breath for a free meal on my probationary day. Maybe I’ll get a chance to scarf down a bag of croutons if I’m lucky.
Despite the extra zeros in my bank account, I’m on a strict budget. I can’t cook in my hotel room, so I need to shop for peanut butter, bread, yogurt, and bananas. They should keep me going for a few days until I find a room for rent, ideally at Erin’s place since she was Ruby’s roommate.
After the dishes, I return to my spot at the front desk. Not a single customer comes in during the next two hours, and without any distractions, I count the seconds. I’d rather work as a cashier at Walmart on Christmas Eve than to want to stab my eyes out from boredom in a restaurant with slow business.
Erin approaches me, not letting on about her own boredom. “Hey, did you have anything to eat?”
My stomach feels like a deep black hole of emptiness. “No.”
“There’s spaghetti with meatballs for employees. Go help yourself. I’ll watch your spot for you.”
My eyes search for Lena, who is thankfully out of sight—for now. “I don’t want to get into trouble with Lena.” I emphasize Lena to get Erin to talk.
“Oh. Don’t worry. Lunch break is your right.” Erin isn’t one to gossip behind people’s back, I can see. I value this rare virtue, but right now, a gossipmonger would be more helpful given my needs.
I lean against the front desk and put on a cautious smile. “What’s up with her anyway? I thought Max was the manager. Is she his assistant?” I blurt out like it’s an innocent assumption.
“No, she’s not. Lena has been around the longest, even before Max became the manager. She knows many patrons by their first names. She’s great at what she’s doing. Max knows the restaurant will close for good if Lena leaves. She can be a bit bossy, but it’s all for the good of the restaurant.”
Who should come along right in the middle of our moment of gossip? Lena. “What are you guys talking about?” Lena grins with no hint of bossiness as if she wants to join our gossip party.
Erin returns her grin with a polite smile. “We were just talking about who has been around for how long. As far as I know, you started here before anyone else, even Max. I was hired maybe a month after Max became the manager—almost a year now. Fran has only been around since August.”
“Yeah, that’s about right,” Lena confirms with a nod of her head. “I’ve been working here for over four years, Max and you one year, and Fran only two months. She started at the beginning of the semester, the same week as Ruby, the girl who killed herself.”
Hearing Ruby’s name so unexpectedly feels like the stab of a knife in my chest.
Even if Fran wasn’t involved in Ruby’s death, since she and Ruby started working at the restaurant around the same time, she and Ruby might have developed some kind of friendship. Who knows, maybe Ruby shared some crucial information with her.
“I see,” I mutter, shaking and out of breath.
“Are you all right?” Erin frowns, worried.
“Just starving.”
Turning to Lena, Erin mentions my starvation, and Lena approves of me breaking for my late lunch and lets me eat at one of the tables by the window to give the appearance of having patrons.
I dig into my spaghetti bowl, my eyes on Fran like a hawk. She’s just been in the background for me since I’ve been here. Now that I’ve discovered a common ground between her and Ruby, she’s become the most interesting of my coworkers. I should have paid equal attention to her as I did to the others. I probably missed a whole lot of useful information about her.
As I watch her throughout the afternoon—hopefully, discreetly—I realize she’s an introvert. She keeps the chatting to a minimum and gets out of Lena’s way whenever she can—smart move as far as I’m concerned. She’s also polite to a fault. Just like Ruby was.
Close to five p.m., the restaurant is still a ghost house, and I manage to take another break to get my car from the mechanic. The real buzz begins when the clock turns six. Guests come in groups of three or more, ordering plenty of food and alcohol to make up for the empty hours of the day.
After standing ten hours with few breaks, my legs are hurting all the way from my heels to my hips. Max calls me to his office a little before closing and asks me to sign a few documents to officially hire me as the hostess with a promise to promote me to waitress in two months.
I’m as over the moon as if I’d gotten a job at NASA. Not toning down his perverseness, Max lets his eyes take a sweep of my body. I know I should get used to it or learn to ignore it, but for now, I get a bad taste in my mouth, looking at his hungry eyes.
Exhaustion deep in my bones, I walk as slowly as possible back to the downtown public garage where I parked my car. My eyes roam up and down Pearl Street which is looking extra lively in the nighttime with the street lights on and people dressed for a long night of fun.
I walk idly, passing a cosmetics store, a Middle Eastern fast food restaurant, a real estate agency, and a bank. I stop suddenly and walk the two steps back to re-read the name of the real estate agency.
Knight Real Estate.
What are the odds of the a
gency belonging to Austin? Very small, considering his young age, but his father or uncle maybe?
A few shops later, another business carries Knight in its title. Knight Construction. My piqued curiosity fuels a new breath of energy into my veins, and I pull out my unreliable phone to google him.
A text from Tara blares on the screen. It was sent four hours ago. Did you get the job? I picture her sitting on pins and needles while waiting for a response since she pressed SEND.
I’m not wrong. She sent a voice mail two hours after the text. Call me when you can. Your father and I are worried about you.
“Worried about me,” as in where are you with our plan?
I type her a quick text; I got the job. Battery about to die. Will call you when I get back to the hotel.
True to my word, my phone beeps with the low battery sign. I hurry to type Austin Knight in Google and go through about half a dozen people with the same name. I add Boulder beside his name, and the first page that pops up is his Facebook page.
Of course, right when things get exciting, my phone beeps the low battery alert and turns off the next second.
I need a new phone. I need a condo with a real kitchen in it so I can cook myself some comfort food. Mac and Cheese and popcorn would soothe away all my exhaustion right now.
I make it to the garage at last and pay the parking fee before getting into my car. It costs fifteen frigging dollars without any validation. Fifteen dollars I could have spent on a big, juicy hamburger. I stop by a supermarket on my way to the hotel and hurry to fill up my basket with anything that’s under one dollar and can last more than two days.
Today’s manager special; a pack of organic Greek yogurt for a whopping ninety-nine cents. I eat three cups before going to bed. Needless to say, my sleep is deep and refreshing that night. I even forget to charge my phone.
Ch 5
Perky Tits & Unexpected Dates
Shit! How could I forget to charge my phone? It’s unreliable as it is with regular charging. That realization isn’t what jolts me up at six o’clock in the morning, though. It’s the sound of a ringing phone.
Rubbing my eyes, I skim around the room for the source of the sound, my mind still groggy. The flashing light on the nightstand grabs my attention. My eyes pop out at the sight of the hotel phone I’ve just noticed. Its ringing sounds angrier at each passing second it goes unanswered.
Clearing my throat, I pick up the receiver. “Hello?”
“You said you’d call! Why don’t you answer your phone?” Tara yells at the other end of the line. I’m not imagining her anger. She’s fuming. I’ve witnessed her anger attacks one too many times, I can picture the weird twitching on her left cheek and her flashing eyes without seeing her.
During one of her anger attacks, she slapped me right before school, for not putting on my jacket fast enough. My jaw hurt from the impact of it, and I had to cover my cheek with my hair so my friends wouldn’t notice the finger marks on my face.
I don’t have to tolerate her anger anymore. For once, she needs me, not the other way around. It’s time she realizes it too.
“Call me back when you calm the fuck down!” I hang up. Sweet justice. I texted her I got the job anyway. What else does she need to know so urgently to wake me up at six?
Sliding down my bed, I plug my cell phone into its charger and run the water in the shower.
The hotel phone rings again. I go about my morning, letting it ring for a good minute until I pick it up.
“Yeah?” My casual voice must be killing Tara from the inside.
“Good morning, Ashley.” She must be seething through her teeth for having to wish something good for me for a change.
“Sorry, I need to go. The shower water is running. What do you need?” Unfortunately for her, she made the wrong asshole her enemy.
“Oh, I just wondered how your day was yesterday.” Jesus, she can be sweet too. It’s all about training, I guess.
“It was good. I got the job. My phone keeps shutting off. I really need a new one. Can you guys get me a new one? I heard the new iPhones have really long-lasting batteries.” I grin to myself. I wouldn’t have brought up an iPhone if she hadn’t woken me up with a furious phone call.
“Why don’t you buy one with the money your father gave you?” She thinks she’s the smarter one between us.
I let out a sigh of impatience. “All right, I’ll keep my old phone. I really need to go now. The bathtub will overflow. Tell Dad I said hi.” She needs to pay the price if she wants to get ahold of me whenever she wants.
“Wait, wait. We’ll buy you a new phone, but keep us updated regularly, okay?” Probably as in every hour.
“All right, bye.” Replacing the phone, I wonder what else I can get her to do every time she misbehaves.
It’s only six fifteen after my shower which means I have over four and half hours to kill until work at eleven. I find a pair of Lululemon yoga pants and head for the hotel gym, which consists of two treadmills that are already occupied, an ancient rowing machine, and a rack of barbells.
Signing up for RockAthletic is on my to-do list anyway. I locate the RockAthletic gym Ruby signed up for on Google maps. It’s on the west side of the college campus and a five-minute drive away from me.
It was one of the few bits of information I’d shared with Ruby about my new life away from home. I’d started working at the front desk for a RockAthletic gym in South Denver, and they’d let me join their daily drill program for free. It was hard as hell—I threw up the first three sessions and nearly gave up. It got easier with time, though, and I liked how strong I felt. Unfortunately, my free RockAthletic workouts had to come to an end when I found a better-paying job as an office assistant in a software startup.
Still, I remember how I raved about RockAthletic to Ruby more than once. She must have tried it out because of my unintended advertising. I’ll feel terrible if she got into trouble because of her membership there.
Hurrying, I make it in time for the seven a.m. workout session after signing up for a free one-week trial. The session has eighty percent dudes—all with thighs and biceps bigger than my torso and more than half with tattoos. The only other two women are middle-aged and chatting with each other, and by the look of their toned bodies, are regulars and clearly not interested in making a newbie feel welcome.
The tall blonde is wearing a pair of short yoga pants and a crop top, highlighting her toned muscles and clearly fake tits. She’s past the soccer mom stage. She’s a cougar.
My first thought is she’s not here just for workouts, and her constant ogling of the man warming up beside her confirms my suspicion. I can’t blame her, though. The men are all Henry Cavill look-alikes with their rugged bodies.
I pick a spot at the very back to avoid attention and start with the lightest bar, but the coach, Robert, who’s also very muscular and has tattoos along both of his arms, takes an immediate interest in me as per usual for RockAthletic. He keeps coming back to me to check my posture, turning more heads in my direction than I’d like.
Ease up on the shoulders!
Hips are going the wrong direction!
Distribute the pressure to your legs!
Don’t strain your back!
Push with your legs…
It feels like I can’t do anything right although I did RockAthletic before.
At least, I don’t throw up at the end of the session although I’m sweating like a pig and breathing as if the air has been sucked out of the room. The cotton t-shirt I’m wearing is soaked and sticking to my torso. My hands fly up to my chest when I notice my nipples are peeking through the wet t-shirt.
“You did great.” Robert stands tall, dry, and full of energy before me. It’s annoying as hell.
I can’t take a break from my heavy breathing to respond to the instructor. Thankfully, he understands. “Make sure you hit your macros and sleep for at least eight uninterrupted hours.”
I’ll be hard-pressed to hit my macros
on a peanut-butter sandwich and banana diet, but who knows, I may get lucky at the restaurant. “Yeah, I’ll try.”
“Tomorrow, the same time?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Come on, it’ll get easier. You just need to push harder.”
“Hey, Robert,” the blonde cougar calls out on her way to us, hips swaying left and right. She stops beside me but doesn’t say a word to acknowledge me.
Robert gives me a casual pat on my shoulder as he wishes me a good day, his friendliness eliciting a rather unfriendly frown from the cougar.
I didn’t bring a towel or fresh clothes, which means I’ll have to head back to the hotel to get ready for work. Grabbing several tissues from a tissue box I find at the corner of the room, I wipe the sweat off my face. Still, no amount of tissue can clean up my armpits and torso. Even underneath my breasts is wet.
My skin flushed and covered in sweat, I head for the exit.
And who has to be standing in the hallway, blocking my exit at the worst moment possible? Austin Knight! The world may be small, but Boulder is claustrophobic. Can I not pass a day without repeatedly seeing someone?
Any attraction he’s had for me will be squashed, if he sees me glowing like I’ve been exposed to radiation. The lobby is the size of a shoebox, and I don’t see a way to walk around him without him noticing me. I run my fingers through my hair and push them to my face in an impossible attempt to hide my burning cheeks.
Austin sends me a careless glance at first and steps aside to let me pass. It’s with his second look that he recognizes me. “Hey, Ashley! What happened to you?” he asks cheerfully, earning a laugh from the girl who registered me at the front desk.
“Looks like she had a great first day,” the girl says, giggling, all dry with perfect makeup.
Austin’s soft chuckle makes me want to run for the hills. I should have stayed at the hotel’s gym. I should have stayed in bed. I should have never come to Boulder.