Smart Mouth Waitress (Romantic Comedy) (Life in Saltwater City)

by Dalya Moon

  Garnet started to answer, but I cut him off with more questions, accusations, and general big-sister insanity.

  Done with his business, Uncle Jeff came over and tried to hug me, but I squirmed away. “Gross! Go wash your hands,” I yelled.

  This made Cooper laugh so hard he had to put his hands on his knees.

  I wasn't laughing, though.

  As much as I'd like you to think of me as some good-natured, happy-go-lucky type, I was seriously ticked off. My brother wasn't even sixteen, let alone permitted to drive. He could have gotten in serious trouble for driving my uncle around.

  Garnet tried to calm me down, explaining that it was fine, because it was better than Uncle Jeff driving, since he'd been drunk for the last two days, plus his license had been revoked or suspended or something, he wasn't sure.

  With Sunshine's help, I explained to Garnet that laws didn't work that way, with “reasonable justifications,” or anyone would be able to drive, so long as they had an intoxicated person in the vehicle with them.

  A flicker of understanding flashed across Garnet's eyes and then disappeared just as quickly. He tried, again, to convince me that any cop would understand what he'd done.

  Uncle Jeff invited us inside to have some refreshments—with his slurred speech, he pronounced them re-furbish-ish-mints—but I declined on behalf of the group. I sent Garnet into the house to get his stuff.

  “Are you okay on your own?” I asked Uncle Jeff.

  “Wooh!” he yelled.

  “Good to know. Well, thanks for your help with Garnet. I'm sure he's learned a valuable lesson and seen many educational things.”

  “Wooh!”

  My brother came out with his backpack and we all got back in Cooper's car, me in the back seat this time, with my brother.

  “You stink,” I said to Garnet.

  He grinned. “Yeah, Uncle Jeff took me to some pretty crazy places.”

  Cooper waved out the window to my uncle, saying it had been nice to meet him, which was generous. As we drove away, my uncle was making grass angels on his front lawn.

  “He's usually a lot less drunk,” I explained to Cooper and Sunshine as we drove away. “Oh, who am I kidding. He's usually pretty much exactly like that.”

  Sunshine turned back and gave me a smile. “Every family has one or two,” she said.

  I turned to Garnet and said, “So I suppose this little intervention has been a disaster. You're going to be drinking and doing drugs with a vengeance, and pretty soon you can move right in with Uncle Jeff.”

  Garnet crossed his arms. “Yeah, right.”

  “You looked like you were having the time of your life.”

  He looked right at me, his gaze unwavering. “I feel like one of those guys in a movie where he sees his future, and while it's super hilarious for everyone watching, it also makes you want to kill yourself.”

  “Did Uncle Jeff make you sad? He didn't hurt you, did he?”

  Garnet's lower lip started to tremble. “No, he didn't hurt me or anything, but why do people have to be messed up? Why can't the doctors fix whatever's wrong in their heads?”

  “Come here.” I reached for him, but he pushed my arms away.

  “Eww, gross, we're in public!”

  “We're not in public, these are my friends.”

  He stuck his hand on my face and pushed me away. We play-fought for a few minutes, exactly like we used to when we were younger and on long car rides with our parents.

  Our parents.

  As though he was reading my mind, Cooper turned his head back from the driver's seat and said to me, “We'll get back to your house, locate your cell phone, find your father, and then we'll get dinner.”

  Garnet frowned at me. “Huh? I thought Dad was with you.”

  “I haven't seen him since Sunday.”

  He looked incredulous.

  “I've got some bad news. When we do find Dad, he might not be in a very good mood, because somebody put some horrible photos on the internet, of Mom kissing some musician in LA.”

  Garnet's face went pale. “For real?”

  I told him I didn't know much, and relayed all the details I had, short of actually showing him the pictures on Sunshine's iPad. He'd see them soon enough, there was no need to rush.

  I tried to reassure him, saying, “Everything will be normal again.”

  “What if Dad drove off a bridge or something?”

  “He'd never leave us,” I said, hoping my words sounded more convincing to Garnet than they did to me.

  Outside of the car, other people whizzed past us on the highway, caught up in their own problems.

  As we drove home, we listened to some music and Garnet chatted about all Uncle Jeff's colorful friends. The most colorful of all had been Uncle Jeff's girlfriend, a woman called Honey. As Garnet described the woman, and her children, I realized she was probably the one who'd scared him the most. Our uncle's pretty harmless and gentle, even when drunk, but the woman sounded like a nightmare.

  Back in Vancouver nearly an hour later—traffic had been lighter on the way home—I had my seat belt off and was itching to find my phone as we pulled up in front of the house.

  “Just wait,” Sunshine said, handing me her iPad. “I think I know where your father is.”

  Chapter 24

  As we sat in the car, I read the blog post on Sunshine's iPad. I tipped the screen to share it with my brother.

  “That guy looks like Dad,” Garnet said.

  “That is Dad.”

  Our father was in a series of photos, punching some guy at a sidewalk restaurant, and then being led away by the police.

  Garnet turned to me. “Dad's in jail?”

  As stunned as I was, at least jail was better than dead at the bottom of the ocean. By that point in the day, after being terrified, worried, then angry, I was pretty numb, so nothing would have surprised me.

  I scanned the article, reading as fast as I could. “Looks like Mom bailed him out.”

  “Go, Dad!” Garnet said.

  Sunshine said, “At the risk of sounding insensitive, it was kind of a romantic gesture of him to go down there. He must have flown, because that's a long drive otherwise.”

  Garnet smacked his fist in his hand. “Dad was totally defending Mom's honor.”

  “Bro,” I said. “Beating people with your hands is not the answer.”

  Cooper turned and said, “Garnet, I have to agree with your sister.”

  Sunshine, shaking her head, said, “That's so crazy that your private family drama gets into the news.”

  Cooper said to his sister, “You sure you'd want that for yourself? Getting into the music industry.”

  She shrugged. “If that's the price to pay.”

  Garnet said, “I'm hungry.”

  I said, “Since we've suffered emotional trauma, with our father being arrested, I think we can use the emergency credit card to order in.”

  “Sounds fair,” Cooper said as he opened up his car door.

  Cheerfully, I said, “Just another exciting day in the Martin family!”

  I invited Cooper and Sunshine into the house, where we found my cell phone more or less where I should have looked in the first place: between the cushions of the sectional in the TV room.

  I excused myself to the formal dining room, where I plugged the phone's charger into the socket and called my father's phone. A woman answered—my mother. I felt like I hadn't talked to her in years.

  “Mommy, I miss you,” I said, my voice trembling.

  “Oh, Dottie,” she said. “I'll be home in a week or two. Everything's going to be fine.”

  I heard my father the background, demanding to know who was on the phone. He sounded … happy.

  I told her what I'd read online, then asked, “Is Dad in a lot of trouble?”

  “There were no charges pressed,” she said. “He's still in trouble from me, for being a dummy.”

  “That's a bit rich, coming from you.”

  Sw
eetly, she said, “Dah-ling, do you know what I'm doing right now?”

  “No. What?”

  “I'm patting dry my dreadlocks. My long, distinctive-looking dreadlocks.”

  I put my hand on my head, scratching my scalp. “Those photos weren't you,” I said.

  “Bingo,” she said. “Either they did something with digital images, or they got hold of some old photos from years ago. I don't know. Promise me you won't go into showbiz.”

  “I promise.”

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Who did Dad punch?”

  “My gay publicist. I mean, my publicist. I only mention he's gay so … oh, hell. My gay publicist.” She was giggling quite a bit by this point. “Your father came in like Hulk Hogan and punched my sweet, little, skinny, gay publicist right in the nose.”

  “My father, the bully,” I said.

  “Oh, my publicist was delighted!” she said. “He had a bump in his nose he'd always wanted to get fixed. So because your father broke it, we're going to pay for one of those nose jobs for the guy. He couldn't be happier.”

  “We're buying some guy a nose job, and now everything's fine?”

  She sighed. “I haven't gotten much accomplished with the album.”

  “What did you expect? You don't have us there to tell you how amazing you are.”

  After a pause, she said, “Your mother can be stupid at times.”

  “I wouldn't know anything about that.”

  “Of course not,” she joked, and the distance between us disappeared.

  “Mom, when I thought you guys were getting divorced, I was so upset I threw up! I totally barfed!”

  Her voice turned stony. “You weren't wearing my clothes, were you?”

  “No,” I lied.

  She giggled again and told my father to stop whatever he was doing. Ew.

  I said goodbye to my mother and left the phone on the table to finish charging.

  My company was waiting in the other room, but I sat for a few minutes in the empty dining room, at the table we only used for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. We were still a family, and there'd be more dinners. Maybe not forever, but there were more to come.

  The news that my parents were fine hadn't made me happy. Maybe it would sink in later, but having bad news canceled isn't the same as getting good news.

  The pressure lifts, but the ghost of the feeling remains.

  I ordered a big pile of Chinese food, the Dinner for Six special from our favorite place. The Dinner for Four would have been enough, but there's something about having more food than you can possibly eat that makes people happy.

  I joined Sunshine, Cooper, and Garnet in the TV den, and relayed the details I'd gotten over the phone. I told Garnet I would have called him in, but it sounded like Mom and Dad were getting frisky.

  He wrinkled his nose. “They still do that? They're too old.” He turned to Cooper and Sunshine and asked, “Do your parents still do it?”

  “Worse,” Sunshine said. “They talk about it. Like, at the dinner table.”

  Eyes wide, Garnet turned to me and said, “Hey that's what—”

  He didn't get out the rest, because I had my hand over his mouth.

  The food came and we ate it on the sectional in the TV room with our feet up. Everybody kept spilling greasy noodles and those hot-pink chicken balls on the sofa, sending me running back and forth to the kitchen for wash cloths. I could see why my mother didn't allow us to eat in that room.

  Darn you, Mom, for being so right about stuff!

  Sunshine mentioned she wouldn't mind a grown-up refreshment, so I went to the laundry room and raided the liquor stash, bringing a few bottles into the TV room.

  I said, “Hey, watch this,” then I took the cap off the vodka bottle and began to guzzle it.

  Garnet jumped up and tried to take the bottle away from me, while Cooper and Sunshine sat watching in shock.

  After I'd finished the bottle, which was entirely water, I set it on the coffee table, wiped my hand across my mouth, and said, “I was really thirsty.”

  “We have to induce vomiting,” Sunshine said, her face ashen.

  Cooper grinned and looked at me sideways, his eyes narrowing. “That was water, wasn't it?”

  I did my Uncle Jeff impression, saying, “Would ya like some ref-urb-urbishments?”

  Cooper grabbed the bottle and sniffed it. “You are an odd duck, Peridot Martin.”

  I shrugged. “I tried to be normal for a while, but it didn't take.”

  Sunshine had a couple of drinks, but nothing crazy. Cooper had one of my father's beers, but I didn't touch a drop, because I wanted to stay sharp.

  After eating, we flipped through channels and watched some reality TV show about people giving out parking violations, and another show about people buying abandoned stuff in storage lockers to make money.

  Hanging out like that, with two sets of siblings, was cool, like hanging out with cousins, though Garnet kept trying to get a peek at Sunshine's cleavage.

  I had impure thoughts too, and I wanted to get closer to Cooper, but he kept either my brother or his sister between us. He was so casual and friend-like toward me, I wondered if I'd imagined him kissing my wrist earlier that day.

  When the two of them left the house around midnight, because Sunshine had school in the morning and Cooper had to get up and meet with a painting client, I was no less confused. What a strange day.

  Garnet was asleep on the rug in the TV room, and I had to drag him up to his room. I could have left him on the floor, but that didn't seem right. In my mother's absence, it was my job to look after him, and I had let him down once already.

  I hoped the Uncle Jeff excitement would teach my father better than to take parenting advice from me. If Garnet started drinking and partying, what would be my solution for that? Sending him off to smoke meth with hookers?

  The kid was heavy, but I got him up the stairs and tossed him on his bed in his black bedroom.

  I pushed up on his light switch, but nothing changed. The funny thing about a black room is you keep going to flick the light switch on, even when it's already on. Then, when you turn the light off, the room is scary dark.

  Over in my room, I got ready for bed. I held my wrist, where Cooper had kissed it, next to my cheek. Did it still smell like him? No, that was ridiculous. It smelled like my arm.

  I did my final check on Facebook for the evening and was surprised to see a message from Marc, asking me what I'd been up to since the morning.

  Even though he lived in the suite underneath Cooper's family and was friends with Cooper and Sunshine, apparently he hadn't heard anything about the excitement.

  The little green light showed he was online, so I typed back: Managing a family crisis. Remember how I thought my parents were splitting up? Everything's cool. Turns out they aren't.

  Marc: After I saw you today, I googled your mother and saw all sorts of crazy stuff. It was so weird to see your dad in those pictures. He actually punched someone in the face. I've never punched anyone.

  Me: Me neither.

  Marc: What else is new.

  The fact that Marc was asking a question without using a question mark really bothered me, but I let it go.

  Me: My brother was kidnapped, but unfortunately, they sent him back.

  Marc: I guess you'll have to keep him.

  Me: BLEH! Boys! Yucky!

  Marc: Boys can be nice. Or should I say “Men.”

  At that, I giggled at my laptop screen and twirled a strand of my hair, pulling it to my mouth. Oh, he was definitely flirting. It was so on.

  Me: Tell me more about men. What sort of things are they useful for?

  Marc: Killing spiders. If you have any spiders over there that need smashing, I could smash them for you.

  Me: With your big, strong arms?

  His response took some time, and I chewed nervously on my hair, a habit I thought I'd lost along with the dreadlocks.

  You're probably won
dering why I was text-flirting with Marc when I'd been connecting with Cooper that day, and moments before had even been sniffing my wrist.

  I did like Cooper, but I wasn't over Marc. Feelings don't turn on and off like taps. It was like how the news that my parents weren't divorcing had made me feel better, but hadn't returned me to the pre-worried state I'd been in beforehand.

  I was in that weird headspace, that mixed-up, goofy state. Typing messages to Marc didn't even feel real. It was just me, typing some letters on a keyboard, alone in my room. The idea of another person on the other end of the internet was just that, an idea.

  As of now, I understand how I got confused. That night, after all the family drama, I was swept up in the idea of Marc.

  In a moment, I'm going to tell you what I said to Marc. To understand why a girl would say such a thing, you have to understand my background.

  Being on the plump side when I was twelve or thirteen had been a blessing in disguise, according to my mother, because the reporters and photographers treated me like the kid I was, and left me out of pictures and stories.

  When I was fourteen, and still carrying the so-called baby fat, I overheard some boys at school talking about my bum. I was horrified, but kept listening, as they talked about how the seam of my pants was splitting. I thought they were exaggerating.

  When I stood up and turned to face them, the boy I had a crush on, Scott Weaver, said, “Ne ne, ne ne.”

  The other boys laughed, but I didn't know why.

  I ran to the bathroom. To my horror, I found the seam on the butt of my favorite jeans had pulled apart. There were two letters visible, ne—the middle part of my Wednesday day-of-the-week panties.

  Haylee and Courtney came running into the bathroom, as they'd heard from someone else about what had happened.

  Courtney told me to wrap my sweater around my waist, but I didn't want to, because I was just wearing a tank top underneath, and everyone would see my chubby arms. Haylee took off her own cardigan and gave it to me.

  Then something in me kind of clicked.

  I had a change of thoughts, a change in attitude.