by Stacey Lynn
Said he liked how the scenery always stayed the same but the waitresses kept getting cuter and sweeter.
He was a sweet old man, said he was nicknamed Johnny Walker after the bourbon, but I done kicked that habit years ago and been sober for nearly twenty years. My missus woulda set me out on the street had I not knocked off the liquor back then, but the name still stuck.
He meant me no harm and some nights when it was just the two of us, I’d sit and let him talk about his wife, four kids, and twelve grandchildren he missed like the dickens with all the time he spent on the road.
Tonight it was busy and I didn’t have time to chat. I had seven tables and the kitchen was tossing up orders left and right. At nine, the crowd had come in sooner than usual, but at least very few had been drinking. My guess, they were filling up on greasy, deep-fried food to fill their stomachs before they overfilled them with alcohol later but that just meant all my tables were in good spirits. Fine by me. That meant better tips, as meager as they’d still be.
Plus, I was in a good mood anyway, thanks to the “B” I got on my accounting test earlier. When I told Angie after, she threw her arms around me in a tight hug. She did it so quickly she was gone before I could remember to hug her back. But it left me feeling warm, and smiling, as she walked me to the bus stop, chattering about her weekend plans.
Mine consisted of working and sleeping and studying.
Hers included babysitting her brother and sister because her mom had to work Saturday and then a date with a boy from her history class.
Lucky girl. I imagined the excitement I would have once had about a date, but unfortunately, high schoolers didn’t exactly go on real dates and Josh’s overprotectiveness limited my dates further. While I was happy for her, it only reminded me how much I’d lost. I tried to forget about it by focusing on my grades, the days I had off work, and the list of jobs from Valor Holdings I looked through earlier.
One which still stuck out more than others, possibly because it was the simplest. It gave me a hand up without being a handout.
At least that was what I told myself as I opened my computer and typed David an email, requesting a meeting at his earliest convenience.
To my utter surprise, as soon as I clicked Send, the beep squawked above our door and Hudson strolled in.
“Hey.” I closed my laptop. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
Funny, in the days since I lived in the same building as him, I saw him less than in two weeks prior.
He smirked, moving straight to the stool across from me instead of down the bar.
“Miss me?”
“Hardly.”
He drummed his hands on the counter and helped himself to a menu from the stack close to me. While he scanned the menu, he said, “Someone accused me of being a stalker. Didn’t want to press my luck.” Setting the menu down, his head tilted to the side. His eyes still had that hint of sadness but his mouth was smiling. “Thought I’d give you space to get settled.”
“Oh. Okay.”
That was… nice of him. About as nice as his bare arms, with those veins that wrapped around his forearms and stuck out at the backs of his hands. Nice hands, with strong fingers, well-groomed. It matched the rest of him, broad shoulders and chiseled jaw.
Dear God. I was turning into Angie.
“So are you?”
“Huh?” Had he still been talking?
“Settled.”
Oh. Right. No. He hadn’t talked, I’d just drifted off, probably to an awkward silence while I admired his body. Awesome.
“Well, the move was long and difficult and strenuous, so it took a while and required lots of rest afterward.”
“Have you always been a smartass?” He shook his head, chuckling.
“No.” I was too busy staying out of the way or hiding Josh’s transgressions. “It must be a recently acquired skill.”
Three men stumbled in, greeted by the broken and loud-pitched squawk from our bell. On busy nights, it took all my self-control not to rip it off its perilous perch. But the annoying sound was better and safer than being surprised.
“Excuse me.”
I took menus to the group of men who made themselves comfortable at a booth near the front door. They were loud, perhaps slightly drunk by some of their breaths as they laughed. Not obnoxiously so. Mostly high on an easy life and the excitement of weekend revelry in front of them.
Angie’s words about the strip clubs being a rite of passage for her brother and his friends came to mind as I greeted them, took their drink orders.
One of them with dark brown, wavy hair leaned back in the booth and slid a lazy smile in my direction, draping his arm along the back and behind one of the drunker guys.
“Thank you and ignore these idiots. That guy there” —he pointed to the one kitty-corner from him— “is twenty-one tonight.”
“Not a problem. I’ll be back for your orders soon.”
Back behind the counter, I filled their drinks and set them on a tray, all while Hudson kept his eyes on them.
“They’re harmless,” I told him. Why I felt the need to assure him didn’t sit well with me.
Although, neither did having someone looking out for me.
“They’re drunk.”
“Most customers who come in here are.”
I ignored him, and his narrowed glare he kept on the table, delivering their drinks.
Birthday boy slurred his order, earning a shove from the guy next to him. “Damn, Matt. Stop being such a lightweight or you won’t even make it to the main event.”
“I’m not a lightweight,” he slurred back. “Just happy.” He clapped twice and I smirked.
Yeah. These guys were idiots, but harmless.
“You know,” he said, head dropping forward and glazed over eyes meeting mine. “The song. If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”
His entire sentence came out in one long word.
“I know it.” My lips fought against a smile. These guys were the kind of guys I grew up with. Same kind of boys even if they weren’t as polished, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been drinking their weight in keg beer since the first of one of their older siblings started buying it for them when they were barely teenagers.
The guy who thanked me earlier handed the menus to me. “Sorry. He’ll shut up once he gets his food.”
“I’ll make sure Chaz hurries then.” I slid the menus into my arms. “But he wouldn’t be the first customer I had to break out in a song and dance, either.”
A round of laughter burst from all of them, making the rest of the volume in the diner rise along with them.
Seemed everyone was in a great mood tonight, and mine was still up there as long as the drunken table didn’t spill their drinks or leave a huge mess.
Being drunk didn’t excuse a lack of manners.
After I put in their order, I made my rounds through the rest of the tables and rang up Johnny’s bill.
Once done, I was back behind the counter, trying to ignore the way my stomach curled when I was in close proximity to Hudson.
“Are you going to stay here all night again?”
“You want me to?”
“No. Your company is obnoxious.”
“Because I’m quiet?” His shoulders shook when he laughed. “We were interrupted before. You getting settled in the apartment?”
“It’s nicer than anything I imagined I could have had again,” I admitted, and watched that entertained smile on Hudson’s face fall away. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what.”
“Look at me like you feel sorry for me every time you’re reminded I’ve had a shit life. It makes me uneasy.”
He rolled his lips together. “I’ll work on it,” he said, sighing. “Hard not to care, though.”
“Why?” I asked, before I could stop myself. This was my stumbling block. Why did they care so much? Especially about me.
Hudson smirked. That stupid smirk. I could never quite d
ecide if I wanted to smack it away with my hand or melt it away with my mouth.
He was growing on me, like a forbidden fruit I had no business reaching for but couldn’t stop wistfully admiring. That was dangerous.
“Order up!” Chaz shouted through the small cook’s window.
“I need to get that.” Perfect timing. I trayed the meals—burgers and fries for the table of birthday drunks—and grabbed an extra bottle of ketchup. Once delivered and they were taken care of, drinks refreshed, and the birthday boy happily humming his song to himself while his friends laughed at him, Hudson was no longer smiling when I returned to the counter.
In fact, he was head bent on his phone, thumbs wildly tapping on it, so I left him to it and rolled clean silverware, sliding them into the paper napkin wraps.
“I can help with that,” Hudson offered.
“I’ve got it.”
“Don’t have anything else to do either,” he said, and grabbed a pile of napkins.
“You do it wrong and I’m telling Judith. She might really kick you out of here and not allow you back.”
“Pretty sure I can sweet talk her into it.”
I laughed. It clawed from my throat before I knew it was coming, so foreign to my ears, and when I stopped, Hudson was grinning at me from ear to ear.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because Judith is hard as nails and scarier than the meanest inmates I ever met. No one can sweet talk her into anything.”
“We’ll see. I’ve got a way with women. They love me.” He winked at me.
I looked down at my napkin pile to hide the heat rising on my cheeks. I’m sure women did love him. When I Googled him, I saw pictures. Plenty of them. Of Hudson in suits and tuxes and swim trunks with nothing else. I wasn’t sure which image I dreamed of more since then, but both had made an appearance late at night.
Not willing to share that thought at all, I clamped my mouth shut and focused on menial tasks until most of the tables left and the table of birthday boys seemed to be done.
“Anything else I can get for you all?” I asked while I cleared their plates. Surprisingly, they’d stacked their garbage and napkins on their plates, not leaving an enormous mess for me.
“No. Just the check, thank you.”
“No problem. Split three ways?”
The brown-haired guy pointed his thumb at his chest. “I’ve got this.”
“Okay. Be back then.”
As I turned to leave, that sensation of being watched pricked at my spine and I frowned.
Eyes ahead. Don’t look.
I shook it off. They were only a couple years younger than me and staring at my ass. No big deal. I had to learn how to get used to it.
Still, it unnerved me enough that my hands trembled while I dumped their dishes and wiped off the tray. I printed out their check and delivered it to the table.
It must have been their age. Maybe their similarities to guys I would have known way back that caused me to ask, “You guys have a sober ride home?”
Brown-haired guy lifted a finger. “That’d be me. I haven’t been drinking.”
Yeah. And I’d heard Josh say that one or eighty times, too. “Sure?”
“You offering?” Drunken Matt slurred again, slapping the table like he’d made a great joke.
“Dude. Shut up.” His friend shoved his head to the side.
Brown-haired guy wasn’t smiling when he replied, “One. Hours ago, I’m in charge tonight as their older, more responsible friend.”
Relief washed through me.
“Drive safe then.”
I took his card that he slid into the bill envelope without looking and came back to the counter to ring them up.
“Do you always do that?” Hudson asked, voice low. Thick with something I couldn’t place.
“What? Request a sober driver? Sometimes.”
Usually when they were young and had their life in front of them. More commonly when they weren’t jerks to me. I had no problems ordering a taxi for anyone or requesting they called an Uber. Not that they ever listened, but I at least tried. Once, I called the cops on a particularly drunken and obnoxious table. They could barely stand by the time they left the diner, much less drive. I still hoped they’d been busted and spent time drying out.
I delivered the card and the signature slips. Birthday boy was now singing another silly kid song and playing a sloppy game of what looked like patty cake with the guy across from him.
Shaking off the thoughts of Josh and trauma and drunken accidents, I grinned at Hudson when I got back to the counter.
“Want to hear something good?”
“I’m all ears.” He curled his hand toward him in a welcoming gesture. “Hit me with it.”
“I got a B on an accounting test. I hate accounting.” A B wasn’t great, but it’d made me happy and besides Angie, it’d been a long time since I had anyone to share good news with.
“Sweet. Let me take you to dinner to celebrate.”
“What?” I expected a congratulations. Not a dinner. Unless… “Like a date? I mean… friends. Like friends. Having dinner together.”
And holy shit. Someone. Please kill me now.
18
Hudson
Truthfully, I was up for it to be a date, but as Lilly choked on her words and flailed her hands in the air, correcting herself, it was more enjoyable to watch it happen than step in and save her.
She looked flustered, splotchy red started growing on her chest, up her throat. And the more she attempted to correct herself, fumble over her words with nervous gestures, that pink slid to her cheeks and the tips of her ears.
For the first time since I’d met her in person, I suspected I was seeing exactly the girl she used to be… before her life and freedom was ripped away… and she was beautiful.
Grinning at her, silently encouraging her to continue to babble, I lifted up on the rungs of the stool I was sitting on and reached across the counter for the pitcher of ice water she kept nearby. After filling a glass, I slid it toward her, stilling the hand she flapped in the air as she kept rambling. “I mean, obviously. Not a date date like that.”
I wanted that. Based on this sudden burst of insecurity, I wasn’t going to push for it.
“Lilly.” I wrapped her hand around the glass of water. “Drink.”
“Right. Water. Hydration. That’s probably good. Right?”
I nodded, still grinning. Her cheeks were now as dark as her chest, and I pressed my lips together as she fanned herself.
After downing the water in two large gulps, she sucked in a deep breath. “So. Dinner?”
“Dinner.” I choked down my laughter. If I laughed at her, regardless of the fact I was enjoying this and she looked so damn pretty while doing it, I had a feeling she would have no problems punching me in the face.
“Friends?” she said the word again, slowly, her recent attitude rearing its head.
“I think we could be friends. Don’t you?”
I wanted more. More would take time. Some finesse. The latter of which I was well aware I hadn’t handled correctly.
She refilled her water glass. After another large drink, she fiddled with her ponytail. “I think I’d like to be friends.”
“I’m a pretty good one to have.”
“Are you?” she asked, sassy look on her face.
“Yeah. I’m loyal. I’m friendly. I can keep secrets and I’ve been told I’m good to cuddle up with and watch a movie.”
She laughed this low, throaty chuckle. I almost had to lean in to hear it. “You just described a puppy.”
“I’m okay if you think of me as a puppy.”
She shook her head like I was being ridiculous, because I was, and went to go clear up a couple of tables. I was thinking I’d have to ask again about dinner when she returned. She flicked the dish towel into a bin of soapy water and came to me, wiping her hands on the white apron of her uniform.
“I think what I want is to talk to D
avid tomorrow and then do dinner after?”
She was doing it. Warmth stretched my lungs and made them expand as I took her in, the tapping of her chewed-up fingernails on the counter as she bit her bottom lip. “And celebrate a new job, too?”
“I think we can definitely have dinner for that.”
“As friends,” she said.
“As friends,” I agreed.
For now. For a while. For as long as it took.
“Do you know what she’s thinking?” Dad asked as we met outside the conference room. I wasn’t entirely sure why we didn’t use his office, but I wasn’t offering up mine for this meeting, either.
I doubted it was for the same reasons.
Mine was so I didn’t have the memory of Lilly in my office, giving us a hard-earned smile or maybe another low laugh, to distract me throughout the day.
This gave me separation, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t an issue for Dad.
Stephanie knocked on the opened doorframe like she always did before entering a room and brought us a tray of water bottles.
“I can grab some wine from the lounge on seven if you’d like some,” she offered.
“No, thank you.”
Dad turned to me, brows dipping down. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.” I waited until Stephanie left. Mostly because after she showed up last Friday, dripping in sweat and fury and screaming at us, she’d walked away muttering, “Well, there goes another potential assistant.”
Dad wanted Stephanie to have some help due to his busier schedule with the new projects we had rolling out, and Stephanie had been stubborn up until six months ago, refusing, saying she didn’t need it.
Truth was, she did. Between him and I, and as self-reliant as we were, Stephanie had her hands full.
After Stephanie left, I turned to Dad. “Lilly can’t have alcohol. It’s a parole condition.”
“Oh.” His brows rose slowly on his forehead. “I didn’t know that.”
“And last week when I ran into her, I didn’t tell you she was coming out of an AA meeting.”
“Yikes.” He cringed. “It’s a good thing you remembered then.”