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“I can’t scare the customers away." I grab a spoon and a small stack of napkins for the couple in booth two. “I need the money,” I admit. “I’ll let you know when it becomes too much.”
I know those assholes won’t leave me a tip, but I can’t be a problem for her business. My biggest fear is for her to let me go because I’m driving the customers away. It sucks, but business is business. She’s not running a charity.
“I promised Adam that I would keep an eye on you, sweetheart. Boys are stupid when it comes to pretty girls.”
I snort. The last thing I would call myself is pretty. I had to learn this lesson the hard way. Don’t fall for a charming smile and be fooled by the wetness between your legs. It’s biology. Hormones. The kind that clouds common sense and blocks comprehension.
I lift the serving tray. “That would be the case if I were.”
Pfft. “You’re pretty enough.”
Older people say this just to be nice. To them, being young is beautiful. Like babies, no one points out how weird they look when they’re born. No one says you gave birth to an alien. It’s a human life. They are all cute and beautiful.
After I drop off the food at booth six, I walk to booth eight. I begin to clear the table and stack the plates when I see the bill with the exact amount.
No tip.
“Assholes,” I mutter, but that’s not the worst part. It's what they wrote on the bill.
WE ALL HEARD YOU CRIED LIKE A WHORE
The plate rattles in my hand. A butter knife slides to the edge. A fork drops with a clank, sliding under the table.
“Shit,” I grumble, placing the stack of plates on the table.
As I bend to retrieve the fork, sudden movement catches my attention—a tattooed arm sliding past me beneath the table. Fascinated, I follow the intricate design inked onto the skin, a sinister skull perched atop a hand. My senses reel as the arm emerges, offering the fork.
My nostrils flare involuntarily as the scent of a woodsy cologne engulfs me, momentarily eclipsing the smell of food.
"You dropped this," says the voice that sets my heart racing.
I straighten and look up at familiar intense hazel eyes, like pools of liquid amber flecked with touches of gold and chestnut softened with a veil of cerulean blue. My eyes slide over his gorgeous face. Straight nose and masculine lips (not too plump but not too thin). He has a symmetrical square jaw with a defined edge that complements his features. Perfect-shaped brows that could only be inherited by a beautiful woman.
His brow lifts. “Your fork?”
"Oh, thanks," I stammer, hastily taking the fork from him. "It's not mine. It's dirty. I was." My words stumble over each other.
A grin tugs at the corners of his lips, amusement twinkling in his eyes as he watches my flustered reaction.
I release a nervous breath, the fork clattering clumsily onto the plate as I hastily gather what I can from the table, desperate to escape the awkwardness. With a quick sidestep around him, I make my way to the wash station, but his scent lingers in my nose.
The man has the effect of a tornado when it touches down. You could only stare in awe as it destroyed everything in his wake, and no one could stop it.
Valen Vikiar is the swim captain at Kenyan University. Rich, dangerous, and a heartbreaker. The first time I saw him, I couldn’t look away. I kept watching him from across the room. I was young and underage at a college party. People were drinking and doing things a sixteen-year-old girl had no business seeing, but I couldn’t help it. At that moment, Zack was a distant memory. I had never seen a guy who looked like him.
He had his tongue down some random girl’s throat. The way he kissed, the way he could fuck a girl’s mouth with his tongue would make a girl reconsider watching porn and watch him instead. I didn’t ask who he was, but I heard someone call his name and say he attended Kenyan University. That was all I knew about him. I have never seen him again until now.
After my shift, I couldn’t get him off my mind. The guys from Ohio were forgotten. The note on the bill was a distant memory. I was relieved when he ordered his food to go with Dorothy at the register. I had already made a fool of myself by stammering like an idiot and knew it would get worse if I had to talk to him again.
I turn the key in thehand-me-down Mazda my parents bought me when I was sixteen. I was bummed when they said it was my birthday present. It wasn't because I wasn’t grateful, but because I knew what it meant. I was not the favorite even though I was the youngest. My brother Adam got a shiny new truck when he graduated. My older sister, Maddy, got a brand-new Honda. I didn’t complain, but I knew that out of the three of us, Adam was the perfect child in my parents' eyes. The perfect son while I was the hard-to-deal-with daughter who fucked up. I was the outcast. The one they had to make sure they kept an eye on because she didn’t know any better, and Maddy was the perfect daughter who didn’t cause my parents any trouble.
After Zack and his friends orchestrated my expulsion from Ohio State two weeks ago, falsely branding me as the "crazy ex-girlfriend" who stalked him, I knew I had to leave. Their disappointment was palpable, their questioning gazes piercing through me as soon as they learned of my expulsion. The weight of their accusations hung heavy on my shoulders as I packed what I could.
In their eyes, I had confirmed their worst fears, proving them right in their belief that I was spiraling out of control. It was a bitter pill to swallow, knowing that my own family couldn't see through the facade constructed by Zack and the guys on the football team. They only worried about how I could have ruined my brother Adam’s future on the football team.
My brother felt bad and got me his old job at the diner after my parents wouldn’t give me gas money so I wouldn’t have a way of sneaking out.
Apparently, after hanging out with the rich guys from Kenyan, he didn’t need the job at the diner anymore. He had a scholarship to play football and had enough money to pay for all his expenses. Then my sister Maddy moved out. She dropped out of college and left with her girlfriend for New York at the beginning of my senior year.
