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If I leave St. Louis, I’m heading west, not back east, but they wouldn’t know that since I haven’t attempted to call them once.
“Want me to save your tip for tomorrow?” Macy asks as I count out my money, smiling with the tip money I made today. Double shifts are hard on my body, but I won’t complain about the extra cash.
“Naw, you’re going to earn it. The guy picked all of the carrots out of his stew and threw them under the table.”
Macy laughs. “People are psychotic.”
“Tell me about it,” I agree.
“You’re still okay to cover my swing shift tomorrow.”
“Of course,” I tell her with a genuine smile. I’m not keen on the idea of working first thing in the morning because business is always slower, meaning tips are practically nonexistent, but the evening crowd gets rowdy and tends to tip well.
I wouldn’t call us friends exactly. Macy and I haven’t been able to spend any time together outside of work. I take on any shift offered to me and she has twin three-year-old boys that garner her off-hours attention, but I haven’t caught her talking about me behind my back which was something the people back home did. She helped me when I first started, giving me pointers and identifying the people who tip the best.
“Oh, he’s a cutie,” she whispers before sweeping her lithe body across the room to seat a man who just came in.
My heart begins to beat faster, but when I notice it isn’t Flynn, it calms right back down. Lots of good-looking guys come in here, but none make me look twice. It’s impossible to do when my stupid heart is still stuck on the one fool who doesn’t want me in return.
“How did you do?” Samuel asks when I turn my stuff in to the office.
“Only one customer accused me of trying to kill him, but Tom was the one who put onions on his burger, so I’m not claiming that. I didn’t break a single thing today.” I grin wide when he chuckles.
“Don’t jinx yourself. You still have to make it out the front door.”
My cheeks heat with the reminder of my first day and how I managed to knock an entire tray of dark beer out of one of the other waitress’s hands.
“True,” I agree, giving him a little wave before carefully walking outside. The days are still warm, but the nights are beginning to cool down, the threat of fall on the breeze.
I mentally prepare myself for the walk back to the hotel, wishing, not for the first time, that I brought my Air Pods with me when I left New York. My parents would’ve never missed them, but I didn’t grab them on purpose. My prepaid phone doesn’t have the extensive playlist that my old one did, but I’m slowly building it back up over time. Music and work are the only two things I have to keep me company these days. I’ve managed to keep from playing my sad-poor-pitiful-me playlist for the last three days, and I’m calling that a win.
Darkness grows thicker around me, the streetlights spreading out as I walk toward my hotel, and for a split second it makes me miss the busy streets of New York where people bustle around all day and night. Not that I was any safer there. Thinking of the time Flynn was wrestling me after I took off from him while people walked around us to avoid the situation is something I refuse to think about.
Just as I open my mouth to verbally chastise my mind for traveling down that road again, strong arms, laced with muscles grab me from behind. My heart pounds, panicked and full of utter fear. Then I smell him, a scent I’ve been trying to forget.
“Let go of me,” I scream at the top of my lungs, and surprisingly, he does.
I’m placed back on my feet, but the second his arms fall away, I spin around, hitting him first in the chest—which does nothing by the way—but the knee I lift and clock him in the balls with makes him double over in pain, a whoosh of anguish escaping his lips.
I press my back to the front door of a locked office building, chest heaving up and down, still a little frantic from the initial scare.
“Don’t!” he practically yells when I take a step closer, my need to make sure he’s okay outweighing the anger I’m feeling for him thinking it was okay to grab me the way he did. “Remi, it’s me.”
Still bent in the middle, he looks up, his eyes finding mine.
“I knew exactly who it was,” I hiss, finger pointed at his face, but I’m unable to manage any other words.
I walk away, hair whipping around so fast my ponytail slaps me in the face.
