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Well, obviously she was correct. I was just grasping at straws. Not like I’d ever done this “managing” thing before. That was Jack’s gig. My job was signing the papers and not blinking twice at quarterly reports, no matter how red-lined they were.
I knew from my father, though, that appearing indecisive in front of an employee was a critical error. You had to take a firm stance, even if it was the wrong one, and let the cards fall where they may. In retrospect, I could see that perhaps he had just been applying his theories of gambling to business management, but it had gotten him far enough that I’d do well to follow suit.
“I don’t have the costume for the in-house show,” she said, making one last bid for reprieve. “It’s a different outfit.”
But I’d made up my mind. “Jack will grab you the correct one. Size, I don’t know, two?”
Her lips pressed together, tucking her anger back inside. “Yeah.”
“Jack, grab that.”
My manager nodded and scampered off into the bowels of the casino, leaving me and Kiki alone. Well, if you don’t count the hundreds of other patrons encircling us, pinballing from one game to the next with such randomness that I wondered if, from an eagle’s eye view, one might deduce a pattern in their drunken wanderings.
I offered her some clemency. “You can go home, nap, and change, after this shift.”
“You’re talking two eight-hour shifts. A nap’s not gonna fix that.”
I nearly apologized, then remembered my father’s lessons. Men don’t say sorry, he’d told me. They say it won’t happen again.
“I could’ve fired you, the way you were talking back there,” I reminded her, as if expecting some kind of prize for my leniency.
“Technically, sure. But I’m your best waitress. Only been employed a little while, but I know this place better than anyone. Definitely better than you.”
“That’s a low bar,” I muttered. “And if I have to lose some talent to make a point, I’ll do it. Pass that on to the other waitresses. My father would have fired you in a heartbeat.”
She tilted her head back, getting a better look at me. “Your dad doesn’t run this place anymore. You do. You can be a different kind of boss, Tate.”
Yeah, sure, if I knew how. No, it was wiser to keep things as they were, to not raise or lower the meniscus. Stasis is the ally of business. Alluding to my father had caused the hairs on my arm to stick up straight, as if on high alert. It wasn’t like he was coming back from the dead or anything, but even mentioning him aloud felt dangerous. Could ghosts still call you a disappointment?
“Your next shift starts in a few hours,” I said at last, my throat tightening. “I suggest you finish this one out and then go home.”
We held each other’s gaze, and despite the hatred in her eyes, I couldn’t help but feel a teensy bit turned on. She looked at me like I was a speck of dust, unformed and incoherent. And yet, even then I felt my cock hardening, growing firmer with every second of time that lapsed between us.
What was this minx doing to me?
And how could I make it stop?
Just as I was deciding whether to end the staring contest by propositioning her or walking away — there didn’t seem to be a middle ground — Jack returned with some sequined fabric flung across his arms.
“Here,” he said, shoving it into the small space between Kiki and me. “Take your costume.”
Kiki lifted the outfit from his hands, wrapping it in her own, without ever taking her eyes off me.
“I’ll see you, Tate,” she said, almost like a warning.
Jack scoffed. “Get back to work.”
She turned on a heel, hair whipping behind her like a flame, and was gone, subsumed in the flickers of the floor lights.
“You should have fired her,” Jack said immediately, with a reprimanding tsk. “People can’t talk to you like that. It’s outrageous!”
“Oh, lay off,” I growled, full to brimming with his antics.
“Right, sir.” his voice trembled.
Jack’s instant turn of tone threw Kiki into sharp relief. Whereas he flattened his ears the moment I indicated annoyance, she held her ground. It was a new sensation, being questioned. The experience made me feel… strangely alive, I suppose, like the window of my life had just been pried open a touch more by insistent hands. Sure, the crack might let bugs in, but with the bugs came a cool, refreshing breeze.
Kiki roared in my head, her image swirling around my cortex and lodging in my cerebrum. I had the unsettling feeling that it would take quite the effort to displace her.
In an effort to move past the incident, I turned back to Jack with newfound resolve.
“What’s next?”
He beamed, delighted that I’d deigned to show an interest in my own casino.
