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“Hello?” she greeted cautiously.
“Eva, it’s Robert,” the voice on the other end replied. Suspecting that Eva had no idea who he was, he cleared his throat and clarified with, “It’s Mr. Jameson.”
“Oh, hello…” she said flatly, unsure of where this was headed. In all the time she’d known the man, Mr. Jameson had never once referred to himself by his first name.
“Okay, well, let me cut to the chase. I feel terrible about how things ended between us. I realize now that I may have been a little hasty in letting you go. I said some things, you said some things. It got a bit heated, and I think I overreacted. We both did.”
There was a pause so lengthy that Eva wasn’t sure if the man was still on the other end, and she pulled her cell away from her ear long enough to check the LCD screen to see if they were even still connected. They were, and as she placed the phone back to her ear the silence was finally interrupted.
“I’d like you to come back to work, Eva,” Mr. Jameson blurted.
Eva stood in shock. The last thing she had expected was for the same man who claimed he didn’t like her to apologize and offer her job back. The previous evening, Destiny had made her routine phone call and informed Eva that, yes, her brother’s law firm was still looking for a secretary. The pay wasn’t very good, however, and its downtown location meant longer, more expensive bus rides. By the time it was all said and done, she’d be making a good deal less than she’d been making at the restaurant. Mr. Jameson was a jerk for sure, but if she could suck it up and play nice with the man, she’d be able to pay her bills easier and could look for a better job in the process. Still, a forced insincerity in his voice made her hesitant to accept the invitation back.
“Why?” she asked skeptically. “I thought you hated me, remember?”
“Oh, you know me, Eva. I’m a loudmouth with a temper. I was just having a bad day and took it out on you. Truth is, you were my best server and, as the saying goes, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.’ Come back, Eva.”
He definitely sounded disingenuous, and Eva knew from the two years she’d spent working for the man that he wasn’t one to have a change of heart. She’d seen him fire countless waitresses during her time there, and he wasn‘t exactly nice about it. Out of fairness, most of them did deserve it, but he never rehired anyone and surely never called to offer his apologies. She suspected something was awry, yet her mind couldn’t stop drifting to how much she hated riding the city’s public transportation. The bus ride from Bon Appétit to her neighborhood wasn’t even ten minutes, yet it felt like an hour and she hated every grueling second of it. The bus always smelled like a mixture of sweaty feet and urine, and as if that weren’t bad enough, it always carried a load of delinquents and crazies who made her extremely uncomfortable. She’d stopped carrying her purse to work in fear she’d wind up getting stabbed for the damn thing. If she could barely tolerate that short bus ride, then the forty-minute trip downtown would likely cause her rapid decline into one of the crazies she so regularly turned her nose up at. It only took a quick weighing of her options to reach her decision.
“Sounds good. Sorry about blowing up on you. When do you want me to start?”
“Wonderful!” he exclaimed in clearly feigned joy. “I need you for the breakfast shift tomorrow. That okay?”
“I’ll be there,” she said before ending the call with a push of a button. She wasn’t the least bit sorry for exploding on the man less then forty-eight hours prior. Screaming “fuck you” in his face had not only been the highlight of her year, but a moment she’d proudly remember forever. Alas, she had to make en effort to get along with the middle-aged despot, so her hollow apology seemed like a smart move. He likely sensed it was just lip service, but since he sounded as though he were being insincere as well she didn’t feel too bad about it. Eva decided another waitress must have quit, perhaps taking a cue from her and telling Mr. Jameson where to go, and feeling the pinch of a short staff he had no choice but to swallow his pride and ask for her back. She was just relieved to have a source of income again, regardless of his motives.
“Did you hear that, Burley?” she asked excitedly while dropping to her knees to rub her four-legged friend behind his fluffy ears. “Momma got her job back!”
The words had just left her lips when she heard her phone sound off again. She swallowed hard, her face turning serious and her heart thudding in her chest. Burley tilted his head to the side and widened his eyes, a clear indication that he was both curious and concerned by his human friend’s sudden change of demeanor.
Great, Eva thought as she stood up and reached into her pocket to retrieve her phone for the second time. This is where the asshole calls to tell me he was just kidding, or to tell me he’s only hiring me back with a pay cut.
Rather than displaying the restaurant’s familiar number, her screen flashed that an unknown caller was dialing her. Her wary nature made her nervous when it came to unrecognizable numbers, and she answered the phone with the same cautious tone she had when Mr. Jameson had called minutes earlier.
“Hello?”
“Hey, you! It’s Devon Cross. From the other day? The guy who left your restaurant looking like a Jackson Pollock painting?”
She didn’t laugh at his joke. She was too confused, and a tad concerned, by how this man had acquired her phone number. She rarely gave it out, yet he somehow knew it. This was unsettling since, despite their brief time together, he was still a stranger.
“How did you get my number?” she asked with a twang of irritation that he was astute enough to pick up on.
“Yikes. Sorry, but numbers aren’t that hard to find if you have some disposable income. I was just calling to ask if you took your job back. You did, right?”
“Wait, how did…” Eva trailed off as her mind pieced together the obvious reason Mr. Jameson had rehired her. She kicked herself for having not made the connection sooner, as she had always prided herself on being a fairly sharp girl. Yes, Devon Cross had clearly used his influence to score her job back, and had she realized this while she was on the phone with Mr. Jameson, she likely would have thrown a few more four-letter words his way.
“I told you I’d fix things,” he said, and she sensed he was smiling on the other end of the phone.
“I didn’t ask you to do that,” she replied politely, refraining from jumping down this man’s throat as a deep confliction ran through her. A part of her was flattered that he’d made good on his word and had gone through the trouble of getting her job back, while an equal part was upset by his intrusion into her life. She’d already made up her mind that she wasn’t going to see or speak to him again, but by unwittingly answering his phone call he’d managed to ruin that resolve. He’d basically forced her into talking to him, and she wasn’t sure if that sat right with her.
“I had to overstep your boundaries after over-pushing my chair!” he said in jest, his attempt at levity successfully causing Eva to erupt in a fit of laughter. She didn’t know what to make of this guy, but couldn’t deny that he did have a certain charm.
“You’re stupid,” she responded playfully. “And, yeah, I took the job back. I didn’t want to, believe me, but I need the money, so… thank you, I guess.”
“I stick to my word,” he replied confidently. “Now, about that dinner…”
“I never agreed to dinner,” Eva reminded him sternly. “I remember telling you ‘maybe.’”
“You got me there,” he replied. “I’d like to turn that ‘maybe’ into a ‘yes.’”
