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The bartender sighs. “Alright, alright, fine. I’ll get Yannis to do it. Look, I’ve got shots here ready for the group with the lady, other side of the stage, hidden from view. Can you run this at least?”
The lighting in here is dim. Maybe I can make this work. Jay doesn’t have to put a halt to me doing my paying job—the one thing that’s enabling me to stay living here. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Yeah, yeah,” grunts the bartender for a you’re-welcome before tending to a customer elsewhere.
I hoist the tray onto a shoulder like a shield, then make my way stealthily to the table on the other side of the stage where two men and their lady friend hoot and cheer on Zak as he dances. Every step of the way, I sneak glances across the dim space, and each time, I see Jay’s beady eyes trained on Zak and his moves, mercifully unaware of me. Let’s keep it that way.
His face twitches with annoyance, and he looks off into the crowd for no reason at all.
I lift the tray an inch off my shoulder, shielding my face perfectly from view.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Hey, watch it, boy!” shouts a guy whose head I almost hit with the raised tray.
“Sorry!” I shout over the thumping club music, then take a step back.
That fateful step back begets a rather disastrous sequence of mishaps, as it happens to be on a foot.
The owner of said foot shouts out.
I spin around faster than my feet can manage.
The tray twists too fast.
Balance is lost.
An overcompensating shift of my hands causes a tilt I can’t quickly correct.
With one desperate stumble forward, the tray of delicately poured shots goes airborne toward the stage—as do I, flying forward to stop it.
And I would have, if it weren’t for my booted foot being caught by the leg of a spiteful chair.
And thusly: crash.
When I at last open my eyes, I’m halfway on the stage. Zak is standing over me in a puddle of alcohol, which has drenched his whole costume. His dancing is stopped, despite the music that keeps thumping onward indifferently.
And with a twist of my mystified eyes, I find Jay staring straight at me, a look of astonishment painted over his face which, as slowly as a scorpion tail raising for a strike, changes to an amused gasp of delightful glee.
I am so fucking fucked.
[ THE VERY BAD IDEA ]
Today might be the worst day of Connor’s life.
And that is immediately following the worst night of Connor’s life, when he both managed to soil Zak’s whole military garb, as well as out himself to his arch nemesis as nothing more than a gayborhood shot boy at a strip club.
15
It is the longest elevator ride up I’ve ever taken.
Wales Weekly is the last place I want to be. If I could, I would have called in sick and stayed home with Brett, curled up in a corner hugging my knees to my chest and whimpering like a baby.
Yet here I am.
Maybe Jay has made the rounds at the office already. Maybe everyone knows. Maybe he took pictures of my stage-front demise, blew them up, and posted them all over the top floor.
There is a hole where my stomach should be.
I’m so nervous, I’m not even shaking. I’m just a numb walking carcass with a heartbeat.
When I reach the workroom, I find half of the interns here already—Jay included—and as I silently join them at the table, I find no strange looks or weird behavior. In fact, everything is unremarkably normal. Even Jay, who hardly noticed my entrance at all, simply swipes through a tablet of articles in front of him, focused on the reading of them.
It suddenly occurs to me that Jay might not want anyone here to know he was at Aubergines, either. Maybe we both discovered a secret last night.
The day begins like any other day. Brenda at last comes in, always in a touchy mood, and we are usually given individual assignments, or one big group task. She decides today, however, to split us in half—two teams of five. Within our teams, we’re made to delegate tasks to one another to finish finalized versions of our articles.
Of course, I’m on the team with Jay and three other interns I have no connection with, including Jay’s number one fan Dave. For a blissful handful of minutes, we appear to work together just fine.
Until Jay’s coffee runs out. “What a pity,” he sighs with mock lament. “If only we had a coffee boy … you know, like I mentioned once before. Hey!” His eyes flash with the brilliance of an idea, and he turns his fake merry gaze on me. “Perhaps we can delegate a little task to Connor here. How does that sound?”
I stare at him hard and with knowing darkness.
