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“Shut up!”
Mr. Pruitt came out of his room, dressed in one of his sharp suits. He looked at me with his jaw flexing.
Without uttering a word, I followed him into the guestroom I utilized.
“Good luck,” Cassidy whispered.
***
“Boy, have you lost your mind?”
If there was one thing that I couldn’t take from older folks or anyone, for that matter, it was being called boy. He’d called me boy in a patronizing manner, and because he was Pierce’s dad, I let it pass. I’d respected him as a man. “Mr. Pruitt—”
“I thought you respected me and my household.”
I pulled down my suitcase from the top of the closet.
“I do, and I know that it looked really bad out in the hallway. But I didn’t do anything with Cassidy. She came in here—”
He held his hand up and I shut my mouth before I called her the sniveling snake that she was and made life hell for Pierce and possibly Beth. “Pierce’s performance in school had improved when you and he became friends, and he wasn’t so dang preoccupied with girls. I’d thought that you were a good influence on him, and I’d seen what a hard worker you are. When Pierce had told me that he was going to invite you to stay in my house, I’d told him ‘let’s ask him together’ because that was one of the wisest ideas I’d thought he had had in a while. You’ve taken advantage of my precious daughter’s friendliness—”
“You don’t have to tell me to leave. Consider me gone.”
I gathered my clothes from the closet and threw them into the suitcase. This was what I deserved for a multitude of reasons, the most important being that I got a little too comfortable. I looked forward to waking up and catching up with him for coffee, or having breakfast with whomever else was in the kitchen at the same time I was. While I never confused the Pruitt home with my own, there were moments where I’d forgotten that almost everything is conditional in life. It just takes one action, one misunderstanding, to cause a change of heart. But Mr. Pruitt looked at my pityingly, and another thing I couldn’t take was pity.
“And what’s troubling is that you’re d
enying your behavior. You could’ve fulfilled your needs elsewhere.”
“With all due to respect, it may be hard for you to believe, but I didn’t make a move your daughter. I didn’t even think about it.”
“Why would Cassidy go after a guy like you?” he asked incredulously. “After I am done speaking with her, I’ll let you know if you still have a job at The Paloma.”
“Thank you for the job. My resignation will be emailed to Mrs. Adler and Mrs. Clark before the afternoon.”
***
Bethany
“Hey, Noodles.” Pierce kissed me on my forehead and pulled my ponytail. I didn’t reach to smack him or try to tickle him because I wasn’t in the mood.
“Morning, Pierce,” I said. “Did you sleep here last night?”
“I just needed to do nothing but sleep once I got here,” he answered.
Bringing him a stack of pancakes, I caught Nancy shooting Pierce a glance.
“Beth, is there anything else you’d like for breakfast?” She knitted her eyebrows and tried to fix her face.
“The egg-white wrap is delicious,” I told her truthfully. Despite feeling like a fool, I had to go to work, and act as normal possible in order to get the image of them together out of my mind. “I am gonna eat the other half for lunch.” I slid off the stool, went to the cabinet, and got a plastic container to put my wrap in.
“Dad and I have a meeting to go to around lunchtime,” Pierce informed us as he poured a ton of syrup on top of the rest of his pancakes. “This should hold me over.”
Nancy went around the island and touched him on the shoulder. “There’s more pancakes in the microwave if you’re still hungry.”
Pierce beamed like a child, displaying his dimples.
She cocked her head in my direction. “Have a good day at work, you two.”
