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“Will you be there?”
Surprised by the question, I don’t answer Jace immediately and Celeste gets in with a response first. “Weeping Willow doesn’t do parties. She prefers to stay home with her nose in a book.”
I narrow my eyes at the epithet. Celeste was the first to call me ‘Weeping Willow’ and, of course, it stuck. Now everyone who wants to piss me off, or kiss her bony ass, refers to me that way. What she says is true, though. I would rather stay home and study than go to one of their stupid parties. Getting my degree is my ticket out of this godforsaken town, after all. Still, the sneering tone in Celeste’s voice hurts.
“You should come,” Jace says.
Nobody ever invites me to parties, especially Celeste’s circle of spoiled asshole friends. Hunter splutters in dismay, but doesn’t contradict Jace. It’s clear who’s top dog around here now. He looks at me, waiting for an answer. Sensing a trap, I snort derisively. “Hell, no.”
“Suit yourself.” His manner is offhand. He doesn’t give a shit that I turned him down. “Might do you good to take that stick out of your arse once in a while.”
Flashing him a tight smile, I turn just in time to see Ronnie putting an order of fries in the window for me to pick up. I go and grab the plate and take it to Jace, resisting the urge to just slap it down on the table. My boss, the elderly Mrs. Landry, is big on customer service. If it got back to me I’d been rude to a customer, she’d rip into me in a way only an eighty-year-old woman can.
“Is there anything else I can get for you?” I ask pleasantly.
“No.” Celeste dismisses me with a flick of the wrist like I’m her hired help.
I gladly leave them and go to check on the family who came in for burgers and shakes just before Celeste and her entourage descended. They’re done with their meal.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“No, thanks, darlin’. Just the check.”
As I turn, one of the kids speaks in an urgent, hushed whisper to remind him he said they’d get dessert. I look back to the dad, who sighs in resignation. It kind of reminds me of the way my father used to be. Though he often grumbled about spoiling me, he always gave in. God, I miss him.
“What’s good for dessert?” the dad asks.
“Cheesecake’s nice, but we’re known statewide for our mud pie.”
“Mud pie it is, then. We’ll take four slices to go.”
I box up the pie and calculate the total bill for them. Mrs. Landry’s old-fashioned and likes us to write up people’s checks and then just put the total through the register. She does regular audits to make sure our math is correct. She’s a stickler for detail, but I can’t help liking the old girl.
Once the family has paid and left the diner, I’ve got three other tables to tend to, including the one Celeste and her crew occupy. Thankfully, only five minutes pass before they decide to leave. As usual, they don’t wait for their check. Hunter just casually tosses a couple of large bills on the table and heads for the exit. Must be nice to have money to literally throw around. I don’t have to worry about him stiffing me on the bill. He always leaves more than enough to cover it. There’s usually a decent tip, too. He may be an asshole, but he’s not a cheap one.
While the three guys and Daria head out, Celeste approaches me. “I need a favor.”
I guessed that before she opened her mouth. She only deigns to speak to me when she wants something. Celeste hates me with a passion because her father married my mother and moved in with us. I mean, she never liked me before that, but it was the catalyst for her really starting to treat me as if I was a piece of gum stuck to her shoe.
“Yeah?” I try to sound as if I couldn’t care less, but I’m actually curious to know what she could want from me. “What is it?”
“A friend of mine is falling behind in English.”
Seeing exactly where this is headed, I roll my eyes. “I’m not tutoring some moron friend of yours.”
“He’s not a moron. He’s just fallen behind because he has a lot on.”
And I don’t? Folding my arms across my chest, I shake my head. “I don’t have time. I have school, my job.”
“He’d pay you.”
Given his lack of attendance at our lectures for English, I suspect it’s Trent she wants me to tutor, and no amount of money in the world would induce me to spend time with that arrogant jackass. “No, I’m too busy.”
Celeste narrows her eyes at me and I know this is where she’s about to get nasty. “Fuck, you’re a sad little bitch.”
“Yes, yes, Weeping Willow, I know.”
Her mouth twists into a snarl and I brace myself for what I know will be a low blow. “You do realize your slut mother cheated on your precious daddy, don’t you?”
A breath whooshes from my lungs. I was not ready for that. “What?”
“Oh, yeah. She started fucking my dad while your loser father was in the hospital.”
“That’s not true!”
“Sure it is. They used to hook up at the Marriot on Thursday nights.” Celeste inspects her perfectly manicured nails. “So tacky.”
As I think about my mother’s movements when my dad was dying of cancer, I realize she did disappear on Thursdays. She told me she needed a little space to deal with everything that was going on. Was she cheating on my dad that whole time? It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing she would do, but if Celeste was lying, she was pretty convincing. I don’t want to ask my mom about it. She’s been through so much already. So there’s only one other option. If I want to know the truth, I’ll have to confront Russ.
