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“Well?Did you get the job?”
CJ’s sprawled on the couch, her voice muffled by the pillow over her face.
“The Boston job?Not yet.”I hang my coat on one of the hooks by the door, kick off my heels, and sink onto the cushion next to her, flexing my toes with a sigh.“But the restaurant job’s a yes.”I should probably rethink my choice of shoes for hostessing.I’m not nineteen anymore, and I’ve been working a desk job for way too long.“I’ll have Mondays and Tuesdays off and work Wednesdays through Sundays until their regular hostess is back in January.”
“What a grind.I told you, you don’t have to go out and earn money,” CJ says into the pillow.“I’m delighted to have you freeload for a while.Freeload for as long as you want.”
She’s being serious.When CJ’s corporate consulting job went fully remote, she moved to Beaucoeur, where housing is still affordable.But her work is solitary and her hours are whatever she wants them to be, and as a result she’s gone a little feral.Even if we didn’t love each other like sisters, she’d be thrilled to have me as a roommate if only to stay in better contact with the outside world.Still, there was no way I could sit around her house for weeks feeling sorry for myself.It felt like serendipity when I caught theSeasonal Help Wantedsign in Verdant’s front window.
“I’ll need the money to relocate to Boston once they realize I’m the creative director they’re looking for,” I say.“And I can’t just watch TV in your house all day while you’re running the Singapore Exchange or whatever it is you do.”
CJ yanks the pillow off her face and squints at me.“Plus, there’s the hot waiter.”
“There is the hot waiter,” I calmly agree, praying that CJ can’t tell how much I was looking forward to potentially seeing Jonesy today.And then I did, and he was clearly weirded out by me being there.I went from foolishly hoping he’d remember me to being horrified that he remembered me for some terrible reason.I almost turned and walked out.
“He sat in on my interview and basically threatened to tell my new boss about my legal issues.”
“Seriously?”CJ blinks.“He seemed way cooler than that when he was waiting on us.”
“No, no, he’s super cool,” I say, recalling the glint in his eye once he started acting like the wildly appealing guy I remembered from the week before.“He was just messing with me.”
“You’ve already got inside jokes!”CJ claps in excitement.“I’m thinking a spring wedding.”
“I don’t think he’s the marrying type.”I was only at Verdant for an hour today, and I saw Jonesy turn his teasing charm on pretty much every server, busboy, and customer he interacted with.
CJ smirks.“A fling would be good for you.”
“Oh no,” I say with a laugh.“I locked eyes with him during my interview.Those eyes have seen things.Things I’m not ready for.”Things I’ve only fumbled toward in the dark with my last couple of perfectly polite boyfriends.
I suppress a quiver at the thought of being alone in the dark with Jonesy, the man with no first name.
“So if the hot waiter’s out of the question, I guess that means you’rereallynot ready for a fling with the Santa stripper instead.”CJ’s hair slipped out of its ponytail during her nap, and she’s too busy yanking out the elastic and rebundling it on top of her head to see my whole body go slack at the thought.First Jonesy, then the Santa from the Crimson Lounge?It’s too much for someone in the middle of a sex drought.
“I wouldn’t even know where tostartwith him,” I say faintly.
“Start by getting him to take off the beard so you can see if the face matches the body.”
“Perfect, you mean?”Santa Luke’s aerodynamic V-shaped torso drifts through my mind, and at the memory of his husky “naughty or nice?”in my ear, I swear my Fallopian tube drops an egg.
It also shakes a memory loose.Funny, that’s what Jonesy asked when he took our drinks order at Verdant last week.But his question wasn’t an invitation to have sex with him for hours at the North Pole.
“So you’ve got snake-hips Santa in your spank bank and Jonesy in your workplace, you lucky girl,” CJ says.
“Amazing body, meet amazing face.”Kind of great personality too.Not many people can pull me out of my own head when I’m anxious about impressing a potential boss, but somehow Jonesy managed it.
“Combine the two, and you’ve got the perfect man,” CJ says.
“And just think, without Richie trying to get me locked up for a decade on international fraud charges, I’d never have met either of them.”
“Fucking Richie!”CJ seethes.“I never liked him.”
“You dated him for three months.”
She gasps in outrage.“When I was asophomoreand in my pretty boy phase.I knew nothing about life back then.”
“Fair,” I acknowledge.“And hey, let it be a lesson.You can’t trust handsome men.”
