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“Are you sure you need me to go to this?” I ask, or beg for release, really. At least with my face.
“Ruby,” he sets his coffee down and looks genuinely concerned, “you told me that you would. I told you it would be important. We’re together now, and you’re going to have to meet my family at some point. I mean, you are in love with me so…you’ll go, right?”
Yikes. Just throwing that word around sober, huh? Okay.
“Yeah but, can’t I meet them in like a more neutral, non-threatening kind of environment? You know, like…tapas or happy hour?”
“This is going to be as non-threatening as it gets. They’re going to be too busy rolling out the charm to be threatening. There will be people there watching them that they will want to impress. Also, they don’t really do tapas. Or happy hour, even though they’re functional alcoholics.”
“And…all alcoholics like bartenders?” I offer.
He smiles and says, “Sure. Let’s go with that.”
That doesn’t sound promising, nor does it ease my fear of schmoozing with the Seattle elites. I finish my food and tell him I have to leave, because I do—I’m supposed to be at work in less than 2 hours and I need to shower and not look or smell anything like the night/morning that we'd just had. He offers to drive me, but I’d rather just walk. It’s cold, but also late enough in the afternoon that my outfit won’t be that out of place. I need to clear my head. I need to be alone with my thoughts for a while. Admittedly, being alone with my thoughts isn’t always the most successful use of my time but given all that has transpired in the past two days and what I can expect in the next two, I am going to need all of the solitude I can get to recalibrate. I tell him that maybe I’ll come over after work, but I won’t, because I’ll need that time, too.
It’s as cold as I’d expected, and I’m glad I have my headphones in my jacket pocket. Yes, because music helps me clear my head. But also, because—as every girl that’s ever wandered the city alone knows—they’re very effective as armor. The wearer is not interested. She can’t hear you. She’s untouchable.
It works when I pass Alex a couple of blocks from our building, heading in the opposite direction. I feel him see me at the last minute, and I can feel him turn his head after I’ve already passed. But I’m sure he doesn’t say anything. He knows I don’t want to listen, anyway.
Work is steady but slower than I would have hoped, and I’m having trouble focusing when Chuck tells me that Dane wants to speak to me in his office. I’m a good employee; I’d say that we are friends, even. I was happy to come in a little early to help him with inventory again today, and any other day with just about anything else that he needs. Still, I wonder if I am in trouble here, or fired. Somehow during the twenty-second walk to his office, all the worst-case scenarios run through my head. Suddenly, I’m losing my apartment and wondering where the hell I am going to live and what I’m going to do. Maybe it’s because Jake has been hanging around so much. Shit. That could be it.
“Have a seat,” he says, pushing himself away from the computer on the other side of his L-shaped desk and turning to face me. “You can get that deer-in-the-headlights look off your face. You’re not in trouble. Unless you’ve done something you think you should be in trouble for, and want to tell me about it,” he says jokingly, but I can’t even manage a smile.
Why am I like this?
I manage a pretty pathetic excuse for a laugh and sit down, “I’m sure there’s plenty of things I should be in trouble for, but none of them are work-related.”
“Good,” he says. “Let’s keep it that way. Ruby, I’ve been thinking a lot about my future, and yours, here, and I wanted to run something by you,” he starts. I’m still not at ease. Why would he be thinking a lot about something involving me?
“And where do I start? I guess first, I want to thank you for all the slack you’ve been picking up for me around here lately. I’ve come to rely on you to keep this place running smoothly, especially over the past six months or so. You’ve allowed me to take a step back from the bar to focus on some other projects, as well as my family. And actually, we haven't really gone public with this yet, but Tomas and I are adopting a little boy. He is due next month, and we are so excited. It’s going to be so much work, and I want to be able to be there for all of it, and also, it’s just kind of time, you know?”
“Yeah, wow. That’s amazing! Congratulations! I had no idea. That kid is going to be so lucky to have you two as parents.” I feel a little tug on my heart when the words come out, and it activates my tear ducts. If only he knew how much I meant it.
“Thanks, thank you. Yeah, we are very, very, happy. We have kept it kind of quiet because, you know, we have been trying to adopt for a while and we have been burned in the past, but it looks like this time it’s really happening. It’s all going to work out,” he says with a smile, and I think I see tears welling up in his eyes, too.
“That’s so great.”
“Yeah, so anyway,” he continues, “I am going to be taking a step back like I said, officially, so that I can be home more, and as you know, we have been renovating a couple of properties and we’ve been super busy with that, so I thought it was a good time to hire a manager for this place to take some of the pressure off of me, and I was thinking that the best person for that job would be you.”
“Oh, wow. I wasn’t really expecting that…”
“Before you say yes or no, think about it. You know the job already. You have helped me out so much. You’ve been here for almost five years now. You’re reliable. You’d be dealing with vendors and supply, making schedules, handling timecards, payroll, and hiring. Also, there is some other day-to-day operations stuff that I can easily show you. It won’t be a problem for you at all. There’ll be a nice pay raise, of course. There would be fewer closing shifts, but you know, you’d be here a lot. You’d still end up behind the bar a lot, just like I do. And I would still be here and be available to you when you need it, so you wouldn’t be completely thrown to the sharks, but I don’t think that you would need me very much, and that’s why I’m hoping that it will be you.”
“Okay. I’ll…think about it, then.”
“Absolutely. You’re off tomorrow, so take that time and let me know, but be sure about it by then. I know you have a lot going on, and so do I, so I really do need someone that I can count on, and I need a commitment soon, so if you are going to say no, I need to know.”
“I’ll be sure. And thank you. For even considering me. But also—are you sure I am the right person for this? What about Chuck? He’s been here a lot longer than I have,” I ask, because I don’t feel like the right person. I feel like a child in an adult’s body, or something like it, being handed an adult job and wondering if they realize that this is just a costume. Legally, sure, I’m all grown up. I have a college degree, but certainly not in business management. I do adult things. That doesn’t necessarily mean I feel like one.
He puts his finger to his temples as if I’ve just given him a headache. “Chuck is happy in the role he is in right now. He gets to work around his wife’s schedule at the hospital and be there for his kids when he needs to be. Even if that weren’t the case, I’d still be sure, Ruby. But you need to be sure, too. My only concern for you is your self-confidence. You’re going to need to be able to stand up to your co-workers—your friends—when you need to. Don’t let them walk all over you. You know what I mean. Be helpful, but don’t be a doormat.”
Shit. Was I a doormat? I’d never really thought about it that way. I mean, sure. I pick up the slack for my co-workers. I think they’ve realized that if they leave something undone, I was going to do it so that no one would ever be the wiser. I just kind of thought about it as making sure that the ship ran smoothly, not that they were taking advantage of me in some way. Well, except maybe that time when I let my new co-worker go home with the guy I was in love with, and I didn’t even say anything. Maybe I was a doormat then.
“I get it, definitely something to think about,” I tell him, and I would think about it.
“You do that, and have an answer for me the next time I see you, okay?”
“Thank you,” I tell him again, “and congrats, again.”
