One & Only (Canton) (10 page)

At yet Annabel had never lost her faith in humanity. Milo was her shining light. It was her sister Sylvia who had grown cynical. If I thought I’d made men a low priority on my life list, it was nothing compared to the “stay off my lawn” attitude of my best friend.

Then again, Sylvia’s motto was “guilty until proven innocent.” She hated everyone until she knew they were on her side, and those who’d made the cut were few and far between.

As the night continued, I found I didn’t have much time to talk further with my friends about the situation, though since pouring beers wasn’t exactly taxing my mental capacity, there was plenty of time to think about it. And of course, the stuff I was thinking about wasn’t exactly the kind of thing I could share with the Warrens. Sylvia believed there was a type of guy who cheated and a type of guy who didn’t, and maybe she was right. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe there was a type of woman that you cheated with, too. Women like my mother, who let out some kind of special pheromone only cheating guys could sense that said, “Yeah, I’ll put up with this bullshit. Let’s have at it.”

And maybe I was that type of woman too.

Either way, I was not skipping out on work Saturday to attend the football game with Dylan and his buddies—and
not
Hannah. Instead I tried very hard to figure out the exact proportions of the amaretto sours that the sorority girls at table thirty-five were throwing back like Kool-Aid. Maybe it was the biochemist in me, but I preferred tending bar to being a waitress. Or at least, the part of tending bar that didn’t require me talking to the patrons.

“Hey, sweetheart,” a voice drifted above the din. “You there. Miss?”

Slowly it dawned on me that I was being called. I turned to see a young guy waving some cash over the bar. “Yes?”

“Three drafts for me and my friends.”

I got the beers and brought them over. There were three men and two women, some with Canton T-shirts on, crowding the barstools in that corner.

“Finally, some service!” one of the girls said. “Do you do amaretto sours?”

“It’s a specialty,” I said, smiling as I grabbed the amaretto and sour mix from the rail and started mixing.

The guy who’d first called to me watched me shaking the girls’ drinks. Well, to be frank, he watched my breasts bouncing.

“Would you like to start a tab?” I asked him.

“As long as it means you’re the bartender on call, sweetheart.”

I forced a smile and took his credit card. The name on the card read
Todd J. Hamilton Jr.
Todd here had a dad who loved him so much that he gave him the same exact name. Must be nice. I didn’t even have my dad’s last name.

The next time I made it around to that side of the bar, Todd and friends had been joined by a third woman, who’d clearly found the Verde barstool unacceptable, since she’d taken up a position on Todd’s lap. As she ordered her amaretto sour, Todd didn’t look at me. Not even at my breasts.

Girlfriend. Figured.

The night continued, and so did the steady orders of draft beers, G&Ts, and amaretto sours from the group in the corner of the bar. At some point, the ladies departed, leaving the gentlemen drinking on their own. As I fulfilled the latest round of orders, Todd grinned at me.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Tess,” I said and handed him his beer.

“Tess,” he said, and it sounded like a hiss. “What are you doing after your shift?”

“Going home to study.” I kept my expression open and cheerful, the pro bartender standard of, “I want a tip, but we’re not really friends.”

Confusion crossed his face. “You’re not at Canton.” It was a statement.

“Yes, actually. Just transferred in.” I kept the same lightness in my tone, but there was no point in lying, right?

“Oh.” He still sounded baffled. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” I left and found Sylvia across the bar. “Guy was shocked I went to Canton.”

“Of course he was,” she replied. “We’re the help, don’t you know. Not equals. Not
human
.”

Todd caught my attention again. “You know,” he slurred as I came near. “Since you’re a Canton student, maybe you’d like to come back to our frat house after this. We’re throwing a little party. Just very close friends.”

“I’m not your very close friend,” I said lightly, pouring him another beer.

He grabbed my hand as I passed the beer to him. “Not
yet
, sweetheart.”

I jerked away. “Didn’t your girlfriend leave, like, five seconds ago?”

“Eh,” he said with a shrug. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Oh?” I crossed my arms. “What would she say about that if I asked her?”

His expression turned hard. “Jeez, you’re uptight. I clearly had you pegged wrong. You look like the kind of girl who likes to have fun.”

If he’d slapped me across the face, it couldn’t have hurt more. And five minutes later, when they closed out their tab through Sylvia and she brought me the little black pleather bill folder, I wasn’t surprised to see
Bitch!
written on the tip line.

“Assholes,” Sylvia said. “Their loss, though. They can’t act like this and expect us not to spit in their drinks next time.”

I nodded and closed out the tab.

“Fuck ’em,” she went on. “Jackass guys think any waitress is fair game. And if you don’t drop to your knees and blow them right there, they act as if you’re the one out of line. It’s a professional hazard. You have to ignore them.”

“They don’t bother me,” I said. And it was pretty much the truth. Being hit on and screwed over for tips was annoying, but part of the landscape. It wasn’t that.

You look like the kind of girl...

To Todd and his friends, I looked like the kind of girl who’d go home with a guy after watching him spend the evening with his girlfriend. The kind of girl who didn’t care that he’d made a commitment to someone else, someone who trusted him not to pick up waitresses after their shifts at bars. The kind of girl my mother was.

Were they right?

NINE

I was still pondering the question the next morning as I got ready for my 9:00 a.m. lab, still weighing it in my mind as I drove to school and entered the building. I had a hard time picturing anyone treating Hannah the way Todd J. Hamilton Jr. had treated me last night. Was there some tattoo on my forehead, visible only to assholes, that said, “This one’s fair game”?

Had it always been that way? I wasn’t much of an English student, but I’d read Jane Austen in high school, just like everyone else. In
Pride and Prejudice,
all my classmates had swooned over the love story of Mr. Darcy and Lizzie Bennet, but I’d been fascinated by the response to Mr. Wickham, who’d tried to seduce several of the characters. It wasn’t a part my teachers had ever stressed in class, but I’d never been able to get it out of my mind. With the rich Georgiana Darcy—Mr. Darcy’s sister—and later with the heiress Mary King of Meryton, he’d sought to marry them. But with Lizzie’s flirty younger sister Lydia, who had no money, he’d just run off, content to get the sex and leave her and her entire family ruined. Later, Lizzie’s uncle had reported that Wickham had still hoped to marry a rich girl, despite the fact that he’d been “living in sin” with Lydia. I’d always wondered what would have happened if Mr. Darcy hadn’t stepped in and forced the marriage. Would Lydia have spent the rest of her life in secret, raising Wickham’s bastard children while he married some fine lady?

If there was an invisible tattoo for girls like us, Lydia Bennet had it, too.

I was able to put the thoughts aside as I finished my lab work for the week, but my mood was charcoal gray. It must have shown on my face, too, because I exited the lab, hardly seeing where I was going, and ran smack into Dylan.

“Whoa, there,” he said, steadying me. “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” I grumbled. “I’m just in a rush. My shift starts at ten thirty…”

“Oh, right. How’s the restaurant biz?”

I rolled my eyes. “Eh. Had some jerks in my section last night.”

“Rough. Bad tippers?”

“Zero tippers,” I replied. “Apparently some guys don’t believe in tipping the waitress unless she agrees to go home with them.”

A cloud seemed to pass over Dylan’s eyes. “Does that kind of thing happen to you a lot?”

“I’ll tell you when I’ve done this for a little longer. But according to my friend Sylvia, the answer is yes.”

“I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “We’ve got to get you out of there. I’m going to keep my eyes open for any research assistant jobs.”

“Thanks.” I shrugged. “It’s a learning experience. I should have realized anyone with a name as pretentious as Todd J. Hamilton Jr. would be a jackass. Note to self—always check out the credit card when they open a tab. If they’ve got a jerk name, expect jerk treatment.”

Dylan said nothing for a moment. “I’m so sorry, Tess.”

I didn’t need his pity. I just needed to get to work.

***

Friday night at Verde passed without incident, and the Saturday lunch crowd was especially genteel, seeing how it was made up of all the locals who hadn’t gone out to the football game. As the afternoon waned, however, the patrons grew rowdier and the restaurant filled with football fans eager to celebrate Canton’s win. Half the booths held diners wearing Canton T-shirts and hats and jackets.

“You’ve got table twenty-eight,” Annabel said as she swung by me at the prep table. “Six top. They asked for you specifically.”

“Requests, already?” said another waitress. “Gee, someone’s popular.”

I was baffled. I hadn’t been at Verde long enough to get regulars. I approached the table with no small amount of curiosity, and my stomach clenched as I recognized Todd J. Hamilton Jr., surrounded by some older people. But then the guy in the corner looked up and smiled at me. Blue eyes, dark hair. Dylan.

I’d been complaining to him about his friend?

“Hi, Tess!” Dylan said brightly. “Guys, this is my friend from Bio-E, Tess McMann. She just transferred to Canton this semester and unfortunately, she had to work during the game.”

“Awww…,” everyone echoed sympathetically.

“Tess, these are some Canton Chem folks I met at the last career day. You want to be friends with them in case you ever
do
get to come to the tailgates. They always have the best tent.” He winked at one of the older women, and she smiled.

“Nice drinks, not the usual frat boy rotgut,” she said. “I’m Kathleen Hamilton, VP of Human Resources at Canton Chem.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

“And of course,” Dylan continued, “you know her son, Todd.”

Todd wasn’t looking up from his menu.

“Yes, Todd and I met the other night,” I said, passing out the menus.

“I was a waitress when I was in college, too,” Kathleen went on. “Tough gig. Always jerks drooling all over you.”

“You don’t say,” said Dylan, looking at Todd. “Sounds terrible. What kind of person would be so disrespectful to a woman who’s just trying to do her job?”

“Exactly,” said Kathleen. “Well, Tess, if you ever want to apply to an internship at Canton Chem, here’s my card.” She handed me a glossy rectangle. “Dylan’s been singing your praises the whole game.”

“Oh. Has he?” I got their drink orders and managed to keep our interactions to a minimum through the rest of the meal. As I was ringing up their bill, Dylan found me at the computer.

“What was that all about?” I asked him, punching the buttons on the screen with a bit more force than strictly necessary. “Waltzing in here with him and his
mother
!”

He held up his hands in a feigned display of innocence. “What? You told me he’d been hassling you. I had an opportunity to fix it. And get a free meal in the process.”

“I don’t need you to fight my battles, Dylan.”

“I know that,” he said softly. “But I hate guys who pull shit like that. Who act like bullies toward people—toward women—they think are beneath them. I just thought I’d give him a little lesson in perspective.”

I printed out the receipt, jammed it in the billfold, and slammed it shut. “And I think all you taught him is to be careful about who he pulls his shit around. He might be kinder to me because he knows I’m Bio-E and so Canton Chem will suck up to me, but what’s to keep him from being a jerk to other waitresses—say, my friend Sylvia?”

Dylan stared at me for a second. “Maybe. But it’s a start. He shouldn’t have hit on you.”

“Hmph.”

“He has a girlfriend.”

I looked away. “That doesn’t stop some guys.” And look who was talking. Had I pegged Dylan wrong? Had Annabel been right, that he was really just trying to be kind to me when he’d offered to let me stay at his place? When he’d invited me out to the game? Had he been planning nothing more insidious than trying to hook me up with an internship at Canton Chem?

“Plus, he has no idea what a heartbreaker you are.”

Still safely facing the register, I laughed.

“Plus…he doesn’t deserve you.”

I turned back to him. The look in his eyes was raw, unrestrained, and brimming over with longing. I drew back in shock.

“Tess…” He reached for me, then stopped himself. “I’ll—take the bill back. You can see to your other tables.” He grabbed the case out of my hands and vanished.

I pressed my hand to my chest. Under my palm, my heart pounded like I’d run a mile. What was that? What
was
that? One second he was telling me it was inappropriate for guys with girlfriends to hit on other women, and the next second he looked like he wanted to tear my clothes off right there by the cash register.

At least he’d gone away. If he hadn’t, I might have let him tear my clothes off.

The next time I passed table twenty-eight, it was empty. Along with the tip Kathleen Hamilton, VP of Human Resources at Canton Chem, had written in with the credit card slip, I found a twenty. On the top was scrawled,
Sorry -TJH.

Okay, I didn’t
need
Dylan to fight my battles. But I couldn’t argue with the results.

***

On Sunday, Dylan showed up at Verde again, around two, right as the brunch crowd was dispersing. I was working the bar again, mixing Bloody Marys and mimosas all morning. I finally thought I’d get a break, and then I saw the hostess setting a place at the bar. Moments later, Dylan sat down.