Sweet Girl (2 page)

“It’s fine, I told you. I’m fine,” I say, a little more strongly.

“Any thought on what you’re going to do with that master’s you just worked so hard to get?”

“Is my mom harassing
you
about it now?” I sound petulant.

I am petulant.

I pour an extra bit of vodka into the shaker and start mixing it with more aggression than fresh fruit deserves.

“I imagine Viv would harass you herself if you’d answer your phone when she calls.”

I knew it would come to this.

I knew when I didn’t call her back this week she’d eventually sic one of them on me. But even knowing it would happen doesn’t temper my anger. It might be irrational to get so upset so quickly, but this is a sore subject, and Brody has the disadvantage of being the one who broke this pissed-off camel’s back. I am just so sick of everyone hovering!

I slam the shaker down on the countertop so hard that the coffeepot rattles on its stand.

“You know, one of the perks of living in this hovel and supporting myself is not having to answer to anyone!”

“She just wants to make sure you’re OK,” he says calmly.

He’s purposefully refusing to rise to my level of annoyance, which only irritates me more. I take a swig of my drink, barely tasting it, as I reach for my bag. I only have to dig around for a second before my hand finds the small plastic device. I pull it out and toss it on the counter. The glucose tester skids to a stop right in front of his glass. The last readout is still on the screen from when I used it an hour ago. He tries to appear uninterested, but I watch his eyes take in the numbers before he looks away.

“That’s not what I meant by OK.” He sounds almost bored, but it’s a practiced tone.

I look him right in the eye. “That’s exactly what you meant.”

For a second I think he won’t answer. Brody has had years of experience deflecting my attitude, so he’s an expert at it. But in this rare instance, his aggravation starts to peek through the veneer.

“You scared us,” he says, exasperated.

It’s not what I expected him to say, so I gape like a fish. I didn’t think he’d bring it up, but now that he has I have to fight the urge to reach up and touch the scar that’s hidden under my short hair.

Because nobody has asked me to talk about it in the months since it happened, and I can’t remember much anyway, I thought we had an unspoken agreement to let it lie. My refusal to discuss it drives my mother insane, since she treats meddling in her children’s lives like a part-time job. Lucky for all of us, Daddy was raised by the WASPiest people alive. My parents have politely argued the point for as long as they’ve been together, but since he typically puts his foot down with her about everyone deserving privacy, we stay silent. In fact, “don’t ask, don’t tell” could be the family motto. We don’t ask about where my biological father is now, nor do we discuss how many guys my little sister has worked her way through to try to make up for his absence. We don’t talk about the time Brody went off the deep end, or why I don’t date, or how no matter how much money he has, Liam still works more hours than he sleeps. We don’t discuss any of it at all.

And as far as that night is concerned, I only remember bits and pieces of it anyway. The night I was so busy studying that I forgot to check my levels. The night I felt disoriented and knew I needed to eat something, but on the way to the kitchen the confusion only got worse, and I couldn’t remember what I’d gone in there to do. I started to fall, but my memory ends before my head hit the edge of the counter and I bled all over the floor I’m standing on now. It took the landlord three weeks to replace the tile, but we didn’t talk about it then either. Even with a reminder staining the grout.

When I woke up I was in a hospital room, and Landon was clutching my hand like a limpet. It wasn’t until later that I discovered how she’d found me and realized how scary that must have been for her. She’d had to call Brody, who called my parents, who spent God-knows-what chartering a private jet in Whistler to bring them back to LA immediately. Four sets of eyes stared down at me that morning, and the air in the hospital room was so heavy with their concern and my disappointment in myself that I felt helpless. For a brief moment in time, it was another hospital room and I was nineteen again. I was immobilized by the memory, and I couldn’t find the words to argue with my mom or to explain what had happened. I just sat there hovering between the lost teenager I’d been and the grown woman who couldn’t seem to find the courage to speak. Landon was the one who stood up to my mother’s overwhelming concern and my brother’s anger. She couldn’t have recognized the lifetime of family drama she was inserting herself into, but she must have seen the desperation in my eyes. She must have seen that I was incapable of explaining any of it to them, just like I was six years ago. Because Landon, who’s all soft edges and sweetness, had to speak up for me like I was a child, the shame of that memory still makes me sick to my stomach. I lash back at it with anger.

“It was months ago!” I yell.

“It was yesterday.” Brody shakes his head and stares down into his glass, where a single swallow is left. “It feels like it was yesterday.”

The sadness in his tone takes all the fight out of me. I know how terrified he was for me that night and during the weeks that followed. I know how terrified they all were. I wish I had it in me to be sweet and biddable and to let them fuss over me like they want to. But I don’t. True to form, I’m being prickly and rude. I don’t even know why they keep trying with me.

“Hey.” The word comes out as a croak, but he looks up anyway. “I’m fine, I swear. I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but I’m taking care of myself. I promise.”

He opens his mouth to respond, but that’s the moment that Landon decides to come breezing into the kitchen. She’d changed back into the red-and-pink Kate Spade dress her parents bought her for Christmas. It’s loud and pretty, with a skirt that’s almost as voluminous as her hair. It’s totally her. She reaches for my glass without asking permission and takes a sip. She’s purposefully avoiding the moment where she has to acknowledge the man in the room who’s looking at her like she’s the best idea he ever had.

“That’s a good one.” She sets the drink back on the counter. “Is that pepper in there?”

I didn’t really pay attention while I made it, but I likely added some pepper to balance the sweetness of the mango.

“Just a little.”

“I like it—gives it a little kick.” She smiles down at the glass and then finally looks across the bar at Brody.

“Hi,” she says, suddenly acting shy.

“Hi,” he responds.

“I’m a little nervous,” she says conspiratorially.

She’s the only person I know who would tell her date that he makes her nervous.

His whole face breaks into a grin. “Me too,” he tells her.

She lets go of a breath I didn’t realize she was holding. The smile she gives him then is so big it would be embarrassing, except that he’s looking at her the exact same way.

For a moment they just grin at each other like idiots. Their expressions are so sweet and full of promise and hope that it actually hurts me to see them. That kind of look is dangerous, something you’re not supposed to let someone see when you’ve only known each other a minute and a half. I’m not sure if they realize how easy it is for someone to hurt you when you look at them that way.

“Well, this is weird,” I say loudly enough to snap them out of it. “I’ve got to get ready for work.”

I grab my glass off the countertop and turn to head into my room. I’m sure if they’re left alone long enough they’ll figure out the steps necessary to make it down to the car instead of staring at each other across the Formica all night.

“Don’t forget,” Landon calls out after me, “tomorrow you’re supposed to help Miko and me design those drinks for the Riverton Espresso party.”

“Much to my chagrin, I haven’t forgotten. Espresso-flavored tequila is wrong on multiple levels.”

I don’t turn around and she doesn’t answer, so I’m not sure if she even heard me or if she’s currently so wrapped up in staring at Brody that she’s lost her ability to respond.

Chapter Two

The bar at Gander is already packed when I arrive, and it’s fairly raucous for eight o’clock, which means at least I’ll stay busy and the night won’t drag.

I stash my Tumi under the bar and immediately jump on the line. As usual, I’m working next to Singer-Songwriter, who I’ve never seen sing or song-write in the two months he’s been here. On the other side of him, I’m Not Really a Waitress is making a customer a really strong old-fashioned or a particularly weak manhattan—you never can tell with her since she’s forever getting the glassware wrong. Typically our GM is pretty strict with the mixologists he hires, but I’m Not Really a Waitress has boobs the size of regulation soccer balls, and they’re forever on the verge of toppling right out of the white button-down we wear as part of our uniform.

LA fact: cleavage trumps skill-set or reading at grade level when you work for a skeezebag.

Jorge, my favorite busser, hustles behind me on the way to deliver food to a group of Eurotrash at the end of the long wooden bar. I give him a slight nod as I start to grab beers for the first order screamed my way.

Honestly, beer is such a pedestrian order. I don’t have an issue with beer in general, especially when we have so many great craft beers on our menu. I have an issue with tourists who order beer because they’re fearful of picking a cocktail they’ve never heard of or overwhelmed by the thought of paying eighteen dollars for a single drink. If the drinks seem overpriced to you, you probably shouldn’t be in that particular bar in the first place. This same motto can be applied to most areas of life.

“Necesitas algo?”
Jorge asks on his way back through.

I look around at my supplies while I pour vodka into the shaker in front of me.

“We’re low on the purple basil, lemongrass, and chipotle. Will you have Hector replenish when he has a moment?”

Jorge scans the smorgasbord of ingredients on the counter in front of me with a nod, then grabs a bin of dirty dishes to haul back to the kitchen. The food runners, bussers, and expo guys on the line are the hardest-working people here, and most of them have been doing this twice as long as I have. The others—bartenders, hosts, and cocktail servers—don’t stick around long. I don’t even bother to learn their names. Because it’s never just a name:
Hi, I’m Sara
, or
Hey, my name is Mike
. It’s always a name plus a qualifier:
I’m Sky. I just auditioned for an NBC pilot
. Or
Hey, I’m Avery. I do slam poetry on the weekends.
They’re forever pushing their taglines on others, as if who they
might
be somehow makes them more interesting than who they actually are. Doing their jobs well or staying with the same employer for more than three months at a time is what might impress me. But they rarely manage to do either, so in my head they’ll always be known by my private set of nicknames, and if I acknowledge their existence at all, it’s with as little communication as possible.

An hour or so later, two overplucked, over-forty divorcées squeeze their way up to the bar and flail their arms in my direction. They’re already speaking to me before I even get close enough to hear what they’re saying.

“—drinks from you? We’ve been trying to order from that hottie over there forever, but that group keeps crowding in.”

She points down the bar with a spray-brushed acrylic nail. I glance in that direction to see Singer-Songwriter shamelessly flirting with a group of junior agents in casual wear. Unfortunately for my new customers, they aren’t about to garner much of his attention unless they’ve got an Adam’s apple to go along with their cocktail order.

“What can I get you both?” I ask.

The taller one checks out the liquor on the shelf behind me like it’s a particularly difficult sudoku puzzle. Her friend seems equally confused by the cocktail menu on the bar. I can’t really blame her either; the names of our cocktails are so overly precious and self-aggrandizing, you’d think Jay Gatsby owned this bar. Her lips move silently as she reads each option, and her consternation only grows as she examines the ingredient list. Hibiscus fizz, homemade bitters, egg-white foam, infused liqueur—there’s no way she knows what any of them are. She’s going off menu.

“Could I have a lava flow?” she finally asks.

Of course she opts for the alcoholic slushie.

I valiantly fight the urge to point out that this is not a Ruby Tuesday, and I am
mostly
sure the annoyance I feel can’t be seen on my face.

I lean towards the wrong side of a bad mood most days, but I really do try not to take it out on the undeserving. These two are clueless, which isn’t necessarily a crime, unlike the twinkle in her eyes as she asks again for a lava flow. As if I’d be caught dead serving a drink that requires a prepackaged mix!

“No blender.” I stare at her, willing her to get with the program.

Some people—Landon, let’s say—would hold her hand and explain to her how a bar like this works. Landon would be kind and funny, and make her feel at ease. But I’m not my roommate, and I don’t really do the whole bonding with strangers thing. I just want them to hurry up because I have a hundred other people to serve.

“How about a sex on the beach?” she tries again sheepishly.

“No schnapps,” I answer with a raise of one eyebrow.

Her friend glances back and forth between me and the mountain of liquor on the wall as if it might attack her. She’s probably worried that she’ll be called on next since she appears to be unfamiliar with any of the names on the bottles. I look down at the acrylic nails she’s tapping nervously on the menu in front of her. Even upside down, I can read the tattoo on her left wrist:
To Thy Own Self Be True.

The tattoo is fairly new; it stands out against the worn-out, sun-damaged skin of her forearm. I’d wager my Prius that this is the big vacation to find herself after finalizing her divorce paperwork.

She got herself a new tattoo, a too-tight wardrobe from the Victoria’s Secret catalog, and a new hairstyle because she thought they’d make her into a new person. And while her friend should have warned her off a bob, because she really doesn’t have the bone structure to pull it off, I still empathize with this person. I’m shocked to find some common ground with a woman who’s wearing an unironic asymmetrical hem. But I do. I recognize the desire to chop off your hair or to carry around a reminder on your skin. I know what it feels like to want to change every single thing that made you who you were, as if becoming someone new might give you power over the mistakes you made.

But even as I empathize, I hate recognizing any part of myself in someone so clearly lost, because, well, what does that say about me? I grow more irritated.

She opens her mouth to ask for another drink and then snaps it closed. I see her glance nervously at the exit and then back at her friend, and suddenly I feel . . . not
bad
for her, but at least embarrassed that she’s gotten herself into this position.

“Look.” I glare at her. “I’ll make something for you guys. What kind of liquor do you want as a base?”

They exchange a glance, each willing the other to answer. Finally Asymmetrical Skirt speaks up.

“Gin?”

“OK,” I say, grabbing some of my tools. “Do you like savory or sweet?”

“Sweet,” they answer in unison.

“Berry or citrus?” I ask, pulling together more ingredients.

“Either. Why don’t you choose whatever is best?” she answers.

She’s learning.

I muddle together strawberries and a little jalapeño in the bottom of my shaker. I add in a splash of citrus-infused simple syrup and then the gin. It’s uncomplicated, but when you’re using in-season farmers’ market produce, you don’t want to cover it up with too many other flavors. Everything gets a tumble with the ice until the outside of the stainless-steel shaker fogs up with condensation, a sign of the perfect temperature. I’m sure they’d be more comfortable with a martini glass, or even a plastic tumbler for that matter, but I don’t give them one. To a mixologist, a real one, glassware is sacrosanct. The shape and size of the vessel are chosen based on what will best display both the look and the taste of the cocktail. I strain the drinks into two lowball glasses filled with our giant spherical ice cubes. Customers think the ice is so elegant, but they don’t realize it takes up more than half of the space in the glass. It’s management’s way of tricking people into buying more of these overpriced drinks, so I compensate by adding extra alcohol into the mix. I garnish each glass with some cilantro just to throw them off and slide the drinks across the bar. They both take a tentative sip, and grins light up their faces. I’m already printing out the bill and sliding it next to their cocktail napkins.

When I pass by again half an hour later, the divorcées are getting up to leave—to find a two-for-one happy hour somewhere that’s more their speed, I’m sure.

“Thanks so, so much.” One of them waves the bill and a handful of cash at me.

I take them from the woman, and her friend calls over the music, “You keep the change. We really appreciate your help!”

I look down at the two twenties in my hand. I’m not rude enough to say something ungrateful, even if any other bartender here would be offended by the two-dollar tip they each left.

“Thanks,” I grumble, and head off to my next customer.

By the time I finish closing out that night, it’s nearly three in the morning. I’m exhausted from a heavy shift and probably from the argument with Brody earlier too. I mean to drag myself right back to the hotel’s employee parking lot and straight home to bed, but my feet start to move in a different direction. I pass the entrance to Gander and wind down a series of employee hallways before coming out into a small side lobby. I skirt the fountain and walk through the elevator bank and past the gift shop that doesn’t have a single thing that costs less than a hundred dollars.

I find myself in the exact same spot I end up almost every working night.

The lobby of the Buchanan is cavernous but broken down into unique individual sections, so it manages to feel cozy. When the hotel was remodeled six years ago, the owners shocked everyone (and by everyone, I mean people like my family, who follow the hospitality industry like others follow sports or politics) by luring Marcus Balmain away from a restaurant in New York. In a totally unprecedented move, they handed nearly their entire lobby over to the famous young chef and gave him carte blanche over everything from the budget to the design. Nobody believed any single menu was worth that kind of financial gamble, but with a James Beard award and two Michelin stars under his belt, Balmain had proved them wrong. For the owners of the hotel, it was a visionary move in a town that was rapidly being overrun by wannabe foodies. The men in my family scoffed at the salary the chef had negotiated as part of his deal. But six months into the new opening, there were lines out the door and press by the bucketload, and Brody, Liam, and Dad were trying to figure out how to steal Balmain away for themselves.

On the far side next to reception sits Primi, which features dark whimsical furnishings and austere elegance. Its long tables and leather sofas are typically teeming with people enjoying drinks, appetizers, and a wine list you’d need a special degree to fully understand. Tucked next to Primi is the entrance to Secondi, the hotel’s five-star restaurant and crowning glory. Reservations are booked six months out, and even then you’ll likely be eating at five thirty on a Tuesday unless you know someone in management. And last, in front of me now, a pink haven sits in the middle of the room, bright and sweet like a dollop of whipped cream. This small collection of marble tables, French Regency prints, and ornate, gilded chairs has no place in the otherwise brooding lobby. Its purpose is to stand out, to tantalize, and it does. Behind those tables is an open kitchen separated from the rest of the room by a long white bar. This bar doesn’t serve alcohol, though; it’s covered with apothecary vases of every shape and size, and each is filled with one of the perfect handcrafted desserts that Dolci is famous for. Balmain designed the three spaces to function together so that guests might flit from one spot to the next and, by the end of the progression, have a complete dining experience.

Just like every other time I’ve stood here, I watch through the glass as the early crew starts their work for the day. This is just the prep team; the actual pastry chefs won’t come in for a couple hours yet, but I still can’t help but watch as they practice the minutiae of spinning sugar into something delectable. Eggs are cracked and separated, brown sugar is measured out into giant mixing bowls, and so much flour is sifted at once that it hovers in the air like fog. I have the urge, like I always do, to walk through to the back and see it all up close. I want to know exactly how much butter they use in their flaky tart crusts or what the hell they put into the
fleur de sel
cake that makes it as addictive as crack.

But that urge comes from the memories of another person entirely, and I ruined her dreams along with everything else. So I don’t walk back; I don’t acknowledge the crew at all. I watch a moment longer before turning and heading in the other direction. I give myself only as long as it takes to get back to my car to think about those dreams and the little girl who they belonged to.