Elegant Sins - Stasia Black Page 0,5

a refill, they’d complain you were pesky and intrusive.

Guys liked cleavage on display but if they were with their wives or girlfriends, it pissed the women off to catch their guy sneaking a peek down your tight shirt. Some days you just couldn’t win.

I looked at the clock. Just fifteen minutes left on my shift and then I could finally go home. I leaned back against the counter and tipped my head toward the ceiling. Why the hell had I ever invited Kyle to live with me?

At the time, it made financial sense. He had a job back then and we could afford rent on a double-wide if we pooled our paychecks.

Maybe I was just as clueless as Delilah because I thought it was a steppingstone up in the world, too. From single to double-wide. Sure, it was still a house on wheels, but you couldn’t beat the square footage. I was going to set up a home office in the extra bedroom to do my homework.

I was almost through with my business degree.

Well, sort of.

It was a degree I’d designed for myself based on the free online business classes from the best colleges in the country. It was incredible how much information there was out there. They just gave it away. I’d taken business classes from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale. Courses on entrepreneurship, sales analytics, financial markets.

I did every assignment (even though they were never graded by anyone other than me) and read every book (no matter how long I had to wait for them through interlibrary loan). I wrote papers and did class projects, and I tried to get on every free student forum I could to discuss ideas or swap assignments to grade each other’s work.

Not that I’d have a piece of paper at the end of it saying I learned anything or that I was qualified.

But screw that. I knew. I knew I’d already finished enough work for an associate degree in business and was now working toward my MBA.

I was smart and I wasn’t going to be a lowly waitress barely earning minimum wage all my life.

I looked around the grimy diner. One day I’d own a restaurant of my own and I’d run it right. It would be clean. Bright. A place people wanted to come for a respite from their shitty lives. It would be a place people could spend an hour or two and be inspired that better things were possible.

I’d sell gourmet coffee and provide a wide, exciting menu of dishes so that my customers could experience a flavor beyond Deep Fried. I’d wake up palates and excite imaginations, and I’d build a small enclosed play area outside so it’d be a nice, clean, safe place moms could gather for an hour or two of sanity.

“You’ve got that dreamy smile on your face again.” Delilah elbowed me in the side, and I jerked out of my reverie.

“What?” I felt my cheeks color and I reached for the dishrag to scrub down the counter again, a never-ending task.

But Delilah just grinned. “You dreaming about Kyle? It’s about time you two settled down and started thinking about a family.”

My mouth dropped open and I could only stare at her in horror. Was she serious? I was only twenty-three years old.

But then her eyes got wistful and she caressed her stomach. “I can’t wait until I have a little baby to take care of.”

I glanced at her black eye. She’d spent twenty minutes in the bathroom earlier covering it with concealer, but her eye was still shadowed with the bruise. She couldn’t actually be thinking of having a baby with Jimmy?

“You know Anne-Marie just had her little baby girl and she’s so sweet. Anne-Marie was so happy when I saw her. The little baby sleeps in bed with them. I got to hold her and change her diaper and she was just like this itty bitty dolly. So cute! And you know, Joe was about to leave her but then she got pregnant and he stayed and now they’re both so happy.”

Delilah leaned over and propped her elbows on the counter, looking wistfully out the large front window of the diner. “I’ve always wanted to be that happy.”

Dear God, was there any way to talk sense into my friend? Delilah had a good heart. But if she brought a kid into that apartment with Jimmy…

Looking at her, I suddenly had the freakiest feeling that it was like looking at my own mother twenty years