Rebel at Spruce High (Spruce Texas Romance #5) - Daryl Banner Page 0,41
mind wandering off. “He was opposed to doing any sort of risqué thing with the arts at Spruce High. I’m surprised he approved of it. Y’know, maybe it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing for Strong to run against him in the spring.”
That drops my jaw. “Coach Strong’s running for mayor??”
“No. Worse. His mother.” She nudges me, then pushes open the door. “Now skidoo. We’ve got tables to turn. I’ll go dig Mick out of whatever hole he’s hiding in.” And with another swat of a menu at my ass, I’m out the kitchen door and back into the fray.
It’s around ten o’clock—just an hour before we close—that the chaos of Biggie’s Bites finally starts to ebb. And just when I think I have a moment to sit down, the door flies open, and in comes a cheery, loud quartet of last year’s graduates—whom I would have graduated with had I not fallen behind a year. Leading the four of them is TJ McPherson, sweet, baby-faced, easy on the eyes, but a little pampered for my taste in his giant countryside mansion. The other three used to be good friends with me when we were in fifth grade. Then they got in with the cool kids and ditched me—the pain of which was only further exacerbated by my falling behind a year and watching them soar off ahead of me, coughing in the dust of their departure. Needless to say, I’m not happy to see them.
I slip right into the kitchen before they can spot me. “Mick,” I hiss over the noise of the running sink. Mick’s doing dishes. “Hey. Please. You gotta cover for me out there.”
Mick—droopy-lipped, dull-eyed, with a light, oily complexion and a buzzed head—pulls out an earbud. “Huh?”
“Please, can you take that group’s order and handle them? I’ll take over dishes.”
He gives one long look through the window, confused. “You want me to huh?”
“Them. That group. Can you be their server? C’mon, Mick.”
He doesn’t close his mouth between sentences. It literally just hangs open, waiting for flies. “I dunno how.”
“Lord help us, you just take them to a table, give them menus, and find out what they want. Please.”
“Huh. Okay.” He pops out his other earbud, stuffs them into his pocket, then pushes through the kitchen door still wearing his sudsy apron. I peer through the crack in the door, watching him fumble with some menus before walking the four of my former friends to a booth in the back.
Satisfied, I breathe a sigh of relief and take over doing dishes just as promised. And in that soapy, lukewarm water, I let the rest of my worries melt and break apart like the grease and gravy off plates, until they’re just swirling messes circling the drain.
But even in the kitchen, with the noise of machines buzzing and refrigerators humming, I hear the quartet’s shouts of laughter as they enjoy themselves. One of them starts chanting some kind of slogan—maybe from the university they were admitted to and are leaving for in a week or so, since college classes start later than high school. Then TJ’s distinctively clear and lofty voice proclaims something that sounds rather happy, and once done, it’s met with applause. I have no idea what it is and I never will. It has the intended effect of making me feel so damned lonely and worthless. I’m ready to just break the rest of the dirty dishes, hurl them through the window, or gag myself with this greasy rag. And even a full forty minutes later when TJ and his gang finally leave—and after only three mistakes and one totally botched order on account of Mick being a foggy-headed ding-dong—I still feel sulky.
Eleven o’clock can’t come sooner.
But then it does, and I finish up my duties, bid farewell to Mr. and Mrs. Tucker counting money in the back, and head out the door. I stand on the curb and begrudgingly wait for my mom to pick me up, as planned. Five minutes turn into ten, then twenty, and I take a seat on the curb, listening to the distant noise from a bar down the street and around the corner where the drunken adults of Spruce are all gathered. I pull out my phone and read a text from Kelsey apologizing for not stopping by Biggie’s tonight. She was apparently grounded for the weekend on account of what happened the first day of school, which is a bit of information she didn’t exactly disclose