Page 64 of Boyfriend
I turn off the shower and grab a towel. Yup, just an ordinary Thursday night in South Bend. Nothing to see here.
Twenty-Two
Where the Magic Happens
Abbi
Working a double shift always seems long. But Sunday’s seems to drag on forever. I’m excited to see Weston. Really excited. I tell myself that it’s just the sex, which is epic.
But it’s scary how much I really like him. And the fact that he seems to like me too is giving me all kinds of romantic ideas that I shouldn’t be having. Whenever I catch myself daydreaming about him, I want to slap myself.
He hasn’t offered me a future. But he did offer me his kitchen. So earlier today I bought the ingredients to make a huge vanilla cake with pecan praline icing, just like my mother used to make.
Meanwhile, I’m waiting tables on what has turned out to be a hellishly busy Sunday. Carly is in a surprisingly bad mood, too. But it’s been too crazy for me to corner her and figure out why.
There’s finally a lull at quarter to eight, and I catch up to her by the soda machine. “Hey,” she says, a tired look on her face. “Any chance you want to close for me?”
“Oh, crap. I really can’t. I, um…”
She laughs. “You have plans with a certain defenseman who won against Notre Dame last night?”
“I do,” I whisper. “But keep quiet about that.”
“Of course. And I’ll stick it out here.” Carly’s expression droops.
“Are you okay?” I press. “If you really need me to stay, I will. You worked for me on Thursday.”
“How did it go in New York, anyway?”
“It’s hard to say.” I tell her about my dodgy interviews on Thursday. “And then on Friday I interviewed for the marketing teams at two fun, girly brands.”
“That sounds better.”
“You’d think,” I grumble. “But they just want social media coverage.” And they were intimidating in a completely different way. At both interviews I was asked which were my favorite designers.
I’m way too poor to have favorite designers. So I’d had to twist the question around and explain which clothing brands were doing the most interesting things on social media. And that worked pretty well, I guess.
I don’t think I stuck the landing at either company. And I came home feeling defeated. “But enough about me,” I say. “What’s got you down?”
She shakes her head. “I’m fine, Abbi.”
“You don’t seem fine,” I argue. “Seriously. Will you tell me what’s bothering you?”
She opens her mouth and then closes it and shakes her head. “I don’t want to stress you out with my drama.”
“But that’s what friends do, right?”
Carly looks torn. And I’m mentally tearing up my evening plans to close for her if she needs me to. “I had a run-in with Price,” she says.
My stomach drops. “Oh no. When?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“But bouncers don’t work afternoons. Where did you see him?”
“Here.” She winces. “He’s training to be a bartender. You know how they train people on the lunchtime shift?”
“You are kidding me!” I yelp. “This is terrible.”
