Page 35 of The Pucking Wrong Man

I didn’t know how much longer I could keep this up. I was exhausted. The kind of exhaustion that felt like your body was dying, like you had no hope.

Wiping the table, I forced myself not to cry.

Just like always.

I couldn’t control anything that happened in my life, but I could control my reaction to it.

Or at least that’s what I always tried to tell myself.

I didn’t think any part of me actually believed it.

It would be easy to let that first tear fall, maybe it would even feel good. But it was what came after that first tear that I was truly afraid of.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop once I started.

Sighing, I finished wiping the table and stacking the dishes in the plastic tub, and heaved them up so I could carry them back to the dishwashing station and get them cleaned.

Charlie had told me that if I bussed tables at his restaurant for a month, he would move me up to being a server.

Unfortunately, like most men, Charlie was a liar, and I’d now been bussing tables for six months with no end in sight.

Not only was bussing way more physically taxing than being a server, it also meant that I was being paid pennies because the servers had no interest in sharing their tips—even though they were supposed to.

I needed to find another job. But the thought of going to the library to use the computer and submitting applications, or going from restaurant to restaurant, or store to store handing out my pitiful resume...well, I couldn’t quite comprehend it at the moment.

I might be twenty-one years old, but I hadn’t started working until I was eighteen—Michael’s parents had never allowed it. Some of the jobs after that were under the table, so I couldn’t even include them in my resume to begin with. It was hard trying to get someone to hire me when I looked like I had little to no experience.

“There’s another table that needs to be cleaned,” Poison said in a no-nonsense voice the second I’d set down the tub next to the huge industrial sinks where she was working on getting the grease off some bowls.

Poison was a pink-haired, sprite of a woman who’d evidently been working at the restaurant for over ten years. She never complained...and she never really talked except to tell me there was more work to do. She may have been the size of a pixie, but she was somehow one of the scariest women I’d ever met. Her name didn’t help with that. I still hadn’t gotten the nerve to ask her the story behind it.

“I’ll get on it,” I told her, giving her my fake dance smile which did absolutely nothing for her.

At least it worked for most people.

I quickly emptied the dishes from the bin and set them beside the sink, ignoring her annoyed look when one of the bowls fell into the sink with a loud plop, dousing the whole front of my white blouse with water.

Perfect.

Grabbing the bin, I limped back out to the dining area—my leg past the point of cooperation for the day. I’d danced for seven hours, cleaned the studio for an hour, and then hustled my way to Charlie’s Diner to do this job—with the unfortunate interlude of Michael along the way.

I needed a break.

Unfortunately, I didn’t qualify for a scholarship at this Company because of the liability that came with my leg—and I wasn’t moving back to my old hometown, no matter how nice the instructors had been. This Company was one of the premier studios in the country, but they didn’t start paying their performers liveable wages until you became a senior performer.

A saner woman would have just quit.

But I didn’t know how to give up on the only dream I’d ever had.

Caught in my own head, with my own thoughts, I completely missed the leg outstretched across the aisle.

I crashed to the floor, the bin going flying, and sharp jagged pain ripping through my wrists and knees as I caught myself. The bin slammed to the floor, dishes flying everywhere, the sound of glass shattering filling the entire restaurant.

I glanced up and saw the owner of the leg, a frat-looking boy with his three friends, had just sent me to my doom...laughing like a pack of hyenas.

“Sorry,” he snorted, obviously not meaning it. My face was burning with embarrassment as they stared at me, clearly amused at the situation.

I tried to get up, but my leg buckled with pain, sending me smacking back down to the floor. Blood filled my mouth as I bit down on my lip, trying to stop the cry that wanted to escape. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of hearing me.

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