Page 6 of Surfer Girl

Jessie had slung her backpack over her shoulder, eager to race home, change into something sexy, and grab a quick bite to eat before giving Sophie her surfing lesson. The thoughts of her sexy new neighbor all wet and curvy in a too-small bikini, giggling and breathless beside her, had made it hard to concentrate during that morning’s manager meeting.

She stood outside the liquor room, clinging to the single strap of her backpack she’d managed to put on just before her general manager, Brett Collins, interrupted her sexy daydream. “Right now?”

He gave her a stiff upper lip and a side-eye to match. “That’s…the implication, yes. End of the month is coming up and I need them for the preliminaries before I shoot them back to corporate this afternoon.”

She stammered, needing this job as badly as she needed another sight of Sophie’s glowing, copper skin. “I know, sure, absolutely, but… I was only expecting the morning meeting today. I’m off on Thursdays, remember?”

Brett rolled his eyes, dull and dark behind his predictably rectangular glasses, resting on his predictably flared nostrils. “I should, Jessie, since I make the schedule every week.” He crossed his hands and rested them perfectly on his taut little beer belly. “Why, you have somewhere better to be than your place of employment?”

She didn’t cower, exactly, but she relented, nonetheless. “No, of course not, Brett, I just…have plans later.”

He brightened, squaring the knot in his tie as he grinned triumphantly. Mission accomplished. “Good, it should only take a few hours and then you’ll be free for whatever, uh…plans…you have for later.”

The pause, the glare, the implied disgust, made it clear Brett knew her plans somehow, intrinsically, involved another woman. Not that she’d had a relationship in years, mind you, but he could never forget the time he caught Jessie and the new hostess making out at the Christmas party, even after three long years of simmering, macho, hetero tension between them.

“Of course. Absolutely.” She slid the backpack back on the nail from which it usually hung in the liquor storage room and turned, straightening the hem of the casual periwinkle-blue sundress she’d worn for the weekly manager’s meeting. “Happy to, Brett.”

He followed her to the small gift shop at the front of the restaurant, rustic wooden shelves dotted with colorful Beach Break souvenirs: T-shirts, ball caps, keychains, snow globes, all slathered with the smiling, sentient beach ball with a face that represented “Bouncy,” their ridiculous corporate mascot. “What, did a shipment just come in or something?” She’d never seen the shelves so well-stocked before.

Brett gloated with another shit-eating grin, his version of sticking the knife ever further in her eager-to-please back. “As a matter of fact,” he murmured, kicking a stack of cardboard boxes behind her with the toe of his cheap dress shoe. It was scuffed and had a piece of dried Hawaiian slaw stuck to it. This fact, somehow, made her almost happy she’d stuck around to see it.

Almost, that is…

Rather than help her open the boxes or, heaven forbid, unpack them, Brett leaned against the surfboard-shaped sales counter, watching her do the dirty work herself. “So, performance reviews are up next month…”

She glanced at him over the stack of tank tops in her hand. “Already?”

“Every quarter,” he murmured sarcastically, as if this was uppermost on her mind. “Corporate keeps asking when you’re going the make the plunge to full manager, Jessie.”

“I’m ready when you are, Brett, sheesh…”

He gave her a steadily judging look. “Well, you know, I can only put one assistant manager up each quarter and well, Brody’s been really impressive lately.”

Jessie nearly dropped the stack of keychains she was carrying to the display case at her right. “He was late three times last week, Brett.”

“Still, when he’s here, kid’s on fire.”

“Kid is right, he’s barely legal.”

Brett finally offered a reluctant chuckle. He wasn’t a bad guy, per se, just a guy’s guy: straight, white, macho, and eager to share his workspace with mostly the same type of dude, bro, pal, Chad, or some variation thereof. He’d been perfectly cool with Jess being a girl until he’d found out she wasn’t someone he could actually sleep with, and after that?

Donezo.

Still, three years was long enough to endure his obvious distaste for Jessie and her kind. “Either way, Brett,” she said stiffly, her back to him as she counted the powder blue Beach Break T-shirts for his bogus inventory request, “I feel like I’ve done my time and earned my stripes and I’d formally like to be put in for a manager approval during this round of performance reviews.”

Her announcement was met with a stony silence that continued moments after she turned back to the hostess stand to mark another tally on her growing inventory sheet. When at last her eyes rose to meet his, she found him silently fuming.

“Is that so?” he finally asked, tight-lipped and guarded.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You know, Jess, Brody’s not the only one who’s been late this quarter.”

Jess put down her pencil and calmly crossed her arms over her chest. That way she wouldn’t be able to stab Brett in the eye with her handy inventory writing implement.

“Brett, I wasn’t late last week, I had an appointment that I told you about two weeks in advance. What’s more, I wrote it down on two separate sticky notes so you wouldn’t forget. And yet? You did. I’m not trying to be difficult here, but this continual oversight of my loyalty to this company and this branch is becoming…problematic.”

“Is that so?”

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