Page 16 of Glass Half Full
“We’ve learned to just go with it,” Zach explains as he leads the way down the hall. “Sometimes you have to indulge him.”
The rest of tonight’s crew are all bustling around the kitchen, dropping their stuff off on the hooks where we keep our bags and punching in for the night. DeeDee and I got in early again for my training, and now our backup has arrived for the after work rush, which will flow into the dinner rush, and ultimately the Friday night rush. I only have another couple of hours scheduled this evening, but DeeDee told me to brace myself for a busy shift, and I can feel the nerves starting to swirl around in my stomach.
We find ourselves a place to stand against one of the prep tables, where DeeDee and Zach start conversing in so many inside jokes it almost sounds like a secret code. I’m grateful when a server I haven’t met yet comes over and introduces herself. It’s not that the two of them try to exclude other people; they just seem to be tuned into the same wavelength. I thought DeeDee was kidding when I asked how long they’ve been dating and she burst out laughing before telling me that’s never going to happen. She’s twenty-five to his twenty-two, but I have a feeling that’s more of an excuse than an issue for her.
“Bon dieu du ciel.”
Lisanne, the server I’ve been talking, gets everyone’s attention by rolling her eyes to the ceiling and calling out ‘Dear god in heaven’ just as the office door flies open and Dylan walks out with his hands cupped over his mouth.
Walk isn’t the right word; he sort of...groovesout, making these weird hissing and clucking sounds as he twists his torso from side to side and shuffles to the middle of the room.
“Is he...beat boxing?” one of the nearby cooks whispers.
“He’s trying to,” Zach answers.
“He’s failing to,” Lisanne clarifies.
Dylan gives her the evil eye as he continues to make his car-with-a-broken-radiator noises before ending on one very long and dramatic hiss.
“L-l-l-ladies and gentlemen!” he calls out.
“Oh no.” Zach groans. “He’s remixing his own voice.”
Dylan pretends to karate chop him in the stomach before grabbing the nearest spatula and holding it up like a microphone.
“I apologize for the disruption. Pay no mind to the irritating background noise. It will soon be dealt with. For those of you tuning in for the first time, welcome to the Friday Night Fiesta on Toulouse FM.”
He points the spatula at each new member of staff. My pulse picks up when our eyes lock.
This is the Dylan I remember—the one who always stole the show and kept every eye locked on him. This is the man who made my seventeen-year-old heart race the way only a teenage girl’s heart can.
Which is the only reason it’s racing now. You’re just remembering how things were.
I force myself to believe that’s true even as my body accepts that I’m lying. There’s more here than just memories. I’m not a kid anymore. I know what it means to want someone, to feel that want spike until it becomes a need.
He might be dancing around a kitchen with a spatula, but somehow, that just makes me even more aware of how tuned in to his movements I am, to his voice, the flex of the tendons in his forearms, the size and shape of his hands.
I want to know what his palms feel like running over my skin.
And that right there is a prime violation of the rarely referenced but extremely important eleventh commandment:thou shalt not indulge in impure thoughts about thy manager.
I’m only on shift number two, and it’s already becoming a serious problem. Here I am pitying poor Zach for his inability to hide how madly in love with DeeDee he is, and meanwhile the whole room can probably tell I can’t rip my eyes off Dylan.
He’s in the middle of making a rap song about tonight’s special deal on free French fries. It shouldn’t be sexy. To be honest, it’s not the routine itself that’s so attractive; it’s how he works the room, how he gets everyone cheering and clapping and genuinely excited about fries. He takes the dregs of life and turns them into something worth drinking. He cuts through the boredom and the bullshit and brings people face to face with the best parts of who they are. When he gets going like this, he might as well be inspiration itself.
My next thought comes unbidden, cutting through the noise in the kitchen until it’s all I hear, all I see and smell.
He was the kind of gravity
That pushes
Even as it pulls.
My hand curls around the edge of the table as my breath gets lodged in my throat.
Words.
I tasted them. I felt them on my tongue. They disappeared as fast as snowflakes melting on hot skin, but they were there.
