Page 36 of The Last Love Song
No new suggestions that she kill herself.
Awesome.
She shoved her phone into her backpack and then stuffed the bag in an empty employee locker. The scent of fried fish hung in the air despite the slow-moving ceiling fan. For today, she would take the small victory of no text messages. However, she didn’t dare go on any social media sites after yesterday’s nightmare. She was terrified someone was going to find that page. She’d complained to the internet host site yesterday, advice she’d found online about stopping cyberbullying. But she hadn’t checked to see if the page had been taken down. She didn’t have the heart to look. Besides, once something had been online, it lurked somewhere on the internet forever.
“You ditched me this weekend.” A guy’s voice behind her made her jump.
“Wade!” She straightened her ponytail underneath the Owl’s Roost cap and snagged a clean apron off a hook on the wall of the back room. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Wade Sanderson towered over her, a gangly but cute guy who’d been in Megan’s grade at Crestwood last year. His father worked construction and had fallen off a roof while on a job last summer, giving him extensive injuries that required long-term rehabilitation. Wade had quit school to earn extra money to help out his family. He had at least two jobs, including waiting tables at the Owl’s Roost.
“I would have made more noise if I knew you were gonna be so jumpy.” He flicked the brim of the cap she’d just straightened and then moved past her to get to another locker. “Then again, maybe I wouldn’t have.” He narrowed his gaze as he looked back at her. “I told myself I would hold a grudge against you for not being here for Sunday’s brunch crowd. I had to work with Gina.”
He rolled his eyes. They’d both agreed the hostess who doubled duty as a waitress was the most difficult person to work with on staff. When she welcomed people and assigned themto a table, she put all the families with small children and all the cheapest residents of Heartache in one section, and then assigned herself to another.
“So you got all the town’s worst tippers?” Megan liked Wade. He was honest, fair and funny. She wished she’d dated someone like him when she’d moved to town instead of that backstabbing J.D.
Not that she thought about Wade like that. But it would have helped if she did.
“I got to serve a birthday party for a three-year-old thrown by the grandparents. I’m pretty sure there was a food fight.” He hauled his T-shirt off so that he sat bare chested while he dug in the locker for a shirt that had fallen into the metal depths.
Had she thought he was gangly?
Wade Sanderson actually had a very nice back. He was just…tall.
When he came up with the shirt, he pulled it over his head and stared at her.
“A food fight. Hello? I was scrubbing frosting off booths for half an hour after they left.” He smoothed the wrinkles out of his shirt and she followed the movement of his hands like a total dolt.
Blinking fast, she tried to forget what she’d seen. She definitely didn’t need images of Wade’s back in her mind when her life was falling apart.
“Sounds about right for the Sunday-brunch crowd.” She looped her apron over her head and tied it in the back.
“So, how was the wedding breakfast? Did you make big bucks over there while I was fending off French fry missiles from insane preschoolers?”
“I pulled in a little more than I make here,” she admitted, leaning back on a locked supply closet while she waited for him.“But if I’d known Bailey and her crew would be there, I would have taken your place as target practice for the munchkins.”
“She’s still being weird?” He grabbed a cap and apron from his locker.
She’d told him how Bailey had decided to hate her guts once Megan had broken up with J.D. and Bailey had started dating him. A watered-down version of the story had come out one day at work when she’d begged Wade to take the McCord family’s table after Gina had seated them in Megan’s section.
“You could say that.” Straightening, she headed toward the kitchen and Wade followed.
Before she could shove open the door, Wade’s long arm reached over her head and levered it wide, clearing a path to their workstation and the daily grind of refilling ketchup bottles, napkin holders and other table amenities before the dinner rush began. For a second, Wade stood all of an inch away from her as he held the door.
“She didn’t hassle you while you were working?” He grabbed a stack of menus and a damp cloth to wipe them down, a job Megan hated.
It was cool that he always took it since he knew that.
She sat across from him and started unscrewing ketchup bottles.
“She ignored me.” The temptation to confide something—just the text messages even—was strong. She’d hoped so hard that the torment would end, but she guessed that was naive.
“But?” He kept wiping menus.
She stopped what she was doing.
“What?” He stopped, too. “You think I couldn’t hear the but in that comment?” He wiped the cloth across another menu. “I quit school because I wanted to. Not because I’m a total dumb-ass.”
