Page 75 of Just So You Know, I Don't Work Friday

“It was a rhetorical question.”

“Okay, English teacher,” she said with some snark in her tone.

“Not funny. This is a highly stressful situation for me and—”

“Okay. Let me get the deviled eggs,” she said as she walked to the fridge. She took out a plate and walked it over to me.

“What’s this?” I said, my heart dropping. The egg whites were stuffed with a bright red-looking concoction.

“This is the deviled eggs.”

“But why do the eggs look so red?”

“Remember, you put paprika?”

“I know I put paprika, but they weren’t red.”

“So I might’ve added a little hot sauce.”

“What? Why did you add hot sauce? I already the dash the recipe called for! How much sauce did you add?”

“I may have added the entire bottle. But you shouldn’t worry, because who doesn’t like hot sauce on everything?”

“Oh, gosh. Okay, where’s the bacon?”

“I don’t think you want to use the bacon,” she said, shaking her head.

“Chelsea, where’s the bacon?”

“Fine.” She shrugged, walked to the countertop, and picked up a plate. She walked it over to me, and all I could see was burned-to-a-crisp, black bacon.

“You burned the bacon?” I almost shouted.

“I think it’s because you put the maple syrup and all that other junk. It just burned really quickly. I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t raw, because we didn’t want to give anyone salmonella poisoning, but I forgot I was cooking it because I was—”

“Enough,” I said, cutting her off. “I cannot believe this.”

“So do you want us to put the bacon on or not?”

“Let’s crumble up the bacon,” I said, “and make bacon bits. Maybe that will be better.”

“Okay,” she said. And we both started crumbling up the bacon. It didn’t look better, but I’d already committed. We put the crumbled bacon pieces on the deviled eggs, and I took a deep breath.

“Okay, Chelsea. Will you bring these out in about three minutes?”

“What do you mean will I bring these out? Can’t you take them?”

“No, I can’t take them. You’re the server.”

“Yeah, but I’m still cooking my mashed potatoes.”

“Girl, I cannot take out the deviled eggs when I hired you to be the server. Finn is going to wonder what’s going on.”

“Well, he’s going to wonder what’s going on when he doesn’t see Polly.”

“We can say Polly’s still in the kitchen.”

“But I want to be in the kitchen and—”

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