Page 7 of Rush: Deluxe Edition

I was wrong on both counts.

The “shit that was going down” Anthony had spoken of earlier was now going down. Annabelle Pratt—the eponymous owner—had a nephew who had just moved to New York to pursue an acting career, and he needed a job. Harris Pratt had arrived to learn the ropes while I was out on delivery. Maxine pulled me aside to tell me that each of the six waiters and waitresses would lose one shift to give this guy a full boat.

That kind of bald-faced nepotism would have made an instant enemy out of anyone else in the eyes of the current staff—it certainly did me. But Harris was sweet, attractive, and suffered a ridiculous abundance of good-natured charm. I watched, disgusted, as Clara—who was losing a lucrative breakfast shift to him—flirted shamelessly while showing him the computer ordering system. Digging her own grave with a smile on her face.

My own shift was over. The lunch rush wasn’t enough of a rush for me to finish out, and I yanked out my nametag in the back room, willing myself not to cry. Maxine came around to pay out the credit card tips.

“Did that Lake guy leave anything? From my delivery?”

Her arched brow stabbed her severe hairline.

“I only ask because he was rude as hell to me.”

“Not surprising.” Maxine counted out my money. “He goes through assistants like some people go through toilet paper. Treats them about the same too.”

“What’s his story?” I asked. “He’s younger than I expected.”

She shrugged. “Young. Old. He’s good business.” She peered at me sternly. “I hope you weren’t rude back.”

I shook my head. Certainly, the guy hadn’t heard me call him a prick. Not unless he had supersonic hearing.

“Good.” Maxine laid forty dollars in my hand. “See you Monday.”

I sighed. That sixty, plus the thirty-five from cash tips, was short of what I needed by half.Half.

Anthony—still working the rest of lunch—hurried into the backroom and tried to press some money into my hand. “NPH is generous and that was your table to begin with.”

Fresh tears welled in my eyes at my friend’s kindness, but I quickly averted my head. If Anthony saw me cry, he’d never let me turn him down.

“No way, Anthony. You earned it.” I stood up to shut my locker, in too much of a hurry to even take my apron off. I hugged him, concealing my face against his shoulder. “I love you. Have a great weekend.”

I hurried out before he could speak a word of protest. Out on the street, headed to the subway, I found a twenty dropped into the front pocket of my apron and promptly burst into tears.

chapter three

Lucky 7’s, thank God, was busy that Friday night. I hustled behind the Greenwich bar to a backdrop of noisy music, shouted conversations, and clinking glass with two other bartenders—Sam and Eric with whom I worked with every Friday and Saturday night. They weren’t twins or even brothers, but that didn’t stop me from forever referring to them as one entity: Samneric, like fromThe Lord of the Flies. I mentioned it to them when I was hired three months ago, thinking it a clever coincidence. Neither had any idea what I was talking about.

Now, Samneric hustled around me, chatting easily with the customers while I stumbled my way through small talk. I wasn’t cut out for being a bartender. I was too “wound up” and “slightly goofy,” whatever that meant. But Janson, the owner of Lucky 7’s, had been desperately short-handed when I applied, and I could remember the cocktail combinations with perfect accuracy. He was forever encouraging me to pour one for myself now and then to loosen up.

“And for God’s sake, would it kill you to flirt a little?”

I knew what he meant, but I just didn’t have the flirting gene. I tried, but I had no filter. Words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them, and unfiltered honesty wasn’t necessarily the first thing a tipsy guy at a bar looked for.

Sometimes I thought Janson only kept me because he felt sorry for me. Samneric told me it was because I looked like a pixie dream girl from some indie movie.

“Guys dig that. A lot,” they told me.

“Dig what?” I’d asked.

Sam and/or Eric had clarified, “You’re cute in a sad, smart kind of way.”

I didn’t know what to do with that either, but I did my best to look the part of a bartender chick in a dark, dive-y bar. For Annabelle’s, I looked clean-cut and conservative. At Lucky 7’s, I wore black tank tops that enhanced my not-inconsequential boobs, dark eyeliner, and let my hair run wild. It was like a costume to me. I was neither clean-cut, nor a hard partying girl.

I didn’t know what I was.

At around ten, Melanie Parker shouldered up to the bar through the crowd of Greenwich Village bohemians, artists, and wealthy hipsters that were gentrifying the neighborhood at an alarming rate. Or so my best friend was fond of telling me. She gave the stink-eye to one young guy in a too-expensive sweater and jerked her chin at me by way of greeting.

“Good night?” she commented. The blue neon lights behind me lit up her cat’s eye glasses. She looked pretty gentrified herself in a white cardigan and brown suede skirt, but that was her “work costume.” Melanie gave cello lessons to the children of Manhattan’s elite when she wasn’t playing in the pit for some off-off-Broadway experimental musical act. She brushed the fringe of dark bangs out of her eyes. “How’s rent looking?”

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