“There’s a bedbug website?”
“Of course! You have to check it before you stay anywhere. It tells you if the place is clean or not. Some really nice resorts are full of bedbugs! Can you imagine bringing them home with you? Ugh!”
I made a mental note that, if my circumstances changed dramatically and I was somehow able to take vacations, I would check the bedbug website for sure.
We continued our run, chatting mostly about swimming and the kids, until practice was over. I casually looked around as we left the track. Not that I was looking for anyone specific, but you never knew who might be working out.
Charlie fought me again when I got ready to go to Roy’s that evening.
“You shouldn’t go,” he insisted. “Stay here.”
After a few more rounds of that, I pulled him to sit with me on the coach. “What’s the big deal with me going to work?” I asked him.
He was quiet. “Nothing.”
“Pal, please. Are you scared to be alone? Your mom is here.”
He made a face. “She doesn’t care about me.”
It was like a punch in the gut. “She does, she just doesn’t feel well. It makes her cranky.”
“She was always cranky,” he complained, but I knew what he meant. It hadn’t just started with her diagnosis. Cassie hadn’t really wanted to be a mom, but it had happened. She had shown up at my door in Ann Arbor after she and Mike had argued about keeping the baby and then he had taken off for parts unknown, leaving her with three months left on their apartment lease and a stack of unpaid bills. For her, a baby was another way to glue Mike to her. A very permanent tie. To my utter shock, he had come back, and once they had reconciled, neither of them had wanted to bother much with raising a kid. Thank goodness they had moved in with Nana, who did want to bother.
“So you don’t like to be here alone with your mom? Is that the reason you don’t want me to leave?”
“Kind of.” I waited for him to continue. “Because Rivers said his dad sees you there. And his mom doesn’t like it. He says…mean things.”
Oh, mother Mary. “Charlie, it’s just a job. It’s not a big deal that I work there. And whatever Rivers or his mom says about me, we both know it isn’t true, right?” I hated to think of what he had heard. I tried to remember how Loretta had handled it when I finally broke down and told her about the kids teasing me at school. I remembered a lot of back rubbing and cookies.
He looked at me, eyes big, and nodded.
“Charlie, it’s going to be ok, but I have to go to work. I don’t have a choice, pal. Will you be all right?” I rubbed his back gently.
He nodded again.
“Promise to go to bed on time?”
He put his arms around me and hid his face on my stomach. God damn everything.
It certainly didn’t help that once again, I had to waitress in the terrible yellow shirt, and once again, I was harassed and molested by a bunch of sots, some old enough to be my grandfather. Probably Rivers’ stupid father was one of them. After one particularly nasty comment about my boobs and how they jiggled, and how they would look jiggling naked in the back seat of a car, I told Roy I needed to take a break.
“Five minutes,” he told me.
I went out the back door and stood partially obscured by thedumpster. What was I doing? I took a few steadying breaths, trying not to cry. I thought about Lake Michigan, and the steady, rolling waves. Roy’s paid better than any other place nearby, and I was raking in tips. I could do this. I had this.
Everything would work out. I would let it roll over me, just like the waves.
I took a new order from some guys at the pool table, then went to the bar to get their drinks. Nick Barnes, Luke’s and Cassie’s friend from high school, was now parked on one of the bar stools. While I filled the mugs, I glanced up at him and he flashed me a huge smile.
“I’ll have a Tanqueray, straight up,” he told me.
“We don’t have that here.” As he well knew, since he had probably been coming to this bar for years. “Why don’t you think about your order while I serve these? Be right back.”
When I returned, I saw that he had placed his thick billfold on the bar, a $100 on top. Sweet Jesus. Really? What an ass.
“Just a beer…Emma, right?”
“Emily.” I started filling his beer from the tap.
