“It’s my uniform.” I had turned off my cell service. There was no reason to keep paying for it, when I didn’t want to talk to anyone. It was too expensive, a ridiculous expense. We still had Cassie’s phone in case of emergencies. And even better, her phone was still on Mike’s dime. “I don’t have anything to say to you,” I told Annie. “Except to ask you, please, please don’t kick Charlie off the team.”
Tears started pouring out from under the ridiculous sunglasses. “Luke told me you said that! I don’t know why you’d think I would do that! Why would you say that about me?”
I stared at her. “Emily!” Roy barked.
I turned without saying a word, and ordered a vodka and tonic for her. It was the girliest thing we served. I put it on my tray and brought it back to her table.
Annie was wiping her eyes as I put the drink down. “What is that?”
“Vodka and tonic,” I told her.
“Do you have any cranberry juice?”
“No.”
“OJ?”
“Annie, this is the best you’re going to get here. I have to get back to work.”
She jumped up, sunglasses falling to the table. “No, Emily, we have to talk. I did not try to kick Charlie off the team! How could you think that about me?”
“Coach Sean told me, Annie. He told me that the you and the rest of the Board of Directors are disappointed in my family’s commitment and engagement. That Charlie wasn’t coming to all the meets, and then that I had the nerve to ask for a scholarship. You’ve seen Charlie at the pool and you know how much he loves to swim. You knew exactly why we weren’t able to come to everything. And I needed a break on the swim team fees. I can’t pay my sister’s medical bills!” My voice was cracking. “How could you threaten to take the team away from him? How could you, then invite me to your house and pretend to be my friend? You and your dad and your brother think I’m so trashy, working here and at the NGS. I heard them, Annie! I heard Luke call my sister a tramp.” I was crying now.
Annie’s mouth was wide open. Yep, I knew exactly what she had been up to. The secret was out.
“Emily, no, that’s not true!”
“Which part? Sean told me, and I heard Luke say it!”
“Please, can you sit down?”
I blew out an angry breath. “Annie, you don’t seem understand how a job works. I don’t get to do what I want. I have to show up here, wear a skanky top, and serve drinks to disgusting drunks and their equally disgusting girlfriends. Andif I don’t, I don’t get paid, and then we don’t have money for food. So no, I can’t sit down.” Good, now I was mad. It made me stop crying.
I stomped back to the bar to wipe my face and calm down. I saw Nick Barnes’ friend signaling, so I brought another round to their table. “We’re going to settle up,” Nick told me. He threw a fifty on my tray. “Here you go, baby.”
I kept my face impassive, and gave Roy the money to ring him up. When I brought back the change, Nick picked it up off my tray, then deliberately dropped a ten-dollar bill. “Oops. That’s your tip. Can you pick it up?”
Sure, it would be my pleasure to give him the opportunity to make a comment about my ass. I leaned down to get the money, and he grabbed me on my crotch from behind, and squeezed hard.
It hurt, a lot. I made some kind of a noise, like a squeal and a scream combined, and jumped away, back into a table I had just served with five mugs of beer. The table crashed down, mugs and beer falling on me, glass crashing to the floor with me as I hit the ground violently.
I sat on the floor, gasping in shock. Roy was moving towards us faster than I’d ever seen him go, a baseball bat in his hands. “Get out!” he roared at Nick and his friend. “Get the fuck outta here!” He punctuated his words by slapping the bat on his hand, then on their table.
Both men jumped up, Nick knocking over his chair. “Easy, man,” the friend said. “He was just kidding around.”
“Don’t come back,” Roy shouted, pointing with the bat.
I tried to get up, picking my way out of the glass. I wasdripping with beer. “Sorry,” I croaked to the guys whose table I had knocked over. One of them grabbed me under my armpits and hauled me to my feet. “Thanks.”
“You ok, sugar?” Roy asked me.
Every eye in the bar was on me. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Roy.” He could take the broken glasses out of my paycheck.
He shook his head. “You go on home, now.”
“You’re firing me?” I quavered. Oh, mother Mary, no.
“I’m not firing you. I’m telling you to go home and clean up. You’re covered in beer and bleeding like a stuck pig.” Roy pointed at my arm, and when I looked down, I saw the red blood running down it. I clapped my hand over the wound.
