“Good, and I won’t be a tease either.” She slapped a hand across her head. “I mean I won’t tease you! Dammit, goodnight Avery.”
She climbed out of the car with them both laughing and took one last look at Avery. There was a look on his face she wasn’t used to seeing. Determination? Maybe. Relief? Possibly. Embarrassment for Hailey? Extremely likely.
Hailey shook her head at herself once she was out of the car and tried desperately to not look back. Once she climbed the stairs and unlocked her door, she couldn’t help herself. She turned to find Avery still waiting there,smiling, making sure she got inside. With a final wave she closed the door and then sank back against it, sliding to the floor.
For the first time in a long time, she was looking forward to a date. And there was a zero percent chance she could be cool about it.
20
BROCCOLI IS GOING TO be the death of me.
Hailey carried the bowl of white wine pasta and its overpowering vegetable scent to its table, noticing the odor was killing her just a little bit more than usual. It was her first night back at work at the restaurant and she noticed everything was just a little bit harder. Zane sent her home when she showed up for her shift the morning after. She puked shortly after walking in so he wouldn’t let her stay. Thank goodness.
Tonight, the room felt warmer, despite a few patrons asking to turn the air conditioning down, the bowls and plates felt heavier, the things that usually just annoyed her felt like knives to her eyes, and she was getting a splitting headache from it all.
She was filling a glass with cola and zoned out for a bit, wondering why tonight especially sucked. The sideeffects from the drugs in her system were pretty much gone except for maybe a bit of fatigue, but that was hard to distinguish from her usual depression fatigue. However, Hailey also noticed that any time she had to approach the salad station—hisusual spot—her heart would start to race and she’d feel a sheen of sweat gather on the back of her neck.
It was another moment before Hailey realized the cola was flowing over the side of the glass and her hand was now covered in the sticky, sugary liquid.
“Shit,” she muttered while hitting the tap for the water and running her hand under it to rinse off.
“Hey, you okay tonight?” Hailey glanced up to see Anne giving her a concerned look. It was starting to slow down for the night, finally, so she took a deep breath before responding.
“No, I don’t think I am. Let me deliver this refill and I’ll tell you about it.”
Anne nodded and busied herself with folding a stack of pizza boxes to await Hailey’s return.
When she got back, she grabbed a stack of cardboard to help and told Anne everything that happened the other night at the party. Anne’s jaw somehow managed to drop farther as Hailey revealed each secret from that night.
After she finished the story, Anne seemed to tense and then she took one of the freshly folded boxes and spiked it onto the ground before stomping it back into a flatpiece of cardboard. All Hailey could do was watch and admire the rage Anne easily released onto the poor material that would now never fulfill its destiny of holding cheesy goodness.
Once she exhausted herself, Anne looked around the kitchen and noticed a few other servers and cooks glancing her way so she grabbed Hailey by the wrist and pulled them both into the staff bathroom.
“Anne, what are you—oomph!”
Hailey didn’t have the chance to get anything else out before Anne was barreling into her arms and squeezing her tight.
Eventually, Anne let go but kept her hands around Hailey’s shoulders, backing up enough to look her in the eyes with such intensity and concern that Hailey almost broke.
“Wh-what do you need? How can I help?” Anne asked while moving her thumbs in tight circles across Hailey’s shoulders.
“I don’t really know. I didn’t think about what it would be like to come back here. Even though he’s not here anymore, it kind of feels like he’s lingering, or like he’s even watching me somehow. It’s just kind of creeping me out, I guess. Maybe I should take a few days off.”
“Want me to talk to Mike with you about it? You look a little pale. Do you need a drink or something to eat?”
Anne and Hailey weren’t super close, only really hanging out during work, but the care she was giving Hailey had a lump forming in her throat that she couldn’t seem to swallow past. She took a moment before trying to speak again and cleared her throat.
“You can come with me to talk to him, yeah. My table was almost done eating. Let me just get rid of them and then we can talk to him. I don’t know what else to do.”
Her arms were full of Anne yet again and then they were walking back out into the kitchen, nobody paying them any attention, somehow sensing that they both needed a minute.
It was another ten minutes before Hailey’s table paid their bill and she wished them a good night. Anne had moved on to rolling silverware when she got back to the kitchen and with just a nod she abandoned her pile and joined Hailey to walk back to the office where their boss, Mike, would be.
It was a tiny office and it wouldn’t fit more than the three of them, but luckily that was all they needed. Hailey realized she was nervous because she wasn’t sure how much she should tell Mike. Would he react like Gage did? Or would he actually be supportive and understanding? At this point, Hailey didn’t care as long as she could take the next few days away from this place.
Hailey knocked softly on the doorjamb outside the officeand waited for Mike to turn toward the doorway to see her and Anne standing there with worried looks. An easy smile was on his face but it dropped when he saw the two of them standing there so serious.
“What’s wrong?” he asked right away.
