Greg turns to finally address Julien and his supreme impatience, only to find Braydon standing in his place, looking confused. “Julien is apparently incapable of giving this to you, so here. It’s for table twelve.”
Greg takes the handwritten order from Braydon who’s sauntering away before he can even say a word. Two GTKYG&Ts—Getting to Know You gin and tonics. He doesn’t need an advanced degree to decode that acronym, but what gives? All he did was ask for a minute.
He worries now that he may have a new, non-shirt-related reason to avoid Julien:Julien doesn’t like me.
Greg can’t stomach that if true. He worked too hard in the academy and in New York to be bright and agreeable with everyone he meets. Besides, Julien is the one who spilled all over Greg and declined his generous ride, so if anyone is going to dislike someone, it should be Greg disliking Julien.
Too bad Greg doesn’t have that ability. Not really.
Which is why his anxious thoughts run off like a provoked herd of cattle, and his chest becomes a vice around his heart. The air in the room is suddenly thick and difficult to breathe. It’s been a while since he’s suffered an attack like this.
He reaches into his back pocket for the baggie he always keeps there. It’s his in-case-of-emergency beta blocker. That little orange pill, once swallowed with a glass of ice water, quiets his fritzing neurons, allowing his heart rate to slow and his breathing to mellow out. The thoughts still race, but his body doesn’t respond as sharply to them.
Shortly after, a group of middle-aged women take seats at the far end of the bar, flicking glances his way and whispering to each other.
Well, fine. If he can’t win over the scowling sommelier, then he’ll set his sights on easier targets. He rolls out his neck and slings back his shoulders, dropping out of his head and back into his body.
Happy for the distraction, he slides over to the gaggle of chatty women, dons a protective megawatt smile, and makes their evening with craft cocktails and more harmless flirtation.
Six
GREG
Atext comes in from Martin reading,Can you come in thirty minutes early tonight? I’d like to have a meeting with you.Greg doesn’t know what to make of this, so the first thing he does is show it to Rufus.
“Cuz, you’re probably getting a raise.” They sit at the small square table in the kitchen passing Greg’s phone back and forth.
“Really?” It’s only been two and a half weeks. A raise wasn’t his first thought when he read this text. His immediate association was boarding school, disciplinary action, and anxiety attacks over letting people down.
“Rufus says you’ve been killing it over there,” Jessica, Rufus’s girlfriend, says as she finishes off the last of her Chipotle bowl. She worked her shift over there earlier and brought over a late free lunch. Greg was incredibly thankful for thefreepart.
“Yeah,” Rufus says reassuringly. “You come in every night with great stories and a wallet full of tips. You’re making connections with the customers.”
How much connection is too much connection, though? Pilot Jeff has texted him a few times since their initial meeting. At first it was about cocktail recipes, but eventually it trailed into more personal territory that made Greg a little uncomfortable with the secretive undertones and the sexual questions.
The middle-aged women from the night he met Pilot Jeff told their friends about Martin’s and came in again with their entire book club, announcing to Braydon at the host stand, “That guy’s got the bestcocktails in all of Bethlehem!” It was clear they had just come from a paint-and-sip class at an art studio down the road and were looking to continue their night out. Greg rolled with the punches.
“That’s true. It’s just the tone... Isn’t it a little harsh?” Greg asks, nervous. He’s particularly sensitive to tone, a skill he picked up from a young age when his father’s nightly mood could be deciphered by how clipped or how quiet his statements were when he walked through the front door. “If it were a raise, I feel like he would’ve put an emoji or something.”
“Do you know any men in their forties who use emojis?” Jessica asks. “My dadjuststopped using the ellipsis as punctuation for every statement.”
“When we started dating and I first met her parents, I thought he was being super passive-aggressive with me,” Rufus reminisces, and Jessica laughs. “I always felt like he had more to say, or I was missing something.”
Rufus and Jessica are offering Greg a hand over the line to the bright side, so he takes it because, as his therapist would say,There’s no use worrying over a situation you don’t have all the information for yet. He takes a calming breath. “You’re right. I’m overthinking it.”
“How are you liking the work so far?” Jessica asks. She’s younger than Rufus by a year. She has brown skin, a heart-shaped face, and silky black hair that goes all the way down to her hips.
“I’m liking it a lot.”
“Except Julien,” Rufus adds with a nudge of the elbow.
“I don’t dislike Julien,” Greg corrects, feeling his face go red. Because it’s far more complicated than that, which is irksome.
“Come on, you talk about him after every single shift,” Rufus says. “Julien did this or Julien messed up that or Julien always looks like he’s got the world’s worst migraine.”
Greg had not consciously realized he’d made a habit of complaining about Julien aloud. He tries not to complain at all, but he’s really comfortable with Rufus. And he’sreallyperplexed by Julien.
When Julien spilled an entire tray of drinks for the second time, Greg was closest to the mop and couldn’t watch Julien struggle with the broken glasses alone. When Greg got an order horribly wrong because he couldn’t decode Julien’s acronyms, which were hastily scribbled and then passed off to Braydon—somehow becoming the cherubic messenger from a Greek tale between them—Julien had to speak to Greg face-to-face about the blunder. Though, he wouldn’t meet Greg’s eyes.
