Look away. Focus on work. This is just a thing that happens. People look at people. It doesn't mean anything.
But it felt like something. It felt like everything.
He pushed through the kitchen door and handed the order slip to Marcus, the line cook who moved through his domain with the confidence of someone who’d been doing this for thirty years. Maybe he had. The guy looked old enough to be Nick’s dad. Marcus nodded, already reaching for wings and sauce.
“You look like shit, kid,” Marcus said without looking up from his work.
“Thanks for that observation.” Nick leaned against the counter, letting his weight rest there. The metal was cool against his palm, grounding him.
“Seriously. You good?” Marcus glanced over, concern creasing his weathered face. “Sugar low or something?”
“Just a long day. Thanks for asking.” Nick shoved off the counter before Marcus could press further. The kitchen suddenly felt too warm, like the oven was stuck on broil. He grabbed three fresh beers from the cooler, condensation immediately beading on the bottles and dripping onto his apron. Nick eyed the frosted beer bottles, imagining the cool glass pressed against his warm skin.
Some stomach flu, maybe? Unlikely. His medical chart was pristine. A fact his stepmom had paraded through every school physical, even telling the cashiers at the local grocery store. “Picture of health,” she’d announced, right before mentioning his chronic stomach issues as if they were separate from him, an asterisk rather than part of the text.
Yet here he was, twenty-six years of feeling hollowed out from the inside. Not the standard adult exhaustion either. This was different. A bone-deep wrongness the doctors dismissed with blood tests and iron supplements that did precisely nothing. “Growing pains,” they’d said when he was twelve. “Stress,” they’d claimed when he was twenty. Now they just shrugged, their pens scratching “psychosomatic” when they thought he couldn’t see.
He moved through the bar, table to table, order to order. The noise seemed to amplify with each passing minute—conversations overlapping, glasses clinking, the bass from the speakers thrumming through the floorboards like a second heartbeat.
Carrying the drinks back to the construction crew took all of Nick’s focus. He gripped the beer bottles so tight his knuckles hurt.
One foot in front of the other. Don’t spill. Don’t show weakness. Don’t let anyone see that something’s wrong.
The muscle contractions kept coming, each one a spike of pain that made his vision slightly blurry. Sweat beaded along his hairline, and Nick felt it trickling down his back, making his shirt stick to his skin.
“Where’s the food?” the tall guy demanded, already halfway through the first beer.
“Few minutes,” Nick managed. “Kitchen’s busy tonight.”
“We’ve been waiting.”
They hadn’t. They’d been waiting maybe four minutes, but Nick didn’t bother arguing. If he didn’t need this job, he’d tell the jerk where he could shove that bottle.
Logan rose from the bar stool. His expression had gone cold and flat, all the lazy charm stripped away to reveal something harder underneath.
The construction guy who’d clapped had apparently said something else. Nick didn’t catch what. Didn’t care. His entire world had compressed down to the pain currently eating him alive and the fact that Logan was moving toward them with the kind of focused intensity that suggested violence was imminent.
Another cramp. Sharper this time. It stole Nick’s breath and made him stumble. His hand shot out to catch himself on a high-top chair, fingers splaying against the wood surface. Every muscle in his body had gone rigid, locked against a sensation that felt like something trying to claw its way out of his chest.
“Careful there.” An older regular reached out like he might steady Nick, concern on his wrinkled face.
“I’m good,” Nick said quickly, pulling away from the offered assistance.
At the service station, he started gathering clean glasses for the next round of drinks. His hands shook as he stacked them, the slight clinking sound grating against his already frayed nerves. The fluorescent lights seemed too bright, the noise too loud, everything suddenly sharp and overwhelming.
The stabbing sensations were getting worse than usual. That was the thought that kept circling his mind, the one thought Nick kept trying to push away. Worse than usual meant this wasn’t just a bad day. Worse than usual meant something had shifted, tilted toward something darker.
He forced himself to keep moving. To keep working. To keep pretending that his body wasn’t staging a quiet rebellion against every conscious decision he’d made to keep functioning.
The tall jerk appeared at the counter suddenly, moving faster than Nick would have expected for someone with a heavy, work-hardened frame. He raised his beefy hands and clapped them together sharply, the sound cracking through the bar like a gunshot.
“Hey! Order!” the guy shouted directly in Nick’s face. His breath smelled like beer and garlic. “How long on those wings?”
Nick narrowed his eyes at the aggression wrapped in such a simple request. He reminded Nick of his stepdad. “About four inches. If don’t get out of my face, I’ll make sure your order comes out around closing time.” He cocked his hip, slapping a hand on one side. “Try me.”
“We’ve been waiting forever.”
The pain made Nick’s filter evaporate completely. He was so over this asshole.
