I’d gotten a brief break before folks started coming in for lunch, and then I was dashing around again, taking orders, refilling drinks, and wiping down tables. I was delivering milkshakes to a table when I saw five women enter the diner. I immediately sucked in a breath when I recognized them as friends of my mother.
It wasn’t long before they all noticed me. “Caitlin,” Mrs. Fecto sneered. “I didn’t know you were back in town and working here.”
“First day,” I said, coming up with a fake smile as I went to the hostess stand to seat them.
“Does your mother know?” Mrs. Fecto arched a painted-on eyebrow at me.
“Not yet.” But she would in a matter of minutes, I realized. One of the women would send a text anytime now.
“Typical. She always was a rotten daughter.” I was partially turned as I reached for menus, so I wasn’t sure who said it, but my back stiffened just the same.
“Poor Hailey. So sad to be disappointed in your children,” one of the other women said with a little cluck of her tongue. “The both of them have caused her nothing but heartache.”
It was all I could do not to lash out at the implication that there was something wrong not just with me but with my brother, too. My life might be a trainwreck at the moment, but Ethan was serving his country. Couldn’t my parents even be proud of that? Apparently not.
The only time Ethan had won their approval was when he played football and ran track in high school. Well, he did more than play. He’d been all-state multiple times, which gave my parents bragging rights in a small town where high school sports were major events. My parents went to all the games and my mother even managed to chair one of the boosters.
The artistic leaning that I possessed since I was little had never meant anything to my parents because it hadn’t held any benefit for them. They’d even forced me to give up the opportunity to attend a prestigious art school, stating that the tuition would be a waste of money. In fact, they refused to cover my tuition to go anywhere if I was insistent on taking those “useless classes.”
Thanks to my art teacher at Pop High, I’d received a scholarship to the University of Texas in Austin, which meant I only had to cover my essentials. To say that my parents were disappointed in my decision was an understatement, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Legally, I was old enough to make the decision on my own and it wasn’t as if I was counting on them for anything. I would be damned if I asked them for so much as a dime.
Toward the end of my junior year, I was warned that my scholarship money wouldn’t be available to me for my last year,but that I was welcome to take out a student loan. No way was I going to do that. I’d been apprenticing at Kieran’s tattoo shop and already had a decent following on Instagram. I probably didn’t give it as much thought as I should have, but I ended up dropping out to pursue tattoo art as a profession.
My entire life, my parents never once saw me for who I was—only for who I failed to be, by their standards. Having the audacity to major in something that wasn’t finance was a punishable offense in their eyes. The fact that I didn’t stick around long enough to get my “useless” BA? I had no idea where that ranked in my list failures.
“Follow me, please,” I said to the group of sneering women, impressed that I kept my cool and led them to a round table in my section. I waited for them to sit before handing out menus and promising to return to take their orders.
I moved off to help other customers but was overly conscious that I was being watched by the women at the table. Whenever I came close to them, I heard more remarks like the ones they’d already made, calling me ungrateful, selfish, a failure. Other patrons were starting to look in their direction, and I just wanted them to shut up.
I reminded myself that after another minute, they’d have had theirfunand would move on to another topic of gossip. I just had to hold out, keep a smile on my face, and do my job. On the outside I could look normal and professional, but on the inside all the insecurities brought on by my mother’s constant criticisms returned.
I’d spent years, working my ass off to get past all the scorn and ridicule I’d endured growing up all because I wasn’t the child they wanted, and I thought I had. Being back in this town,around these awful people, just brought it all up again. But I refused to let it dictate my actions. I wasn’t going to let them have control over me anymore, despite the venom coming out of these women’s mouths.
Squaring my shoulders, I approached their table and pulled the order pad from my pocket. “What can I get for you ladies?”
“A new server. We don’t want you,” Mrs. Fecto said. She had a son who’d been in the grade below me, and he’d been just as rude and obnoxious as his mother.
“Get somebody else,” one of the other women said with a little shooing motion of her hand.
I wanted to slap my order pad on the table and tell them to shove it where the sun didn’t shine, but I held back. Aurora had given me this job and was helping me out so much. I couldn’t repay her kindness by driving away customers. Even if they were miserable, dried-up old shrews.
“If you prefer,” I said and turned on my heel.I hate this town, I hate this town,I repeated in my head. My face felt hot and my humiliation was high, but I kept walking until I reached Aurora who worked behind the counter. “You’ll need to take table fifteen.”
“Why?” Aurora looked past me at the women seated there.
“They’re friends of my mother’s,” I explained, “and don’t want me to serve them.”
“Is that right? Those women are a bunch of cackling hens. I’m going to tell them to get lunch somewhere else if my staff isn’t good enough for them.” Aurora made to move past me, but I caught her arm.
“Don’t,” I pleaded. “They’ll just make a bigger scene, and I don’t want you to lose customers over me.”
Aurora squeezed my arm. “Look around—we’re not hurting for business. Besides, they’re a thorn in most everyone’s side. It would be my pleasure to banish them from the diner.”
“Aurora, please don’t.”
Aurora must have seen the anguish I was working so hard to hide. She scowled, obviously not liking it. “Okay, but I’m telling Marc to put too much pepper or maybe garlic in anything they order.”
While Aurora took care of the women, I worked the rest of my tables, smiling and chatting on the surface while I was seething inside. How dare those women presume to know anything about me based on my mother’s rants? I wasn’t going to cause a scene on my first day, though, so I kept my mouth shut and did my job.
