“Are you all right?” Aliana says.
I force out a smile again. “Yeah. Just getting things sent out.”
“Your face is completely red. You’re not coming down with the flu or something, are you?” she asks, reaching up to touch my forehead with the back of her hand.
It would be easy to say yes and duck out, not having to face Billy again, butI don’t want to do that. I need to stay strong and keep up a solid front. As long as we’re both playing in the PLL, I’ll have to see him several times a year. I don’t want this to be a memory I regret for years to come.
“I’m fine. Just a bit hot in here.”
She stares into my eyes. “Let me know if you need to leave. You’ve worked a lot of days in the past month and could probably use a break.”
“I appreciate that, Aliana. Thank you for being willing to work around my schedule.”
“Well, you’re one of my top servers. If I could clone you, I would.” She tries to give me a stern look, but I can see the corner of her lips tick up.
Shaking my head, I say, “I don’t think the world is ready for multiple Burtons.”
“You’re probably right about that.”
We both laugh and she pats me on the back before walking over to check on another section.
I gather what I need for my other tables spread across the restaurant. Sauces, silverware, more water. Just put it on autopilot is what I want to do, but I know I need to concentrate so it’s not a chaotic mess here—which makes me think of Pearl the goat and what chaos she created when I was trying to scare Laney.
The food comes up for Billy’s group. I take out one tray, and Vanessa, a coworker, helps me take out another.
“How’s it looking?” I ask after we’ve set out all the plates. “Did we get everything you needed?”
“Can I get a side order of Alfredo sauce?” one man says.
Mr. Toupee points to his drink and says, “And can I get a refill?”
“For sure. I’ll be right back with those.” My body physically relaxes when I walk away from the table. I can do this for another thirty minutes, right?
I bring out a boat of sauce and the drink with a pineapple slice on the rim.
“This isn’t cooked how I wanted it,” Billy finally says after cutting into his steak. As he holds up the piece, it’s a mostly hot red center and charred on the outside. That’s the restaurant version of medium rare.
“I can have the cook put it on the grill again if you need it cooked more.”
Billy narrows his gaze at me. “I want a new steak, and it better not be mooing at me when it comes back out.”
I lean over and pick up the plate, doing my best to keep my mouth shut as I walk into the kitchen with it.
“Let me guess,” Leni, our cook, says. “He wanted medium rare and then didn’t like how pink it was.”
“Five hundred points to Leni,” I say, putting the plate on the counter above him. He takes the steak and puts it back onto the grill.
“He says he wants a new steak.”
“I can make it look like a new steak; it’ll just be smaller than he wanted.”
I shrug. “We’ll see if he even eats it with it cooked a little more.”
I’m back in ten minutes with the same plate but a “different” steak.
“Let me know if that’s to your liking,” I say, the words coming out as if I suddenly became a wooden puppet like Pinocchio.
Billy cuts into it and says, “Hey, you did something right for once, unlike out on the field. You’re a waste of space. Maybe it’s time to move on, Courtney.”
