“Hey,” I asked the nearest brother to me. I’d never seen him before, and none of them had introduced themselves when I’d walked in earlier. “How much damage can salt and pepper shakers do?”
“You’d be surprised.” He grabbed one from the box. “There’s enough glass that if you aim well and throw hard enough, the cuts sting like a bitch.” He shrugged. “All the glass was on the floor, so it was easier to order everything new.”
I could only imagine how much this was costing Angelica. I had to remind myself there was nothing I could have done to prevent this, but I couldn’t hold the sadness back, staring at the breakables.
“Grab a box or two, and I’ll go grab the refill containers. No one bothers the help.” Lulu winked at me, running past. We were both pretending all of this was normal, when we should have been slinging hamburgers and fries.
It was easier to be busy than to stop and worry about what was going to come next. Lulu must have been thinking the same thing because we made small talk at one of the older tables as we worked, but it was nothing like the jokes we normally cracked. I wasn’t sure how long we’d been at it. I was deep in thought, trying to decide what to do next.
“You’ve got that look,” Lulu said as she poured pepper into a shaker.
I didn’t bother responding. If I told her the truth, she’d only try to talk me out of it. She wanted to keep me, and while I enjoyed her company, this wasn’t my home. My phone beeped, but I continued dumping salt into my shaker.
“Are you going to check that?” she asked me, with a small smile.
“Nope.” I didn’t need to check it to know it was Cactus. The brothers’ reactions gave it away. Each time my phone dinged with an incoming message, they would point and giggle. I would ignore it, but one of them would text him back. I could only guess what they were telling him. They were busy having fun, but to the rest of us that actually worked here, this was too sad for words.
“What happened, sweets?”
Something in Lulu’s tone made me pick up my head to look at her. Her lips curved into a sad smile, as if she had been in my position too many times.
I searched the room, scanning to see if any of the brothers were paying attention to us. I didn’t need them up my ass. They would tease me, and I wouldn’t have any recourse to make them stop. They’d also tell Cactus, and while he might notcare, he was prickly. It could go either way, but I could only see him starting a fight. “I fucked up,” I whispered. “I made a mountain out of a molehill.”
“A mountain…” Lulu cracked up, laying her head against the back of the chair. “Where the fuck did you get that expression?” I’d never heard Lulu swear, but it wasn’t hard to pick up when the brothers were loud.
“Somewhere in the Midwest.” I chuckled, watching the genuine enjoyment on her face. Lulu smiled often, but I had noticed it hardly reached her eyes. I wasn’t sure if I was the only one who recognized she hid pain. “Cactus called last night.”
“Oh.” Her lips made an O shape as she dragged out the syllable. “Did you ask where you stood? There’s nothing wrong with that, sweets.”
“Yeah, but now I’m ignoring him. He told me to ‘get some rest,’ like I’m a little kid he has to take care of.”I had just wanted someone to pick me for once.
“Girl! You should have told me. I would have helped you string him along until he couldn’t see straight. Oh, my God.”
Aces heard the end of her diatribe when he straddled one of the remaining chairs at our table. “You rang?” He smirked.
“No one called you.” She ignored him, turning back towards me. “We should have a girls’ night.” Lulu bounced back quickly.
“You’re the one who wanted an invitation to my bed.”
“Shouldn’t you be unloading the tables, or something?” Lulu reached for the pepper container, but he grabbed it before she could. “What I said was there were plenty of prospects if you would just ask.” She rolled her eyes.
“What’s wrong with you people?” I chimed in. “You run your mouths, talk a good game, and when it comes down to it, you have the emotional awareness of a gnat.”
“Have to have water for gnats.” Aces shrugged, crossing his arms over the top of the chair. “Read those texts yet?”
“Fix my car yet?”
His jaw dropped as if I had sucker-punched him. His gaze slid over the dining room until it landed on where Eights was carrying in one of the new chairs. “HeyEights, you tell Cactus his bitch is as prickly as he is?” Laughing, he stood before I threw a salt shaker at him.
“No one’s bitch,” I yelled at Aces’s back, and I swore Lulu’s hand reached for one of the pepper shakers. We were on the same page.
“Yeah, we’re too much for you to handle,” Lulu chimed in.
“I sent him a proof of life picture.” Eights lingered on Lulu a beat too long. “He’s going to owe me,” Eights muttered, more to himself. She didn’t look impressed, so I didn’t pretend to be.
The rest of the brothers had stopped what they were doing to watch this exchange. They couldn’t contain their laughter, and it bounced off the rafters.
“Fuckers,” I whispered, sliding towards the back of my chair.
