“Can I ask you a question?” she tells me, only slurring her words a tiny bit now.
“Go for it.”
“Is it true that Big D is staying at this hotel?”
My jaw tightens.
Way too many fans ofYard Linehave become aware of his stay.
“We are not permitted to disclose who the hotel guests are. Sorry to disappoint.”
“Oh my God. That has to be a yes,” she says, turning to her friend. “Like, he’d saynoif the answer was no, right? I’m going to find Big D. I’m going to be the next one to get married! And it’s going to be to a famous actor, bitches.”
“He has a name,” I blurt out, my tone a little too harsh. “Celebrities are people, not characters from a show. You can’t just hunt them down like game animals, understand?”
She gives me a wide-eyed look and I’m worried I’ve just fucked up for the final time.
She’s going to ask for the manager.
And then she’s going to complain to David that I was short with her, and I’m going to get fired.
But her lopsided smile comes back a moment later, and she hiccups and starts to laugh.
“Feisty waiter,” she says. “I still want you to fuck me in the bathroom?—”
“Enough, Kristin,” her friend says. “I’m so sorry.”
I wave a hand through the hair. “It’s nothing. Just make sure she gets back to her room safely.”
“I’m on it.”
When I’m back in the kitchen, I bring another batch of stuff into the working walk-in and I pause for a moment, taking a deep breath.
It’s not the bachelorette party upsetting me.
Or my boss.
Or even that everything seems to be breaking.
I reach in my pocket and feel the envelope Logan gave me. I’ve been looking at the money multiple times over the past few hours, getting angrier and angrier each time throughout my shift.
Why did you give this to me?
The right thing to do would just be to take it, deposit it into my account, and have a little extra cushion toward rent this month.
Butfuckthat.
I don’t want his money. Why the hell would he think to even do something like that?
The rest of my shift is more brutal by the hour. The corporate dinner guests get even rowdier than the bachelorette party women were, and while none of them proposition me for sex, they’re very demanding about drinks and one of the guys even snaps his fingers at me when he wants a refill.
I fantasize about splashing paint along the pristine table in front of them.
Staining it with neon green and blue and pink, then moving to the walls, destroying the perfect vintage wallpaper with the thickest brush I own.
Ruin it all, and drown it in color, until it’s something new.
Every hour that I spend here is an hour I spend away from my art, from the actual thing that I want to devote my life to. And some nights, I feel like I’m being slowly consumed by a life that I never would have chosen. I wish I had a pack of cigarettes to chain smoke that somehow magically wouldn’t lure me back to an addiction. Or a sledgehammer to take to every wall. Or…
