Page 68 of All the Ugly Things
“Sure, I know it. One of those clubs is only eighteen to enter. It’s like a rite of passage for every boy, and sometimes us girls go too.”
“You go?” I couldn’t help my surprise. She just seemed toosweet.
“Even me,” Angie said with a nod and a smile. “I’ve been there a couple of times. You like it there? At Judith’s, I mean.”
I shrugged. “It’s not like I have the right to be picky, you know?”
She couldn’t possibly know.
“Can I ask…”
“No.” I knew where it was going as soon as her voice slowed and softened. If I had it my way, no one would ever know even if a simple Google search could answer it for them. Let them go through the work. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
She shrugged off my denial like it was no big deal. And I think that made me like her even more.
“So can we talk about hot and sexy Hudson is then becausedamn, for a white boy, he’s got it going on in all the right places.”
“No.” I threw a pillow at her. “And stop making me think about him.”
Lord knew I was doing enough of that already.
“Break time over,” I said. “I have to figure this out before I need to get ready for work.”
“Fine,” she huffed and tossed the pillow back at me. I batted it off to the side. “But if you ever need to discuss the finer points and angles of Hudson, I’m your girl. Okay?”
It would never happen. “I’ll agree to that.”
She wiggled her brows ridiculously and smiled. Strangely enough, I was pretty sure I was now wearing a grin, too.
And it didn’t feel all that wonky or broken.
* * *
“CanI get you anything else tonight, Johnny?”
“No thanks, darlin’.” He reached for his full cup of coffee and turned back to the Des Moines Register spread out on the table.
I grinned as I walked away. His southern drawl was thick and heavy. He once told me he’d been coming to Judith’s for thirty years, found it one night on a trip from Dallas to Minneapolis, and liked it so much he stopped in as much as possible.
Said he liked how the scenery always stayed the same but the waitresses kept getting cuter and sweeter.
He was a sweet old man, said he was nicknamed Johnny Walker after the bourbon,but I done kicked that habit years ago and been sober for nearly twenty years. My missus woulda set me out on the street had I not knocked off the liquor back then, but the name still stuck.
He meant me no harm and some nights when it was just the two of us, I’d sit and let him talk about his wife, four kids, and twelve grandchildren he missed like the dickens with all the time he spent on the road.
Tonight it was busy and I didn’t have time to chat. I had seven tables and the kitchen was tossing up orders left and right. At nine, the crowd had come in sooner than usual, but at least very few had been drinking. My guess, they were filling up on greasy, deep-fried food to fill their stomachs before they overfilled them with alcohol later but that just meant all my tables were in good spirits. Fine by me. That meant better tips, as meager as they’d still be.
Plus, I was in a good mood anyway, thanks to the “B” I got on my accounting test earlier. When I told Angie after, she threw her arms around me in a tight hug. She did it so quickly she was gone before I could remember to hug her back. But it left me feeling warm, and smiling, as she walked me to the bus stop, chattering about her weekend plans.
Mine consisted of working and sleeping and studying.
Hers included babysitting her brother and sister because her mom had to work Saturday and then a date with a boy from her history class.
Lucky girl. I imagined the excitement I would have once had about a date, but unfortunately, high schoolers didn’t exactly go on real dates and Josh’s overprotectiveness limited my dates further. While I was happy for her, it only reminded me how much I’d lost. I tried to forget about it by focusing on my grades, the days I had off work, and the list of jobs from Valor Holdings I looked through earlier.
One which still stuck out more than others, possibly because it was the simplest. It gave me a hand up without being a handout.
At least that was what I told myself as I opened my computer and typed David an email, requesting a meeting at his earliest convenience.
