Food service was one of the many jobs I’d done at Fortuna over the years, and though I wasn’t above being an asshole to anyone who deserved it—even I wasn’t immune and earned my own wrath often—you’d never catch me being shitty to the person who brought me food.
Stacy let out a borderline-amused huff before asking again, with a little more pep, “Anything else I can get ya?”
I kept my smile in place but tinged it toward rueful. “Ahh, cher, this is perfect. But… I don’t suppose you have a paper or pencil I could borrow?”
Older ladies at the casinolovedwhen I called them by that Cajun endearment, but I reserved the proper nounversion of it for Bree, who would always be “Cher” to me, no matter what was happening.
My shoulders slumped, and I scrunched my toes inside my slides in agitation. I should tell her that.
“Honey, I don’t want your number.”
My smile slipped as I processed what Stacy had said. I glanced up at her and thumped my chest twice with two fingers. “You’ve taken this from me, Stacy. Do you think I can still eat hashbrowns without a heart?” I brought my mug of coffee to mymouth again and sipped slowly, maintaining eye contact with her as I swallowed.
“Oh, you are trouble,” she huffed. “And that might’ve worked twenty years ago, but I am too old to be…”
Her words trailed off as I licked a drop of liquid from my lips.
Her throat bobbed before she picked up the threat of her sentence. “… concerned with that mess.” She tapped her long, red-painted nails on the booth’s tabletop. “I’ll see what I can get ya.”
She disappeared behind the counter, and after I inhaled half of my double order of fried cheese-and-jalapeño hashbrown shreds—delicious both with and sans heart, I could report—I sat my fork down with a clatter before smoothing out myMona Lisaon the table, wondering if there was a way to make this less of a disaster.
I clicked on the course syllabus page on the class portal, and by the time I added salt, pepper, and a rainfall of hot sauce to my two scrambled eggs, devoured them, and regretted the hot sauce level as I downed a glass of too-cold water, it loaded.
I flicked my tongue out like a lizard a few times to try to douse the flames left by the hot sauce as I scanned the screen for what I needed to know but kept getting distracted by a green light beckoning me from the bottom of the page.
This course, like many that were held entirely online, had a chat feature where the professor could assign and moderate discussion forums. Curious, I moved my cursor to the green light, hovering over the online classmate with the username “LL.”
Then I clicked.
One of my hands was busy making a sort of scoop with my triangle of wheat toast so I could transport the remaining hashbrowns from my plate to my face, so I typed out the message one-handed.
Dezi
wgy you yup
Hmm. Not my finest work. Oh well.
LL is typing…
I perked up, dropping the remaining crust onto the plate. Crust was the bane of my existence.
LL
Good morning, Dezi. Are you quite all right?
Ohhh.Quite.
He must be older, talking like that, though I had no reason to assume that “LL” was a guy. I wrestled a fistful of napkins from the small dispenser that was always either overpacked or empty, and I furiously wiped the grease from my right hand. Then with both hands, I typed my response. This time in a manner that suggested that I was both all right and not drunk.
Dezi
My name is Cody. I just thought this would be a cool username.
There. Much more coherent, and mostly true. My last name was Desmond, but it seemed unwise to share such info online, especially right from the jump.
LL is typing…
I leaned forward, eager for his response.
