The Boy I Grew Up With

No, that wasn’t true.

I knew he was quiet, hard-working, lean, smart, and never a problem. He showed up for his job, and on days he didn’t need to be here as an employee, he came as a customer. He enjoyed Brandon. Those two talked and laughed a lot together at the bar. Cruz came in to be there on nights when Brandon closed, and he was there most of the “not so busy” nights. I now realized that had all been purposeful.

He paused, sitting across from me, and frowned. “I stink or something?” He smelled his armpits.

“What?”

He gestured to my face. “You look in pain. I know it’s not my outside—I’m pretty beyond measure there—so I thought I must smell.” He sniffed his shirt. His grin turned sly. “I don’t. I smell like fresh lilacs, and I know that because Ava just got a whole bouquet of them.” He paused a beat. “From Roy.”

“Roy? Uber driver Roy?”

He nodded, resting his elbows on the table and getting more comfortable. “Apparently he asked her to some dance, and she’s all giggling and blushing right now.”

I laughed softly. “That’s awesome. Good for her. Him too.”

He nodded again. “Mmm-hmmm, and that brings me to why I’m out here.”

Here it was. I prepared myself.

“I’d like to become your main manager, and I’d like to hire Katrina to be the manager under me, along with one of my cousins. He’s a really good worker. Lots of experience. He doesn’t live far. He’s here a lot already.”

I knew who he was referring to. It was the guy he came with a lot of those nights when they closed with Brandon.

I already knew I was going to do it, but I still groaned, rubbing at my temples. “You’re giving me a headache. You know that, right?”

“I do.”

There was a person we hadn’t named yet, a person who would be directly affected by this.

He leaned forward, the easygoing smile going away. “She doesn’t want to be a manager. You know it. I know it. She knows it. She says otherwise, but I’m already doing her work for her. Hell, you’re doing her work for her, and you’re the boss. You’re supposed to hire us, not fill in for us. It’s not right, and it’s time to make the change.”

He was right, and why did I feel this could be a metaphor for other parts of my life too?

“Right.” I said it dully, because that’s how I was feeling. Like a dull, dumbass piece of shit. I’d let things with Suki go longer than I should’ve. She was excelling at the private gourmet dinners, but she’d gone back to not even being half a manager.

It wasn’t meant to be.

I sighed. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Yeah?” He straightened up, his eyebrows rising. That grin started to spread again. “On everything? My cousin too? I have his resume with me, but he—”

I waved him off. I trusted Cruz. I trusted Brandon, and he liked Cruz’s cousin. “No. It’s good. Tell him to come in next weekend to fill out paperwork, and we can figure out the orientation schedule. Katrina’s okay with this too?”

His head moved up and down, his eyes dancing. “Oh yes. It was her idea, said she was tired of being ordered around by Suki. It’s the right call. It’s time, boss.”

The way he was talking, I knew he expected me to let Suki go. He had another thing coming.

As he started to get up and leave, I noted, “I’m not firing her, Cruz.”

He rounded back to me. His eyes got big. “What?”

I understood his fear. Suki was… Well, Suki was nuts, but Suki was family. Once you were in, I didn’t let you go.

“She’s not going to be a manager, but she’s going to be around.”

“Oh my God.” He dropped back to the bench and caught his head in his hands. “Oh my God. You have no idea. She’s a nightmare to work with.”

I knew. I really did, but she was an asset. I pointed behind him. “Go in. Send Suki out, and you can call Katrina, let her know the good news.”

“Oh no.” He stood, but it wasn’t quick. He kept shaking his head, and I heard that phrase on repeat over and over until he rounded the corner of the building.

I didn’t want to do this. I knew what the rest of the day would be like.

Suki would come out. I would fire her as manager. She’d be upset, get all blustery and start expressing how Suki was going to bring her wrath and damnation on this place. I would interrupt her, tell her I wanted her to stay on as the gourmet chef, doing her shows more often, and she’d be happy—or I hoped so—but it didn’t matter. She’d take the job change, and she’d do it without an attitude because I was not in the mood.

This whole day had become about taking care of the shit I’d been letting go.

Once we got through it and Suki went back inside, the normal grumbling out of her system because she wasn’t really sure if she should be happy about being demoted, even to the job she really wanted, she’d have a little extra bounce to her step.

And she did.

Then Ava came outside. She was grinning and blushing, and she gushed about the flowers. She was beyond excited.

I smiled. I congratulated her. I expressed how happy I was, and then I teased her.

I went through the motions, but inside I knew that after all of this, there was another part of my life I’d need to deal with too.

Once Ava went inside, that same extra bounce to her step that Suki had, I knew the next person around that corner would be my brother.

He appeared, laughing to himself and shaking his head. “You’ve had an eventful day.”

I grunted as he dropped into the seat Cruz had vacated, then Suki, then Ava.

“It’s hilarious inside. Cruz is beaming, but he’s wary of Suki. Suki is happy, but acting like she’s supposed to be angry, so it seems like she’s faking. Katrina came in, and she’s having a drink with Chester, the guy you just hired as a manager.”

Chester? That was his name?

Brandon rolled his head around and massaged his neck, “And Ava is acting like a giddy schoolgirl, which is annoying the fuck out of Suki. She’s so damn happy about her own thing that she wants to swat Ava down, but she isn’t because it’s all confusing the fuck out of her.”

Confusing her? Welcome to the club.

I groaned. “My headache is getting worse. I don’t think I want to know what Roy is doing.”

“Roy took off. He pushed those lilacs in Ava’s hands, read a poem, and dropped to his knee. It looked like he was proposing, and then one of his buddies ran in with a poster and threw it at them. It hit Ava across the face, but Roy caught it and read it out loud, asking her to that dance. I swear she’s going to have a fat lip from that sign, but she’s not feeling a thing. I don’t ever remember being that happy about going to a dance in high school.”

“Because you’re a manwhore. You don’t have the simple, pure outlook on life that they do.”

He grunted now too. “You think?”

Shit. Ava was a senior at Roussou Public School. That same year I’d been running Manny’s, having sex with Channing, and hanging out with Samantha and the Kades. The only thing that had changed from then till now was that the Kades had moved across the country.

“Oh yeah. I can’t imagine Channing even thinking about asking me to a dance with a sign, much less me blushing because of it. If I was blushing, it was because his head was between my leg—” ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">