Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
And his extreme tan that veritably screamed impending melanoma was a constant, even if I had no idea how he maintained it when he was inside most of the time.
Tips were decent at The Surf Club, but it didn’t matter. Tito paid well above minimum wage, offered insurance, even to part-timers, and gave five percent to the 401(k)s he also offered. We all had regular schedules so we could live our lives not at the mercy of when The Man decided to put us to work. And every year, he gave epic Christmas bonuses, along with a bottle of Dom, doing this at the Christmas party he closed the Club down to throw.
The weird part about this was, he might look like Santa, and be just as generous, but he didn’t show at the party he threw. Never.
However, I knew he’d bail me out of jail (eventually, once he meandered there) or knock himself out to find a specialist doctor to deal with a rare disease if I contracted it. And I knew this in a way that thought was iron tight and unshakeable.
But I’d been working here for four years, and I knew practically nothing about him, except he fostered long-term employees by hiring well and paying well and providing zero management.
You were hired, everyone there taught you the way of things until you knew what to do, so you just did it, and he let us alone to get on with it.
I had no idea how it worked, I just knew it did.
I also knew I loved it here.
Luna worked at SC for a year before she coaxed me from my job in retail to join her.
It had been the best decision I’d made in my life, and both Luna and I knew, as long as there was a Surf Club, we’d be working here.
Yep, you guessed it. This meant I had no ambitions outside maybe one day owning my own little house somewhere in the Valley and the separate bank account I had that I added to every payday without fail would get me there (maybe in another hundred years).
Any ambitions I might have started to foster had been irrevocably quashed one horrible day when I was eight, and they’d been thus in a way no kernel could ever take root and grow in the time since.
As for Luna, she had her own reasons to have a job that had zero stress, meant you had cash in your wallet at all times, and no one got up in your face if you were late to work.
Which that morning, she wasn’t.
She was behind the bar polishing the high shine to a higher shine while I heard Otis, the man who ran the coffee cubby on weekdays, steaming milk for a patron around the corner.
“Yo, Tito!” I called when I hit the room.
Tito didn’t look up from scribbling in a journal.
Again, I took no offense. This was an everyday occurrence, even if the journal might be a book or some YouTube video he was watching on his iPad.
I then approached Luna.
My girl Luna, by the way, had burnished dark-blonde hair I’d witnessed a variety of people get into full-fledged verbal fights as to whether it was blonde or red (I liked my descriptive version best). That hair was full of bouncy curls.
She also had upturned, almond-shaped, silvery light-blue eyes and beautiful, full, pouty lips that had creases in the corners when she smiled, even a little bit.
She was one inch taller than me, standing at five-eight. And, like me, she assiduously maintained her T&A with profuse consumption of Willow’s baked goods and Lucia’s fusion with intermittent injections of things like Lenny’s.
Today, she was in a lacy, white swing dress with a deep ruffle on the very mini-miniskirt, a plunging vee neckline and super-flowy, three-quarter sleeves (straight up, guaranteed good tips in that dress from the hetero men who’d show, which was one, if not the only reason she wore it).
If that didn’t shout boho loud enough at you, she’d topped this with a fawn-colored rancher hat.
“Am I uninvited to your birthday party?” I asked.
“I’m thinking on it,” she returned. “My first inclination is, yes. However, my vision for the party hinges on your sangria, and I don’t think I have time to alter the theme.”
Good news for me, but unsurprising. My sangria was the shit.
“That’s good, because if you shut me out, I would be forced to save your birthday present for next year, and the present I got you rawks.”
This was a total lie. First, I hadn’t got her present yet. Second, I was the worst gift-giver in history.
I didn’t know what my deal was. I just got incapacitated by the stress of it all.
This might be why she shot me a disbelieving look.
“Okay, it’s gonna rawk,” I amended. “I swear, I’m gonna do better this year. I’m on a mission.”