Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
It was why I avoided the man like the plague, why I tried never to be caught alone with him.
But the kitchen staff was turning over, so no one was near the window. The guests were situated in a back corner behind a pillar. And I was the only waitress in the building.
Damnit.
How the hell could I get out of this and keep my job?
“Tommy Martin Dolin, if you don’t keep your grubby little sausage fingers to your damn self, I will slice them off with a very dull butter knife.”
That was Maureen.
The force of nature morning waitress who had worked at the diner since Tommy Senior was running the place.
She was tall and skinny with orange-red hair, a bit too much eye makeup, and a chain-smoking habit.
All she did was smart-mouth our boss.
I think the only reason she still had a job was because Tommy was genuinely too scared to fire her.
I adored her.
She was like the diner’s grandma. She’d seen it all, done it all, and rarely ever got flustered. She was who’d trained me. If it weren’t for her, I don’t think I would have lasted a week.
“I was just—“ Tommy started even as he snatched his hand away and took three large steps to the side.
“Leaving. Yes. Good idea. I don’t want you breathing down my neck while I’m working. Hey, girl. How’d it go?” she asked, physically placing herself between me and Tommy, a power move that had me smirking and wishing I was half as badass as she was when I got to her age.
“Busy,” I told her truthfully.
“Busy is good. Keeps you from noticing how your feet are hurting and your back is aching and your underwire is cutting into your left one,” she said, getting a chuckle out of me. “What did he want?” she asked, giving me a knowing look.
“He was complaining that my hair fell out of my bun. But I was more worried about him wanting to start getting a cut of tips.”
“Over my dead and decaying body will that ever happen. If he mentions it again, you tell me. I’ll take care of it, no problem.”
“Maureen, you are truly the best of us,” I said, giving her a one-arm hug.
“Yeah yeah yeah. Now get. You need some rest.”
She was right about that. I was dead on my feet. And my feet were still going to need to walk me all the way home. I couldn’t afford to waste any money on cabs or even the subway.
It wasn’t that far anyway.
It was just a not great neighborhood in the dead of night.
I got a stomach ache every time I left work.
Even if I carried a little hidden can of mace, an eye-gouger, and a large umbrella with a pretty pointy thing at the top.
Just in case.
“Be safe,” Maureen called as she started loading up the coffee filters with coffee, preparing for the upcoming rush.
“I’ll try my best,” I called, waving at her before slipping my fingers into the holes in my eye-gouger.
I was a native city girl.
I was accustomed to the streets.
But not since I was a reckless college student did I walk them alone at night if I could avoid it.
These days, though, there wasn’t a lot of choice.
I needed to save every dime I could.
And not just in my usual “get a summer job to hold you over while schools are out and so you can buy much-needed classroom supplies” kind of way.
No.
This was in a more pressing way. In a way that said I might have to make some of my own classroom decorations and put some wishlists up on my social media, begging people to contribute to my classroom since I couldn’t do it myself.
I was lucky, I had to remind myself quite often, that I worked in New York City, where teacher salaries started much more reasonably than other places in the country. The problem was, of course, that the cost of living in the city was also much higher.
I once read somewhere that the ideal income to live comfortably in the city was just over eighty-grand. Not even working a summer job put me close to that.
Which meant that I was really in the red these days.
It was fine, though. Temporary and fine. I could do it. Deal with the hard work and the creepy boss. Just another year or two, that was all.
Maybe one of the other waitresses was right. It was time to start selling pictures of my feet or my old, worn socks from the nights at the diner. Apparently you could “make bank” if you knew what you were doing.
I was only halfway joking when I said I was considering it.
If push came to shove, I could paint my toes and snap some pictures.
That was what my mind was on while I was walking home, since I knew better than to listen to music or an audiobook.