Page 15 of Bloom

Relief floods me. “I’d really appreciate anything you can do,” I tell him.

“Why don’t I come by tomorrow night and we’ll talk? You live at your dad’s place off 55th, right?”

“Yeah,” I say, feeling my stomach drop. “But I’m out of town.” Is it what I should have said? Probably not. But in the moment my mind was blank.

“No problem,” he says. “I’ll call you next week.”

I lay the phone down on the counter, avoiding eye contact with everyone.

“What did he say?” asks Ginny.

I shrug. “He’s going to find me something else.”

James’s voice comes next, low and suspicious. “Then why don’t you look happy?”

“He wanted to come to my dad’s place to ‘discuss’ it with me.”

I hear James’s hiss from across the room. “If I ever run into that guy, he’s going to discuss it with my fist.”

Max is more sanguine. “She’s a pretty girl, James. It won’t be the first or last time it happens. Consider this her chance to learn how to deal with it.”

“Girl is the key word,” James growls. “He’s old enough to be her grandfather.”

That’s a bit of a stretch, unless Edward was getting busy in middle school, but what I like less is the fact that James seems bound and determined to see me as a child.

Chapter 11

At the end of my second week I’m promoted to waiting tables in the bar area, as opposed to the restaurant. It’s significantly harder and significantly more lucrative. I suspect that my promotion has more to do with my looks than my waitressing abilities, because I still totally suck.

Kristy works there with me. “Brian has a thing for blondes,” she says, winking at me. “Dye your hair and you’re out of here.”

Kristy’s boyfriend Matt overhears this and rolls his eyes. “This whole situation is bullshit. I’ve never been given a section in the bar.”

“Apparently you need to bleach your hair,” I suggest.

The third girl who works cocktail, Ashleigh, is not a blonde, but she’s stunning and I hate her a little. Not for her looks so much as the way she fawns over James, and the way she rolls her eyes every time she looks at me.

She’s only slightly less rude to me than James himself, who actively looks elsewhere when I come to place my drink orders, providing terse answers at best. It grows so tiresome that I drop my orders with Brooks, the other bartender, whenever possible.

But James is here more, and at a certain point I get fed up with his Jekyll-and-Hyde routine. “Okay, what’s up?” I ask point blank. “Why are you so unfriendly to me during the day?”

He stiffens. “I’m not unfriendly. I’m just trying to do my job.”

“You are unfriendly. And you manage to do your job and not treat anyone else that way.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. And then he walks away. Yeah, because walking away in the middle of a conversation isn’t unfriendly at all.

Between his attitude and my complete failure as a waitress, the summer is shaping up to provide quite the wallop to my self-esteem. Did I really think I’d ever make it as an anchor when I can’t even remember a drink order? If it weren’t for my inexplicable desire to be near James, I’d have quit already.

I’m standing across the bar from James when Brian comes out to talk to me about my latest slip-up. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I keep messing up the abbreviations.”

“No prob,” he says, coming around behind me and rubbing my shoulders. “Don’t let yourself get all tense. This is supposed to be fun.”

It’s slightly awkward, having my boss — a married father of two — standing in the middle of the bar giving me a massage. I meet James’s eye and begin blushing, wondering if this is getting filed in the same part of his brain that led him to tell Brian I look like a whore in my uniform.

I manage to escape Brian’s hands and go check on my tables, but I hear a bottle break behind me and look back. A very heated conversation has ensued between James and Brian, with James now towering over Brian, his face a study in focused rage.

It ends with Brian retreating angrily to his office while James stands there with clenched hands, looking like he’s just figuring out what to punch and how many times.