Chapter 2
Standing in the cold parking lot, I looked from Keith to Brittney and back again.
I totally didn't see that coming.
"You are so fired!" Brittney hollered through the glass. Her long blonde hair hung in surprisingly perfect waves, but her dress was definitely off-kilter, like she'd been wrestling a monkey in the back seat. Whatever she and Keith were doing, she apparently hadn't bothered to undress.
I couldn’t really blame her. If I were doing Keith, I'd keep most of my clothes on too.
"You can't fire me," I hollered back through the car window. "You don't even work here."
Smiling, she reached a hand toward the door. The car window slid halfway down, revealing both of them in all their sweaty glory. No wonder the car had been running. Clothed or not, the night was way too frigid for a backseat bang-a-thon.
Brittney turned to Keith. "Go on, baby," she said. "Tell her."
I looked at Keith. "Baby?"
Keith cleared his throat. "Well, uh, you never showed up for your shift, and um –"
"And," Britney said with a flip of her hair, "you're totally fired."
Again, I looked to Keith. He was still covering his privates, but his jaw was set in that stubborn line I knew all too well.
"Is that so?" I said with a lot more surprise than I felt.
In truth, I had expected to be fired. I had a pretty good idea why Keith had called me here. He wanted the pleasure of firing me in person. If I had any dignity whatsoever, I'd have told him to take his ultimatum and shove it. But dignity was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
So here I was, waiting for the hammer, but hoping for a miracle.
Keith squared his shoulders. "You know the rules," he said. "Section three, item two, under employee conduct." He spoke like he knew the employee manual by heart, which he probably did. Oddly enough, quoting the thing word-for-word was the one thing he was actually good at.
His voice picked up steam. "Employees who miss their shifts will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination."
I nodded. "Uh-huh. And what does the manual say about, oh, I dunno, screwing skanks in the parking lot?"
"Hey!" Brittney said. "I'm no skank."
This wasn't true. If you searched on the word skank, you'd find a picture of Brittney, along with her friend, Amber. They were the worst kind of groupies. Except they didn't specialize in rock stars, or even restaurant managers, regardless of what it might look like now.
They specialized in billionaire bad boys from Detroit. Okay, one in particular. Their latest conquest had been Lawton Rastor – former underground fighter, famous reality star, fitness mogul, and yes, the guy with the handcuffs.
I rubbed my wrists. The skin was still raw, but not half as raw as my aching heart. Walking away from Lawton tonight had been one of the hardest things I'd ever done, especially after he'd begged me to stay.
But I wasn't that girl, the one who'd excuse the inexcusable just because the skeletons in some guy's past were rattling too hard for him to handle.
"We weren't screwing," Keith said. "And besides, I'm on break." He stuck out his chin. "What I do on my own time is my own business."
Keith was almost always on break. Restaurant management was an incredibly hard job, but somehow Keith managed to log a lot of hours without actually working. We all figured he had naked goat pictures of the owner or something.
"Really?" I crossed my arms. "You do realize you'll be on a permanent break if this gets out?" Was it true? Hard to say. But I was desperate. It was worth a shot, right?
Keith narrowed his eyes. "Are you threatening me?"
"I dunno," I said. "Are you threatening me?"
His gaze slid to Brittney, and then back to me. "You know the rules," he said. "No exceptions."
I gave him a hard look. "Is that so?"
"It wouldn't be fair to the other girls," he said.
I let my gaze drift downward. When it reached the land of Squidville, I gave him a long, slow nod. "Uh-huh."
With one hand, he reached up to straighten his tie. He stopped in mid-gesture when he discovered no shirt-collar to secure it to. A trickle of sweat inched down his brow. "Go ahead," he said. "Tell someone. You can't prove anything." He gave me a nasty smile. "It's your word against mine."
"Yeah," Brittney said. "Who's gonna believe a ditz like you, anyway?"
I stared at her. A ditz? Sure, I played one at work, but in real life, I was anything but ditzy. If nothing else, I was smart enough to know I couldn’t afford to lose my job.
I had too many bills and an accounting degree that was getting me nowhere. Waitressing was the closest thing to a career I had.
Pathetic, I know.
Thinking about everything – the stalled career, the bills I couldn’t pay, and the obligations that were piling up – I felt my hands tighten into fists. That's when I realized something. My hands weren't exactly empty. In one hand, I had my purse. In the other, I still held my phone. That phone had a camera.
I looked at Keith, naked except for the necktie. I looked at Brittney, not naked, but decidedly disheveled. I looked down to my phone.
I shouldn’t.
But I did.