Marcus turns the lock and lets me in. “Whoa. Hey! What’s going on, Will? You smell like onions.”
Bo watches me from behind the counter with wide eyes and a twitching jaw.
I can’t look away. “Ron in his office?” I ask Marcus.
If Marcus would look up from the lock instead of fiddling with his huge ring of keys, he’d see everything that happened between Bo and me because in this moment it is so obvious. So open. So public. It’s all right there, splayed out like an open-heart surgery.
“Yeah, I think so.” He locks the door behind me, finally. “But you still haven’t said what you’re doing here.”
I don’t answer him. The butterflies in my stomach carry me through the break room and to Ron’s office. I knock on the open door.
Lydia is sitting in front of his desk on a crate. She turns at the sound of me. “Oh, thank Christ. The prodigal cashier has returned.” She stands and takes her pack of cigarettes from his desk. “I’ll leave you to it.” And once her back is turned to him, she gives me the tiniest smile as she closes the door.
Without bothering to sit, I turn to Ron. “I want a raise. And I’m going to need a couple days off for . . . for this thing I have.”
Without hesitating, Ron says, “I can do a seventy-five cent raise. And I’ll work with you on your schedule. We’ll figure it out.”
“Okay.” I didn’t expect that to be so simple. “Well, then it’s a deal.”
“You’re back?”
I nod. “I’m back.”
“That chili was really bad. I tried to eat it, but Lydia kept gagging every time she walked by my office. I think she was kidding, but still.”
“It’s pretty horrible.”
He chuckles. “I’m glad to have you back.” He stands and walks me through the kitchen to the front. We pass Bo and his eyes follow us all the way to the door. “Are you okay to start on Monday?”
“I’ll be there.”
He holds his hand out for me to shake, and I do.
I walk to my car as Bo’s gaze follows me; the feeling of it starts as a ball of heat in my chest and spreads like a sunrise.
FORTY
I gave Alejandro my notice, and he kind of looked at me like, What took you so long? He promised me that I’d always have a job at the Chili Bowl and asked me to give Ellen his number. I slipped the folded scrap of paper in my pocket and swore to forget about it. I was all nerves when I told Mitch I was going back to Harpy’s, but he shrugged it off and kept playing his video game. It occurred to me then that he had no reason to be upset. For the first time, not telling him about my history with Bo felt like a lie.
My first night back at Harpy’s is quiet. Marcus berates me with endless questions about the Chili Bowl, like, “Who makes the chili?” or “Is it true you guys don’t wash the pots?”
Bo keeps to himself in the kitchen, but we play a game of Catch Me If You Can with our eyes over the heat lamp counters. When Bo’s on his break, Marcus leans over and says, “He almost got fired a couple weeks after you left.”
“What?” The way Ron made it seem, he couldn’t afford to fire anyone, so I can’t imagine what Bo could’ve done that was bad enough to get fired.
“Ron had Bo up on the front counter while he worked the kitchen, which was a bad idea to begin with, and these guys from his old school came in, and Bo refused to serve them. Just flat-out told them they weren’t welcome. The dudes made a big deal about it. Even their parents made a big deal about it, and basically the only way Bo could keep his job was if Ron only kept him in the kitchen.”
“Whoa.”
“He’s one crazy dude. I feel like he’s either going to murder everyone or be, like, a movie star. There’s no in between for that guy.”