“Did she say that?” I asked, feeling a little sick to my stomach.
“Oh yeah. She said it loud and clear. Repeatedly. I’ll go back with you to pick up your check at the end of the week so you don’t have to face her alone.”
I closed my eyes, wondering why things couldn’t have just stayed the same, even if it was just for another six months. Not that I should be surprised. My reality had never been smooth before, so why should it start now?
Think positive, I reminded myself.
Crap. Now I was bummed and I wanted to bitch-slap my brain for being so annoying.
“What the fuck happened out here?” Danielle asked, her arm suddenly around my shoulders. I immediately felt better. Danielle and I balanced each other out perfectly—she was batshit crazy and insanely optimistic. Make that dangerously, recklessly optimistic. As for me, I spent nearly all my time focused on staying sane and getting ahead. That didn’t leave much time for things like actually living my life.
We’d met each other our senior year of high school, when she’d offered to drive me back and forth to town in her shiny new Jeep Wrangler. This spared me from the horror of sharing a battered school bus with every hormonal teen living in the greater Callup metropolitan area. After a particularly harrowing ride home in her car one night (long story short, it took us six hours to travel thirty miles and by the time we pulled into town, we had matching tattoos of chipmunks wearing scarves) I decided it was my job to keep her from accidentally killing herself.
In return, she pushed me to do fun things, reminding me at least once a week that I was only twenty-one and perhaps the fate of the universe didn’t literally rest on whether or not I balanced my checkbook to the penny. Along the way, she taught me how to do smoky eye makeup, how not to freak out when a guy asked me to dance, and how to “borrow” music off the Internet. (When I pointed out that “borrowing” music was stealing, she agreed and started using iTunes for her downloads. To finance this, she “borrowed” her dad’s credit card.)
“Well, apparently me and Blake no longer work here,” I said, leaning my head against her. “I don’t know if you’re fired or not.”
“Fuck that,” Danielle declared. “Eva can kiss my ass. If you’re out, I’m out.”
“You weren’t even part of it,” I protested.
“I don’t care. You’re a much better waitress than I am. If she fired you, no way I’d last there anyway. Let’s go get drunk!”
Blake laughed and caught me around the neck, hugging me from the other side. Puck watched us silently, his face grim. Just. Like. Batman.
The Dark Knight was easier to understand, though. Puck had treated me like I had the plague ever since that night five years ago, yet this morning he suddenly wanted to get breakfast? We weren’t friends. I didn’t even know where he lived, for God’s sake. Sometimes he’d just disappear for months at a time and despite full access to Callup’s sophisticated gossip network, I’d never been able to figure out where he was or what he was doing.
Not that I cared.
I didn’t.
Although I had to admit, I slept better when he was in town. He made me feel weirdly safe in a terrified, trapped-deer kind of way. Puck was a wolf, but for the most part he left me alone while scaring away the other wolves. This was a good thing and it worked for us—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
“I can’t get drunk,” I reminded her. “I have to go home and shower, and then it’s time to head out for school.”
“Okay, tonight then,” Blake said. “We’ll get together and share our misery. I’ll bring my friend, the good Dr. Jack Daniels, and we can make a double date of it—you, me, Danielle, and our bottle. Sound good?”
I shot a quick glance at Puck, wishing he’d go away and stop listening to us. Ignoring my wishes, he studied me and Blake, his face turning thoughtful. Not the “oh, she should go out and have fun” kind of thoughtful. No—he was definitely having dark, broody thoughts. That’s when it hit me. Puck didn’t like the idea of me partying with Blake and Danielle.
That was exactly what I needed to tilt the scale.
“Tonight sounds great,” I announced. “Might as well celebrate the fact that we won’t be getting up at five tomorrow morning.”
Danielle grinned happily, and I smiled back at her, pretending Puck didn’t exist.
Eva stormed out of the restaurant at that moment, all angry and red in the face. Shit. She spotted me and started trucking across the parking lot under full steam, Regina and Melba behind her. Melba seemed to be egging her on, while Regina was trying to catch and hold her arm. Eva ignored both, and the look on her face convinced me that now wasn’t the time to discuss my final paycheck with her. Danielle apparently came to the same conclusion.