An Extra Pump of Sugar

Chapter 31

Work was a nightmare Saturday night. Not only were the guests insufferable, but I'd cried so much in the past 24 hours, I felt completely drained—body, mind, and soul. I missed Jay terribly, and every time I thought of his crinkled eyes and sly grin, I had to fetch a new bin of utensils from the kitchen so I wouldn't burst into tears in public.

And beneath all that, thoughts of Theo gnawed at me.

I knew he would have never slept with Alyssa if he thought what we had was mendable, so the bullet of betrayal had made its way out of my body by now. But I did grieve the relationship we'd built together. It was officially over, and the prospect of someday rekindling our friendship was unimaginable now that Alyssa was back in the picture.

...Which was probably for the best. But it sure didn't feel that way tonight.

Baker manned the front desk with me this evening, and we'd agreed to put our differences aside in order to keep the restaurant from burning to the ground.  

Obviously, I welcomed the normalcy—and a competent copilot for the first time this week—and even though I knew she could sense my fragile mental state, she didn't push me to talk about it.

"Another call-ahead for seven adults and a highchair," Baker murmured, hanging up the phone and jotting down yet another party on our lengthy reservation list.

I swore under my breath, inspecting my screen for tables to block out in the next thirty minutes.

This was fucked.

We already had dozens of guests on the wait list, and that didn't include our booked reservations or the party of sixteen that was just now receiving appetizers. And on top of the wait time, two of our hostesses had called in, stretching us so thin that we had to rely on our to-go staff and bussers to conduct updates on turning tables.

It was undoubtedly one of the most hectic, infuriating nights of my life.

I alerted the next party to be seated, far too excited to behold a clean table in my periphery. But as the young couple approached the host stand, so did the agitated white man I'd dealt with two times already.

I repressed an irritated sigh when he parked himself in front of me. "Just a moment, sir."

"A moment?" he sneered, drawing looks from the patient duo behind him. "My family's been waiting for almost 45 minutes! You told us 20!"

Actually, my manager told him that. After watching the bar fill up, she'd asked me how long I was telling guests to wait for a table, and she'd almost had a seizure when I'd said 50 minutes—a slight overestimate to accommodate for the six o'clock rush. Enraged, the woman had proceeded to make her rounds throughout the lobby, promising our guests a shorter wait time to convince them to stick it out.

And because of her need to save face, entitled pricks like Hawaiian Shirt over here decided to take their frustrations out on Baker and me.

"I'm sorry about that," I lied. Personally, I'd rather die than sit hungry in a chaotic, jam-packed lobby for an hour, but I also wasn't addicted to carbs like Mr. Potbelly. "We're waiting on several parties to finish eating so we can push adjacent tables together. It's not easy to accommodate such a large party on a Saturday night without a reservation."

Baker sent me a furtive no-kidding look. The man had walked in expecting his party of nine to be seated right away—like an absolute idiot.

Faking a smile, I handed the menus and silverware to my stressed seater and sent her off with the party of two.

"This is ridiculous!" the Boomer cried, setting his pager down on the host stand as if I'd reward his temper tantrum with a table. "You've taken multiple people back already, and we were here before any of them!"

"Those people had reservations," I said equably, but he was quickly chipping away at my civility.

"What about that huge family with all the kids? They showed up after us, waited half an hour, and then got tables before us!"

My smile flattened. Did I really have to explain myself to someone who'd never worked a day in customer service? "Unlike that party, yours requires two highchairs and a sling. And there are only certain areas of the restaurant where that doesn't pose a safety hazard."

"Sounds to me like you don't know how to do your fucking job." He looked around the lobby, as if he expected others to join in on the harassment. "Go get your manager, will you? Find me at least one person who's qualified to be running a restaurant. Good god."

Aggravated tears stung the corners of my eyes, and I hated myself for it. This was the last thing I needed today—a total jerk yelling at me over an issue my manager created.

"Really," he complained. "You're gonna cry?"

I felt everyone's gaze on me—my alarmed coworkers, the guests in the lobby, the people watching me from their booths. I didn't know what to do. I just wanted to disappear.

Then Baker gently pushed me out of the way so she could confront the man herself, and the look on her face was lethal. "You're really spending your Saturday night mocking a 21-year-old girl? What kind of subhuman piece of shit does that?" She grabbed his pager off the counter and held it out for him. "Wait your turn like a grown ass adult, or get the fuck out."

My breath abandoned me, and I gaped at my ferocious hero in amazement.

She did not just say that...

Hawaiian Shirt stared at her, appalled and humiliated, and then he slowly walked back to his wide-eyed family members.

"You didn't have to do that," I whispered.

Baker shrugged. "I think I did. No one has ever told that fucker no in his entire life. It was time for a reality check."

It appeared that he wasn't ready to face the music, though. He seized Melanie's attention soon after, and I saw him mouth 'manager' from across the room. The waitress sent us an admonishing glower as she raced to fetch Lindsay, and I turned to Baker in wary silence.

A few minutes later, the giant emerged from the back of the house, and she approached the red-faced man with a level of sympathy that was never afforded to her employees. The man pointed to Baker and me, and over the roar of the lobby, I could hear him say something about never feeling 'so disrespected' in all his years of dining.

Lindsay offered a string of reassurances, and when she spun to address us, I felt my fight-or-flight response activate.

"My office. Now," she growled.

"...No."

I whipped my head around, shocked at Baker's defiance.

Lindsay, equally stunned, didn't know how to react. "Excuse me?"

"If you're going to side with that jackass over your own employees, then I quit," the blond replied, and the other seaters stared at her with pure veneration in their eyes. "As a matter of fact, you don't deserve Mona or me. The two of us kept this restaurant from burning to the ground every weekend—and for minimum fucking wage." She removed her radio from her belt and yanked out her headset, setting them down on the front desk with her name-tag. "But keep being a shit manager and see where that gets you."

No one stopped her from leaving.

No one could.

She snatched her purse out of the storage cabinet—along with the illicit tote of snacks she'd stashed behind the menus—and saluted the hostesses as she walked away. But just before she pushed through those heavy doors, she licked her hand and smacked it against one of the windowpanes, leaving a fat, nasty handprint on the glass.

"I wouldn't eat a single thing that comes out of this unsanitary dumpster fire," she disclosed to the guests on either side of the lobby. "Check your salad for bugs. There's always something crawling around in the tomatoes."

Then the doors swung close, and I smiled at the trail of bruised egos she left in her wake.