Bleed for the Camera

Chapter 10

          Sundays brought a sort of peace. Sun spilled through the windows. An Italian roast filled the air with a warm, rich aroma that eased the mind. There were no fighting employees. No deliveries to sign for. No calls to suppliers nor negotiating with the bank. And few customers came in outside of regulars who valued quiet as much as I did.

     I looked around my kingdom and sighed with contentment. My own corner of the world. Just a girl and her shop...

     "It's boring as fuck when nobodies here!"

     ...And her dumbass cousin.

     I stirred the can of coffee grounds I'd been low-key smelling and side-eyed him . "Jackson, you're ruining my mood."

     "I thought you asked me here to help me with this G.E.D shit. Not work for free."

     "If you don't like my methods you're free to go to a prep class."

     "That shit cost a hundred and thirty dollars."

     I smiled with abandon. "Then I guess you'd better multitask."

     He frowned but continued his bitchfest. "How you gon' work and study at the same time."

     I pulled the G.E.D. practice site up on my phone and casually browsed the material. "I know for a fact it can be done. I had two jobs in college."

     He raised his eyebrows at that like I knew he would. "You ain't have money for college?"

     "My parents didn't save one red cent for my education." I bit the bitterness away and kept the light smile on my face. "I worked at this mom and pop coffee shop—the Rise and Grind—for three years."

     "Auntie Gina drives a Mercedes."

     "So?" I asked as I read through some language arts questions.

     "So, y'all got money."

     I laughed. "No. I have a mom that loves to stunt. Most of the time we were broke."

     "For real?"

     "Yep."

     "Wow."

     Just the mere mention of my mother's spending habits exhausted me. I drifted away from him for a time and kept myself busy doing very little until we eventually closed at one. The two of us reconvened in the kitchen where I put him to work helping me deep clean the big appliances.

     "It mostly looked like critical thinking questions." I sprayed a fine mist of disinfectant on the inside of the fridge and wiped it down with the sort of efficiency gained only with practice. "It should be easy."

     "I wasn't exactly a A student. If I didn't drop out they would've flunked me." He stood by the sink, a mop in his hands and the top of his work boots shiny from spilled water.

     "That was a long time ago. You can handle this."

     "Easy for you to say. You're smart."

     "You're smart too."

     "No, I'm not." He grabbed a sponge full of cleaning solution and wiped down the sides of the donut fryer. "I ain't go to college. Or start a business. I ain't even get through the eleventh grade."

     "Well, so?" Though I wore a mask the smell of industry grade product was still making me pleasantly light-headed. "Plenty of morons get far in life on dumb luck or their ability to game the system."