Hailey kept replaying the scene in her mind:
Jimmy said, “I’m going to wait for you, Hailey.”
And she said, “No, you won’t.” Then paused to see if he was actually listening.
He seemed to be, so she kept going. “I’m not saying, like, that I wouldn’t trust you to wait if that’s what we were doing here. I’m saying ‘no, you won’t’ because it’s not necessary or even a good idea.”
“Huh,” he grunted.
“I know this is hard to accept right now, but I just know you’re going to meet someone else and be happy. You and me? We were only ever meant to be friends and business partners. These feelings you’re having – well, maybe you’re confusing some desire to protect me with love. You know?”
“You done with your little speech?”
Hailey suppressed a groan. Swallowed and started again. “It’s not love, though. C’mon. Think about it. It’d be a total disaster if you ever acted on those feelings. I can’t even imagine how much we’d fight as a couple, considering how much we fight as friends."
“You don’t think it’s possible we fight because both of us want to be together instead of just being friends?”
“I’m not sure I can even follow that argument.”
“I believe the commonly used term is ‘sexual tension.’”
She felt her cheeks heat up. “Oh my god. Stop. Jimmy, you’re my boss. I mean, business partner. That’s not appropriate. Besides, ‘both of us’? What, do you think I’ve got these feelings too and I’m denying it or something? What the hell?”
He glanced over at her from the driver’s seat. A millisecond of eye contact, but that was all that was needed.
“Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “Don’t go thinking you can read my mind, because you can’t. You don’t know me like that.”
“Sure. Keep telling yourself that. I bet it’s nice and comforting.”
Goddamn. She was so frustrated for a moment that she couldn’t speak. The freaking nerve of him. He was being hardheaded, presumptious – well, pretty much how he always was.
She had the trump card, though, she realized. “I slept with someone in Australia,” she announced. “So just—”
“The surfer. Yeah, I’d guessed. And it made you miserable.”
“It did not make me miserable. I loved every second!”
“Oh, okay. So that’s why it’s clear you were crying or something for most of the flight.”
They were merging onto another, more crowded part of the highway. Horns blared as Jimmy gunned it, cutting off a smaller car.
Hailey was almost grateful for the noise. Which was a first. With her history, she didn’t much care for cutting things close on highways. She looked out the window, past the mess of other cars and traffic to the tree line. Just a bunch of barren looking pine trees, no real comfort.
“Dylan is actually a really nice guy,” she said slowly. Only she wasn’t sure she believed it. Was Dylan a nice guy, in fact? Did she even know him well enough to say that? She was never going to see him again, anyway. Right? It wasn’t like she could say they were in a relationship or anything like that. She’d left a whole country without telling him. That didn’t exactly make them intimate.
“I think you guys probably had a little bit of fun together.” Jimmy’s tone implied that he would grant that point, like he had the authority to be granting points.
“He told me he wasn’t looking for anything casual.”
“Uh huh.”
“And before I, uh, sort of lost it outside his shop, he invited me to his house for dinner. So I could meet his daughter properly. Because the first time I met her, I… well…”
Hailey couldn’t finish her own sentence. All of a sudden she was too embarrassed to tell the truth. That Dylan’s daughter had very nearly seen her naked. That she hadn’t even known he had a daughter to begin with, because she’d slept with him before learning anything about him, or really getting to know him.
Jimmy’s voice cut into her thoughts. “You’re not really made for that sort of thing. It makes you crazy.”
“How would you know? Maybe I am. Maybe I think it’s great—”
They were nearly outside her apartment now, and part of her was hoping that Jimmy wouldn’t have time to respond. She half wanted to leap out of the car, suitcases and all, before he could say another word. She had a weird impulse to put her fingers in her ears and start singing – maybe the national anthem or something – anything to drown him out.
“Hailey, shut up. What I’m saying is that I love that about you.”
“That’s perfect. ‘Shut up, I love you’.”
“For god’s sake, let me speak. I like that you’re not the hookup type. I like what a solid person you are. Most twenty-somethings – I’m counting guys as well as girls – you can’t trust them as far as you can throw ‘em. But you’re not like that and I love it about you.”
She couldn’t argue with that. So she tried the last thing she had up her sleeve. “We are not having this argument. This whole conversation never happened. I ask that it be wiped from the record.”
“I’m afraid not.” He slid into a parking spot, jerked up the emergency break.
She started to open the jeep door. “When I see you again, this conversation will be erased from your memory. You’ll actually have no memory whatsoever of giving me a ride home.”
“Stop it with the mind-control effort. It’s not going to work.”
Ugh.
Now here she was one day later – still jetlagged, but starting the breakfast shift, because they still hadn’t gotten around to hiring a new waitress.
And every time she made a move, Jimmy’s eyes followed her.
He watched her as she poured herself a cup of coffee from the extra-strong pot they kept in the kitchen for themselves. He watched her as she poured some creamer in with a free hand. He watched her as she leaned against the stainless steel counter and took a first sip.
“Oh my god,” she spat.
“What, the coffee?” Serg looked up from the cutting board where he was chopping bell peppers for the western omelet special. “It old or something?”
“No, it’s Jimmy. Look.” She moved her coffee cup back and forth in front of her, slowly, and sure enough Jimmy’s eyes tick-tocked to and fro. “He’s like one of those creepy paintings in Scooby Doo. Make him stop, Serg.”
“Eh, maybe knock it off, boss,” Serg hedged.
“Shut up,” Jimmy barked. “I can’t help it.”
“Well, I can’t work under these conditions. Keep it up and I’ll… I’ll…” Hailey couldn’t think of a threat. She took her coffee and fled through the swinging door into the dining room.
The obvious thing was to run back to Australia, right? What was a tiny little thing like all twenty-three million Australians believing she was a hooker – or the fact that she’d spilled her guts-slash-life-story on a sidewalk to the hottest man she’d ever seen (certainly the hottest man she’d ever slept with) – in comparison with this awkwardness?
In her mind, she went on writing that letter to Dylan she’d started in the car: You know what, you were totally right about one thing. My boss, the feelings, all that being a big flaw in the plan. Oh my god. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.
Mildred and Joe were pushing through the plate-glass door into the restaurant, and Hailey’s mind snapped back to the breakfast rush. She let the hostess show them to a table, then she went over with their cups of coffee already poured.
“My dear, we’re so happy you’re back,” Mildred cried, placing a warm hand on Hailey’s forearm as soon as Hailey got in range. “You made it. All in one piece.”
Was she just jet-lagged, or was there actually something a bit extra in Mildred’s greeting? The way she gripped her arm, it was like she’d come back from some brush with death rather than a vacation Down Under.
“How was Surfers Paradise?” Joe boomed. “Are you all right?”
Now Hailey could guess what was happening. Even Mildred and Joe had, apparently, heard the rumor about her becoming a prostitute. Which was just great. The exact sort of thing you hoped would make its way to your faux-grandparents.
“Listen,” she began. “I know you may have heard some things, but—”
“Well, girl, you know we’re not on the Facebook. But still—”
“We accept you no matter what.” Mildred seemed to have prepared this speech in advance. “You can always count on that—”
“We may seem old fashioned and I’ll admit we’re pretty out of the loop on a lot of things. Be that as it may. You’re one of our favorites and nothing is going to change that. And if anyone ever hurt you—”
“If some sleazy character ever treated you badly, well—”
“Guys, I’m sorry. But listen, I didn’t become a, a prostitute. So you don’t need to worry about it. That was all just a big misunderstanding.”
Mildred’s smiled wobbled, like she was relieved yet was trying not to show it. “We never believed it. Not for one minute. I kept saying to Joe that you didn’t go to Australia just to have some fling. You went there to learn to surf.”
“Right.” Hailey swallowed. “I did try surfing. Not that I can say I got very good at it. And, uh, I did meet someone, but I’m not sure you could call what happened a fling.”
“More of a hook-up?” Mildred’s voice was hesitant.
“I guess so. Fortunately, the Australian media didn’t report on it.” Hailey tried to laugh. What she really wanted to do was go lock herself in the bathroom or something for about the next week. Just until everything went back to normal. “You guys having that western omelet special or are you having lunch?”
“Well, if it wasn’t anything serious…”
“No, I guess it wasn’t.”
“How could it be?” Joe was saying, more to Mildred than to Hailey. “All those women he’s been involved with. His marriage.”
Hailey felt herself go cold, all the way down to her fingertips. The word marriage reverberated inside her like a gong. “Wait. Who are we talking about now, Paul Weston?”
“No, Dylan Shane. The surfing teacher one who you—”
“What about Dylan?”
“His marriage. All those women.” Joe’s look was sheepish. “I googled him.”
“Oh yeah. Uh, that. Um, well, I’ll be right back with your food, okay?” Hailey backed away from their table, then pushed through to the kitchen with numb hands. Jimmy looked up as she did so, but she hardly registered it. “I need two omelets,” she whispered.
He nodded like she’d said something profound.
“And a side of fruit salad each.”
“Of course,” he said.
Hailey was just about to tell Jimmy that she really couldn’t handle this right now, like really could not – she had some very important googling to do, for one – when she noticed Serg trying to slip out the back door to the alley.
He wasn’t taking out the trash or anything. No, he seemed to be trying to leave. “Serg, what the hell?” she asked.
“Smoke break.”
“You don’t smoke. My god, what is going on today? Can’t anybody be normal?”
“Don’t make me say it, girl.”
“C'mon, Serg. You’ve got to tell us what’s wrong.”
“I can’t handle the tension in this kitchen. It’s making me fucking nervous. I’m gonna slice off a finger or something.”
Hailey whirled back to face Jimmy. “You see what you’re doing? This is all your fault.”
But before Jimmy could respond, Serg started shouting at someone in the alley – someone who was attempting to come through the door.
Oh my god, Hailey thought, we’re being robbed.
“No man, you can’t come in here. Get lost, dude. No way! Get the hell out of here.” He tried to slam the door shut, and a hand appeared, gripped on to the edge of the door.
“HAILEY! HAILEY, OPEN UP! I HAVE TO TALK TO YOU!”
She shot a look at Jimmy, knowing she was going to see him reaching for the metal baseball bat he kept in the gap between the grill and the wall. “Don’t,” she said, as calmly as possible. Any more of this craziness and she was going to need to start breathing into a paper bag. “I’ll handle this.”
“You want me to close it on his fingers?” Serg asked.
“No,” she said. “He’ll let go. Just let me talk to him.” She went and stood behind Serg. “Ben. Ben, let go of the door. You’re about to lose most of your fingers.”
“But I have to talk to you—”
“We can talk through the door.”
“The hostess wouldn’t let me in the restaurant, so I had to come back here, and—”
“Just let go, for god’s sake. Then we can talk.”
“You promise?”
Hailey didn’t have time to answer. Serg heaved his body against the door and Ben let go just in time, yelping: “Ouch! Jesus!” Only his voice was slightly muffled now.
“You still there?” she asked.
“This is ridiculous.” He sounded angry now. “Why won’t you just come out and talk to me?”
“Because I don’t want to. There’s nothing to say. Go home.”
“But Hailey, you’re my girlfriend.”
“No, I’m not. Remember? You started sleeping with someone else and then you broke up with me by text message.”
“Yeah, but we were together for three years before that. And when I heard you’d come back, I knew you had to still have feelings for me. I swear I don’t even know why we ever broke up. Fiona… like, she means nothing to me. You’ve got to believe me. It was the stupidest thing.”
“Don’t care. The only thing I want from you is the money you owe me.”
“But I was going to come to Australia and rescue you.”
“I don’t need rescuing.” She thought of looking at Jimmy to make sure he’d heard, then thought better of it. “Anyway, don’t change the subject. When are you going to pay me back?”
“I can’t believe you want to talk about… about cash… at a time like this. Don’t you have feelings for me?”
“No.” She didn’t have to think about it. “Not at all.”
“I’d have to, like, pawn a camera. And that would set my film thesis back weeks, if not months.”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll give you till next Monday. You can bring it in in an envelope and leave it with the hostess. I’ll let her know to expect it.”
Ben was saying something else, his voice high and indignant. But Hailey walked away, grabbing Mildred and Joe’s omelets from the expo table where Jimmy had just dished them up, and for the moment avoiding eye contact with Serg or Jimmy himself. They could draw their own conclusions. She had a shift to work, and Mr. Skinny Jeans was the least of her concerns. Small freaking mercies.
If everything else hadn’t been so fucked up, she probably would have been glad about it.