Crush du Jour (7 page)

“Actually, it’s—,” I started.

“Awesome!” Callie said, cutting me off. “Seth wants you to shadow me today.” She spat out the word “shadow” like it was more
along the lines of “poison with arsenic.”

“I’m just going to give her an intro to prep work,” she said, speaking directly to Seth. I couldn’t help but notice the shift in her demeanor when she looked at him instead of me. “Once she’s changed. You are changing, right?”

She turned back toward me, scowling again. “I think the last waitress left her uniform behind. She’s bigger than I am, so her uniform should fit you just fine.”

I could smell an insult when it was dropped into thin air. This girl, who until five minutes ago I did not even know existed, seemed to hate me with the heat of a thousand fiery suns—for reasons that were not entirely clear.

For now I forced myself to mentally calculate how much tip money I’d need in order to make it through one semester at college. The sum I came up with was in the vague neighborhood of “a lot.” I decided to let Callie’s attitude go. It wasn’t worth jeopardizing my job performance.

As I shimmied awkwardly past the bar and toward the unisex bathroom that the restaurant employees used, I felt a hand pat me on the back. I wheeled around and found
myself face to face with Damien. “Don’t mind Callie,” he stage-whispered to me. “You’re going to be fine.”

Was he flirting? Or just being friendly? I was pretty sure he was flirting (radar, remember?). Either way, his eyes were a hypnotic shade of green, and I totally appreciated the small gesture of kindness. Old habits, right? I’d probably be a fickle little flirt until my dying day, wheeling myself around the nursing home winking crookedly at the eligible bachelors in the joint.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling. There was no harm in smiling at a cute boy, was there? Even if that meant my boy-o-meter was now buzzing in two different directions?

“Don’t mention it.” When he grinned, his cheeks dimpled. It was totally adorable. “If you have any questions, just come and find me. I work most nights because I’ve got college loans to pay.”

I did the mental math. He was a bartender. That meant he was at least twenty-one—too old for me. But I couldn’t help it if I was attracted to him, could I? Dude radiated hotness in every direction. He was like a tornado of heat.

I tried to convince myself that it was
actually a good thing that Damien was so attractive. If nothing else, it would keep me from fixating on Seth. In that way it was sort of a distraction from my current distraction.

I was starting to confuse even myself. I pursed my lips and tried to look pensive and mature, like someone who worked to pay off college loans, rather than someone who was in high school but obsessively planning out her college budget about a hundred years in advance. I knew from hot guys, and they did not, as a general rule, find good organizational skills to be a turn-on. (If they did, I would be so unstoppable.)

“Let me know if Callie gets to be too much for you. She’s not exactly a girl’s girl, but I’ve got your back.” He winked.

OMG. Seth may have been adorable, but Damien exuded dangerous hotness, like that drugged-out guy on
Heroes
. (Which was not to say that I thought Damien did drugs. At least, I hoped he didn’t.) He could
totally
get my back, if he wanted.

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. That’s how the saying goes, right? Damien was hot. Seth was hot. Heck, Callie wasn’t exactly my type, but I had to admit
that even she was hot. Hype was practically a hothouse.

I felt invigorated. I knew waiting tables would be work, and I knew the work would be hard. I wasn’t trying to kid myself about that. But as far as the work environment went, I was, for the moment, a happy little hothouse flower.

Eight

“Uh, Laine?”

It was Pete, tugging insistently at my sleeve and looking concerned but decidedly nonchalant, all at once.

I smiled at him affectionately, despite the fact that any moment now, I was sure to let out my best primal scream.

It was the Fourth of July, and while Anna was enjoying red white and blue ice pops courtesy of the Cabana Club caterers, I was stuck working a booth at the Halliday Fantastic Fourth celebration. I loved my students. Really, I did. And I was proud of the blizzard of desserts we had whipped up the previous Saturday, in a maniacal burst of collective energy.

But seriously?

I was tired.

No, it was more than that. I was, like, completely and totally overcooked. My pilot light was fast flickering out. Between shifts at Hype and teaching the cooking course, I was rapidly running out of steam.

But that wasn’t Pete’s fault.

“Yes?” I asked him, sneaking a handful of the gummy bears we had set up in a giveaway bowl and stuffing them into my mouth. My cheeks puffed out like a strungout squirrel’s. Very professional.

“Are there, um, preservatives in the apricot cobbler?”

I drummed my fingers against the tabletop. “Who wants to know?”

He squinted and pointed somewhat conspicuously to a bleached-blond soccer mom who looked Botoxed and yogafied within an inch of her (undoubtedly extremely healthful) life.

“Did you tell her that we use apricot
preserves
in the apricot cobbler?” I asked, taking care to speak slowly and reign in at least 60 percent of my frustration. “Preserves that may be fortified with preservatives.”

He nodded. “Yeah. She wanted me to
double-check, you know, whether or not we used only organic ingredients.”

Right.

I wished. As much as Seth and I made a point of emphasizing healthy living, we did not have the budget to shop at the local food co-op, where a loaf of organic bread cost a bazillion and five dollars. Personally, I would have preferred to use some less processed, more exotic ingredients. But the whole point of the class, I guess, was to relate to the kids on their own level. Or so Nora kept telling me whenever I came to her with an idea for jazzing up a classic recipe.

I waved my hand at him in a “not so much” sort of gesture. He smiled and ambled off to break the news to Fit Mom.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to find Barrie, looking distraught. Her bright red hair was pulled into two taut pigtails, which added a surreal touch to her anxiety. In culinary parlance, she looked not unlike a certain red-headed spokesperson for a well-known fast-food joint. Although, at the moment, she was considerably less chipper than that other, trademarked, animated floating redhead.

“We have a problem,” she said gravely.

Seeing as how she was clearly not hurt or otherwise in distress, I bit the insides of my cheeks and struggled not to giggle. I mean, someone with as many freckles as Barrie just cannot get away with grave anxiety. It simply doesn’t work.

“Oh?” I raised a single eyebrow—a trick that the students found endlessly fascinating. It’s the little things, really.

“It’s Gretchen,” Barrie offered, still pretty much breathless. “She says the chocolate chocolate chip cookies are undercooked.”

This scenario was entirely plausible. Our kitchen equipment wasn’t totally reliable, and, as I may have mentioned, a bunch of twelve-year-olds aren’t the most patient people you’ll find. Not that I was all that much better about the self-discipline. I still had a little burn on the roof of my mouth from some overzealous and premature tasting of a batch of éclairs last week.

I had to think fast. “Some people like their cookies undercooked,” I reminded Barrie, serious as an untouched packet of Splenda. “There’s a whole cottage industry of packaged raw cookie dough that’s sweeping the nation.”

Barrie rolled her eyes. Obviously, I was being a very moronic older-type person.

“Duh,” she said. “It’s just that she’s worried. Because
some
people”—she said this part very self-righteously and allowed herself a furtive glance to each side before continuing—“think the situation could be dangerous.”

I scrunched my forehead up in total confusion. To the best of my knowledge, there were very few scenarios in which a cookie could be called “dangerous,” undercooked or not. I seriously think that salmonella hoo-ha is at least 74 percent hysterical parenting.

“I think we’ll be fine,” I said, trying not to sound patronizing. “Cookies aren’t really—”

I was unceremoniously cut off by an enormous gob of chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough that hit me squarely in the chest, bouncing off of my nonboobs and leaving an unattractive stain right in the middle of my favorite baby blue long-sleeve baseball T-shirt.

Oh, that was so totally not coming out in the wash.

“That’s the thing,” Barrie said. She may or may not have sounded slightly smug.

“Right, okay,” I said, clapping her on the shoulder briskly. “Why don’t you duck and cover, and I’ll, ah … have a word with everyone about what is and is not considered appropriate Fantastic Fourth behavior.”

Before Barrie had a chance to trot off, there was deep belly laughter from behind me, and I knew it could mean only one thing: Seth had been witness to my humiliation.

Sure enough, when I whirled around, I found him wiping at the corners of his eyes. He was lucky. Only a boy as cute as he was could get away with taking so much pleasure in my pain.

Not that I was noticing his cuteness, or boy-type people in general, this summer.

Nope. Not I. Not at all.

“You’re laughing at me,” I said.

He swallowed a particularly enthusiastic guffaw and, to his credit, managed to straighten up for a nanosecond before collapsing back into hysterics again.

“I am,” he managed to squeak, once he’d regained a tiny sliver of his composure. “Sorry.” He shook his head and wiped at his eyes again.

“You’re laughing so hard you’re
crying”
I said, lowering my voice to a totally non-threatening growl.

“I can’t help it,” he said, practically gasping the words out.

He took a deep breath and somehow managed to get it together. “I’ll make it up to you,” he swore.

“How?” I was suspicious. I kind of liked the idea of Seth being indebted to me, but it had to be too good to be true. It for sure was a violation of the no-flirting policy that dictated my entire summer social life.

“You go clean up,” he said, gesturing to my now semisweet T- shirt. “I’ll pay a visit to the frontlines, take care of the warring camps.”

Barrie scowled. “Why do I think this means you won’t let any of us retaliate?”

I chuckled. “She has a point, Seth,” I reminded him. “After all, revenge is sweet.”

I was scrubbing vigorously at the front of my shirt when Seth tracked me down outside the girls’ bathroom. Adding to the humiliation of being pelted with raw cookie dough was the need to wash it off in a public restroom. This shirt was
so
going to need to be replaced. Grr.

Seth peered at me cautiously, probably because I radiated intense grouchy rays in all directions.

“Stain Stick?” he offered tentatively.

I smiled. “Definitely. But even then we’ve only got a 50 percent chance of recovery.” I thought for a moment. “What are you doing with a Stain Stick, anyway? You don’t strike me as the kind of person to carry a laundry basket in his pockets.”

Seth laughed, showing his even, white teeth. Seriously, he totally looked like an “after” picture for those teeth-bleaching solutions.

“I’m full of surprises,” he said simply.

Oh, man. If that was true, then I was in even more trouble than I thought. Stain Stick kinds of surprises were actually the way to my heart.

“You thought it was safe to leave them alone?” I asked, meaning, of course, our miniarmy of Rachael Ray juniors. (Yes, I was changing the subject. Surprisey Seth was starting to make me blush, and I needed to get myself back together.)

“Well, I put Gretchen in charge,” he replied. It kind of made sense. She seemed pretty earnestly opposed to food fights,
which made her unique among a good chunk of her peers.

“So, which is harder?” Seth ventured, as I tossed the last of the soggy used paper towels into a trash can. “Teaching the class or waiting tables at Hype?”

Even with a gajillion-ton ball of cookie dough having come at me at light speed, this was a no-brainer.

“Hype.” My eyes widened, conveying the trauma and stress associated with that place. “Definitely Hype.”

He laughed at my wild-eyed expression.

I was
so into
it when Seth laughed. Even if it was at me.

We were definitely verging into flirting territory.

“Its not that bad,” he insisted.

“Its not
that
bad,” I agreed. “But it seems like I’m maybe not the most ideal candidate for a job that requires attention to detail. I get so … distracted.”

“Well, the cooking class is hard core and you deal with that, right?” he asked.

“I have a partner for cooking class,” I reminded him, “who keeps me on track.” He grinned again, and his brown eyes twinkled. The power of those twinkly eyes
was not to be underestimated. His gaze was steady, and suddenly I felt a little bit self-conscious.

Was this a Moment between us? Were we having a Moment? Because a Moment
definitely
counted as flirting.

“I mess things up at the restaurant,” I said. Anything to break up the awkward, intense, thunderous silence. Surely I didn’t have to actually remind him of the surfin’ safari I took last Tuesday on a stray hunk of avocado? Surely he could recall that master stroke without prodding.

It was so frustrating. All my life, things had worked out for me: grades, friends, flings. Sure, I had to work at them, but when I worked, things worked out. I had blindly assumed that Hype would be the same.

I assumed wrong.

“And then there’s my archnemesis,” I continued. I didn’t want to trash-talk Callie to Seth, because I thought it would make me sound petty. But it was what it was. She detested me, inexplicably, and was constantly going out of her way to give me a hard time. Her latest shtick was forcing me to “marry” all of the ketchup bottles—
midshift, when there was no way to balance side work with turning tables. Brat.