Chapter Sixteen
“IT’S NOT WHAT it looks like!”
Sammie slammed her phone face down on her desk, flames of embarrassment licking up her neck, searing her face as Luz backed away from her.
“Girl, no judgement from me.” Her assistant took another step back, gaze averted toward the ceiling, amusement cracking a smile across her face. “You do you, I’m not telling anyone you watch porn on your lunch breaks!”
Sammie wanted to melt into a puddle of sludge and slowly drip into the floor drain. “I’m not watching porn on my lunch break.” She picked up her phone, clicked on the screen, only to slam it back down again. “Dammit, Kieran!”
“The grain delivery guy?” Luz raised her dark brows, delight sparkling in her wide eyes.
“Fuck.” Sammie ran a hand over her face. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Luz laughed. “This is exactly what I needed after the shitty day we’ve had here, so thanks for that.”
“I promise I don’t sit here and… and…” She waved a hand at her phone, flailing for words to explain away the video Luz had just caught her opening. “Do weird shit on my lunch break.”
“Seriously.” Her assistant stepped forward, arms out in a placating gesture, as though Sammie might spook at the slightest sign of danger. “It’s not a big deal. I’m not gonna go tattle on you to management. You looked just as shocked as I when the… screeching started up.”
Oh god. Oh fuck. Why had Kieran sent such a loud video?
“But why is the delivery guy sending you porn?”
There was a hint of trepidation in Luz’s question, a serious turn to her voice that had Sammie squirming.
“It’s hard to explain.”
“He’s not bothering you, is he?”
Sammie sighed. “Shit.” She didn’t want Luz to think Kieran was some sort of creep. “No, it’s not like that.” There was genuine concern written across the other woman’s features, and before Sammie knew it, the only explanation she could come up with fell past her lips.
She told Luz the truth.
“Wow.” Luz had dragged over an old, discarded barstool and plopped down onto it as Sammie had rambled on—at length—about her entire situation with Kieran.
It felt good to say it all, to let the whole series of events spill out of her, unfiltered.
It wasn’t until she was done and Luz was looking at her as though she were an entirely new being that Sammie realized just how badly she’d needed to talk to someone else about it.
Someone who wasn’t her brother. “That’s…
a lot.” Luz hesitated, squirming in her seat.
She was small, bouncy, and had never been good at keeping her thoughts off her face.
“Just say it.” Sammie buried her head in her hands, fingers tangling in her hair.
“I just never expected you to do something so exciting.”
Sammie raised her head to glare at her coworker. “Rude.” Luz’s round face split into a shit-eating grin.
“No, seriously!” She leaned forward, poking Sammie’s forehead.
“I’m proud of you, trying new things, doing something that has nothing to do with this place.
” She waved her arms at the giant, stainless steel tanks surrounding them.
“Still don’t really understand why the dude’s sending you videos of threesomes on your lunch break, but good for you! ”
Sammie groaned, dropping her head back to her hands. “This is so embarrassing.”
“It’s not.” Luz scooted her stool closer, leaning forward to pat Sammie’s head lightly. Why did everyone always think she needed that? “Okay, maybe it’s a little embarrassing, but no more-so than when Carson drunk dialed me last week and told me he loved me.”
Sammie raised her head again, blinking. “I’m sorry, what?”
Luz waved a hand. “He doesn’t remember. I’m waiting for the right time to use it against him.” She smiled, equal parts proud and maniacal.
“Well. Let me know how that goes, I guess.”
“But back to your problems.” Luz started to give Sammie another head pat, which she batted away. “Look, my sister does the same thing. Different platform, but same basic concept. If you want another woman to talk to about this stuff, I can give you her number.”
It would be nice, having another person, another woman experienced with sex work that she could talk to. Because the video Kieran sent—which featured two women and one man—had been paired with a question.
Is this along the lines of what you wanted to try?
Who the fuck asked about threesomes in the middle of a work day?
But, well… yeah, that was pretty much exactly what she wanted to try. With him. And the idea of it terrified her.
“Your sister would be willing to talk to me?”
Luz nodded, her smile going soft. “Maria does really well for herself, and loves what she’s doing. She’d be more than happy to help you out, and there’s no shame in needing or wanting help.”
“I know.” Sammie pulled at a hangnail. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I’d really like to talk to her.”
“I’ll give her your number and have her reach out—”
A clanging crash rang out through the brewery. Sammie was out of her seat in a flash, Luz a beat behind her. The sound had come from the direction of the canning line. She cursed as she rounded one of the tanks to see the cause of the clatter.
Sammie’s nails bit into her palm as she clenched her fist. She’d told Carson to keep his stacks straight.
Now she had three cases of beer busted and spilled across her brewhouse floor.
Luz was already buzzing around, salvaging as many of the cans as she could before running off to find the mop bucket. Carson stood at the end of the canning line, blinking slowly with a look of horror on his face.
“I’m so sorry,” he finally said, a hand going up to push his bangs back as he continued to take in the mess that he had made.
“Just help Luz get it cleaned up.” Sammie didn’t even have the energy to be mad. Okay, maybe a little mad, but she was just so fucking tired of this week already, and it was only Tuesday.
Their morning had started with Luz struggling to dial in the machine, an hour wasted on the finicky tuning mechanisms as Sammie tried to help her with it.
The first canning run had gone fine, although the vibrator she had zip-tied to the whale tale didn’t seem to be working as well as Sammie had hoped it would.
The second canning run had been where things had really started to fall apart.
A paper jam in the label machine. A string of low fills that Carson failed to catch.
And the afternoon heat was absolutely cooking them, beating down on the concrete blocks that made up the walls.
Even with the big garage door open and fans going, Sammie had sweat through her shirt.
She had just wanted to enjoy a peaceful lunch break.
The foamy beer seeping across the floor reminded Sammie that she needed to keep going, to push past her annoyance and get back to work.
They’d just lost a good portion of the order they needed to have ready for pickup the next morning, so filling enough cans to make up for it would add another hour onto their already long day.
She pulled out her phone, pushing a harsh exhale out her nose as she tried to calm herself.
Sammie: Sorry man, I’m gonna be working late tonight, can we reschedule?
Ivy: of course :)
Guilt gnawed at her. Not only was she keeping a massive fucking secret from her friend, but she’d just confided said secret to a coworker.
It wasn’t that Sammie didn’t consider Luz a friend, she did, but they’d only worked with one another for a year, and rarely spent time together outside of the brewery.
It wasn’t like how things were with Ivy.
The fact that she was keeping things from Ivy was probably why she’d spilled it all to Luz.
Sammie couldn’t let herself keep going like this, hiding things from her friend. And she missed Ivy. She missed shit talking with her, she missed having someone who wasn’t family to vent to. Ivy had always been good to Sammie, and Sammie wasn’t being respectful of that fact.
However, knowing that and actually doing something about it were two entirely different matters. And after the way this work week had been shaping up so far, Sammie just wasn’t ready for the potential disappointment she would see in Ivy’s eyes when she admitted to her new… relationship with Kieran.
Sammie tucked her phone away, promising herself she wouldn’t postpone again. She would tell Ivy, they would face whatever uncomfortable feelings arose, and they would move on. Because Ivy wouldn’t just stop being Sammie’s friend over something like a guy, right?
With Luz’s help, Carson got his mess cleaned up quickly while Sammie took a moment to order a significantly bigger vibrator for the whale tale. She wasn’t taking any more chances, the new one was sure to work.
The rest of the canning run went relatively well, only a few minor hiccups with one of the sensors failing to read.
Daylight was just beginning to fade when they all finally closed up for the night.
Sammie said goodnight to Carson and Luz, noting how the former paused to chat with the latter for a few minutes, both of them smiling and leaning in close.
Huh, interesting. Sammie didn’t think a lot of Carson, the nepo-baby she was cursed with.
But she only knew him as he was related to her work, nothing beyond that.
He was a nice enough kid—man—even if he was the most incompetent worker she’d ever had.
And if Luz liked him, even a little bit, he couldn’t be all bad, right?
Made Luz would rub off on him. Not in the euphemistic sense. Or maybe, judging by the way he’d just made her laugh, absolutely in the euphemistic sense.