Chapter 3 Jade
THREE
jade
Thursday evening I’m fifteen minutes early to the restaurant where I work, and I feel awesome about it.
I can already picture the look Cecily, my manager, will give me when I walk in: surprise, then approval, and then, ultimately, suspicion, because why am I early and what the hell do I want?
I don’t want anything—except the promotion to server that I’ve been angling for since June.
I want it so badly that this morning I swapped out all the earrings I usually wear in my six sets of piercings for a single set of genuine pearl posts I bought used from a consignment shop.
Cecily has never commented on my piercings, but during my first interview, she eyed them the same way my great-grandmother did when she first noticed them back when I was in high school.
I don’t get people who judge others over a couple of extra earrings, but if this is what it takes to move out of my minimum-wage hostessing job and start bringing home real tips, then fine.
At least she’ll never know about my nipple piercings.
I go in the back door and breeze into the small, windowless office where employees stash their belongings to find Cecily standing over her desk, shuffling through a mess of papers. She looks up at me, not bothering to hide the surprise in her dark eyes.
“Jade.” One brow arches as she glances at the clock on the wall. “You’re early.” She sounds unusually pleased.
I smile and cross the room to put away my purse.
“Is everything okay?” she asks warily. I knew it.
“Everything’s great. Just wanted to get an early start. Like the new hair?” I turn my head, slowly tucking a loose strand behind my ears so she can’t help but notice how unadorned they are.
“Oh. Yeah. Looks nice. You got rid of that fuchsia craziness you had going on. Your natural hair color suits you.” She grunts like it hurts to give me a compliment.
“Thanks.” I don’t tell her that it’s not totally natural—I’m sporting some fresh rose-gold highlights, but my hair is French braided back into a bun, so it’s hard to tell.
Her approval makes me miss my fuchsia hair, but I’m forcing myself to transition back to my natural strawberry blond because monthly salon dye jobs are a luxury I can’t afford anymore. “Well, I’ll go get started.”
“Jade, before you go: I hired a new server who’s starting tonight. Introduce yourself, okay? Let’s be welcoming.”
I feel my smile plummet. Is she kidding? Every time I’ve asked her about moving up to server, she’s insisted we don’t need more servers, and now she’s gone and hired some new chick without even mentioning it? This bitch!
“That’s my job,” I tell her through clenched teeth, then turn on my heel.
I’d respect Cecily a lot more if she just told me I was too much of a bimbo to be a server and to fuck off back to the hostess station.
As I cross the restaurant floor, I’m already making a mental list of the bottles of hair dye I have back home—next time Cecily sees me, she’ll be greeting my pink hair again. I think I’ll do a light candy pink. Like an old lover, it’s the color I always go back to for comfort.
I’ve just reached the front when Lori, a longtime server, leans conspiratorially on the hostess stand and smiles.
“Someone’s excited to be here. You ate an edible before you came in, didn’t you?” I ask.
“Don’t need one. Did you see the new guy yet?”
“The new server’s a guy?”
“Oh, yes he is,” she says breathily, raising her brows for effect.
So the new guy is hot. “Congrats, he’s all yours.”
“You sure? You might want to get a look at who you’re rejecting before you give me first dibs.” She straightens up and looks past me. “Check it out.”
I turn around.
Reeve Dalton is walking onto the restaurant floor clad in a crisp white shirt and black tie, the uniform for all waitstaff at Somerset Grill.
I couldn’t be more surprised if Elvis was the new waiter.
Reeve cracks a joke to Jorge, the server next to him, and laughs, then spots me and lifts his chin in recognition. Meanwhile, I haven’t blinked.
I clear my throat loudly and turn back to my station. “Like I said,” I tell Lori, “he’s all yours.”
She scoffs in disbelief. “You know who he is, don’t you?”
“Of course. I’m at Shafer; worshipping our football heroes is in the student handbook under code of conduct.”
“What, you don’t think he’s gorgeous?”
“I never said that. I don’t think he’s a very nice person.”
“He doesn’t need to be. Look at him!”
I busy myself pulling up our reservation schedule. “No, thanks.”
“Do you even know him?”
“He’s Lenni’s boyfriend’s best friend. I know enough.”
Lori shrugs and starts to head for the back, but I’m not done yet.
“Why is he even working here? What, the billion-dollar football paycheck he’ll be getting in nine months isn’t enough?
” I lower my voice to a furious whisper.
“And Cecily knows how badly I need that job! She hired him because he’s some local celebrity?
Put him in an ad, then, not on the restaurant floor. ”
“Maybe she hired him ’cause he’s fine as hell.”
“Cecily’s too old for that.”
“Girl, my granny’s not too old for that. Do you have eyes?”
I tell my eyes to stay exactly where they are, but I can’t help letting them drift back to Reeve as Lori walks away to start her shift.
He does look incredibly good with that collared shirt a tad too tight for his wide shoulders and cut arms. His skin has a deep tan and his dark-blond hair boasts buttery highlights that look like he spent all summer on the beach.
Even from here, the blaze of his bright-blue eyes is remarkable.
I watch as he follows Jorge around the empty restaurant, listening to the directions he’s given, smirking every so often at Jorge’s comments in a way that’s totally on-brand for his arrogant self but somehow also makes him look annoyingly hot.
I turn back to my work before he notices me watching and starts thinking I’m another one of his many, many fangirls.
Who cares if he adds a little eye candy to the workplace? Beautiful men aren’t for me.
It’s a busy night, and I barely see Reeve, but when I do I feel hot with resentment.
If I didn’t need the money so badly, I wouldn’t mind being a hostess.
The hours are fine, my coworkers are fun, and I love my surroundings.
Somerset is beautiful with its midnight-blue walls, dark furniture, and modern, angular light fixtures.
But the money I make hostessing is never going to get me to Spain, and knowing Reeve stole my job right out from under me reignites the hate I had for him for so long.
And it’s not only the way he and the other football players strut around campus like they’re god’s gift to the student body and entitled to whatever and whomever catches their eye. It’s the way he treated my best friend.
Last year he basically coaxed Lenni into having a crush on him, strung her along, and then, when she finally worked up the nerve to act on it, he humiliated her.
It doesn’t matter that he’s since apologized and explained he never meant to treat her that way.
It doesn’t even matter that the incident led directly to Lenni landing Cam and becoming the happiest I’ve ever seen her.
Reeve and I can tolerate each other on the rare occasions that Lenni and Cam force us together, but he’s still an entitled asshole. And now he’s screwing with my plans.
When I step into the office to grab my purse after work, Reeve’s in there chatting it up with Cecily. I do a double take because Cecily—fiftysomething Cecily with kids the same age as Reeve—is all starry-eyed and laughing with him like he’s Prince Charming in the middle of a stand-up act. Gag.
I try to move quickly enough that Cecily might not notice me against the blinding beauty of Reeve Dalton, but no such luck.
“Oh, Jade,” she says. “Did you introduce yourself to Reeve?”
I open my mouth, but Reeve beats me to it. “No, she didn’t.” He looks at me, his eyes flashing like he just told a joke at my expense.
Whatever it’s about, I’m not taking the bait. “We already know each other,” I tell Cecily bluntly. “Our friends are dating. Well, good night. See you tomorrow.” I’m out the door before she can say goodbye. No need to kiss her ass now.
I wave to the kitchen staff on my way out and head for the parking lot. My hand is on the handle of my car door when I hear my name. I know without looking that it’s him. Even his voice oozes arrogance.
When I turn around, there he is, taking his sweet-ass time crossing the parking lot, hurrying for no one. Hopefully it’s not too dark for him to catch the way I roll my eyes.
“Hey,” he says when he reaches me. “Way to extend me a warm welcome on my first night.”
“Did you need one? You’ve got everyone else on staff eating out of the palm of your hand. And I’m not the warm-and-fuzzy type.”
“Don’t need to tell me, baby.” He pretends to shiver. “Brr.”
“All right, would you like me to pretend to care? Let’s see . . . how was your first night?”
“You’re still pissed at me, aren’t you?”
“Still? No, sir. I’m pissed at you all anew.”
He laughs. I never noticed before that he has two dimples. “Seriously? What could I have possibly done to you?”
“Never mind.” I refuse to give him the satisfaction of knowing he scooped my job. “So how was the first night for real?”
“Pretty easy. Good tips, and everyone was pretty understanding about my screwups.”
“Yeah, because you’re the local hero. Our guests are going to salivate over you.”
“Until I screw up on the field.” For a rare moment, he looks solemn.
“Do you ever?”
He shrugs. “There’s a first time for everything.”
“Well, you can count on me to neither know nor care what you do on the field. How’s that for warm?”
A slight smile curves his lips, but he only looks at me. A silent Reeve Dalton isn’t something I ever thought I’d see, and for a second I’m caught in the silence, wondering what he’s thinking and why, for once, he’s not saying it. But then I remember I don’t care.
I turn back to my car. “Anyway, I’m out of here.”
“This your ride?” he asks, looking at my white clunker of a vehicle.
“No, mine’s the Range Rover over there. I just figured I’d ransack this shitbox for loose change.”
He smirks that same cocky, delicious smirk as before. “You ever do anything nice with that mouth of yours?”
The question silences both of us. I don’t know what he meant by it, but it’s impossible not to let my mind take a brief but dirty turn as I look at him over my shoulder.
His eyes linger on my lips for an instant. “See you around, then,” he says, already turning away. “Drive safe.”
I climb into my car and start the engine but sit there and watch him in my rearview as he gets into an old nineties-looking Bronco painted black and green. He jams the car into reverse and peels out of the parking lot as though he’s performing for a crowd of hundreds.
What an asshole.