Chapter Nine
Elliot
Ispent the rest of my shift smiling and checking my phone like someone obsessed with phones and smiling. A hot guy liked me. That was a miracle, or there was something at play in the universe. My money—though I didn’t have any—was on the universe.
Grymley had stood at the door, staring at me as if I were his long-lost boyfriend.
He’d been friendly and a little flirty in the looks he gave me.
I wouldn’t have lost my mind over someone who wore a sun visor with a slice of pizza on it and a red polo shirt with stains on the front.
I was in my work uniform. I promise. But my shirt was part of the restaurant’s uniform, and that place was drenched in grease.
I drowned every shift. No exaggeration. Okay, maybe I was exaggerating a little, but grease dripped down the walls in the kitchens where the fryers were.
Mandy tried to keep the place as clean as possible.
We had a closing routine, but nothing seemed to get the grease off the wall back there.
The best we could do was keep it to a minimum.
Do you prefer to be called Grymley or Grym?
He responded right away, which was another great thing about him. You can call me whatever you like.
My face heated even though Grym wasn’t there to see. My smile was permanently fixed. If I responded to him by saying I’ll call you sexy, would that be too much? It would, right?
If it’s okay, I’ll call you Grym. I should have said something flirty back. Something less than what was running through my head, but I was too giddy to come up with anything else.
I set my phone down on the crate. It was late. After midnight. Grym had answered me right away, which meant either he was a night person without a day job or he didn’t need much sleep and had one.
But I didn’t want to ask after having just met him. Some questions were intrusive. We had been texting for hours now on top of a fifteen-minute phone call. That counted as a whole date, right?
Joel sat on the crate beside me, smoking lazily, as if he had nowhere else to be. He offered me a cigarette, but I shook my head. I needed to drive home. I wasn’t making the same mistake twice. “So, who are you texting? Whoever it is, it puts a look on your face.”
Yeah, I figured I wore my giddiness like a mask. I just couldn’t help it. “My first delivery of the night was to this hot guy. I asked him out, and he said yes. We’ve been texting. Don’t tell Mandy. She’d lecture me for having my phone during restaurant time.”
“What’d he order?” Of all the things to ask, that was what struck Joel. “You can tell a lot about a person from their order.” He was constantly imparting words of wisdom, or at least he thought they were. He was right about sixty percent of the time, so who was I to judge?
“Um, I think pepperoni, sausage, onion, and banana peppers with the marinara dipping sauce.” Did I still have his ticket in my pocket? Maybe. Had I looked at it a thousand times like an obsessed weirdo? I wasn’t admitting anything to anyone.
Joel raised his eyebrows. “Classic choice, except for the banana peppers and the dipping sauce.”
“So, what do you think it means, oh, wise pizza wizard?” I honestly wanted to know.
Joel giggled. His giggles turned into laughter, and he nearly fell off the crate. Then I got going. We probably looked like two restaurant employee lunatics, but this was why I hung out with Joel. He could be Zen and wacko, laughing at nothing in the same two-minute span.
When we recovered, he was as serious as he had been before the bout of laughter.
“The classic pep, sausage, and onion mean he’s a pretty traditional guy.
Or he would be, but the banana peppers mean he’s not scared of the tangy curveball life might throw at him.
It might take him a while to decide to go for it, though. ”
Joel got all that from just four pizza toppings? Amazing.
“What does the dipping sauce signify?”
“That he eats the crust.”
That made me laugh. Maybe I was still a little high.
The laughter was contagious again.
Joel sobered first. “I should get a new name tag that says Pizza Wizard.”
The comment came out of nowhere, but I didn’t mind it much.
“Totally.” I sucked in a breath. “What if we left little cards with your wizardy words on them with every order?”
“Like a psychic reading.” Joel waved his arms around for reasons I didn’t know. I think he might have been pretending to wave a wand, but he didn’t quite pull it off. “I could be psychic.”
“Not like a psychic. Like the zodiac horoscope stuff.”
“Pizza zodiac.” Joel’s dark eyes widened with wonder, as if we’d just solved the world’s biggest problem.
“Yeah.” Some of our best ideas came to us while we sat on the crates.
My phone chimed. What time do you get off work?
I answered Grym immediately. An hour ago. Right after I called you.
Joel snatched my phone from me. I didn’t know he could move so fast. Maybe he really was a wizard. Smoking always slowed my body and brain, but he was a fast motherfucker.
“Hey.” I tried to get it back, but I got a little pissed when he started typing. “You better not ruin it for me, man.”
Whatever he typed, he sent it and then handed me the phone back.
I huffed to make sure he knew how upset I was.
I read the message. Hanging with my bestie behind the restaurant. Come smoke with us.
I’ll be there in ten minutes. Stay safe.
So maybe Joel was a wizard after all. Because of him, I would get to see Mr. Death Angel twice in one day.