Chapter 4 Merrick
MERRICK
I looked at my luggage and had to shake my head at myself.
I was going to be gone for a week… a week to the mountains, where I was probably going to spend most of the time in my accommodations and my sweats.
But what did I do? I packed a full-size suitcase, a carry-on suitcase, and a large plastic tote with random items from around the house I thought I might need.
It was absolutely ridiculous, but it was the first vacation I could remember in a long time, and it came at the absolute perfect time.
I was going to miss all the Christmas parties at work, at least the biggest ones.
There was nothing inherently horrible about working events, but they tended to be a ball of confusion, with our current management, and I wasn't in the mood for that.
Plus, seeing people all happy-happy about Christmas only reminded me about how little the holiday was going to mean for me this year… most years, probably forever.
After my brother’s kidney transplant, he was a whole new person. He could be a normal college kid after that, hanging with friends, going to basketball games, playing far too many video games, and meeting his true love.
My father and I never let him know the sacrifices we made to pay for that surgery and all the treatment needed before and after it. He was still a kid when he first got sick and suffered for years. The last thing he needed was to worry about money after dealing with all of that.
Now he was living with his wife and kids and had invited Dad to Christmas there. I was happy for them and glad my father could go, but the plane tickets were outside my budget, and I bowed out, saying I needed to work. Heck, this free vacation was outside my budget. But such is life.
“Stop it.” I patted my cheek. “Pull your head out of your ass. This vacation is going to be fun. Quit having a pity party for one.”
I made one last check of my packing list, decided I was as packed as I was going to be, and took my tote out to the car.
My phone started buzzing in my pocket partway there, but I needed both hands and ignored it.
There were very few people I didn’t have on mute, which meant it was probably important, but those few minutes were going to have to wait.
I pulled it out when I got back inside and saw it was Sally.
“Fuck.” That meant something went wrong at work, and they needed me to fix it.
I wasn’t in the mood, but if she was calling, Manager Steve would be next, and I’d take Sally over them any day.
Maybe they were just wishing me a happy trip or asking me to pick them up a souvenir.
They were the reason I won, after all. Yeah, I was going with that.
She picked up on the first ring. The sound of Chef explaining something very loudly, but not quite loud enough for me to understand, was the first thing I heard.
Knowing the time, he was letting everybody know what hors d’oeuvres were being passed.
He loved to create unique items for that and insisted we all be well-versed in them, not that anybody cared.
When you walked by someone with a platter of food, they would, at the most, say, “Is this gluten-free?” or “Is this vegan?” and then grab something.
“You just caught me, Sally, I’m on my way out.” Please let that be true.
“About that,” she was whisper-shouting. “Hold on a second.” The sound of Chef grew further and further away, and I heard the telltale seal of the walk-in open. “Listen, the manager fucked up. They didn’t just fuck up. They, like, royally fucked up, and you’re on the schedule.”
“But I put in to have it off.” And I had witnesses. Many of them.
“I know, but they called us all in the dining room and shouted that anybody who wasn’t here that was on the schedule was getting fired. No excuses, no exceptions. You need to get your ass in here. You have half an hour. I said that you were running late. Car troubles.”
“Sally, why didn’t you tell them I put in for it?” I wasn’t pissed at Sally, but I came across as harsh. “Sorry. Didn’t mean it that way.”
“You’re fine. I started to, and the first thing they said was, ‘Well, we’ll see if they make it on the schedule ever again.’ And I figured you didn’t want to be fired right before Christmas. The job market’s not good during the happiest time of year.”
Fuck, she was right. “Fine. I’ll be there.”
I couldn’t guarantee watching my words when I saw the manager, but fuck it.
This was something I had told them about half a year ago.
I’d been working extra shifts to make sure I could afford my bills, missing a week of work.
Heck, I’d been rambling on about it this entire time.
I was sure every single co-worker was sick of hearing about it.
This was intentional. There was no way it wasn’t.
If I did the shift and left a day late for my trip, it was still six days off. My stomach dropped as I realized this might not be the only date she put me down for. It had better be six days off. If I was on the schedule all week, then I was walking out and would figure out the mess later.
I threw on my uniform and raced to work, making sure I put my suitcases in the car first. I wasn’t wasting any more minutes than necessary getting to my vacation.
The entire car ride was spent with me hyping myself up. I had to pass flutes of champagne, and then when the party died down, I was going to leave. No big deal. A delay, not a catastrophe.
Everyone would cover for me at that point. They were great like that. We had each other’s backs—well, except for management, which could suck it. I walked in just in time.
It was a fancy party, a masked ball of some sort, although not everyone was masked from what I could see.
Invite-only. If I had been a guest, I’d have felt very much out of place.
But as a server, it wasn’t so bad. No one tried to have conversations with me because, well, most of them saw me as less than an NPC for their game of life.
That wasn’t fair. I didn’t know for sure if these were all wealthy elite, although their clothing suggested they were.
The first half-hour wasn’t bad. I was on champagne duty, winding through people who were all snatching it like they’d never had any before, and then running back to the kitchen to reload. Easy peasy.
But then I saw him. I recognized him before he even turned around.
It was King. He was here. I’d never forget that jawline, the way he leaned slightly to the side when he was pretending to be interested in a conversation but wasn’t really.
We’d only had that one night together, but every detail of him was as fresh as it was that night.
What I wanted to do was run to him, throw my arms around him, tell him I missed him. But this was work, and for all I knew, the person he was talking to was his date. Too much time had passed for me to pretend, even to myself, that he was still mine.
So, as my heart pounded in my chest, I handed my tray to a server heading back to the kitchen and blurted out that I needed to go to the wine cellar.
It was bullshit. There was plenty of wine upstairs.
It wasn’t even wine time yet, but the wine cellar was one place I could go, pretend I had a task, and also not be disturbed.
I needed to pull myself together. It was probably my imagination anyway. It wasn’t as if I could see his face.
I raced down there like my life depended on it, unsure if I could handle seeing him again.
I’d left that day and never turned back.
I had no choice, but there had to have been something I could have done, right?
But past-me didn’t, and I was screwed, because apparently, the feelings from that last night never went away. I wondered if they ever would.