Chapter 1 #2
“In my wallet.” He’d paid me for my last week of data entry with a chagrined look, an admission that he was more cash-strapped than he would have liked (which I knew, having just gotten his bank account in order), and a scribbled note on the back of a brand-new business card: IOU—Beau Sato-Jones owes Alix Watson the unconditional loan of one (1) fabulous outfit for the event of her choosing.
Redeemable whenever, wherever. Signed with a dash, and jammed in between my ID and my grocery store discount card, now all creased around the edges.
In my more cynical moments I wanted to toss it in the trash, because when would I ever go somewhere glam enough to need an outfit from Brummell’s?
But I never did, because if your life is Cinderella pre-ball, it’s nice to think your engraved invitation and your monogrammed pumpkin are out there somewhere.
“C’mon, I’ve got a robe à la francaise with your name on it,” Beau tempted me.
“A nice long back like yours was made for Watteau pleats. Or if you want something more on the fantasy side, and I know you do because I saw the latest George R. R. Martin in your bag when you went by last week, I can kit you out as the Mother of Dragons. Dragon-scale smocking, attached cape, knee boots—what do you say, gorgeous?”
“I’d say I’m already late for work, and my boss is definitely going to look at me funny if I show up to make espressos in a robe à la francaise,” I said, shoving down the pinch of regret that I’d never been called gorgeous in my life by a man who wasn’t trying to sell me something, and slogged off to my shift at the coffee shop on Boylston.
Whoever thought to name a coffee shop The Bump ’n’ Grind should have been gagged, bound, and thrown in the Charles River, because it meant that three quarters of the male clerks thought it was hilarious to grind up on the women clerks while saying Bump and grind, geddit?
but it was the least crappy of my three crappy jobs, and let’s face it, a woman with $36.
82 in her bank account (card declined, card declined) can’t afford to be picky.
“Late again,” my boss Cody said sorrowfully.
He never got pissy with his staff, he just sounded sorrowful.
“I’ll have to dock you.” He sighed, laying a moist hand on my shoulder.
He probably thought that made him less of a prick for cutting a full half hour of my pay when I was thirty seconds late.
“You know that chronic tardiness is not in line with the company mission statement here at The Bump ’n’ Grind, Alix. ”
I wanted to ask Cody if the company mission statement had anything to say about that man bun stuck on his head like the back half of a wasp, but I didn’t.
I just smiled tightly, putting on my apron with Alex embroidered on the tit.
I’d tried pointing out that wasn’t how I spelled my name, but he very kindly explained that my name was Alexandria, and therefore the correct nickname was Alex.
I’d never liked Alex with an e; it sounded like the hard-boiled chick detective in every half-baked Law & Order spin-off, the one who runs around cleaning up the mean streets of Los Angeles by going undercover as a stripper.
But Cody Man Bun had decided it was irrelevant how I actually wanted to spell my own name, so my left tit perpetually said Alex.
“Why Alexandria and not Alexandra?” My last foster mother asked me that, ten days, nine hours, and forty-two minutes before my eighteenth birthday, when I could finally exit her basement bedroom and the entire foster care system, not that I had an app on my phone counting it down or anything.
“Alexandria. Wasn’t that like one of the Real Housewives? ”
“Sure,” I said. “The Real Housewives of Alexandria. Drink chardonnay and bitch about the invasion of Rome.”
She’d given me a look that said I wasn’t the only one counting the minutes till my exit from her house, and I didn’t bother explaining I’d been named after a library in Egypt, not a Real Housewife.
My mother loved books, almost as much as she loved shitty boyfriends, and when I was three years old she worked as a page in the local branch library.
She used to push me around sitting on her book cart, which she’d decorated with a flamboyant bumper sticker—tacked down, since they wouldn’t let her stick it on permanently: They Got the Library of Alexandria—They’re Not Getting Mine.
She’d untacked it and taken it with her when we left town to follow Mom’s latest boyfriend, the drummer of an indie rock band thisclose to a recording deal, and that bumper sticker was still around (tacked over my bedroom door) when I turned eight and my birthday present was the news that Mom was headed to LA with a tech bro who swore his start-up was the next TikTok.
“He’s not so big on the whole kid thing,” she’d told me, wrinkling her nose affectionately as if to say, Isn’t that just the cutest. “I’ll be back for you the minute I bring him around, mmkay? ”
I guess she never brought him around on the whole kid thing, because I ended up going into the foster system with nothing but that frayed, curling bumper sticker, a few tattered paperbacks, and a name no one spelled right.
I pushed Mom out of my head, but I didn’t have any better thoughts today to replace her. I made a batch of cold brew and began taking drink orders, and all the time my brain kept blinking: card declined. And underneath that, the bills.
“Caramel macchiato for Lauren.”
The bill for my phone with the cracked screen. The rent I owed my roommates. The dentist appointment I’d been putting off for four years—
“Flat white for Shawn.”
The crappy $22 pleather boots with the disintegrating soles, which wouldn’t survive another spring rainstorm—
“Pumpkin spice latte for Kayla.”
Because I couldn’t afford hundred-dollar boots that would actually last, which meant that two months from now I’d have flapping soles again and be looking at twenty-two more bucks for another pair of crappy pleather boots, and by the end of the year I’d have spent $132 plus Massachusetts sales tax on boots that didn’t do shit to keep the rain out, all because I never had $100 in my bank account to spare at any point in time for a decent pair.
I’d end up spending more money to have wet, aching feet, and that’s another facet of poverty math: how expensive it is, how frustratingly, ruinously expensive, to be broke.
“Four quad-shot Red-Eyes for Allyson, Bonnie, Ashleigh, and Jazmin.” A gaggle of college girls in Boston University sweatshirts and expensive Uggs (Uggs?
I could imagine Beau side-eyeing. Oh, honey, no, but at least those glossy bitches had dry feet) took their espresso concoctions without thank-yous.
They’d be up till three in the morning in their dorms, jittering and giggling as they crammed for their chem lab or their art history midterm, and I envied them with a bitterness that verged on despair.
When I was eighteen and fresh out of that final foster home, getting my first grimy studio apartment and my first job at Dunkin’ Donuts, I still thought college was a possibility—I’d be that inspirational story that racks up views on social media, the girl who waited tables or worked a stripper pole to put herself through night school (#FemaleEmpowerment!
#ByTheBootstraps! #YasQween!)—but eighteen turned to nineteen turned to twenty without my managing to save even a third of what I’d need for college courses, even at the cheapest college in a city full of them.
And here I was at twenty-six, and it probably shouldn’t have taken me so long, looking at Allyson/Bonnie/Ashleigh/Jazmin with their sleek ponytails and Coach totes full of $900 textbooks, to realize that the dream was done: Alix Watson wasn’t going to college, ever.
She’d be lucky if she got to her thirties with a full fridge and dry fucking feet.
Card declined. Card declined.
“No-foam cappuccino for Charlotte.” I pushed the drink across the counter, and the brunette with the PTA bob frowned after one sip.
“This wasn’t made with skim milk.”
“Yes, it was, ma’am.”
“I can taste the dairy fat in there. And did you use the sugar-free vanilla flavoring?”
“Yes, I—”
“You weren’t paying attention. Head in the clouds the whole time you were making my drink.”
I looked at her diamond stud earrings, her salon-frosted highlights. Card declined.
“What if I was lactose intolerant? I could have a reaction from full-fat milk, you know. You don’t know someone else’s life.
You just looked at me and assumed I was a basic bitch on a diet, didn’t you?
” Her French-manicured nails drilled the counter.
She wore Lululemon yoga pants that had probably cost $120, and her butter-yellow shirt said Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain! Of course it did.
I exhaled slowly. “Are you lactose intolerant, ma’am?”
“No. But you didn’t know that.”
“Ma’am, I’m not quite sure what you want me to—”
“Make it again, please.”
I could feel Cody Man Bun watching me, so I made it again. Skim milk. Sugar-free vanilla flavoring. Shake of cinnamon.
“I said two shakes of cinnamon.”
I added another shake, wishing it were arsenic. “Thank you for coming to The Bump ’n’ Grind.”
She motored off with a warning I-still-might-speak-to-your-manager sniff. “Your shirt has a comma splice,” I muttered under my breath, and moved on to the next drink. Card declined. “Large Americano for Brent.”
“Thanks, babe.” Brent was young, slim, Hugo Boss suit. He took his cup and held a single dollar bill over the tip jar, dropping me a wink. “Only if you give me a smile!”
I stared at him. The words just fell out of my mouth, quiet, completely unplanned. “Fuck you.”
Not quiet enough.
Just like that, I was fired.