24. Chapter Twenty-Four ~ Emma
Chapter Twenty-Four ~ Emma
There’s only a couple more hours left of the day and I’m looking forward to collapsing in my bed as soon as I get back to the house.
At least, until one of the girls comes up to me as I’m loading a tray with drinks.
“Boss wants to see you.”
“Ethan?” I ask, almost hopefully, but she shakes her head, taking the tray from me. “The big boss. I’ll take this. Table 23, right?”
I give a nod, brush my hands on my skirt and suck in a deep breath before heading upstairs. There’s a chance that it’s nothing. That he’s just interested in another booty call or something. But deep down I know that’s not it.
There’s a serious look on his face and I know that the conversation I’ve been trying to put off is finally coming to pass.
He’s not going to let it go any longer.
“Chris … I … there are some things you need to know.”
“About your financial situation?” he asks and my face goes white.
“How … how did you know?”
“My mother. But I’d rather hear about it all from you.”
I take a deep breath because I’m not really sure if I’m happy he wants to give me a chance to talk or if I would rather he just took what his mother said, because at least then I wouldn’t have to go through this whole thing.
“Okay … um … my family … we’re poor. Extremely poor. Like … we never had enough of anything growing up.” I’m not sure how to talk but once I start, the words seem to pour out of me of their own accord. All while Chris sits there and stares up at me with an unreadable expression on his face. “We were doing okay at first. Me and Mom and Dad and Leann. But then Leann got sick and the medical bills started coming in and Dad ditched and it was just the three of us.”
“But we had to make it work. We had to do everything that we could to take care of Leann and make sure that she was safe and healthy and everything and so that’s what we did. We didn’t give up. And Mom worked pretty much 24/7 and as soon as I was old enough to get a job I did too. And I’ve been waitressing ever since I was about 15. I looked older and so the restaurants would pay me under the table and I just went with it because we needed the money.”
“And now Mom and Leann are still struggling but I’ve been helping them with my money from the club and then when you suggested this, it seemed like it was perfect and I’ve been giving the money that you give me to them so they can buy things and it’s been amazing for them. They have so much more than we did the last decade or more and I’ve been giving them some of the things that you’ve given me, like some of the clothes and blankets and some extra things because they don’t have them and it’s nice for them to have luxuries and they can use the money from selling some of the things.”
When I finally stop my torrent of words I can’t bring myself to look at him. At least, not at first.
Tears are running down my face as I stand there, feeling like a child who’s just broken all of the rules.
He’s still giving me that strange look. The one that I can’t understand and I’m terrified that this is going to ruin everything. That he’s never going to look at me the same way again.
He can’t undo the contract. At least, not the baby part. But the rest: what if he takes my baby and leaves me on my own? What if he continues on with the contract but doesn’t want to actually be around me anymore?
All the ‘what ifs’ are bouncing around in my head and I can’t figure out what I’m going to do. Or how to respond.
He hasn’t said anything. Hasn’t reacted in any way. And that makes it even more difficult for me to know what I should be doing. How do I know how to react or how to fix things if I don’t know what it is that he’s feeling?
“Chris …”
“That’s all I needed to know, Emma. You can return to work now.” His voice is quiet as he says this and there’s still no emotion on his face. But there’s plenty of it on mine.
I know because I can feel the tears tracking down my face.
How am I supposed to go back to work? How am I supposed to just pretend that nothing happened?
But what else can I do? Short of telling him that I want to go home, the only thing I can do is just turn around, stop in the bathroom to blot off my face, and get back to work.
“Oh, Honey, what on earth happened to you?” Meg asks as I make my way back to the bar.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay, but we are going to do something about it because you look like hell. Jake, we’re taking a minute,” she tells the bartender.
He glances at me and raises an eyebrow but then gives us a nod and a half wave as he continues filling drinks.
Meg takes me into the bathroom and immediately sets to work on doing a much better job at cleaning me up than I did.
“You need some good products. Just one minute. I’ll be right back.” With that she goes to grab her own makeup bag, About 10 minutes and a steady hand of blush, lipstick, eyeshadow, eyeliner, and concealer … and I actually look good.
Better than good.
I look better than I think I have in my entire life.
“There.” She sits back, proud of her work and I gape at myself in the mirror.
“Wow. I look … this is amazing.”
“I’m saving money to go to cosmetology school,” she tells me with a smile.
“You should be. You’re great. Especially considering I looked like hell when you started.”
“You kind of did,” she agrees and I give her a slight scowl but it’s hard to be mad at her when it’s accurate. “I don’t know what you’re going through. So maybe you have all the reasons to feel like hell.” She shrugs and I can tell there’s no judgment there. “But you don’t have to look like it. And now you don’t. You look phenomenal. If I do say so myself.” She grins, packs away her makeup and stands up.
“Now we’d better get out there before they send someone after us for an unauthorized break.”
“They want us to look good. This was a break to make sure we look good,” she says with another shrug and I manage a small smile.
Whatever else is going on, I look good. And that’s going to have to be enough for me. At least for now it is. Because I can’t do anything else.
So I head back out to the floor and set to work doing my job. At least if nothing else, I’m looking great, raking in the tips, and I can put everything else behind me for a short while anyway.
I’m still going to have to deal with whatever happens when I get back home but for now this is good.