Chapter Two
Max
“Call again,” I tell Trevor as I uselessly pace in front of the bed.
“Babe,” Trevor rubs his exhausted eyes in frustration. “If she’s at the hospital, she won’t be able to answer. You know how bad the service is in places like that.”
“Yeah, I’m convinced they do it on purpose,” I snap back.
“So, calling her for the fiftieth time is as likely to go through now as it was ten seconds ago. Come lay down and get some sleep.”
I dial her number as Trevor glares at me. It goes straight to voicemail, and I hang up.
“What if she was hurt?”
“She wasn’t,” he tries to soothe me with his rational voice, but I feel even more frustrated the calmer he gets.
“We should go up there.”
“Max, lay down,” Trevor snaps and sits up straight as he finally loses his patience with me. “It is ten o’clock in the morning, and we haven’t slept. There is nothing we can do at the hospital. Her friends are with her now. Everything is going to be ok.”
He says that, but I have the worst feeling in my gut that nothing will be ok. Not for a long while. Her friends were acting shady as fuck when they showed up. I can’t believe he trusted them with her purse.
Maybe I can wait for him to fall asleep and steal the truck. I’ll deal with the consequences after I know that Tera is laughing it up at the hospital.
I crawl into the bed beside him, and he curls around me. I love being the little spoon, even if I’m taller than him, and he knows it. The bastard knows I’m planning on bailing out and is trying to get me to fall asleep, cuddle style.
My brain won’t shut off long enough for that to be possible. My mind wanders back and forth from the past to the present while I lay as still as I can so Trevor will fall asleep first.
When I first met Tera, she was bubbly, energetic, and ready to get to work when it was time. A little flirty but in such an innocent way that it confused me.
The first time she spoke to me, it felt like she was trying to angle her way into my bed. I was so used to all the waitresses shooting their shot that it seemed like another ploy. The best way to cut her off was not to speak, not respond, ignore her. She was obviously an attention hog, coming back over and over just to hear herself talk. Ignoring her, making her realize she won’t get attention from me, would make her go away.
My attitude changed after one night. This one made her real out of the millions of monologues she’d given me. A person instead of one of the vapid women surrounding me or an empty, shiny bubble just waiting to be popped. Always with a smile and so damn happy. Nobody is that peppy with their shitty life.
“You look sad today, Max.” Her voice wasn’t cautious or tiptoeing around the subject that night. She walked directly to me after clocking in and blurted it out with real concern on her face.
It had been a shit day. Trevor and I had argued over stupid bullshit I can’t remember, and I was too stubborn to say sorry. No one had said anything to me about my being a little off-kilter and more angry than usual. They’d been avoiding me as much as possible.
Not Tera. She marched right up to me and threw my emotions in my face. I waited for her to tell me to lighten up or get over it like anyone else here would, but she put her hand over mine as I reached for a dirty glass and stopped me.
“Go take a break. I’ve got this.”
Her voice was gentle as she moved my hand away and started clearing everything up, and I didn’t know what to do with the odd kindness.
I glared at her to get her to back off. I didn”t need to be babied, but the effort was half-hearted at best, and she gave me a gentle smile that I’d never seen on her before. Something soothing and almost commiserating.
I realized that all I wanted right then was to go upstairs and back to bed to start this shit day over with a new attitude. Maybe I did need to be babied a little. I couldn’t tell her that, though.
“Just for a couple of minutes,” she took the rag from my other hand with a quick flick to wipe down the table. “Go outside and scream. Text someone who would get what you’re going through. Deep breathing helps me. You could try that. Or just take a second and be at peace with yourself. A change in scenery is what you need.”
What kind of hippie bullshit was she into? I wanted to tell her to fuck off, but for some reason, my feet forced me away, and before I knew it, I was outside in the cold, wondering why I obeyed one tiny optimistic girl. I barely listen to Trevor, and he’s my boyfriend. I do that out of pure joy, though. The look on his face when he catches me acting like an asshole usually gives me excited chills.
Her demands, if you could call it that, felt different. It was more coddling than threatening, which I usually hate, but it’s acceptable when it’s genuine.
It’s as if she saw me and cared that I was off-kilter tonight. Even with how I’ve treated her, she was still decent when I had no reason to ever expect her to be. The thought that I might have been wrong about her this entire time sat heavy in my gut.
I took several deep breaths and let them out slowly, convinced this crap would never work. After five minutes of watching a half-full parking lot stay half-full, I decided to go back inside. Then, I did something even farther out of my comfort zone.
I went to Trevor’s office, and I apologized before he could say a word. I didn’t wait for his reaction and marched right back out.
Then I took out my confused embarrassment on Tera by glaring extra hard and refusing to let her help me the rest of the night. Her response?
“Aw, that’s the grump I know and love. Welcome back, Max.”
I got a reward for being an ass. A fucking reward.
I got a little worse to test out the theory, walking away while she was talking and refusing to face her. She laughed and called me adorable, even pinching my cheek when I wasn’t paying attention. She didn’t follow me around to talk for once, leaving me in peace, and never asked me why I was upset.
She stopped following me around and bothering me after that night, though. I finally realized she saw me as a person, and she backed off.
Suddenly, I didn’t want that peace. I wanted her attention. It”s something I usually despise unless it’s from Trevor.
I brought it up to him a few nights later because I was confused. I usually like the punishments, not the cuddles, so why did her being a decent person to an ass like me have such a strong effect? And why was it bothering me so badly that she was… not avoiding me, but not talking to me much anymore? No more going on and on about her day and asking me questions I wouldn’t answer. I fucking missed it.
Trevor listened, but he didn’t listen-listen. Like this was a phase, and it would pass. She was nice to me once, but that didn’t mean she was a fantastic person like I was building her up in my head.
I figured maybe he was right. So I carried on as before, glaring and generally being an asshole. But I paid a lot more attention to Tera after that. I noticed things about her that were covered by my bitter filter as it slowly began to drop.
She wasn’t flirting with bar patrons. She was listening, sympathizing over someone’s shitty day at work, making them feel better with her attention and comfort. She gets good tips that she shares with the other waitresses who didn’t do as well, keeping it even. Because times are tough, she would say. Her bubble wasn’t empty. It was floating high as if it could exist on her smiles alone.
I hated it because she gave me some attention, but I wanted all of it, all of the time like before. I liked that sunshine hitting only me, not the lazy waitresses or the miserable drunks. Trevor took me aside to speak to me several times due to my jealousy.
I told him she was perfect and wanted to ask her out. He said she wasn’t for us. She’s too innocent. She would have no idea what she was getting into. Blah, blah, blah. They were all valid points, but it felt like he was trying too hard to keep her away from me or us.
We’ve had other people in our relationship, which never worked out. We had decided to take a break from finding whatever we both felt was missing for a while. If he liked them, I would be jealous. If I wanted them, they became too bratty for him to tolerate. I like amping up his frustration, but not to the extent some of them did. They told me I’m not a real brat, like I lied on some form.
If I’m not getting insulted for being bi, I’m insulted for not checking off all the boxes of a kink. You can never win.
When I noticed her obvious submissiveness and eagerness to please, Trevor brushed it off as her surface personality. I didn’t.
When people ask her to do things, she does it immediately, no questions. If Trevor asks her to do something, she does it even faster with a grin and squirms when she’s done until he gently dismisses her or tells her she did a good job. She obviously wants him, and I’m ok with that for once. I don’t feel any jealousy when she gives him her smile. She could be his good girl, and I would be his brat. Perfect.
I got pushy with Trevor, which got me more arguments. I just wanted him to see her, and he wanted nothing to do with it, happy with where we were at that point in our relationship. But it could be so much better if he would just listen.
It wasn’t until she met Joe that he started paying attention. Trevor had purposely been scheduling her away from the night Joe usually showed up. He was afraid that little innocent Tera wouldn’t be able to handle his attitude.
He always came in on Tuesdays, slow days, so he could drink and be mean to everyone. We usually threw the servers that needed a little humbling at him. The ones who sneak upstairs to lie in wait for us to come up and try to seduce us mostly.
Half of them hated him and refused to serve him for his behavior. The other half just cringed through it with horrible customer service.
I didn’t want Joe ripping into her or making his idiotic comments to her. I told Trevor I would serve him and got a baffled look in response. I never serve.
He refused, but it piqued his interest enough to get him out of the office and hovering on the stairs where no one could see him so he could supervise. Probably me more than Joe because of my blatant interest.
It didn’t help that half the time I felt like Joe went too far, and I would threaten to kick him out as he laughed in my face. He somehow knows that I would never lay hands on an old man and took full advantage of it. I might forget that in my need to protect Tera.
Tera bounced up and asked for Joe’s order. He told her she was a waste of a good hire because her ass was flat. I came very close to throwing Joe out. No threats, just my boot in his old ass.
Her smile never wavered as she asked for his order again like he never spoke. He got his usual whiskey sour, and she left.
When she returned, she had the drink in one hand and a bar towel in the other. She asked if she could clean his glasses for him because they were dirty. I don’t know what Joe thought as he handed them over with an aggravated sigh.
Tera took her time cleaning them, double-checking them to ensure they were spotless, before handing them back and turning away to look at him over her shoulder.
“Now that your eyesight is clear, take another look because my butt is spectacular, sir.”
Joe laughed hysterically, and they were fast friends from that point on. They were making dirty jokes and flirting shamelessly. No matter what kind of mood he came in with, he left smiling. Old Joe. The man that can break a waitress in one night.
And Trevor began to watch her more closely, too. He might think I haven’t noticed his interest with how firmly he’s been telling me to leave her alone, but I know him.
I was hopeful, but those hopes were dashed when Andi came strolling in, and she instantly had a new best friend. I’ve always disliked Andi, not for her personality, even though her shrieking tries my patience, but because she took Tera away from us. My chest starts burning with jealousy whenever I think of her, and I have to push it away.
A couple of months into their friendship, Tera’s stories with everyone got shorter and shorter. Her smiles got tighter. She started avoiding Trevor unless he called her specifically to do something. There was no more waiting like a good girl for a dismissal or check-ins with him.
She acted normal with customers, with Joe, friendly and outgoing, but I got concerned over the sudden withdrawal around the rest of us.
Trevor told me to let it go and that she was growing up, but I knew it was wrong. She wasn’t growing up. She was shutting down.
When the news broke about Andi’s psycho stalker, I was pissed. Tera had to know what was happening and never breathed a word of it. I wanted to throttle her. Then I realized she might have been tense because of all the pressure she was under hanging out with Andi.
But her stress didn’t get better with the asshole arrested, and she was shutting down more and more. Her smile has been absent for months now. The one she gives customers is fake and hesitant instead of sunny and comforting.
When the robbery started, Trevor and I were in the office arguing about her, trying to come to a compromise that wouldn’t damage our relationship. I wanted him to bring her into the office and make her talk to him. I knew he could do it. He has a good sense of when to push and when to back off, which I needed because I would push until something broke. I needed him as a go-between, and he refused.
And then Joe.
She was right next to him, holding his arm.
Watching him fall felt like I was stuck in slow motion. Trevor tackled me to the ground and yelled for Tera to get down, but she was frozen until the gunfire ended.
I wanted to go with her to the hospital, but Sal had decided holding onto me was the best comfort she had ever known and wouldn’t let go. Trevor had to speak to the police. There was no one else. I watched her argue with the paramedics hysterically before she jumped in. Then she was gone.
My thoughts finally sputter out as the exhaustion catches up to me. Trevor’s light snoring has lulled me down until I’m almost asleep.