Chapter Eight
Jenna pulled in the parking lot at the Driftwood and sat staring at the building for far longer than she should have.
Dread felt like a stone in her stomach. Until Roadkill asked, she hadn’t even remembered Mason asking her out so long ago.
Was that why he kept cutting her down? Because she hadn’t had the bandwidth at the time to add one more thing to her life?
She hadn’t been on a single date since she’d been granted custody of Lacey. She didn’t have time. Still didn’t.
But since when did something like that matter to a male? All most of them saw was how something affected them. And unless it affected them, they rarely even noticed it. She might only be twenty-four, but she’d been around enough to have learned that.
But Roadkill seemed different. He hadn’t pushed for her to do anything for him.
The most he’d pushed for was answers, and even that was so he could help her in one way or another.
Then that business with his card? Why had he offered her his personal number?
She got the feeling he didn’t do that for most people, hell, even most women. So, why her?
She dropped her gaze to her lap and spotted the card.
On a whim, she added Roadkill and his number to her phone, then she stuffed her phone into her purse, grabbed the bag off the seat, and headed inside.
The sooner she got to work, the sooner she would be done with the shift and could go pick up Lacey.
Letting herself in the back door of the Driftwood, Jenna shoved her purse into her locker, then put on her apron and moved into the small kitchen to start her prep.
As she went through the motions of the stuff she did every shift, her mind turned to the evening.
They’d done math homework last night so tonight would likely be history, maybe English.
Those didn’t take as much hand-holding to get done, so she started thinking about dinner and what she could make for them. Spaghetti sounded good.
Between her prep and thinking about the evening, Jenna hadn’t been aware of Mason’s arrival until he brushed against her.
Brushing up against each other wasn’t uncommon when working in the small confines of behind the bar, which was part of why she rarely came back here during a shift, but he hadn’t been here when she’d arrived, or she hadn’t seen him, so she hadn’t thought about it.
“Sorry,” Mason said as he pushed past her, hitting her harder than he had to, she could tell. “It would be a lot easier to move around back here if you hadn’t let yourself go.” He kept going as if he hadn’t just made yet another cutting remark.
Jenna said nothing, just picked up what she was doing and shifted so she was on the other side of the bar, and he had no excuse to do it again.
She couldn’t stop him from making mean spirited comments, not if she wanted to keep her job, but she didn’t have to stand there and let him man handle her either.
Mason unlocked the front door at opening time, and she continued to work on whatever needed doing.
She’d discovered long ago that if she could stay busy, then her shifts went much faster, so she found whatever needed to be done and kept going, even when there were no customers.
Not that they were ever without patrons long.
Jimbob, an old curmudgeon who gossiped more than he drank, was there by twelve fifteen, just like he was every day.
“I’ll take my usual, Jen-girl,” Jimbob said as he slid on to the barstool that likely had a permanent impression of Jimbob’s backside, from the number of hours he spent there. “Why isn’t the TV on yet?” He waved at the tv over the bar.
“No reason, what do you want to watch?” Jenna asked, not bothering with Jimbob’s drink because he was sitting at the bar and Mason would take care of it.
“Put it on the news. I need to know what’s going on in our world.”
Jenna bit back a groan. The news would set him ranting all afternoon about what was wrong with the world and how everything would be all rainbows and sunshine if he were in charge, because he knew how to make it work.
To make everyone follow the rules and to have an idyllic country.
She’d long since learned how to tune him out as she went about her day.
Though, sometimes, when she was really bored or pissed at Mason for some reason, she would engage with Jimbob in whatever he was going on about.
Sometimes she egged him on, others she voiced an opposing view.
It wasn’t like she cared about whatever he was going off about at the time, but that she was getting him to either keep Mason occupied and off her ass or she was using the old man as revenge. She was happy either way.
As the day started, one by one the regulars drifted in.
A man she thought looked familiar but couldn’t place where from, she didn’t think she’d ever seen in the Driftwood came in a little after one. He sat in one of the booths, ordered a beer and sat, looking around.
Cheryl came in at 2:30, after her shift at the Shop and Save, she would stay until at least ten, having at least one drink an hour before she went home to start it all over again tomorrow.
Jenna had only been here a couple of times when she’d been asked to cover Monica’s shift when the other waitress called in.
It had been one of those shifts that she’d figured out she could make better tips. Now that she thought more about it, Mason’s mean comments about her weight had started before she’d started asking how to make more money.
Monica showed up on time, so Jenna was able to cash out the last of her customers and get out of there in time to pick up Lacey.
In the car, as she made her way along the familiar roads between the bar and the school, she wished for a moment that she had a normal life.
That she could have just twenty four hours where she didn’t feel the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Where she could be a regular, every day twenty-four year old with nothing more on her mind than who she was dating and where they were going that night.
She pulled into the pick up line and pushed her wallowing out of her mind.
She was over simplifying things, she knew.
There were plenty of women her age who had things far worse than she did.
Besides, what part would she give up? Would she let her sister be raised by strangers if it meant she could be more carefree?
Not in a million years. And Jenna never wanted her sister to think, even for a moment, that Jenna regretted fighting for her.
If Jenna managed nothing else, she’d make sure Lacey knew she was loved.
Sitting in the car, she wished she could go to the gym tomorrow, not because she liked working out.
No, that was pretty much torture, but for some reason she felt safe there.
Then something occurred to her. Digging her phone from her purse, she pulled up Roadkill’s contact info and typed out a message.
**Jenna: I know you said for me not to come in tomorrow and to take the day off, but can I bring in my sister? Can I show her what you showed me today, and only do the warmup stretches and walking after with her?
She hit send, then realized he didn’t have her number and would have no clue who was messaging him.
**Jenna: This is Jenna, BTW.
She set her phone on the passenger seat to move the car up in line. It chirped an incoming text, prompting her to pick it up again. There were still at least a dozen cars in front of her, if not more and the kids were just starting to come out the door.
**Roadkill: Of course you can. I’ll help you show her if you like, or if you forget something. Just let me know.
**Jenna: Thanks.
She set her phone aside and eased forward. It didn’t take long until she spotted Lacey, and only a couple of minutes longer for her sister to spot her and race her way.
The grin on Lacey’s face warmed something inside her. This was why she did it all. That grin, that joy, that was why Jenna struggled. So her little sister could be secure in knowing that she had someone at her back.
“How was school?” Jenna asked as soon as Lacey’s butt hit the seat.
Lacey sighed as she pulled the door closed, then buckled her seatbelt. As soon as Jenna heard the seatbelt click, she hit her blinker and pulled out of line to let someone else have her spot.
“We do this every day, Jen. It’s middle school. It sucks.”
“So tell me what happened?”
She listened as Lacey outlined all the latest happenings.
She didn’t care all that much about who Danny was dating, or who Rebecca Lynn thought was cute, but she loved that Lacey talked to her.
And she would listen to all the middle school gossip just to encourage her sister to keep talking to her, to keep telling her everything.
So that later, when her problems were more important than that Joel down the street didn’t like her the same way she liked him, that Lacey would remember that Jenna was there for her, no matter what.
Jenna wanted to be the one her sister turned to, the one she trusted to help her, no matter what kind of trouble she got into. Always.