Most Likely to Succeed (9 page)

That was the last thing on these guys’ minds, though. I’d imagined six people worked in the Crab Lab kitchen. There must have been twelve, all hustling. The equipment was new, but the walls were the original exposed brick like most of the buildings that made up downtown. The ceiling was embossed tin. Oil, steam, and Spanish floated in the air. If any cooks called to me, I didn’t understand what they said. I made a beeline straight through to the back door standing open, which I assumed led to the Crab Lab’s porch for employee breaks. Sawyer and Tia had experienced more escapades there than I’d really wanted to hear about.

Outside was a different world. The night, though warm, was ten degrees cooler than the kitchen, and full of the smells
of cooking, not just from the Crab Lab but also from the barbecue restaurant on one side and the Indian restaurant on the other. Industrial-strength air conditioners shouted from all the buildings up and down the alley. But the Crab Lab’s porch was an oasis, sheltered with an awning, furnished with picnic tables and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts. The railing was spun with twinkling white lights.

Sawyer stood at the edge of the wooden stairs down, arms crossed, staring at the ancient brick-paved alley. When he heard my footsteps, he turned around. “Kaye!” he exclaimed, sounding startled. “I am so sorry.”

I kept coming and walked right into him, wrapping my arms around him.

He didn’t move, holding his arms stiffly at his sides.

“Hug me back,” I said into his shoulder. “You have to do that sometimes. We can’t always run to your truck to find the pelican outfit when we need to hug.”

I meant we were both in emotional turmoil. We needed a hug to calm what was going on in our heads. But as he obediently slid his hands around my waist and nestled his face in my neck with his mouth at my ear, he took a step closer. His hard thigh was between my thighs. His body heated mine through his T-shirt and my thin dress.

His arms tightened around me. I tightened mine around
him. We’d never hugged before—not when one of us wasn’t dressed as a pelican, anyway. I regretted this now, because my body felt so good against his. His breath was soft in my ear. All the best parts of me started to tingle.

Without warning, he released me and took a step back. “Sit down,” he said, sinking to a bench himself and patting the space beside him.

I sat very close with my knee touching his. “Will I get you in trouble for being back here?”

“Nobody gets in trouble for anything that happens on this porch. That’s one reason I used to drink so much.”

“Ah.” That must also be the reason he and Tia had felt each other up nightly when she worked here last summer. I hadn’t understood then why she put herself in that position with him over and over. I could definitely see the appeal now.

But that wasn’t what I’d come here for, and I knew we didn’t have much time to talk before he had to get back to work. I said, “About my mother—”

“There’s no excuse for me saying that,” he burst out.

“No!” I exclaimed. “
She
shouldn’t have said that to
you
.”

“She should be able to say anything she wants to me. Usually customers can. I don’t react.”

I found this hard to believe, knowing Sawyer. “Do you save it all up and release it at school?”

“Yes,” he said. “But I wasn’t expecting you tonight. I saw you come in, and I haven’t been able to think straight since.”

He was looking into my eyes and admitting that he liked me. My gaze drifted to the blond stubble on his cheeks, and then to his lips, which looked soft.

Reminding myself how little time we had, I slid my hand onto his. “My mother’s powerful at her bank. According to everything I’ve heard, she’s kind and fair to her employees. But you know the saying. A man in that position gets called the boss. A woman in that position gets called a bitch. I’ve been called a bitch at school just because I took charge or expressed my opinion, so I know how she feels.”

Sawyer swallowed and nodded.

“And maybe she saves it all up and releases it at home,” I mused. “You had no way of knowing this, but when you mentioned that she might want to see the wine label instead of my dad, you definitely hit a sore spot.”

“And then your dad and your brother laughed,” Sawyer said. “I know. I never meant for that to happen. I’ve just had female customers react that way before. I’ve learned to stand back and read people so I can head off anybody getting angry or embarrassed. I thought I’d gotten good at it. I
have
. I know I have.” He glanced sidelong at me. “You’re jamming my radar.”

“Sorry,” I said softly.

Pulling his hand out from under mine, he stood, paced to the porch railing, and turned to face me. “What is she going to do to me? I blurted that dumb shit about the police chief, and suddenly I saw my life flash before my eyes. She could turn me in. I could lose my job. I won’t be able to get another job serving alcohol at this age, and that’s where I make most of my money in tips. My brother could lose his job for convincing the owner to hire me. Hold on.” He pulled his phone out of his back pocket. It hummed and vibrated in his hand. “Oh, holy fuck,” he said to the screen, “really? Now?” He pocketed it again without answering it.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, alarmed. “Who is it?”

“My mother.” Sawyer had a way of conveying loathing in his voice, but I’d never heard him sound quite so disgusted.

“In Georgia?” I checked.

“Yes.”

“You don’t answer her?”

“No.”

I realized something. “Did she call you last night in the van?”

He looked at the porch ceiling, remembering. “Yes.”

“Does she call you a lot?”

“Yes.”

“When’s the last time you talked to her?”

“Two years ago, when I left Valdosta.” When I gaped at him, he said, “She only wants money.”

I was having a very hard time understanding Sawyer’s world. “What if she’s calling about something else?” I reasoned.

“She’d call my brother. I know, you’re thinking, ‘You should send your mom money if she needs it,’ but I’m just done with her. I mean, I voluntarily came to live with my father as soon as he got out of prison. That’s how bad it was with my mother.”

I frowned at him. “Wait. I thought you moved in with your father because your mother couldn’t handle you anymore.”

He huffed an exasperated sigh. “Who told you that?”

“Several people. Tia.”

He squinted at me. “I may have said that to Tia before I really knew her. My first day in town, it got around school that my dad had been to jail. Assholes were picking on me. I hit first so nobody would hit me. That seemed to work, so I started cultivating a tough-guy rep. See how great it works? Arrrrrrrg,” he moaned with his head in his hands. “Fuck everybody.”

I’d heard him say
that
before too, but he hadn’t sounded this lost.

He looked up at me. “Everyone but you.”

“Aw,” I said. “That’s sweet, I guess.” I got up and walked over to him. He was staring at the floor again. I put my hand under his chin and lifted his head until he looked at me. “My mother’s not going to turn you in, Sawyer. That was never her intention. Being critical is her way of making small talk.” I was realizing this for the first time as I said it.

He removed my hand from his face and held it loosely between us, looking doubtfully at me.

“She grew up poor,” I said.

Sawyer gave a short nod. He needed no further explanation.

But I wanted to give him one, to show him I wasn’t completely ignorant of what this meant. “When Barrett and I were younger and she got mad at us for not working hard enough in school or refusing to eat enough dinner, she packed us in the car and drove us across town to gawk at where she grew up.” Actually,
I
was the one she always got mad at, but she often made Barrett go too, in case my bad attitude had rubbed off on him.

Sawyer gave me the mad scientist face I loved, raising one eyebrow and lowering the other. “That’s heavy.”

“I thought so too,” I said. “You got off easy.” I detangled my hand from his and rubbed his arm, trying to rub some of
his usual life back into him. “
I
was impressed with your waiter skills. I had no idea you were so highly trained. You never pull out all these stops when I come here without my parents.”

“I’m not going to do all that shit for you guys,” he muttered. “You’re my friends, and I’m in a hurry to get back to another table, and y’all aren’t going to tip me anyway.”

“Of course we tip you!” I said, thinking back to the last time Sawyer had waited on me when I’d paid for my food myself. It was the last time I’d been here, two weeks ago exactly, and I could have sworn I’d tipped him fifteen percent.

“Not when Aidan pays, you don’t.”

My hand stopped on his arm as I gaped at him.
“Really?”
I was horrified. I’d had no idea Aidan was that rude to anyone but me. And Sawyer needed the money, now more than ever.

He looked away. Even in the dim blinking lights, I could tell he was blushing.

I took both his hands in mine. “You know, your parents have a legal responsibility to take care of you until you turn eighteen.”

“Yeah, well, I’m about to turn eighteen.”

“You don’t turn eighteen until March fifteenth, Sawyer.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Why do you know when my birthday is?”

“I just do.” I didn’t let on that I’d surprised myself with this knowledge too. I knew generally when most of my friends’ birthdays were, as in, what month. I’d memorized specific days for Tia, Harper, Aidan, and Sawyer.

“That’s a long time for you to go without a real place to live,” I said. “Did your dad kick you out, or did you just leave?”

“I left,” he said darkly.

“Why?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said so vehemently that, nosey as I was, I didn’t dare try to turn over that rock again.

Instead I said, “You should talk to someone. One of the counselors at school.”

“No! Guys don’t do that.”

“Not the weird counselor with the muttonchop sideburns,” I said quickly. “The nice one, Ms. Malone. Go in and tell her whatever you don’t want to tell me. You obviously need to tell
somebody
. You’re this big ball of stress.” I reached up and rubbed his shoulders, kneading the soft notches next to his shoulder blades. Sure enough, the muscles there were tight with his anxiety. Even tighter than mine. “Promise me you’ll go Monday.”

He let out an appreciative sigh and let his head fall forward so that some strands of his hair got caught in mine. He groaned, “No.”

Leaving my hands on his shoulders, I stopped rubbing. “Promise me, and there’s more where this came from.”

“Okay,” he said instantly.

I made a few more hard circles with my fingers, then let him go. “I have something to ask you. I know we’ve been out here a while, though, and you need to go back to work. Our table from hell isn’t your only table.”

“I told another server to cover for me while I took a break,” he said. “So, yeah, I need to get back, but you can ask me something. Shoot.”

“It’s a parliamentarian question,” I said. “When Aidan broke up with me last night, he also told me to resign as vice president.”

Sawyer was shaking his head.

I went on. “I told him no. He said he would go to Ms. Yates. I said I would go to you.”

“Exactly.” Sawyer sounded like his sarcastic self again. “There’s nothing in the student council charter giving him that power. Ms. Yates knows that. After Friday’s meeting, she also knows I understand the charter, and I’d make a stink. If they tried to take the position away from you, theoretically you could sue the school system for not following its own written rules. There’s no way Principal Chen would let that happen.”

“I shouldn’t worry?” I asked. “I figured he was bluffing to see if he could make me resign.”

“No,” Sawyer said, “don’t worry. The charter gives Aidan very little power. The only reason he has power around school is that he
says
he does, and other people believe him.” He eyed me hard. By “other people” he meant me.

I would prove Sawyer wrong about this.

“Are you working tomorrow?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“All day.”

I’d been afraid of this. “All night, too?”

“Yes.”

“My parents are taking Barrett to the airport midafternoon. I’m going to make my escape, drive over here, explore some shops, and try to figure out where we might be able to hold the homecoming dance. Maybe I’ll pop in to visit you.”

“Do,” he said. “I’ll see you then.” He didn’t smile, exactly, but he looked a lot less tortured than he had when I’d come out here. I headed inside.

But as I looked back over my shoulder at him, he was staring out at the alleyway again. He ran his hand through his hair and gripped the back of his head like he wanted to pull his scalp off.

When I returned to the table, my parents were finishing their food. Barrett’s plate was empty, and several of my shrimp
had gone missing. Plopping down in my chair, I told my mother, “I hope you’re happy. You scared the life out of Saw—”

I stopped as Sawyer himself appeared between my parents. He took my mother’s plate, then Dad’s. “How was everything?” he asked in his personable waiter voice.

“Delicious,” Dad said. He ordered dessert.

My mother glared. Sawyer noticed and smiled at her. Oh, Sawyer.

As soon as he’d disappeared into the kitchen again, she told me, “I
meant
to scare the life out of him. I don’t want that boy anywhere around you, after what I just found out about his father. Did you know—”

“Sylvia, don’t,” Dad said.

My mother spoke over him. “—his father grew up here in town and actually robbed a bank branch right down the road in Clearwater? That hits a little too close to home. Seth said it wasn’t one of
my
branches, but—”

“Seth,” I repeated. The only Seth I knew was Aidan’s dad, who worked as an assistant district attorney for the county. “Did you
call Aidan’s dad
right here from the restaurant so you could convince me how terrible Sawyer is? You made him look up that case on a Saturday night?”