Sweet Girl (8 page)

I open my mouth, but she cuts me off by shaking her head.

“This was already an impossibility, but I thought maybe we could figure it out. I didn’t factor in the shorthand. Even the kitchen assistants are familiar with it before they apply here. There’s just too much you don’t know, and I can’t risk it. Thanks for trying, though. It was really nice to meet you.”

She sticks her hand out, and I am too stunned to do anything but shake it.

As I grab my bag and walk slowly out of the kitchen, I am in a daze. I don’t look at anyone or notice if anyone looks at me. I make it all the way to the hallway next to the underground employee parking garage before I stop moving. It is early afternoon, a time of day between shifts, so no one is around. I let myself lean against the wall. My backpack falls from my loose fingers to the floor, and it seems like such a good idea that I follow it. I slide down the wall and let my forehead drop to my bent knees.

How did I get here? How could I possibly have made it so close to this dream and then lost it all because I was too flipping stupid to keep my mouth shut until I figured out what was going on? If I’d taken thirty seconds to Google the shorthand, I would have realized what it was. It might have taken me longer, but I could have worked out that recipe. At the very least I could have been canned because I screwed up. Not even getting a chance to try was so much worse!

I know better than to get my hopes up. I know how minimal the chances of happiness are. How could I let my guard down? Why did I think that for once it would actually work out in my favor?

Disgusted with my line of thought, I close my eyes tightly and take several deep breaths. I will pull myself together. People go through way worse stuff than this. Hell, I’d been through way worse stuff than this. I open my eyes, and a hint of orange peeks out at me from my feet. The sight has me taking in a strangled breath. Excited about the new job, I’d gone out yesterday and bought Native Shoes in every color they had, since an online search informed me that they were the coolest nonslip shoes you could wear. They also sort of look like rubber Converse, so they seemed like the perfect choice. I’d worn the orange today in a dorky homage to Mario Batali, a fact that utterly ashames me now.

The color blurs before me, and damn it, I hate myself in that instant.

I didn’t cry when I ended up in the hospital in December. I didn’t cry when Grandma died last summer or Pop Pop the year before that. I haven’t cried since that night six years ago when my mother found me in bed, and the sight of these stupid orange shoes is going to push me over the edge!

I swipe at my eyes angrily and choke on the sobs in my chest, refusing to let them out.

I don’t even hear the group of guys until one of them speaks to me.

“Jennings?”

My head flies up in time to see Bennett effing Taylor walk down the hallway towards me with two other guys trailing behind him. They are all dressed in black jeans and black T-shirts. But unlike the other two, Taylor looks utterly shocked and totally concerned. About me.

Great. This is just absolutely flipping perfect!

I look away. I don’t have the energy to acknowledge him right now.

“You guys finish getting that step-and-repeat signage set,” he tells the other two. “I’ll meet you there in a bit.”

The guys walk past without another word while Taylor, who clearly can’t take a hint, sits down next to me. He acts like finding some chick he barely knows in tears in the garage hallway is the most normal thing in the world.

When I don’t turn my head to look his way, he tries a more direct approach.

“Are you OK?” he asks so gently that I almost start bawling again.

Jeez, I’m a mess!

“I don’t want to talk to you,” I finally croak.

“OK,” he says slowly. “Is there someone I can call for you?”

As if there were someone who I
do
want to talk to. As if I were going to lay this all out for my family or my few friends to pick through.
Hey, you didn’t know it, but I had this stupid childhood dream that I’ve secretly been obsessed with all my life. Oh yeah, and I finally got the chance to realize it, only I wasn’t good enough to pull it off, and now I’m crying alone in a hallway.

I laugh, though nothing about this is funny.

Taylor must hear the irony in the sound.

“OK.” He stretches his legs out in front of him and crosses them at the ankle in a deceptively casual manner. “So then talk to me. I’m right here.”

I wipe my eyes again and my bracelets jangle.

A fifteen-percent chance.
The memory flits through my mind, and I bat it away. I know the chances of happiness. Why did I set myself up for this?

“You said it yourself the other night,” Taylor tries again. “You don’t give a damn about my opinion, so why not just tell me what’s going on.”

He nudges my shoulder with his own playfully.

I don’t respond.

“Look, I promise I’ll go back to being patronizing and antagonistic when I see you next. We’ll forget this ever happened. Just tell me what happened.”

He is so easygoing about the whole thing, as if he is offering me a beer at a party instead of a chance to vent. But I can’t actually consider it. I don’t talk to anyone about anything. It’s just easier not to.

“I lost my job,” I utterly shock myself by saying.

“That sucks. I’m sorry,” he says gently.

I watch some tension come out of his shoulders. Maybe he was expecting something more traumatic, but he doesn’t understand how traumatic this is for me. No one does.

“You don’t understand.” I suddenly feel the need for at least one other person to understand, even if it is a near stranger.

I look up into his eyes. How had I never noticed that they are the exact color of black-forest-cake batter?

I shake my head to get rid of the thought. Rather than stare into something that prompts ridiculous analogies like that, I look down at his forearm colored in pattern and ink. I follow the lines of his tattoos in order to avoid looking at the questions in his eyes. The story comes out of my mouth without my volition. It just pours out into the quiet hallway in a near whisper.

I tell him about baking with my mom as a child and how it has always been my dream to do it professionally. I tell him about Avis Phillips and how much I admire her. How I knew she worked at the hotel and how I got a job tending bar there because even though I didn’t have the courage to try for my dream, I wanted to watch others do it. I tell him about getting the job at Dolci and convincing Joey to let me keep it. I even tell him about how excited I was to buy my shoes, which makes me cry all over again. And then, because I have no pride left, I tell him about the shorthand and how I’ve been summarily canned without ever really getting the chance to prove myself.

When I finish I feel totally deflated. I put my forehead back down on my knees. Maybe I’ll never get up from this spot. They’ll find me here years from now, a fossilized memorial to epic failure.

“OK, look.” Taylor’s voice is overly loud in the nearly empty space. “Between my mama, my gran, and my little sister, Dee Dee, I grew up surrounded by women. So I know that you’re probably not looking for a fix here. Experience tells me you’re not even looking for a pep talk; you’re just looking for someone to listen.”

For most women he’d be dead on, but I’m not most women. I don’t even really want him to listen. I can’t believe I actually told him all that; it just came out.

“But even though you’re not looking for it,” he carries on, “I’m going to give you both.”

“Both?” I ask stupidly.

“Advice and a pep talk,” he answers.

“Great,” I grumble.

My aggravation puts me back on steadier ground.

“Oh, hush,” Taylor says, sounding as southern as Landon.

When I only raise my eyebrows, he continues.

“So you don’t actually know what you’re doing. Who cares? That’s the same as half the people in this town. If this is your dream job, then you have to try. You can’t give up without a fight.”

My eyes fly to his in shock.

“I did try! They don’t want me!”

He doesn’t even flinch at my tone, just shakes his head slowly in response.

“They didn’t say they didn’t want you. They said you weren’t qualified.”

“I’m
not
qualified,” I say viciously, because it is true and I hate to admit it.

“Yeah, but can you do the job?”

“What?” I ask, confounded. What did that have to do with anything if I didn’t have the job anymore?

Taylor smiles and crosses his arms.

“When I was in the fourth grade, there was this kid named Monty Kirchner.” He looks over at me. “You following me here, Jennings?”

I cross my own arms.

“I have no idea,” I answer honestly.

“I’m an Okie,” he tells me conspiratorially. “We tend to expound on a point, and we love to share childhood stories like they’re proverbs. Just go with it, OK?”

“OK.”

“So Monty—”

“Kirchner,” I supply.

“The very same,” Taylor agrees. “He decided he hated me. I don’t know why or what I did to piss him off, but he decided he was going to beat the crap out of me. I knew this because he screamed it one day at recess. Just like that. No conversation, no chat, just those two facts screamed across the sandbox. He hated me and he was going to beat the crap out of me. Now, that might not seem like a big deal, except that I was maybe sixty pounds soaking wet, and Monty was twice my size. I know it’s hard to believe that I wasn’t always this glowing specimen you see before you.”

He winks and I roll my eyes, but he is right. He is well over six feet tall and has a full sleeve of tattoos on each arm. Even though his arms aren’t bulky, they are solid muscle, and so is the rest of him. It’s hard to imagine him as a scrawny kid.

“So Monty decided he was going to murder me, only he didn’t do it that day. It was so much worse, because he put the fear of God into me and then didn’t act on it. Every day he’d find me in the hallway or on the playground and tell me how he was going to beat the crap out of me, and every day I went home sick to my stomach. Finally, one night at dinner my mama noticed I was off my feed and asked me what was wrong. I was so keyed up that I started crying like a baby. I told her the whole story. Even though I knew she’d tell me that violence isn’t the answer and we’re supposed to love our neighbor, I was sort of hoping there was a chance she’d call the principal or let me be homeschooled or something.”

He smiles at the memory and shakes his head.

“But you know what she did, Jennings?” He looks over at me. “She got down on her knees and looked me right in the eye and asked, ‘Bennett, can you take him?’ I was so shocked I just stared at her, and so she asked again, ‘Do you think you can take him?’ The thing is, I didn’t think I could take him, but I could see in her eyes that she did. She didn’t want me to get pushed around or bullied, and she wasn’t about to let me run away. So I nodded and told her that yes ma’am, I could take him. She smiled, like she expected this all along, and then she said, ‘Bennett Taylor, you aren’t allowed to start a fight, but if you get in one, I expect you to finish it.’ You get it, Jennings? This is your fight to finish. I didn’t ask if they wanted you there or if you were qualified. I asked if you could do it. Can you?”

I think about the last few days, the last few years, and the decades before that. I look at the hallway around us and then down at the chef coat I’m still wearing and the tangerine-colored rubber shoes on my feet.

“I can,” I say, looking over at him, “but how do I convince them of that?”

It’s the first time I’ve asked anyone for advice in as long as I can remember. I can’t believe that he is who I am turning to, but he is here and I have no one else to ask.

Taylor doesn’t say anything but jumps to his feet like motion might propel us to the right answer. He reaches a hand down to me, and I let him pull me up.

“They need someone who can recreate the recipes, and I don’t understand them. It’s like they’re written in Greek!” I tell him helplessly.

He purses his lips in amusement. “Then I guess you’d better figure out how to speak their language.”

I nod in response because my mind is spinning too fast to come up with words. He is right; Joey didn’t fire me because she didn’t want me there. Hell, she is desperate, which means she’d probably take a well-trained dog right now if it meant she had a replacement. She fired me because she believes understanding the shorthand is both necessary and impossible to learn quickly. I’ll have to prove her wrong on that second part, and I need to do it in a hurry. She needs someone to do her job, and she has even less time now than she did when I met her.

I am so energized that I walk halfway down the hall before I realize what I’m doing. I pause midstep and turn back around. Taylor stands at the other end with both his hands shoved down deep in his pockets. He smiles like a proud parent, which is kind of mortifying, really.

“Did you finish it?” I ask him.

“What’s that?”

“The fight, with Monty—did you finish it?” I clarify.

“Oh, hell no.” He chuckles. “He beat the snot out of me before I could even get my fists up. But I went down swinging, Jennings. You get that?”

I nod in response. I
totally
get that.

“So you promise to go back to being a jackass the next time I see you, right?” I ask him.

He laughs once. “Absolutely.”

“OK then.” I fiddle with my bracelets nervously and then take a deep breath. I’m not a child; I shouldn’t be nervous. “Thank you,” I tell him sincerely. “Seriously, thank you so much.”

Taylor grins and a single dimple catches my attention. He rubs his jaw self-consciously. It is the first time I’ve seen him look embarrassed.

“You’re welcome,” he says. “I’ll see you around, Jennings.”

I pull my backpack onto my shoulders as a plan already begins to form in my mind. I am heading down the hallway when Taylor’s laugh catches up with me.

“Out of curiosity,” he calls, “where are you headed now?”