CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Riley
I stepped out of the Williamsburg clothing boutique and rolled my neck around to get out all the kinks. A week without a full-time job hadn’t felt like a break from work at all. Any time I hadn’t spent working at the bar or sleeping, I’d used up with job hunting.
The first thing I’d done was check to see if there were any more shifts open at the bar. Since there weren’t, I’d resorted to running around Brooklyn and Manhattan, dropping off resumes. I’d left them at coffee shops, clothing stores, and bakeries. Even though I was considering going back to school as soon as I could, I still needed a second job to save up some money. I wasn’t thrilled about the prospect, but I hoped any new job I got wouldn’t be as crazy as Crumbs.
Right now, it was those little things that kept me going. It was the promise of a better future. And thank God I had that, because the last few weeks had been littered with nothing but disappointment and confusion.
I’d told Xavier I needed some time to think about us, but I knew the second I left that coffee shop I didn’t have to spend any more brain power on the subject. Xavier and I were different people. We wanted very different things. I should have just counted my lucky stars that I found the truth out two weeks in and not six months or a year later.
Though I felt decisive about it, I still hadn’t texted or called to let him know. I couldn’t explain my actions, really. Maybe I hoped he’d suddenly change his mind about me, so I kept the door open.
With each day that passed, though, I saw more and more of the light. Xavier wasn’t the kind of man I was looking for. I wanted something similar to what I had with Jesse. I wanted a boyfriend. Preferably one who would stick around.
It hurt to realize it couldn’t be Xavier, but what could I do? Stay in bed all day and cry? Stalk him and beg him to be mine?
The dreams weren’t making it easy. Every night, like clockwork, I put my head on my pillow and Xavier was there. Touching me. Tasting me. Looking at me through those soft, gray eyes. Except in my dreams, he was different. He was the real Xavier, the one I’d never gotten to know. He wasn’t the man who kept me at arm’s length and lived in the shadows. He was the one who loved freely and embraced life.
I knew that Xavier existed. He was there, just below the mask. There had been fleeting moments where he showed himself, like in the lake. Maybe one day he’d fully expose himself. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be around to see that happen.
I blinked back tears as I walked down the sidewalk. At least I’d learned a lesson. If a man looked and smelled like trouble, he probably was. There was no shame in running for the hills the moment he first said hello.
Arriving at Joe’s Tavern, I waved my hello to Bobby, the bartender. Delphine and Janet, the two other waitresses for the night, were already prepping for our shift. I jumped to it and pulled my hair into a high ponytail, then got to work refilling the salt and pepper shakers. Delphine and Janet were both fast workers, and also cheerful. They talked about their weeks while we got the bar ready to go. When they asked about what was going on in my life, I gave a quick and general answer. I wasn’t ready to talk about what happened with Xavier, and I didn’t know if I would ever be.
Business came in at a trickling pace for the first few hours. At dinnertime, we got slammed like we usually did. A big group from a nearby law firm came in, and the place became packed nearly shoulder to shoulder. Janet, Delphine, and I were hopping, jumping around so fast our heels rarely touched the floor.
The intensity the bar offered me was good. When it got busy like this, there was no time to think about anything other than getting drink orders right and making sure fries were coming out of the kitchen on time. My personal life and all its woes were a million miles away.
The big group started to peter out around ten, and by midnight, we were back to a slow flow of business. Delphine and I sat at the cocktail bar near the back getting a head start on organizing the night’s tickets.
“Ugh,” Delphine spat and held a receipt up to show me an eight percent tip. “What the fuck is wrong with people?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“I gave them excellent service. Excellent.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, and they probably thought they were rewarding you immensely for it with an eight percent tip.”
We both burst into giggles. “True,” she agreed. Her eyes slid over my shoulder and then dropped down to the pile of receipts. “Don’t look, but some guy is staring at you.”
“Huh?” My shoulders immediately tensed up. There was one person I thought of right away. It couldn’t be him. Could it?
“What does he look like?” I asked with a dry tongue.
Delphine surreptitiously checked the guy out. “Blond. Kind of effeminate.” She started laughing again.
“Oh.”
“That’s not your type?”
“No, I just...” Was hoping it was someone else. “I’m just tired of customers hitting on me.”
“Join the club.” She secured her pile of receipts with a paper clip and stood up. “I’m going to get started on the ice. You got the bathrooms?”
“Yeah. I’ll do them last thing.”
Delphine winked. “Good thinking. You wouldn’t want to clean them only to have some drunk guy pee all over the walls.”
She walked off to take care of her side work. I slowly slid off my stool, stuffed my receipts into my black book, and refastened my apron. When I turned around, I nearly fell over backward.
“Sorry,” the guy standing a few feet away said. He reached his arm out and momentarily touched my elbow. “I didn’t mean to surprise you. I just didn’t want to interrupt what you were doing.” He gave me a lopsided grin.
Going purely off the blond hair and pink button-up, I assumed this was the guy Delphine was talking about.
“It’s all right,” I told him. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Still, I feel bad.” He squinted his eyes and studied my face. “Sorry, I don’t mean to stare. It’s just… I saw you over here, and you look so familiar.”
“Do I?” I gazed back at the man in front of me, trying to figure out if I’d seen him around anywhere. “I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize you. Where do you think you might know me from?”
He snapped his fingers in excitement. “I know! Do you know Xavier Fields?”
My heart twisted in agony at the name. It was one thing to have it constantly on repeat in my head and another to have someone else say it out loud. Those four syllables burned my ears, a painful reminder of what I might have had but never would.
“Yes,” I responded, pulling my shoulders back straighter. “I know him.”
“Oh, cool. I’m Seth Wasser.”
He extended his hand, and I shook it. “Riley Carson.”
“I saw you two together, maybe about a week ago. You were having coffee. I would have come over and said hello, but it looked like you two were having a pretty important conversation.”
“Oh.” I sounded like a dumbass, but I couldn’t get anything else out. My heart was still spasming in pain, and my brain wasn’t working right.
Seth seemed completely oblivious to the effect the conversation was having on me. He stuck his hands in his pockets and kept grinning. “So, how do you know him?”
“Just from… around… a club. We met at a club.” Talking about Enigma was almost as painful as talking about Xavier, since it was the place we met. I glanced over Seth’s shoulder, hoping some new customers had come in. I desperately needed to escape this conversation. Unfortunately, the bar was even emptier than it had been ten minutes ago.
“Nice, nice. He’s an interesting guy. Are you two…?” Seth raised an eyebrow and waited for me to answer the unfinished question.
“No,” I said tartly. “We’re not.” I sucked in a burning breath and crossed my arms.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to assume. I just saw you together, and I thought—”
“Nope. Nothing is going on with us.”
Seth kept going, waving his hand, and talking like he hadn’t heard me. “I mean, I see Xavier with a lot of girls, so it’s hard to know sometimes. They could be the flavor of the minute or just a friend, or, you know… anything else.”
I bristled. “I’m definitely none of those things.”
“Ah.” His eyes started to dance in a new way. “I know this might be a bit forward of me, but would you like to get drinks sometime? At somewhere other than the place you work?” He smiled wide, looking extremely pleased with himself.
I bit down on my bottom lip so hard I felt skin tear. “That’s nice of you, thank you. But I’m not really dating right now.”
“I understand. It could be super chill. No pressure whatsoever. It’s just that you seem like a nice girl.”
The casualness of his words did something positive to me. Seth wasn’t suave like Xavier. He was not eloquent and slick. He was real, and I found myself liking it. Still, it had only been a week since everything went down with Xavier. I’d need at least a couple more months of sitting on the couch eating ice-cream and watching Sex and the City before I could think of dipping my toe back into the dating pool. I’d waited a year, and my first attempt blew up in my face. If there was such a lame thing as PTSD from dating, I was pretty sure I had it.
“Thank you,” I honestly responded. “If it were another time, I would probably say yes. There’s just a lot going on in my life right now.”
“I understand.” He pulled a white business card out of his pocket and offered it to me. “Hit me up anytime you like. Again, it can be super chill. Do you like sailing?”
“I don’t know,” I laughed. “I’ve never been.”
“Perfect.” He grinned, showing off a row of straight, white teeth. “I could give you a lesson.”
I glanced down at the card in my hand. Seth’s name, phone number, and e-mail was printed on it, but nothing else.
“I hope to hear from you soon.” He gave me a kind of two-finger salute as a goodbye and walked away. I watched him cross the floor and exit the bar.
Not five seconds later, Delphine was at my side. “Was that creeper hitting on you?”
“He was actually nice.”
“Hmm.” Delphine’s lips twisted. “If you say so. Hey, table four just got sat. You want it?”
“Yeah, I’ll take it.”
I tucked Seth’s card into my apron and went to greet the new party. Business picked up slightly, and I spent the rest of the night stabbing tickets and refilling beer pitchers. The whole time, though, I was aware of Seth’s card burning a hole in my apron.
I probably wouldn’t call him up, even once I felt ready to date again. Still, being asked out was nice. It brought back a little bit of the hope I’d felt earlier in the day. My life would feel right again soon. Knowing I could be in the dumps but still look forward to the future brought the first genuine smile in a week to my face.