Sugar and Spice

Don’t be a Hero: Jay

I sat in the dirt, the brick wall between our parking lot and the Sonic parking lot cool against my back. The smoke from the joint I was sharing with Cole curled up into the humid Florida air. My hands were finally steady, but the ghost of that crash was still ringing in my ears.

“You really ate it, man,” Cole said. He sat a couple of feet away with his knees pulled up to his chest. He took a hit and exhaled slowly. “I mean, I’ve seen some spills, but that was theatrical. You had the whole lobby in a trance.”

“Shut up,” I muttered, but there was no bite in it. I stared at my beat up sneakers. “I was moving too fast, I didn’t see the corner of the rug.”

“You were moving like a madman all day,” he said, passing the joint back. “Since the second you clocked in. I was gonna ask if you replaced your stash with espresso, but then I remembered what you said yesterday.”

I took a long drag, letting the tension in my chest loosen just a little. “I was trying to stay ahead of her. Get the tables clean before she even has to look at the tablet. That was the plan anyways.”

“The plan ended with you kneeling in a pool of tea while Geri called your name like a drill sergeant,” he reminded me. “But you saw her right? Mallory? She didn’t yell at you. In fact, I think I saw a glitch in the robot. She actually looked concerned.”

“She told me not to be a hero.” I sighed, “She saw me in the back, and… I don’t know. It was weird, Cole. It was like she stopped looking at the Chaos Factor for a second and just saw me.”

“That’s the dangerous part,” Cole said, smiling. “Once she starts seeing you as a person, you’re in trouble. Next she’ll have you color coding the rotation sheet for her.”

I looked back toward the restaurant. She was still in there, somewhere. Probably resetting the whole damn lobby.

“She’s a perfectionist, Jay,” Cole continued as if he could read my mind. “You don’t fix two years of ‘Don’t look back’ mentality with one day of fast bussing. But hey, you’re off to a start, even if it ended with a faceplant.”

“I’m gonna get her to Kingsport, Cole,” I said, my voice firm. “Even if I have to carry every bus tub in there.”

He paused, looking at me over his glasses. The cynicism was gone for a moment, “You like her, don’t you?”

I didn’t answer right away. I just watched the last bit of smoke vanish into the sky. “I like that she has a plan. I like that she cares about something enough to be that high-strung. It feels like I’ve spent my life just…drifting. I don’t know. My parents never stayed in one place. I never thought about the long-term like she is because the long-term didn’t exist for me.”

“Well, try to keep the glassware in one piece tomorrow,” Cole offered softly. “It’s hard to build a bridge out of broken ceramic.”

Riley walked up then, and asked if he was ready to go. I watched them leave before getting in my car. I thought about the way her hand had felt on my arm when she helped me up. Professional, she called it. But I felt her pulse, and it hadn’t been running at corporate speed.