Slow Twitch - Реинхардт Лиз (читать книги онлайн без сокращений TXT) 📗

“What’s the matter?” I asked, panicked. I put the drill on the table and put my arms around her. She was so small, it was like holding a rag doll. Not that I’d held many in my life. “Do you hate it? The resolution is kind of shitty, but I thought they looked pretty good.”

“No.” She shook her head hard. “How can you think I hate it? I love…I love…” She flapped her arms up and down, like she had no words for what she loved.

“Well, you just tell me what you like and we’ll do it, okay?” I kissed her forehead.

She patted my back, then squeezed the skin at my hips and kissed my cheeks.

Living with Aunt Helene had changed a lot of what I thought were truths about me and life. For example, I had always thought of myself as a lazy fuck with no motivation. A few weeks ago, if someone had told me that I would tackle a few dozen home improvement projects in addition to having a full time job this summer, I would have laughed my ass off.

I never imagined that it would feel so good to have someone leave me a plate of pork chops and cabbage in the oven. I never thought I’d start getting to bed at a normal time and waking up in the morning ready to do something other than snort a line of coke and jerk around.

And, most of all, I never imagined that it would all feel so fucking good. That I would actually prefer a life of mundane, blue-collar work in a falling-down house with an ancient aunt and a group of crazy coworkers to my privileged existence as a lonely pampered fucking prince in a cold-ass mansion.

I got ready for work while Aunt Helene fried up some more of her incredible cookies. When I was ready, she handed me a wax paper bag, splotchy with delicious, buttery oil, and I kissed her cheek and headed out to Pamela’s car.

“Cookies, compliments of Aunt Helene.” I tossed the bag to Jimmy who cheered, stuffed his face, and passed the cookies around.

Cadence sat stiffly in her seat, pressing down on the pleats of her skirt.

“Hey.” She didn’t even glance at me.

“Hey,” I answered. “So, are you ready for a laugh fest?”

She smiled a tiny, tiny smile. “You have to try,” she said earnestly. “Today is going to be crazy. I…I tried to talk Mom into getting someone else to do it. I think you’re too new. But she said you were here to work. And she said she has a feeling about you.”

“Then listen to her,” Pamela interrupted.

Cadence and I both looked up, surprised. It was a tiny ass car, for God’s sake. It wasn’t like any of us imagined that anything we said was truly private. We were all always eavesdropping. We just had the good tact to not interfere where we weren’t wanted.

“She’s smart,” Pamela continued. “And she knows things. You know what I mean.”

Jimmy, Cadence, and Pamela all nodded, and I felt a little creeped out. What exactly had Rosalie said about me? Because, apparently, what she said was pretty much gospel. Before I had too much time to freak myself out, we were at the diner, piling out of the car. For a minute, we stood outside in the hot, promising Jersey sun, willing the work night to be over already. But we couldn’t kid ourselves. We had to go through with this, so we might as well not fuck around about it.

Pamela and Jimmy headed inside, where she was an indoor waitress and he was a fountain boy, one of the kids who filled drinks for the outside waiters and waitresses. It was too risky to come in and out of the restaurant on skates, so there was this little alcove right by the kitchen and soda fountain with a window. When you worked outside, you stuck your head through the window and sent your order tickets in and got drinks set up for you. Then you took the drinks out to the waiting cars and went back to pick up the food orders. Same as a regular waiting job. Except you were on skates.

“So, um, how do you want to split it?” Cadence asked. Three cars had just pulled up. “We can do, like assigned spaces or we can just switch off.”

“How do you like to do it?” I asked, adding enough sexual suggestion to my voice to give her the assurance that I meant more than I was saying.

She looked alarmed. “Stop it, Saxon,” she said firmly. “This is work, okay? I take it seriously. No more bullshit.” Before I could reply, she flicked a gaze at the cars. “You work all even numbered spots, I’ll work the odds. And we’ll take turns skating the circuit in case people pull in across the lot.”

“Okay.” The diner was designed in a huge circle, so you could potentially have two cars parked on opposite sides of the circle and not notice one at all. And since customers at any eatery are ninety percent tools, it usually worked out exactly that way, according to Cadence.

I skated to my first car. Two older guys.

“Can’t we pick our server?” one griped.

They were livery-speckled old fucks who finally had the money to drive the car the guys who used to beat them up in high school drove. And they were leering at Cadence in a way that made me pretty hot. I didn’t have once fucking fraction of an ounce of guilt because they were old as fuck. I was ready to beat their ancient grandpa asses.

“Strip club’s down the road,” I sneered. “You want to eat or not?”

They muttered about the shitty service, but gave me the order anyway. I skated back to the booth. Cadence was there, her orders under the silver bell she was ringing.

“Here.” She handed me a miniature photo-copied menu. “It’s for trainees. I forgot to give you one.”

“I already know it,” I tossed it onto the counter, “but thanks.”

“You know the whole menu? Prices and all?” She leaned against the low red counter. Her legs were so long and tan, I couldn’t help but think about getting wrapped in them. I had to lean over her to put my ticket down, and I could smell the sweet smell of her hair. I put a hand on her waist, as if I were steadying myself.

“You okay?” She grabbed my forearm.

I made my best wussy/worried face. “Yeah. Just getting my bearings.”

Her green eyes narrowed a little. “I watched you skate to the booth backwards.”

“Yeah, well, it comes and goes,” I said offhandedly.

She shook her head, then bent over a list of drinks, some scratched out. “Write your drink orders here for Jimmy,” she murmured. “He gets ten percent of our tips.”

“The car I just took wanted you.” I flicked my thumb their way. “Some old geezers.”

She peeked out of the window. Thank God this little booth was air conditioned. It had to be almost a hundred degrees outside.

“In the blue convertible?” She leaned over to see better, and I saw the edge of her little cheerleader bottoms under her skirt.

I shook obscene thoughts out of my head and tried to focus on work. “Yeah.”

She sighed. “Damn it. They tipped me a twenty last week.”

“Doesn’t it feel a little whorish?” Alright, I was being a prick, but I was kind of hoping she’d ask why I hadn’t given her the customers, and then I was hoping she would be thankful that I was protecting her honor.

“I didn’t fuck them,” she said, her eyes suddenly that angry girl bright that’s just no good.

“I didn’t say that.” I sat on the counter and watched her lean over and add her tickets up, slashing numbers on the paper with neat, precise jabs of fury.

“You implied it,” she growled through her clamped teeth. “It’s money, Saxon. If they like the way I look and the way I smile, and that makes them leave me more, then good. Good for me.”

“Fine,” I snorted. “I’ll pass the next old perverts along.”

“Oh, don’t worry, you’ll get your share,” she seethed. “Though, I bet when it’s some old woman drooling over you, it won’t be whorish, right? It will just be making tips.” She tossed her black hair over her shoulder and shook her head. “Un-fucking-believable.”

“Sorry,” I said, pissed that my intentions wound up being so far off the mark. “I didn’t know that you were so sensitive about it.” Or I could have just said, ‘ You should throw a super hissy fit and scream at me now.’