Smart Mouth Waitress (Romantic Comedy) (Life in Saltwater City) Read online

  I tried to push away my annoyance and accept my best friend for being imperfect, but the new girlfriend had been nothing but trouble, and I hadn't even met her yet.

  Once in bed, I couldn't get my pillow quite right. Without my dreads, I was missing something. My head was naked.

  I wondered how the people at work would react. I wondered if guys would suddenly start flirting with me.

  The next morning, shampooing was pretty delightful. So delightful, I did it twice. When you have dreadlocks, you still shampoo and condition your hair, mostly the scalp, but you have to do it gently so you don't unravel the dreads. That morning, I gave myself the most wonderful scalp massage. With a big grin on my face, I felt like one of those ridiculously happy girls in a shampoo commercial.

  The only problem was the amount of hair that came off in my hands disturbed me. After all the shedding I'd done the night before, still more was coming out? I didn't want it to go down the drain and mess up the ancient pipes in our house, so I plastered a clump of my hair against the tile wall in the shower, to be retrieved later. The clump looked like a furry little monster, so I made him a smaller clump as a friend.

  I spent so long in the shower, I didn't have any time to put on my usual makeup, which for the last couple of years had been a thick, black, liquid eyeliner that covered a lot of eyelid, plus gobs of mascara on top and bottom. If I'd had time, I would have penciled in my pale eyebrows—they're quite sparse at the outside edges, thanks to my Scottish-English heritage—to give my face more balance.

  Most white girls my age with dreadlocks wear flowing skirts and no makeup, going for that hippie look, but I liked my black jeans and big boots, the more buckles the better. You might say my look was Edward Scissorhands, except female, and with lighter hair. If I got a good dose of pale streaks, I could almost call myself a blonde. My hair looked more colorful out of the dreads, which by comparison had a gray cast. The ends Jay had chopped off were in my garbage can, and looking at them in there with garbage and wrappers gave me an ick feeling.

  I was already late for work, though, so I had to skip makeup entirely, for the first time in forever. I dashed down to the front door with my wet hair falling to my shoulders in light waves. Mom hadn't taken all her shoes and clothes with her, and she wasn't around to say no, so I helped myself to a pair of her light brown, suede pirate boots and her matching jacket. They went well with the ivory-colored gypsy dress I'd also liberated from her closet.

  As I opened the front door, my brother's alarm clock went off upstairs, which meant I was two minutes late leaving.

  As I stepped out the front door, I felt several pounds lighter—even though the dreadlocks couldn't have weighed more than a few ounces—and like an entirely new person. When I reached my hand into Mom's jacket pocket, I found a pink, sparkly lipstick. Just for kicks, I put on the lipstick before I walked in the back door of The Whistle.

  “You can't use that door,” one of our cooks, Donny, said.

  “Try and stop me, hamster biceps,” I said.

  He did an honest-to-goodness double-take. He literally looked at me, looked away, then his head went BOING and he looked back at me, mouth open and everything. It was priceless.

  “Smokin' hot!” he said.

  After that, my mood was really great for all of five seconds, until I saw the heart-shaped birthmark on the back of Donny's neck and remembered I was down a set of dreadlocks but not up by a boyfriend yet.

  “You're a guy,” I said to Donny, whose age I hadn't been able to pin down, but was likely somewhere between thirty and forty.

  “Was it the sideburns that tipped you off?” he replied as he rearranged a row of sizzling bacon.

  Behind me, Toph laughed. He normally worked as a prep cook, and had only helped me serve tables the day before when Courtney had called in “sick.” Toph is about my age, but a good twenty pounds lighter, so I always thought of him as a kid. He laughed at the cooks' jokes like it was a job requirement. Toph didn't find me very funny, but at least I had the customers to abuse.

  “Donny, how do girls flirt? Teach me how to flirt,” I said.

  “Don't play games,” he said, flashing me his custom-designed black and titanium wedding band. “If you like a guy, tell him you like him.”

  “Ugh, you're so old. Hey, kid.” I poked Toph in the arm. “In your fantasies, when a girl flirts with you, what does she do?”

  “She calls me by name,” he said.

  “You guys are not helping.”

  “Your hair looks pretty,” Toph said. “You look softer.”

  “Ew, are you flirting with me?”

  Donny made a horrible buzzer sound. “Wrong. Bad Perry. Bad. Why don't you try again. Try flirting with young Toph here.”

  “Your name is Toph?” I held my hands up to my face, pretending I hadn't known. “Oh, God, I think I just threw up in my mouth.”

  Again, Donny made the buzzer sound. As much as I didn't want to flirt with Toph, I wanted to hear the buzzer sound even less, so I tried again.

  I stepped a little closer to Toph and straightened out my posture, which thrust my chest ahead. “You really know your way around a potato peeler,” I said.

  Donny made the buzzer sound.

  “Do you come here often?” I asked.

  Buzzer sound.

  “You actually have really nice eyes,” I said to Toph, who was being very quiet. “They're, like, not green and not brown, but in between. They're kinda … smoldering.”

  I braced myself for Donny's buzzer sound, but it didn't happen.

  Young Toph blushed and dropped the potato he was peeling into the peels bucket.

  “That's it?” I said to Donny.

  “You got it,” he said.

  I gave Donny a coy look. “You have really nice sideburns. I like how they frame your face.”

  “Aw, thanks, I like to shape them—hey, are you doing it? Are you flirting with me?”

  “I'm on fire,” I said.

  Donny wagged a finger at me. “Never say that phrase in a kitchen.”

  I hung my borrowed brown jacket up on the wall. Usually, I wore a loose cardigan over my shirt so guys wouldn't eye-grope my boobs, but I was turning over a new leaf in my quest for love, and they could eye-grope away, within reason. The ivory dress I'd borrowed had shirring at the top, so it wasn't too clingy. I felt like a Roman goddess, or at least like someone playing one on HBO.

  I stepped out to the dining area and was greeted by an appreciative wolf whistle, courtesy of my best friend, Courtney. I can whistle a pretty good tune, mostly on-pitch, but I can't do the big, loud whistle with my fingers in my mouth, like Courtney can. It's one of the many, many awesome things about her.

  Another awesome thing about Courtney is she came out as a lesbian when she was sixteen, and she'd been so cool about it. For example, if someone at our high school called someone gay in a mocking way, Courtney wouldn't make a big scene and embarrass them if it was their first offense. She would gently take them aside and explain how insensitive it was, unless you were genuinely saying it as a compliment and you were also an out gay person. If it was a person's second offense, though, Courtney would let them have it. I saw her punch a big guy in the face once, and while I know it's wrong to use violence to support a cause, it was still pretty damn cool.

  Courtney is Chinese-Canadian and barely over five feet tall, so she can get away with stuff like that, like how tiny chihuahuas can bite people or hump their legs and not get put down for public safety and decency.

  The Whistle was still empty, with the first of the Monday morning breakfast customers not there yet, and Courtney was filling the ketchups, using a funnel. “Stay back,” she called out in warning. “I just crop-dusted over here.”

  I kept a safe distance from her morning fart zone, on the other side of the bar, where I rolled up sets of utensils in napkins.

  “I take it by the wolf whistle, you like my new hair?”

  “I thought you were joking when you texted me.
Give me a minute and I want to come over there and pet you like a llama.” She made a face. “Too much broccoli.”

  For the record, Courtney doesn't look like someone who would be so proud of the power of her methane production. She always has perfect hair—a chin-length bob—and her makeup is magazine-perfect. The girl wears false eyelashes, and not just for special events, but every single day. The eyelashes are pretty, and they change the fold of her upper eyelids, giving her a more Western eye. She'd alternate between moaning about Asian girls who had eyelid-fold surgery done, berating them, and talking about getting it done herself. Like most people, she was a study in contradiction.

  After Courtney was done with the ketchup, she ran over to me at the bar and admired my hair close up. “It's darker than I remember. Must be because you're older now.”

  “I'm eighteen, not nineteen like you, old lady.” My hair had air-dried and was fluffy and soft around my face. “What do you think? Is this boy-friendly hair? I want to get some dates, like, immediately.”

  “Who are you, and what have you done to Perry?”

  “I've had an attack of the boy crazies.”

  She tilted her head and looked wistful. “I miss your hair snakes. Did you keep them? I'm doing some found-art pieces and I could use something disturbing. Ooh, can I have your old dreads? Can I?”

  Before I could tell her they were in my bathroom garbage bin, we both turned to look at the front door, still closed. This happens all the time, and my best guess, other than we're psychic, is that a human body in front of the restaurant's doorway absorbs both street noise and sunlight—not dramatically, but just enough that you can always tell when you're about to get the first customer of the day.

  A familiar-looking guy reached for the door.

  “There's your future boyfriend,” Courtney said.

  I chortled. “Crossword Guy? No way.”

  She ran to greet him and quickly escorted him to one of my tables, by the window on my side.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I whirled around, surprised to find Donny outside of his kitchen cave. “Practice your flirting on that guy.”

  “I take back what I said about your sideburns. They're too pointy.”

  “He wants coffee,” Courtney said, gliding by.

  I rolled my eyes so hard I worried I may have hurt myself. “My wish is his command,” I said in my robot voice. “I am the Waitress Two Thousand, I live to service.”

  Crossword Guy was, surprise-surprise, doing the crossword puzzle when I brought him his coffee and white ceramic mini-pitcher of cream. He wasn't doing just any crossword puzzle, but the New York Times crossword puzzle, as he'd mentioned to me on several occasions.

  I felt the buzz of knowing Courtney and Donny were observing me.

  Turn on the charm, said the troublemaker voice in my head. Charm practice wasn't a terrible idea. If I could flirt with Crossword Guy, I could flirt with anyone. I was about to get my Bachelor's Degree in Flirting.

  Instead of my usual opening, something along the lines of, “Well? What do you want?” I smiled wide, revealing many teeth. I couldn't think of anything remotely flirty, so I didn't say a word.

  After what felt like an eternity, he looked up from his just-started crossword puzzle, surprised. “You're stealthy,” he said.

  I smiled wider.

  “What's the special today?” he asked.

  Was he serious? The muscles around my eyes tensed, wanting to narrow to little straight lines of are-you-kidding-me while I pointed to the clearly visible specials chalkboard, but instead, I recited Donny's special for the day: eggs benny with fresh spinach and turkey bacon.

  Crossword Guy always had hard-poached eggs on dry toast, and I resented him dicking with me by asking about the special when he and I both knew he was going to order the same thing he had every Monday, but I was in Flirt Mode, and as I understood it, that meant I had to be nice, and not a smart mouth.

  “Spinach and turkey bacon sounds great,” he said. “I'll have that.”

  You could have tipped me over like a sleeping cow of urban legend—that's how surprised I was.

  “Terrific!” I said.

  “Thank you!” he said, and he did something I'd never witnessed Crossword Guy do before. I'd assumed he was missing the crucial muscles to do so, but he actually smiled.

  Just then, the sun came out from behind a cloud. The nearly-empty restaurant filled up with light and kindness. Crossword Guy had a nice smile. A handsome face. Sparkly brown eyes. Soft brown hair with not too much hair product. Tortoiseshell glasses that complemented his bone structure. And surrounding him was a light odor that wasn't horrible—not the Axe Body Spray the boys in my old high school masked their overactive sweat glands with, but something that smelled like an adult, and yet not quite Dad-territory.

  He picked up his blue pen and returned to the crossword puzzle. That was it? We were having a moment; didn't he know?

  In a daze, I meandered back to the pass-through window that opened to the kitchen.

  “Sock it to me,” Donny said.

  “I'm crushing on Crossword Guy.”

  “Are you high? Give me the order. He's having the hard-poached eggs, right?”

  “No, he's having the special.”

  Donny dropped his mouth open in mock horror, then said, “He's ordered the same thing every Monday for a year, and today he's having the special? Courtney, come quick!” Courtney looked up from the radishes she was carving on the prep counter. “Our little Perry is all grown-up,” Donny said.

  Courtney, who was messing around with the garnishes, held up a thumb-shaped radish. “Does this look phallic to you guys?”

  Toph came over to examine the long radish and Donny threw the pink slab of turkey bacon on the grill.

  Everybody was going about their regular business, but inside, I felt like I was standing still and twirling at the same time. I had a crush on someone, for the first time in years. Not since Scott Weaver had I allowed myself to have flippy-floppy feelings for a guy who wasn't completely unavailable due to being a member of a cute boy band, or a famous actor playing a TV vampire that was pure evil some seasons and the good guy other seasons.

  More customers came in and I sat them in my section, feeling the sensation of Crossword Guy's gaze on me. As I took the next table's order, my consciousness left my body, and I saw myself from the perspective of an outside observer. My mouth got dry from nerves, like I was on stage performing. Crossword Guy could hear what I was saying. He was listening, I just knew it, and assessing me. Analyzing me. Trying to figure me out.

  Dread washed over me as I remembered why I don't like having crushes on non-celebs. I don't like losing control and acting like a loser.

  An hour later, Crossword Guy was still at his table, though the puzzle was surely finished. I thought about withholding coffee refills so he wouldn't stay as long, but instead I found myself smiling like an idiot and refilling his mug every time the level went down by more than an inch.

  He looked up at me, the light speckles in his mottled glasses picking up the same highlights that were in his eyes. He said, “Sheesh, if you keep filling my coffee, I'll never leave and do my studying. Seems like you want to keep me here all day.”

  “Maybe I do, cutie,” I said.

  Yeah, I called him cutie. Right to his face.

  The thing about my smart mouth is I have zero control over it. Some people's words pass through a filter before they talk—you can see it on their faces as they rehearse their sentences quickly before speaking. While they're figuring out what to say, I've already said three things, two of them socially inappropriate. Apparently, when I'm in flirt mode, it's no different.

  To follow up, I giggled, which was quickly echoed by Courtney, who stood nearby, refilling water glasses.

  When I looked up and caught her attention, she crossed her eyes and gave me a stupid look, making fun of me.

  Eventually, I stopped refilling Crossword Guy's coffee and dropped off his
bill. Finally, he left.

  I slumped over in relief. I'd been holding my stomach in and maintaining perfect posture, with my shoulders back and everything, for well over an hour. My head felt light whenever I turned around, but that could have been partly due to the lack of heavy dreadlocks.

  Courtney cleared Crossword Guy's table and handed me the tip. “Generous today,” she said, passing me some cash and a colored postcard.

  “He left this?” I asked, but before Courtney answered, I'd flipped the card over and seen his note, in the same blue pen he'd used to solve his crossword puzzle.

  This is my friend's art show. You should drop by. -Marc.

  Crossword Guy asked me out!

  Chapter 4

  I examined the card in my hands, the casual maybe-date invite from Crossword Guy, a.k.a. Marc.

  The art on the front was abstract, all swirls and swooshes that looked like something anyone can do, but probably takes years of training to get just right.

  Courtney tugged me down so she could put her chin on my shoulder and read the postcard. “You should go. Tomorrow night? I'll go with you,” Courtney said. “Is there free wine? Do we have to buy anything?”

  “Courtney, you have exactly as much information as I do. How would I know if there's free wine?”

  “Sometimes the wine is by donation, so bring some five dollar bills.”

  “I'm not going! I acted like a total loser serving him breakfast, and I'm on my home turf here.”

  We stood together by the kitchen window and Courtney petted my hair down on both sides of my face. “There, there, puppy. Hey, your makeup is all different. You look pretty. Give me some of that lipstick.”

  “Kiss, kiss!” Donny called out from the kitchen side. We girls tended to think of that zone behind the bar as private space, because it was away from the dining customers, but the sound funneled right into the kitchen.