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

  “That would be Marc's ex-girlfriend,” Cooper said.

  “No kidding.” Suddenly I was feeling very bland and regretting wearing a pearl-button cardigan over my borrowed green dress instead of my puffy army jacket. “He dates girls with blue hair?” I asked.

  Cooper turned to study them, rubbing his eyebrow. “The exact opposite, actually. He doesn't like the weird hair and tattoos. She didn't look that way a year ago. She was sweet and innocent-looking.” He took another sip of his wine.

  “Sounds like you're pretty hard-up for her yourself.”

  He spat wine out of his mouth in a spray. “She's my sister.”

  “She's a lovely girl. Ah, I see it now, a bit. Do you both have some of that quality Scottish DNA?”

  “Not that I know of.” His mouth twisted with amusement, which made my head feel light and my smile grow wider.

  I turned back to the canvas, which truly was growing on me. “I'm actually digging the art now,” I said. “Don't get your hopes up—I'm not buying any, but I like what you're doing here.”

  “If you're not buying, I'd better go chat up some rich ladies who are.”

  “You should.”

  He continued to stand in front of me, so I grabbed him by the elbows and rotated him to face the crowd of people who'd just walked in.

  He turned his face toward me, ducking his chin to his shoulder, and said, “I'm scared, Peridot. Give me a push.”

  Standing behind him, I looped my arms under his and waved my hands in front of him, like they were his. “Don't be scared, I'll be your hands. We'll do it together.”

  Cooper transferred his empty wine glass to my left hand, then tucked his hands behind his back and pressed his arms down, gripping my arms firmly, so I was stuck with him, being his arms. I rested my face between his shoulder blades and enjoyed the contact.

  He walked us up to a lady and said, “Hello, I'm Cooper. Shake my little girlie hand.”

  The lady went along with it and shook my hand like a champ. “No wonder your work shows such sensitivity,” she said.

  “All in my magic hands,” he said.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder—Marc, looking embarrassed on my behalf. “I didn't think you'd come,” he said.

  “Try and stop me.”

  I withdrew my arms, and Cooper carried on without missing a beat, talking to the interested lady about the relative light temperature of rooms facing north versus rooms facing west.

  Marc said something else as we walked toward an empty corner to talk, but I couldn't hear him over the noise. The gallery had filled up—there must have been a hundred people—and the bare concrete floors and white walls did nothing to buffer the noise. Back at The Whistle, we have an acoustic-tile ceiling, painted teal, to help keep the din of conversation pleasant in such a crammed space.

  Marc repeated himself for the third time, nearly shouting, “I like your buns!”

  I had forgotten my hair was twisted up in two buns and thought he was being extremely cheeky, so I said, “You can grab them if you want.”

  He reached up gingerly and touched my hair, to my disappointment. “This look is so much better for you than the dirty mats.”

  “They're not mats, they're called dreads. And they weren't dirty. I washed them once a week.”

  “Well, I'm glad they're gone.” He wasn't looking at me, but near me, over my shoulder. “You look nice.”

  I turned to see his ex nearby, the one with the blue hair and the butterfly tattoos.

  “Marc, do you have really rigid ideas about how a woman should look?”

  With that, I had his full attention. He looked deep into me with his gold-flecked, light brown eyes that matched his tortoiseshell-framed glasses. I had a crush on him, and a separate but equally strong crush on those glasses. I wanted to put them in my mouth.

  “I'm a fan of authenticity,” he said. “Truth. Honesty. Not artifice.”

  “I'm down with authenticity.”

  “Says the girl with the false eyelashes,” he said.

  I'd forgotten I was wearing those, courtesy of Courtney's supply. They weren't so uncomfortable after all, once you got used to them. “What's wrong with a little window dressing?”

  He tugged at his shirt collar, and I realized he was wearing an actual tie, along with pants and a jacket that could have come from my father's closet. I was used to seeing him in more casual clothes, but I liked him in a suit. The tie, however, could have been more interesting.

  “The art's great,” I said. Behind Marc, Courtney passed by, giving me a subtle thumbs-up.

  Brightly, he said, “Thanks for coming by. These events always go better when there's a crowd.”

  He reached his hand out and shook mine, which seemed formal, but appropriate enough for the sophisticated atmosphere. I turned to look for Courtney, to re-introduce them now that we were outside the restaurant, but she'd disappeared on me. When I turned back, Marc had also disappeared into the crowd.

  I couldn't see Blue Hair in the gallery, and I had a feeling Marc was off somewhere with her. Later on, after I left the art show, I would become angry at him for inviting me out and then not paying attention to me, but, in the moment, in the crowd, I was simply confused.

  I was lost.

  The first time I'd walked home from school by myself, as a little kid, I took a wrong turn and ended up on a street that looked like the one I lived on, complete with a house that looked like mine, but wasn't mine. I couldn't figure out what to do next, and feared if I kept walking, I'd only get more lost, so I sat down on the sidewalk and waited for my mother to come find me.

  The problem with being lost at the art show was nobody would be coming for me.

  A waiter passed by with a tray of something aromatic. “Yes, please,” I said to get his attention.

  He tilted the tray my way, displaying crumbs and prawn tails. “I'm afraid that's the last of them.”

  “No kidding. All the good ones are taken. Isn't that always the way.”

  He gave me a quick nod and disappeared as well.

  Courtney and Britain were engrossed in conversation with some other girls who looked a little familiar.

  I stood near a wall, as forlorn as a dog turd in the middle of the sidewalk, and mumbled to myself, “I do not speak any English.”

  I'd really worked myself up to a good pout by the time Courtney came by to see if I wanted to go for dinner with her and Britain.

  “No. She's the devil,” I said.

  Courtney laughed.

  “I'm dead serious. You left me alone in your room with her for a minute and she threatened to eat my future babies. She has it in for me.”

  Courtney shook her head and laughed again. Her cheeks were really flushed from the wine. “That's her sense of humor, silly. She's just teasing you.”

  “Like hell.”

  Courtney pouted her lips. “Don't be a lawn-pooper.”

  “I'm going to record her with a nanny cam and show you. She was really mean to me.”

  “I told her all about you,” Courtney said. “You guys just need to spend more time together.”

  “What do you mean, you told her? Did she say something about me?”

  “No,” she lied.

  Courtney is a terrible liar—her whole face practically twitches—so I knew she was lying. If Britain had been talking about me, that meant she was threatening me to my face as well as sabotaging me behind my back.

  “You two young lovers have fun,” I said. “I've got bus tickets that'll get me home.”

  She didn't make any effort to convince me to stay, and Marc was nowhere to be seen, so I headed for the exit before my night could get worse.

  Outside, I caught a B-Line full of every creepy, smelly weirdo within Metro Vancouver. At least the bright interior lights mercifully dimmed once we got rolling, and the B-Line is pretty fast, because it zips along Broadway with minimal stops. I'd be at my home near Main Street in no time.

  To pass the time, I read all the
back-lit advertisements for exciting careers in tourism or dentistry, as well as a disturbing but almost-pretty ad for donating your lungs. I turned back to the career ads, wondering if the models were people in those careers, or simply models. They weren't good-looking enough to be fashion models, but they weren't quite average-looking either. Could I get a job as a slightly-better-looking-than-average model for career ads?

  When I was in high school, I thought I'd have things figured out by graduation. So many other kids knew exactly what they wanted to be, from veterinarians to hockey players. A lot of their career goals were ridiculous and unlikely, but still, I envied them their dreams.

  The only thing I'd always known about my future life was I didn't want to be like either of my parents. I didn't want to diagram water pipes and talk about retirement, nor would I choose to be chewed up and spat out by the entertainment industry.

  Done with the ads, and wanting to avoid conversation with the guy who'd just sat next to me, I pulled out my phone. The guy had light brown dreadlocks and wore sandals that highlighted his gnarly yellow toenails. He was maybe twenty, but had the toenails of a much older person.

  Minutes passed, and he still hadn't said anything to me. I nearly started a conversation myself, just to make things normal, when I realized he wasn't talking to me because I didn't have my dreadlocks anymore. We were no longer in the same club, insta-buddies.

  That gave me mixed feelings: relief tinged with loneliness.

  On my phone, I scrolled through my emails, looking for messages from my mother. A new one from her came in as I was looking at the screen. We do have a psychic connection at times—one that mystifies my father. The text read check out this arm candy, and she was standing next to that skinny guy who's in Maroon 5 and also on that singing show, The Voice. He's got that pretty-boy, sexy look: Adam Levine.

  He had the Moves Like Jagger, and his arm around my mother.

  While you might think it's cool to meet rock stars, or hear about meeting them from a family member, it's tempered by that uneasiness you might get from seeing a dude—a hot one who always has his shirt off in music videos—touching your mom. She's a person in her own right, but she's still your mom.

  I showed the photo to the guy sitting next to me—the guy with the dreadlocks, and tried to explain the whole situation, but he was not very chatty. He said, “I'm German, no English.”

  “Sure you are,” I said, returning my attention to my phone.

  It wasn't the worst bus ride of my life, but things were not right in the universe that night, and I was in a strange emotional state—kind of a full-moon feeling. I wanted to go to the country and bay at all the stars you can't see in the city. I wanted to row a boat out into English Bay and be alone.

  Instead, I went home, washed up the dinner dishes, and did laundry. Like a good little housewife.

  Chapter 7

  Wednesday at work, I was off my game.

  “Scrambled,” I said to the grown woman with the stuffed-toy octopus on her lap.

  “No,” she said, gagging like she was going to throw up. “Don't be revolting. Over easy.”

  “That's how I'll have mine too,” her husband said.

  As I put the order in to Donny in the kitchen, I wondered if I was normally wrong that often, or if I was having an exceptionally bad day.

  When I told you my superpower was knowing how people like their eggs, that wasn't exactly true. There are four main ways to get your eggs: poached, scrambled, over, and sunny-side up.

  Poached people have a look. Imagine someone who is opposed to fun—generally against enjoyment. Picture that person with their little wire-rimmed glasses or their permed hair. That's the poached look. Poached is the only style with no oil, salt, pepper, or fun.

  Foodies and most Asian people go for sunny-side up, and the rest of humanity gets either scrambled or flipped. Over easy is by far the most popular, at about sixty percent popularity, and I think it's because people like the label for themselves: I'll have mine over easy because I'm cool like that.

  What I do to make it seem like I'm psychic is I guess. The key is to make it sound like you're offering an option, so if they don't jump on your suggestion, you can move down to the next on the list. Fortune tellers do the same thing, more or less, naming off a letter of the alphabet and fishing for a reaction.

  So, when it comes to the eggs, I simply take an educated guess, and when I'm right, I smile and say, “I knew it.”

  However, on that Wednesday, I wasn't right once, if you don't count the regulars, whose preferences I'd memorized.

  At two o'clock, I was relieved to wipe the breakfast specials off the board and switch over to the lunch menu, which didn't have eggs.

  I was bummed that I'd gotten dressed up the night before, only to get ignored by Marc. Dating seemed like a lot of effort. My all-too-willing prep cook, Toph, was starting to look better and better.

  As I was thinking about him, he brought a tray of glasses up for us, his biceps showing under his thin shirt. I felt dirty for even looking, because while Toph and I were only a month apart in age, there was something little-brother-y about the guy. Apparently, I was into guys a couple of years older than me, like Marc.

  I wanted to talk to Courtney about my boy crushes, as well as about her girlfriend, but the lunch rush went on forever. Near the end of my shift, I cornered her by the coffee machines.

  I said, “I have some concerns about your girlfriend.”

  She put one paper coffee filter in the machine and one on top of my head. “I won't get her pregnant, Mom.”

  I left the coffee filter crown on my head. “I think she's jealous of me.”

  “Of course she is. You're my best friend. Deal with it.”

  “You know?”

  She measured out the coffee grounds, which smelled so good. I don't drink coffee, but sometimes when I grind the beans, I get the urge to shovel them into my mouth.

  “Perry, if you're picking up on a vibe, you're probably not wrong. She's a smidge insecure now because she's going through some stuff. It's only natural.”

  “It's not a vibe, Courtney. She threatened me.”

  “With what? How, exactly? Did she say she was going to punch you out?”

  “It was implied.”

  Courtney pressed the red button and the machine began huffing and gurgling. “She's just teasing you. Brit really likes you, I swear. She thinks it's cool you're taking care of your family while your mom's out of town. Very responsible.”

  “Whatever.” I took off my paper hat and crumpled it into the garbage. “Consider her on warning, from me.”

  “How did it go with your guy, Marc? I saw you chatting up his friend, the artist. Marc's eyeballs practically fell out of his head when you were hugging his friend.”

  I squealed. “Really?” I hadn't been hugging his friend, but I had been pretty close to Cooper when I let him use my arms as his for a gag. Furthermore, I had not minded the close, physical contact with him. He was much more fit than you'd expect an artist to be. Thinking about pressing my face in the spot between his shoulder blades put a Mona Lisa smile on my lips and a tilt to my head.

  Courtney asked, “What's your next move?”

  “Marc likes girls who look normal, so I'm going to be normal.”

  “Normal?”

  “He called it something else. Authentic.”

  Courtney frowned as she pulled at her row of false eyelashes and adjusted the edge. “Don't ever change for a guy.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  The train whistle blew with an order for a table on Courtney's side.

  While she was finishing up with her table, I got my phone out and googled Marc to see what else I could find out. With just his first name, however, that proved impossible. His friend, Chris Cooper, was far easier to find.

  I located Cooper on Facebook, where he had a completely unsecured profile. Through his friend list, I found Marc, but I didn't send a friend request to either. Marc only had
one photo visible to the public, but it was a good one.

  I went back to Cooper's page, hunting for more photos of his friends. I guessed he kept it open for his art career, as there were a lot of posts about his paintings. His abstract, large-scale art was growing on me. None of the paintings were of anything in particular, but they were enjoyable to look at and admire, like the mountains, or the ocean, or your own freshly-manicured fingernails.

  The blue-haired girl was in many of the pictures, and her name was revealed to be … Sunshine Cooper.

  A wave of nausea washed over me. Speaking as someone with a weird name, I have to say people with odd names are so much more trouble than people with normal names. Maybe they're spoiled rotten growing up, or maybe their parents are narcissists and it's genetic, or maybe the whole world treats them like one-of-a-kinds and it goes to their heads.

  I know I'm not an easy person. I try to be good, and kind, and moral, but I am not easy.

  Sunshine, how easy are you?

  I was imagining blue-haired Sunshine with her little paws all over Marc when Courtney came by and laughed at the wretched look on my face.

  Courtney said, “You must be looking at that photo of your mom with Adam Levine.”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “It was on a bunch of blogs. I'm sure it's nothing. From what I read, she was just down at a taping for The Voice and went backstage to meet some people.”

  I grumpily put my phone away. “She could have told her own daughter the whole story.”

  Donny, who was listening at the window, stuck his head through and said, “I have a man-crush on Adam Levine.”

  “He's a handsome man,” Courtney said.

  “Does that make me bisexual?” Donny asked Courtney.

  “If you have to ask, it means yes, you are.” Courtney grabbed a clean butter knife from the utensil bin and gently touched it to Donny's left shoulder, then his right. “I hereby knight you a bisexual,” she said.

  They carried on for a few more minutes, making jokes about different grades of bi-curiosity, but I wasn't paying attention.