Page 10 of Something Reckless

ALBA

B ack to waitressing at my shitty restaurant job. The one with the skeezy boss. Though thankfully, Mr. Drummond is busy in the back office today and not ogling me in my awful uniform.

I’m on the daytime shift. I fly around the room, taking orders, refilling drinks, handling customer complaints and smiling like I mean it the whole time.

Jules gives me a sympathetic smile from where she’s welcoming patrons at the hostess stand.

That little smile reminds me to look for the silver lining in this situation.

The upside of being so busy at the moment is that I don’t have time to hyperventilate in the bathroom over what happened with Easton at the library yesterday.

I swoop between tables, platters of steaming food balanced on my palms. I try to avoid eye contact with the woman who has already made me return two dishes to the kitchen for her.

But on the other side of the restaurant, there’s a familiar face calling out, “Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo, Alba!” and waving her arms like an air traffic controller. I have no choice but to head toward her with a smile.

“Yes, hi? How can I help you all?” I say to Emmeline Madison, with as much pleasantness as I can muster.

My ex-boyfriend’s current wife turns toward their preschool-aged child. “Tell the nice lady what you want, Rebecca.”

Rebecca picks up her plasticized menu and starts slowly sounding out the words. “I want ex…tra spi…see chee...dar cheese sticks!” She jabs each word with her little finger as she reads.

The mother breaks out into applause. “Such a smart girl! So proud of you! Little genius!” She turns toward her slimy husband who quickly looks away from peeping at my ass. “Aren’t we proud of her, Chris?”

“So proud,” my ex echoes listlessly, picking at the spinach in his teeth with a toothpick.

We briefly make eye contact. He rolls his eyes and looks away.

Instead of punching him in the throat like I want to, I turn my attention to his admittedly cute little girl with her blue eyes and her dark brown curls. “Those cheese sticks are really, really spicy,” I tell her kindly. “Do you think you’d like the regular cheese sticks instead?”

The child slumps back in her seat, folding her arms and poking out her bottom lip. “No! I want ex…tra spi…see chee...dar cheese sticks!”

Okay. Maybe she’s not that cute.

Emmeline gives me an apologetic look, handing a French fry to the toddler who is fussing loudly and vigorously slapping his palms against his highchair. “We try to allow our kids to make choices for themselves instead of questioning their every decision,” she informs me, flinching .

And that seems to be working out just great for her.

Am I annoyed right now? Yes. But I know that the amount of money I make today depends on how willing I am to just grin and bear it.

Plus, Emmeline seems like a nice enough person. Although, for some reason, she appears to go out of her way to start conversation with me whenever we see each other. I haven’t quite figured out her endgame.

Christopher started dating her not long after he left me.

In the blink of an eye, they were married and popping out babies.

A part of me thinks that Emmeline feels guilty that she ended up with what was supposed to be my fairytale ending.

It’s almost like she’s trying to convince me that she’s not a bad person.

But she has nothing to prove to me. I’ve become accustomed to running into the happy little family around town over the years. Seeing them doesn’t bother me anymore.

I’m well aware of what kind of man Christopher is. Honestly, Emmeline can have him.

“Oh, okay. Of course.” I smile harder, shifting my weight from one foot to the next as I continue to ignore the fact that I’ve needed to pee for the last twenty minutes. “Extra spicy cheddar cheese sticks coming right up.”

As I turn to walk away, Emmeline calls after me. “Um, Alba.”

I glance back and find her digging around in her purse.

“I—I, uh, just thought—”

Christopher cuts her off with a stern look.

She slowly slips the pamphlet she’s holding in her hand back into her purse. She shakes her head. “Um, never mind.”

Okay. Weird.

I offer Emmeline a forced smile. Paycheck, I chant to myself as I head back to the kitchen to put in her daughter’s order. Paycheck, paycheck, paycheck.

Though with my Easton-related anxiety bouncing in and out of my thoughts, I’m barely managing to getthrough this shift. I’m distracted as hell and my tips show it.

To be fair, the daytime tips are never quite as good as they are on the evening shift. But I’m trying to get through real estate classes at night, so it’s like an ugly jigsaw puzzle, trying to fit the pieces of my life together lately.

These days, I’m feeling less confident that I’ll ever finish the real estate program I started. I already failed the exam the first time I took it a few months back. I need to study so I can retake the test soon, but I’ve been dragging my feet.Plus, it’s not cheap, taking the test again and again.

It’s so annoying. I should know this stuff forward and backward. I’ve been studying the ins and outs of real estate since I was in high school. But this exam? It’s freaking hard, and it’s starting to feel like a dead end.

Most days, I’m just too drained to concentrate. Between my three part-time jobs and trying to squeeze in as much time as I can with Jagger, finding the right balance is overwhelming.

But, I really, really want a career. One that will pay my bills and allow Jagger to have the opportunities he deserves.

So, I grind and I grind, until it’s hard to put one foot in front of the other. Today and every day.

It sure would be nice to get some help.

In between customers, I keep checking my phone. Raya still hasn’t gotten back to me. When she didn’t respond to my text messages, I reached out to her on social media. I tried calling her, too.

I need to speak to her. I want her to know that Easton is back in town. I want to give her the opportunity to weigh in on how to handle the situation. I think it’s the respectful thing to do. But my twin sister still hasn’t responded to me and I’m starting to get frustrated.

In those first days and weeks of Raya’s pregnancy, I tried to convince her to tell Easton that he was going to be a father. But she insisted that parenthood was definitely the last thing on Easton’s agenda, and I couldn’t help but agree that she had a point.

Easton was always a good guy, but he was also just starting out as a rookie in a really tough professional league.

I grew up with a father who sacrificed his hockey dreams to raise a family.

The bitterness he harbored toward my sister, my mother and me was brutal.

Call it my ego or call it protectiveness, but I couldn’t bear the thought of Easton resenting my precious nephew the way my dad resented me.

So I kept my mouth shut and went along with Raya’s course of action back then, keeping the truth of Jaggers paternity a secret from everyone, even our parents.

In the beginning, at least.

Eventually, my guilty conscience caught up to me. A few months into Raya’s pregnancy, I all but forced her to confront Easton. But that shit blew up epically, confirming the fears I’d held all along—Easton didn’t want to be a father.

But what about now? Things are different now.We’re all grownups. And there’s an innocent child in the mix. A child who might benefit greatly from knowing who his father is.

Still, there’s another voice whispering at the back of my head. Jagger absolutely adores Easton. He’s his favorite hockey player. If Easton rejects Jagger, that poor child will be devastated. Again.

But by the time I’ve finished working, I’ve decided to be a big girl and make an executive decision.

I’m going to pay Easton a visit and tell him about his son.

I think I owe him the truth. Plus, after our uncomfortable run-in at the library, I have to act quickly and tell him myself… before he figures it out on his own.

But first, I have to tell Mom. Shit.

I decide to try and soften the blow by baking some cookies. Everybody loves cookies, right?

My mother is a sucker for chocolate chip. And I distinctly remember Easton gobbling up the ginger snaps we’d occasionally bake at youth group back in the day.

When I’m leaving the restaurant, I catch sight of Emmeline in the ladies’ washroom with her hysterical little girl seated on the counter. “It burns, Momma. It burns!” The child cries as Emmeline tries to wash the ex…tra spi…see chee...dar cheese sticks out of her mouth.

Le sigh .

I duck my head and hustle to where Mom and Jagger are waiting outside. Mom’s car was making a funny noise this morning, so she borrowed my little hatchback for the day. Now, she’s here to pick me up from work.

I hurry across the parking lot with a pep in my step. I feel anxious, but as I climb into the passenger side, I’m also confident in my newfound decision to be honest with Easton.

But when I take one look at Mom, my shoulders sag. To put it bluntly, my mother looks like a bit of a mess. A sad mess. Her red hair is dull and disheveled. Her clothes are mismatched.

I lay a hand on her thigh. “Mom, your yoga pants are inside out,” I say softly.

When she looks down distractedly, she lets out an embarrassed laugh. “Oh, dear. I had no idea.”

While my mother is entirely present for Jagger whenever he needs her, she often has this blankness to her eyes that makes her seem hollow.I hate what my father did to her. She never deserved this kind of betrayal.

My mother was born into a wealthy family, and while my father wasn’t rich or anything, that didn’t matter to Mom, because she thought she was marrying a good man.

A considerate man. An honest man. After all, Dad coached the youth hockey team for years.

He was on the church’s board of directors.

He forced our entire family to volunteer weekly, for crying out loud. Who wouldn’t trust a man like that?

Boy, did he have everybody fooled.

Despite my mother’s unconditional devotion to him, my father resented being tied down. He begrudgingly suppressed his disdain for us for years.

But by the time I was finishing high school, it was clear he was having affairs and cheating on Mom. I hated all of it. But still, she remained loyal. She’d look the other way and continue to be the dutiful wife.

Then Raya got pregnant and Dad started to really reveal his true colors.

He hated that his teenaged daughter was pregnant under his roof.

And he especially hated having a baby around the house.

He became sloppy about covering his philandering, and when his scheme to fill his pockets and run off with his lover blew up in his face, Mom was the one who lost everything.

The house. The bank accounts. Even her reputation.

It all left my mother embarrassed and heartbroken.

Following his conviction, Dad did his two years of house arrest. Then he quietly left town. No one’s heard from him since. But the silver lining is that, without Dad around, Mom has the space to heal without having her wretched ex-husband in her face at every turn.

Now, she’s trying to slowly rebuild herself.

After decades of disrespect and betrayal, some days are better than others.

Some days she seems to struggle to get out of bed.

She barely has the energy to put in a few part-time hours at the shoe store downtown where she now works.

The only time I see her smile is when Jagger tells his silly knock-knock jokes, but even then, the laughter never quite reaches her eyes like it used to.

I lean over and give her a brief squeeze. “Thanks for driving Jagger around, Mom. I’m really sorry that you have to do all this for me, especially when you aren’t feeling the best. As soon as I can afford it, I’ll hire a nanny.”

Mom puts the car in reverse and waves me off. “Don’t be silly. Getting to spend time with Jag is the only thing that helped me get out of bed this morning. I just wish you would let me help you more.”

“I don’t want to put any more pressure on you,” I tell her.

“I know this is a hard time for both of us, but we’ll get through it together,” she says, though it lacks confidence.

“We will,” I assure her. Then I turn around to where Jagger is buckled up in the backseat, giving his knee a loving shake. “Guess what! We’re going to the grocery store to get ingredients to make homemade cookies. How does that sound?”

Jagger’s eyes light up. “Cookies? Yay!”

Yeah, cookies. Because even though life can be a bitter pill to swallow, Jagger’s smile is always something sweet to look forward to.