Free Crush du Jour by Micol Ostow Page A

with my good friend Damien”—I jerked my thumb in his direction—”while I finish up my shift.”
    ”Laine , how long is that going to take? Be honest—I will totally kill you if you make me miss The Daily Show”
    I shrugged. “That’s why God invented TiVo,” I reminded her. There wasn’t time to snag her some of the “family dinner” that the staff was served before each shift, but I could poke my head into the kitchen and get her an order of steamed edamame to snack on.
    “Now, get comfy,” I told her as I ran off. “I’ll be back with some food in a minute. Then I’ll finish out my shift. And, in the meantime, Damien will take good care of you.”
    If there was a God, he or she was totally trying to mess with me, big-time. Hype was serving two specials that night, penne with sweet Italian sausage and rigatoni with spicy sausage.
    I mean, you can see where I’d get confused, right? Two tubey little pastas? Two types of cured meat? When I made pasta, it was usually vegetarian. It almost seemed like a practical joke that Callie would pull.
    Not even. A practical joke from Callie would probably have been easier to deal with than this. About every other order I brought out was wrong. In addition to annoying my customers, it aggravated the kitchen staff and stressed me out.
    In truth, the amount of time I worked and Anna sat at the bar was something like an hour and a half. But running back and forth sweaty and disheveled, trying desperately not to let Seth catch me doing an allaround lousy job, was so exhausting it may as well have been a day and a half.
    I was too worn out even to take it personally when I was the first waitress cut for the evening. For Anna, it was practically a cause for celebration, despite the fact that Damien had been making pleasant chit chat while I worked.
    “Thank God” she groaned dramatically as we grabbed our bags on and made our way outside.
    “For small favors?” I couldn’t help butadd my own two cents. Because really, this had been one teeny-tiny favor. The blisters on my feet screamed with every step. And like I said, it wasn’t really such a good thing being the first person sent home at the end of the night. It certainly didn’t say much good stuff about my job performance.
    “Whatever, Laine. You’re lucky that we got you out of there when we did.” Anna rolled her eyes at me and dug into her bag for some lip balm, which she proceeded to apply liberally. When she was done, she offered the tube to me.
    I shook my head. My lips were totally ragged from constant stressed-out biting. There was no saving them with drugstore solutions. “Was it really that obvious?”
    She nodded vigorously. “Oh yes.”
    My stomach bottomed out. Anna was right. Seth’s father was totally going to fire me. He was so busy at the restaurant that we still hadn’t been properly introduced, but I didn’t think that would prevent him from oh, say, firing me.
    Oh, jeez. My not-boyfriend’s father was totally going to kick my butt. I’d lose my job and my not-boyfriend all at the same time.
    Of course, that would solve the problem of having to explain to Seth what my mother did for a living.
    No. I didn’t care. Getting fired was still too terrible to even contemplate. It was like when I learned that fat-free cheese was actually worse for you than eating smaller portions of the regular stuff. Devastating.
    Anna coughed and went on. “I’m very sorry to tell you, but that girl Callie totally has it in for you. If I were you, I’d start sleeping with one eye open.”
    I marveled for a moment that she could be so cavalier if, in fact, the life of her best friend was truly in danger. But after that moment had passed I realized that the two of us were talking about totally separate catastrophes.
    And how, even, had I found myself in the middle of two totally separate catastrophes? My alpha-personality had finally bottomed out. I was a robot set to malfunction. I’d been running off in