Free Dante's Way by Marie Rochelle

couple of people around on the schedule to give his friend some well-deserved time off.
    “Thanks but no thanks. Going on a vacation alone isn’t as fun as going with someone. In addition, I still need to do interviews for a front desk person at the shop. I still can’t believe Katie left to open her own shop with her boyfriend.”
    “I told you not to trust her. She was just a little too interested in the clients. I should have fired her before I left Inked . I knew she was bad news and I left her there with you and Caleb.”
    Getting up from the bar stool, Dante walked down the aisle until he joined Griffin at the end of the bar. “Do you need my help with the interviews?” It was the least he could do after everything that happened at the tattoo shop.
    “No, Caleb and I can handle things,” Griffin said, picking up his motorcycle helmet. “You have enough going on here getting ready for the tournament. I can handle Inked . I’ll probably be back here this weekend. I have several tattoos scheduled this week.”
    Dante understood the pressure Griffin was under. Finding the perfect floor manager at a tattoo shop was essential to the business running smoothly.
    “Don’t worry about anything going on here. Take care of everything back at the shop. If anything really important comes up, I’ll let you know. Now, stop worrying about me so much and leave. I can’t waste any more time talking to you today,” Dante joked.
    His friend smiled at him and then shook his head. “I don’t think you even know how to waste any time. You stay too busy for that.” Spinning around on his heel, Griffin walked away from him and headed out of the front door.
    A few minutes later Dante heard Griffin’s motorcycle roar to life before he pulled away. Heading back behind the bar; he picked up Griffin’s dirty glass placing it underneath the counter into the plastic bin with the rest of the dirty dishes.
    He shouldn’t take Griffin’s comment so personally, but he hated when his buddies pointed out the obvious to him. But he didn’t have anything else going on his life at the moment. Rekindling his past with Bambi wasn’t in the picture at all. Hell, he should have never hooked back up with her last year, but loneliness can make a man do crazy things.
    Anyway, after attending Jim’s wedding to Keira and witnessing how amazingly happy all of his friends looked, something triggered inside of him and during a momentary lapse in judgment, he thought maybe Bambi could give him what he had witnessed that day.
    Shit, he had never been more wrong in his life. She was still self-centered and unreliable as she was when he first met her. Hell, if she wasn’t one of his best waitress/bartenders he would have cut her out of his life a while ago.
    Nevertheless, she was still here with him. He wasn’t dumb. He still noticed the hungry look in her eyes every time she came to ask him a meaningless question she already knew the answer to, but pretended she didn’t. His bed might be cold and very empty at night, but he wasn’t crazy or stupid enough to give her another free pass back into it. He had a difficult enough time getting her out of it the last time they were ‘a couple’.
    “Hey Dante, are you busy?” a voice hollered out to him.
    Spinning around, he spotted his cook Kent standing behind him with a worried expression plastered across his tanned face. Kent never bothered him unless it was something extremely important concerning the kitchen or food.
    “No, I’m not busy,” he answered, walking over to his head chef. “What’s going on?”
    “I was starting to get the food ready for the lunch crowd and I can’t find any more wings in the walk-in freezer. Do we not have any more? I have enough ready for about two maybe three orders at the most.”
    Fuck! He had gotten so busy looking for the homeless girl that he had forgotten to fax the extra chicken order yesterday for today.
    “Man, I’m sorry. It’s my mistake.