Smart Mouth Waitress (35 page)

On Sunday morning, I brought a gift for Courtney in to work. It was her favorite study-session snack food, Pocky, a Japanese snack similar to a skinny cookie, or a stick pretzel, half-dipped in chocolate.

Instead of Courtney, however, I found a slender redhead in the dining room.

“Hey, Perry,” Ginger
said. “Your friend Courtney traded the rest of her shifts with me, which is fine because I like working mornings, but … are you two fighting?”

“Apparently.”

Ginger, who is older than me by a good dozen years, said, “Haters gonna hate.”

“You really have a way with words,” I said, smirking.

“That's why I get to work at The Whistle,” she said, flipping the
Sorry We're Closed
sign over to
Sorry We're Open
.

Studying the sign, I said, “This restaurant does everything wrong.”

“You're just figuring that out now?”

I grabbed some Windex and cleaned off the kids' hand prints I'd noticed on the windows the day before. A restaurant that did everything wrong was a lot like me, really.

“Ginger, did you ever like two guys at once?”

“I tried to, but they thought it would be gay if their balls touched.” She made a shocked face to show she was joking, then said, “Actually, when I met my husband, I was dating his friend. So, yes.”

I gasped in mock horror. “Did your husband steal you away from his friend?”

Ginger turned her back to me and cleaned off the chalkboard, the white bar cloth turning gray. “All's fair in love and war.”

“Cliches and platitudes are not really helping me.”

She turned around. “Are these two guys both chasing after you?”

“More like running away from me. But not trying very hard to get away. They're like ...” I pulled out a chair and pretended to trip over it. “Oh no, I'm trying to get away from the demon woman but I fell down! Stop touching me! Wait, come back and kiss me! Look, I'm naked!”

Ginger seemed to be as confused as I was.

“I'm not explaining this well,” I said. “I've kissed both of them, and been on what people would call dates, but I don't know where I stand.”

“I don't think I have the experience to help with your particular level of problems,” Ginger said with mock seriousness, hands on her hips.

“The one guy is all,
oh, I'm so tortured, I'm an intellectual, but I don't know how I feel
,” I said, rubbing my chin and acting pensive.

She nodded. “I know the type.”

“Then the other guy is smart and kinda philosophical, but he's also …
ooh, touch my manly, chiseled abs.
” I perched on the edge of the chair like a pin-up boy, rubbing the sides of my own torso.

“Keep going,” Ginger said, getting out her cell phone to take a few pictures.

I acted out a few more of the scenes I'd had with them, including the drunken text messages from Marc and the under-table knee touching with Cooper.

Things got a little silly, and I was posing with a lemon wedge between my teeth when the first customers came in.

The woman with the Zooey Deschanel bangs and glasses turned to her fair-skinned boyfriend with the floppy hair and said, “You're right, we should have gone to The Wallflower.”

“So hungry,” he whimpered.

She wiggled her Starbucks coffee at me as I took them to their table. “I know about the extra charge, it's okay.”

“Fine, but no mayonnaise on your fries,” I said.

The two of them laughed at each other.

That was when I realized The Whistle did everything wrong, everything you shouldn't do in a restaurant, and yet, people loved it not just despite its flaws, but because of them.

Another group of people rushed in the door, and from that point on, the place was busy right until the end of my shift, with the kitchen whistle blowing non-stop.

When the other waitresses arrived for the evening shift, one of them being Courtney, I barely said hello to her. I sat at the back of the kitchen with Ginger and we shared the Pocky treats I'd brought for Courtney. Ginger and I pooled our tips and split them, which made me happy.

Donny made us some french toast with Nutella and fresh bananas, which also contributed to my happiness. Never underestimate the power of a few well-timed carbohydrates.

I asked Ginger how she'd met her husband, and about how he'd stolen her away for himself. She got herself a big cup of tea with two bags of the “sickly fruits” flavor, as we called it, and recounted the entire story while sipping the fuchsia beverage.

Ginger had been dating her high school boyfriend for about five years, and everyone, including her, assumed they'd eventually get married. The only problem was, every time they had sex, afterward, she would get this terrible anxiety that everything in her life was wrong. She was too embarrassed to talk to a doctor about it, but she did some reading on the internet and decided she had POIS, or post-orgasmic illness syndrome. She wondered if she was allergic to his semen, so they used condoms, but the anxiety persisted.

Despite all of this, her boyfriend proposed marriage to her, and she accepted, on one condition. She wanted to have sex with at least one other guy, so she wouldn't always wonder what it was like to be with someone else, and if the post-sex anxiety wouldn't happen. She and her boyfriend had been each other's firsts, so she suggested he sleep with another woman as well, just to be fair, and so neither of them would wonder. He agreed to it, and said he would pay for an escort for himself, so he would know he'd gotten the
best treatment
, so to speak.

Ginger's dilemma of who to sleep with for her one-night stand was not as easily solved, until one night she met a friend of her fiance's. He didn't live in Vancouver, but was visiting some family for about a week. They had chemistry together, and when she mentioned the idea to her fiance, he thought it was a good one. The truth is, he had gotten rather excited about being with an escort.

The friend was not so easy to convince, and insisted on being taken out for a proper date, with wine and a fancy dinner—just the two of them. Ginger agreed, and they had a wonderful dinner. Later, when they got to their hotel room for the pre-negotiated evening of sex, he lit some candles. Then he slowly undressed her and …

At this point in telling the story, Ginger's eyes rolled up and she wrapped her arms around herself giddily.

“He rocked your world,” I said.

Donny and Toph, who had been relieved by the next kitchen shift, sat on pickle buckets near us with their mouths dropped open.

Ginger wiggled her torso and stamped her feet while squealing.

Toph said, “I am so turned on right now.”

Donny said, “I'm going home to make sweet love to my wife.”

I waved my hand at my face to cool my own cheeks. “Holy cow. That is one dirty story.”

Ginger said, “No it isn't. I didn't say one dirty word, and there was no nudity. It was all implied.”

I said, “But there were hookers, and that weird orgasm illness. So, do you actually have that POIS thing?”

She waved her hand. “Gosh, no. Just with my ex. I think my heart was trying to tell me he was not the one. The body knows.”

Donny and Toph both grabbed their jackets and made a bee-line for the door, leaving us some privacy.

I picked at my fingernails. “I don't want that sad feeling to happen when I have sex for the first time.”

“Then pick the right guy,” she said.

I stared up at the water stains on the ceiling.

She clapped her hands in front of my face. “Quick, which one! Pick!”

“Ginger! I think I just peed a little.”

“Didn't work, huh?”

“No, but thanks for helping me check the absorbency level of my pantyliner.” I stood and checked myself, relieved the moisture was just sweat.

“See you tomorrow,” Ginger said, grabbing her purse and heading home to make love to her sexy husband.

Oh, I'd seen Ginger's husband around The Whistle: handsome face and a cute bum. You better believe I was imagining the guy making love to … well, it doesn't matter to whom.

On the walk home, I imagined flying somewhere exotic, like London, and meeting all the boys from One Direction, then starring in one of their super cute music videos, and getting their cute little British-Irish boy band bodies all over me.

When I got to the house, nobody was there, so I locked my bedroom door and had some private time. I know masturbation's not for everyone, but when you're so
good
at something, why deny yourself?

Chapter 22

After a little nap, I put a chicken in the oven, expecting my father and Garnet home for Sunday dinner by six. They didn't show.

I figured my father was delayed picking my brother up from my uncle's place in New Westminster, so I portioned everything into sealed containers and stacked them in the fridge. I'd tried making risotto for the first time, and it turned out tasty enough, though I was curious what it might taste like with actual wine in it instead of extra chicken stock and apple juice.

After I got the kitchen business put away, I went to my room and did a video chat with Haylee while we over-analyzed and over-thought every piece of communication or gesture I'd shared with Marc and Cooper.

I told her about my lunch with Sunshine the day before, and we checked out her YouTube channel, playing all her cover songs and discussing how well she'd do as a musician.

Haylee thought Sunshine's eyebrow tattoo was a rip-off of Amanda Palmer, a musician I didn't know much about at the time. I looked her up and found out Amanda draws in both of her eyebrows with makeup, which is different from Sunshine's look.

“It's hard to be original,” I said to the image of Haylee on my laptop screen. “My mother got in at a good time, when female singers weren't all about how much they wanted sex. In the 90s, people were actually upset about stuff Madonna did on stage—stuff that's totally normal now.”

Haylee put her chin on her hands and leaned in to her web cam, making a dreamy face. “Your mom is so crazy good, and she's working on an actual album. My mom spends all day pinning pictures on Pinterest. Pictures of fudge and flower arrangements. That site is like mind control.”

“My dad plays that same game my brother does. Skyrim. Plus he's all over this Star Wars one. He's such a geek.” I turned my head to listen and make sure no one else was in the house. “I think he and my mom might get separated. Don't tell anyone, okay?”

Haylee scratched her head and didn't say anything.

“What's up? Is Andrew doing something funny? Do you need to go?” I asked.

“I know you don't like hearing about the gossip blogs,” she said.

My skin prickled all over.

“Just tell me,” I said.

“Your mom's always getting photographed with guys. But there are these new ones.”

A horrible feeling washed over and into me, like my digestive system was full of ice cubes.

“Show me,” I said.

“It might not even be her,” Haylee said.

“Send me the link or I'll google it. Come on, let's get this over with.”

Seconds later, it was all over my screen.

The prickling on my skin turned to sweat.

When you're a regular, non-famous person, you look at TMZ or whatever when you're bored and your friends aren't doing anything interesting on Facebook. You make fun of Lana Del Ray, or read the articles about Demi Moore checking into rehab, or whatever Courtney Love is tweeting about, but those people are about as real to you as brands of toothpaste. Yes, brands. You don't think of them wrapping Christmas presents for their kids, and you don't think about how those kids feel seeing their parents' faces all over the internet.

When everyone was tweeting about Whitney Houston's death in February, and speculating about whether or not it had been an overdose, Bobbi Kristina Brown was mourning the loss of her mother.

I consider myself lucky, because my mom's fame peaked when I was a baby, too young to know what was happening. I was probably eight years old by the time I figured out other people didn't have Alanis Morrisette come for dinner with her then-boyfriend Ryan Reynolds.

But … enough name-dropping, and back to my gut-wrenching, heart-breaking discovery of what exactly my mother was up to in LA.

First of all, she'd gotten rid of the dreadlocks, and not by combing them out, like I had. Her hair was on the short side, and messy, like she'd hacked them out with whatever sharp thing was handy.

She was with another guy, some non-famous musician you haven't heard of, with tattoos all over his skinny arms. He was like the knock-off, no-name brand of Adam Levine. They were having dinner together in some of the photos, which could be explained away easily enough, but there were blurry shots, taken with a telephoto lens, of them kissing while walking on the sidewalk, right out in public, where anyone could see them.

The worst part was how she looked in all the pictures. Not her face, but her body language. Her body screamed that she was happy.