Bitter End (20 page)

After my shower, I dried my wrist carefully and thoroughly, then gently spread concealer all around it. I covered the concealer
with a dollop of liquid foundation out of an old bottle I found pushed all the way back in the bathroom drawer. Probably one
of Shannin’s. I finished it with powder and held it out for inspection.

Not too bad. Much better than it was. Probably nobody would even notice it. You’d have to be really looking.

I guess I was half-expecting to see Cole’s car waiting for
me in the employee parking lot at The Bread Bowl, but it wasn’t. I was running too late to ruminate over it, though, so I
just threw the car in park and went in. But just to be sure, I walked around to the front door to check out the parking lot
up there.

Nope. No Cole.

I was so distracted coming through the front doors of The Bread Bowl, I almost ran smack into Dave’s chest.

“Whoa,” he said, a sincerely annoyed look crossing his face. He was holding a bowl of soup and raised it head-high to keep
from spilling it. “Watch it, Anna.”

“Alex,” I corrected, then wished I hadn’t when he glared at me over his shoulder.

He delivered the soup to a table, and I took that as my chance to scurry back to Georgia’s office to clock in. She was sitting
in there, craning her neck to look out into the dining room.

“Did you run into him?” she whispered.

I shook my head. “Close.”

“Oh, girl. He’s gonna be after you now. He’s in a hell of a mood today. Here he comes. Get your visor on, quick.”

I typed my ID number into the computer to clock in, plunged the visor down over my hair quickly, and then grabbed an apron
off a peg next to the office door and tied it around me.

Georgia tapped a few numbers into the old adding machine that sat on her tiny desk, then wrote down a number on a form. “All
this paperwork…” she muttered, then
said in a louder voice, “There’s a new batch of bagels ready to go up front. And see what else is ready to put up. Just keep
busy and you’ll be fine.”

I nodded and started toward the kitchen.

“Everything okay with you, Alex?” Georgia asked.

I stopped, leaned back into the office, and nodded. “Yeah. I’m good,” I lied. And for some reason I couldn’t totally explain,
tears welled up in my eyes. I turned my face down and acted like I was brushing something off my apron to keep Georgia from
seeing. When I looked back up at her, she was squinting at me, head cocked to one side.

“You don’t seem the same these days, girl. I hope you’re taking care of yourself. Not doing anything stupid.”

I thought about yesterday. About picking myself up off the floor of the tutor lab. Would Georgia think that was stupid? If
I told her that I’d almost made Granite-Ass spill soup down the front of him because I was still hopefully looking for Cole’s
car after what had happened yesterday, would she think I was stupid then?

Instead of telling her anything, I just shook my head. “I’m not. I’m just… stressed, I guess. I don’t want to get either one
of us in trouble with you-know-who.”

She squinted at me and then shook her head and went back to filling out the forms on her desk. “If you say so,” she said.
“I’ve got too much to do to argue with you. Just don’t be doing anything stupid, or I’ll come after you myself.”

I rolled my eyes exaggeratedly. “Yes, Mom,” I said. She wagged her pen in the air over her shoulder.

The day crept by, and trying to look constantly busy eventually made it so there was no work to do.

Zack came in with his parents for lunch. They brought Celia with them, who stared at me with an ultra-smug look on her face
the entire time, no doubt telling them what an awful daughter I was for not ordering Dad’s cake yet. Or maybe she just looked
smug because she was Celia.

After a while, Zack got up to refill his soda, and stopped by the counter, where I was refilling the chocolate chip cookie
case.

“
Psst!
Waitress! Can I get some service over here?” he hissed.

I glanced at him. “What do you need?” I asked, straining to hear if Dave was still in the kitchen with Jerry, fiddling with
the new bread recipe corporate was making all the stores launch in two weeks.

He wiggled his eyebrows up and down at me suggestively. “Well, Doc, I have this pain in my…”

“Ha-ha-ha,” I deadpanned. “I can’t play around. The owner’s here today.”

“So?” he said, fishing in his pocket and coming out with his plastic tube of toothpicks. He opened the top of the tube, and
I could smell cinnamon oil waft out. That was Zack’s new favorite flavor—cinnamon so hot it made his lips swell. “I just wanted
to say hi. And I’m a customer. You can’t ignore the customers, you know. You have to fulfill our every need.”

“I seriously doubt Dave would call jackassing with you filling the needs of my customers. Where’s Bethany?”

He took a sip of his drink. “Home. Babysitting, I think. Trying to earn some cash for our trip. She keeps saying something
about wanting to buy some real Native American leather or something. If I get bored enough, I’ll go over and bug her. Let
the kids tie me up or something. Unless you want to volunteer for the job…” Again with the suggestive eye thing.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Celia pull herself out of the booth and sidle across the restaurant, pretending she needed
a refill of her drink, too, but keeping her eyes glued to us the entire time. “Looks like you’re too busy with Miss Personality
to go hang with anyone else.”

Celia slid up next to Zack. He reached back and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“What? My girl?” Zack drawled. “She can go with me.”

“Go where?” Celia asked. “To order a birthday cake?”

I made a face at her. “Listen, kids, I’d really love to chat, but need I remind you that I’m supposed to be working here?
And if I lose my job, there is no Colorado.”

Celia rolled her eyes. “You guys still talking about that stupid trip? God, when I graduate, I’m so going somewhere amazing.
Like Beverly Hills or New York City. Totally not Colorado.”

Instinctively, my hand drifted to my collarbone again and touched the necklace. How could Celia have no interest? Were we
that far apart?

“Mmm, Beverly Hills,” Zack said around his toothpick. “Home of hot blonds in short shorts.”

Celia made a face and slapped at his chest, wriggling out from under his arm. “You’re disgusting. Don’t touch me.”

He reached over and poked her in the side. “Touch,” he said. Then he reached across the counter and did the same to me. “Touch.”

Celia squealed when he touched her, and the faces of several customers turned toward the counter. She poked him back. “Touch!”
she said. Loudly. And next thing I knew they were batting at each other’s hands, Zack hopping around in a fencing pose, talking
in a French accent.

“You zink you can tek me in a battle? En garde!”

“Guys!” I hissed. “Stop it! You’re gonna get me in tr—”

I felt someone come up behind me. But they kept going at it, Celia crying out, “What, are you gonna touch me with your nasty
wrist? Did you see it, Zack? It’s gross. Touch! Ha-ha!”

My stomach dropped. I was afraid to look behind me, to see who had overheard Celia’s remark. My guess was that everyone in
the restaurant had heard it.

I quickly picked up the spatula again and started shoveling cookies into the cookie case, double-time, acting as if I hadn’t
heard a thing.

But then I heard another set of footsteps swishing up behind me, followed by Dave’s unmistakable voice. “What’s going on here?
Anna?”

Immediately, Celia and Zack stopped their finger-sword fight and hustled back to their booth, where Zack’s parents were gathering
up their trash.

I turned around. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s my sister.
She’s just…” I trailed off, not sure what to say that would not make Granite-Ass even angrier at me than he already was.

Georgia, who’d been the one standing behind me in the first place, didn’t say a word. She just stared at my wrist, which I
held out in front of me awkwardly, gripping the spatula in the air.

Dave’s face went stony and red. It was like watching someone build a brick wall right in front of you. His jaw moved outward
a few times, and he took a giant breath in. I almost expected him to let the air out in a gale of screaming, but instead he
just said very calmly, “This is not a place for you and your friends—or siblings, whatever—to mess around. I can’t have customers
being bothered by a couple kids wrestling up front for the jollies of the cashier.”

“I kept telling them…” I said, but he held out a hand to silence me. He turned to Georgia, who was still staring at my wrist.
I laid the spatula down on the pan and sank my hand as far as it would go into my apron pocket.

“This go on all day?” he asked, gesturing at me. “Is that why this store is losing money? Are your employees’ friends driving
away all the paying customers while they drink free soda refills and act like this is their personal playground?”

“No,” I said before Georgia could even open her mouth. “No. We don’t play around here. Plus, my sister and her friend were
here with his parents. They paid.”

Georgia reached over and put her hand on my arm. She didn’t need to speak for me to hear the message loud and clear:
Don’t go to bat here. This is my fight to fight
.

“I try to discourage them from chatting when their friends are here. But with this store being so close to the high school,
I can’t keep the teenagers out. We’d go under. This,” Georgia motioned toward the dining room, “is truly a one-time thing.”

“Every time I’m here, Anna is gabbing with some friend or another,” Dave countered.

“Alex,” I mumbled, even though I knew he didn’t hear me. And even if he did, he’d never care enough to get it right.

“Dave, I really think we should be concentrating on these fall promos…” Georgia answered, letting go of my arm and ushering
him back into her office. My arm felt cool where her warm hand had just been resting. I shivered.

Zack waved good-bye as they left, mouthing the word
sorry
to me, and I was left balancing a half-filled cookie sheet on the counter against my side, my other hand stuffed in my apron
pocket.

I pulled it out and gazed at it. I was stupid to think the concealer would cover up the finger-shaped bruises there. I could
still see them, looking rotten and black under a film of beige.

And Georgia could definitely see them. She was staring right at them. Staring right through the concealer and the foundation
and the powder at the ugly mess beneath.

The question was… could she see through me?

For a while I considered just marching into Georgia’s office and holding my wrist up and telling her everything.

After all, this was the sort of thing you would tell a mom, right? You’d show her the bruises and cry on her shirt and tell
her you still love him and ask her what you’re supposed to do now. And she would give you advice and say she understands and
tell you that you’re beautiful and this won’t define you. That it can’t, no matter what, ever define who you are.

But when I stepped into Georgia’s office to time out at the end of my shift, she was sitting there with a wadded-up tissue
in her hand, and her voice was scratchy and her nose was stuffy and I realized that I couldn’t lean on her today because today
just wasn’t a good day for her to be my mom, and if she really was my mom it wouldn’t matter because your mom is your mom
no matter what kind of day she’s
having. And as much as Georgia was
like
a mom to me, she wasn’t and never would be my mom, so she could have bad days off.

And then I thought of Brenda, and how it seemed as though she was always having bad days, and I felt sorry for Cole, despite
everything, and could understand why he was so stressed and angry with nobody to lean on. And just like that, I realized that
in a way, what happened yesterday had already started defining me anyway; I was making excuses for why he hurt me.

I’d heard the muffled shouts coming from behind the office door as I finished stocking the cookies. It went on for what seemed
like forever. Dave’s voice, on edge, rising, falling, rising, falling, then answered by Georgia’s voice, steadily loud.

Then Dave stormed out, and a few seconds later I saw his silver Lexus squeal away at the stoplight, but before I could go
back to the office, the dinner rush started and I was too busy to do anything but fill soup orders.

I heard a heavy clink as Georgia slammed the safe, and the creak of her office chair as she pulled herself out of it. And
then she retreated into the kitchen, where she stayed until just a few minutes before my shift was over.

“I’m sorry,” I said, while I typed in my ID number to clock out. “I really did tell them to cut it out. I hope I didn’t get
you into trouble.”

She rested an elbow up on the desk and palmed her forehead, then looked up at me, her red-rimmed eyes watery
and weak behind her glasses. “You didn’t,” she said. “But I saved your ass. I probably won’t be able to again.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I mean, thank you. I…”

“Don’t,” she interrupted. “He’s just a fool. Don’t give him the dignity of responding to that shit. He doesn’t know the first
thing about compassion.”

A tear slipped out from under her glasses, and she wiped at it with a tissue.

“Georgia?” I said softly. “Everything okay?”

I could swear I saw her flick the tiniest of glances at my wrist. She stood up, took a deep breath, dabbed at her eyes again,
and said, “You like hot chocolate?”

She didn’t wait for me to respond. She pushed past me and I followed her out of the office and back up front, where she poured
two cups of hot chocolate and carried them out through the dining room and outside to the empty patio.

“I’m taking a quick break,” she called to Clay, the new hire, just before letting the door swish shut behind us.

It was getting dark on us already. The lights on the outside of the building were on, and moths fluttered around them manically,
bumping into them repeatedly, as if they thought if they could fly hard enough into just the right spot, they might make it
through that light after all.