And even if I were in the mood for pussy, she isn’t my type, and it has nothing to do with the sombrero.
“A guy like you looks like he could go for something…bigger,” she flirts, her voice all breathless and flirty.
“Only the five,” I tell her, not wanting to be rude and definitely not wanting in her pants.
“A girl can dream,” she breathes as she punches the buttons on the register. “That’ll be $15.70.”
I toss a twenty on the counter and hold up my hand. “Keep the change,” I tell her, figuring she deserves a tip for working this shit shift, dealing with drunk idiots like the guy who ordered in front of me.
She snatches the bill off the counter, staring at my face and no longer my body. “Thanks, big guy. It’s my first tip of the night, and I’ve been here five hours.”
“People suck,” I offer, rubbing the back of my neck and hoping to make an exit as quickly as possible.
“They do.” She turns her back, yelling something in Spanish to the guys working in the kitchen. When she turns back, the smile is on her face again. “It’ll be a minute. The dumb shits are slow tonight. Sorry.”
“No worries,” I tell her, stepping back. “I got nothing but time.”
“You can take a seat, and I’ll call you when your order is ready,” she says, making change from the money I gave her and stashing it in her pocket instead of the empty tip jar.
Now I have a dilemma.
Do I sit at the table closest to the drunk guy rambling to himself or the chick who’s crying in her nachos like her dog just died?
I look back and forth between the two and pick the chick because the guy isn’t something I want to deal with. He is talkative, although he is only talking to himself, but I’m not about to risk that changing any time soon.
The safer option is the chick who hasn’t bothered to look up from her nachos, is continuing to cry, and hasn’t stopped eating. Between those tears and her chewing, the likelihood she is going to try to chat me up is slim to fuckin’ none, so I pick her.
As soon as my ass hits the wood, the drunk guy, still swaying, breaks out in song like he is performing for a crowd at a stadium.
“Christ,” I mutter, shaking my head.
“Jimbo,” the sombrero girl says, leaning over the counter, stretching her neck to see him. “You didn’t drive here, did you?”
He shakes his head. “Walked, babe. No license, remember?”
“Only making sure.” She nods, pushing his bag of food out for him to grab. “Need a ride home?”
His head shake is immediate. “It’s the type of night where you need to take in the stars.”
“Shitshow,” I mumble, rubbing my forehead and avoiding the tragic disaster of a human being in front of me.
“Don’t be watching those stars while you’re walking, Jimbo. Liable to end up in a ditch or hit by a car if your head is tipped upward, drunk, and not watching where you’re going.”
“God will show me the way,” he answers, digging into his bag with one hand and pulling out a taco.
Sombrero girl narrows her eyes and twists her thin lips. “God wants you at home so you can be at church tomorrow and not late for your daddy’s sermon.”
Preacher’s kid. Not surprising. ’Round here, they go one of two ways. Devout or rebellious. Based on Jimbo’s current situation, he is stuck somewhere in the middle. He is a believer but has different feelings on God than his father probably taught him.
“I’m never late, Tina Marie.” He sways as he backs away from the building and gazes upward with his first bite. “I’m right where God meant me to be.”
“Lord have mercy,” the sombrero girl, Tina Marie, mutters, watching Jimbo with her eyebrows disappearing up and under the brim of the hat. She does a quick sign of the cross, mumbling under her breath until something behind her takes her attention away from the taco-eating, stargazing guy who’s wandering down the side of the highway.
The crying chick is still crying, or at least, she is until her phone rings.
“What?” she snaps, sounding more vicious than sad.
“Where the hell are you?” the guy asks through the speaker.
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Bitch, I want an answer,” he roars.
I wince, not liking the name nor the tone in which he’s speaking to her, but I remain forward-facing.
Not my chick. Not my business.
“Get. Your. Fucking. Ass. Back. To. The. Hotel,” he says slowly, pausing between each word.
“Let me lay this out for you,” she snaps, the wood creaking on her picnic bench as she shifts her weight.
I want to turn around. I want to watch her because, based on her tone, she is not going to get her fucking ass back to anywhere the asshole is at, and I think she’s about to clue him the fuck in.
“I’m. Not. Coming. Back. You. Fucking. Cheating. Bastard,” she replies exactly the same way he spoke to her, emphasizing every single word.
He grunts. “Jo, I’m done playing. Your skinny little ass better be back in my hotel room in the next thirty minutes, or there’s going to be hell to pay.”
She chuckles, but not because the shit is funny, but because the cheating bastard is delusional.
I’ve heard that tone more times than I care to remember coming from my cousins—Gigi, Tamara, and Lily—and it is never followed by anything good.
“Maybe you should find that blond bimbo you had spread out on my bed with your face buried between her legs. Call her and boss her skinny ass around, because this bitch… She isn’t coming back.”
“When I find you,” he warns, his voice low and growly, “I’m going to make…”
Then his voice stops, and there’s silence.
“Fuck him.”
I brace, waiting for the crying to start again, and right on cue, it does.
“He ain’t worth it,” I tell her, keeping my back to her, giving her privacy even though she laid out her business in front of me, the sombrero girl, and whatever creatures are moving around at this hour.
“Excuse me?” she asks, and it’s not in that sweet way that makes my balls tight.
I turn, figuring she at least deserves my eyes when I reply. “He ain’t worth it.”
Her eyes narrow as she wipes away the stray tears running down her face. “I don’t know who the fuck you think—”
I lift my hand, stopping her from laying into me like she did the guy on the phone. “Babe. It’s none of my business. Or at least it wasn’t until you put that shit on speakerphone and decided to share with the world.”
She peers around, probably noticing it’s only us and the chick with the hat, but she remains silent as I keep talking.
In the dim lighting, I can clearly see she’s pretty, even with the puffy eyes and slick cheeks. She has long blond hair, piled high on her head in a messy bun with a few pieces falling free like they need to breathe. Her nose is slender and straight, clearly never having been broken before. Her cheeks are high, almost touching her light blue eyes, which are staring right at me.
“But I’ve been sitting here for five minutes, listening to you cry. Figured something bad happened. Had your heart broken or some shit. But there’s no man in the world who talks to you like that and does shit like he did who’s worth those tears.”