She, Myself & I (35 page)

“Did you know Mickey here is an aspiring chef? I’m teaching her some of the ins and outs of the business side of things,” Oliver said, lying glibly.

Ins and outs?
Was that supposed to be funny, I wondered, glancing quickly at him. Oliver’s expression was innocent.

“An aspiring chef? What happened to medical school?” Kevin asked.

“I, um, decided not to . . . well, I’m delaying my admission,” I said.

“Really. Wow. Well, I’d better push off. Mick, do you need a ride home?”

“That’s okay, Oliver said he’d drop me off,” I said.

“It would be great if you could take her. I need to make a few phone calls before I go. Thanks, buddy,” Oliver said.

“Oliver . . . ,” I began.

“Sure, no problem. Come on, Mick,” Kevin said, turning to leave.

I waited a beat, looking at Oliver, but he just winked at me and then turned around and walked back into his office. And I followed Kevin out, feeling disposable and panicking that Oliver was losing interest in me.

And now the only question was, just how much of this little run-in had Kevin shared with Paige?

“I was hanging out with our boss last night—he’s really great, very funny. And Kevin saw us, and I think he got the wrong idea,” I said.

“Really. Because Kevin told me he heard the two of you having sex in your boss’s office,” Paige said dryly.

“What? I can’t believe he told you that. Oh my God, that’s none of his business, and it’s none of your business, either.”

“He wasn’t being a gossip, he was worried about you. And after what he told me about that chef guy, I have to say I’m worried, too,” Paige said, wheeling the cart into the checkout. She groaned when she saw how long the lines were. “My feet are killing me, and I’m starving. And look, that guy in front of us has one, two, three . . .
fifteen
items, and this is the twelve-items-or-less line!”

“We have twenty items.”

“Yeah, well, they should have a super-express lane exclusively for pregnant women.”

I turned toward Paige and noticed for the first time how tired she looked. Her face was puffy, and her eyes were sunken and ringed with dark circles.

“Paige, why don’t you go sit down, and I’ll finish checking out,” I said.

“No, I’m fine. Just a little tired,” she said.

“So . . . what did Kevin tell you about Oliver?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“That he’s a womanizer. A
married
womanizer. And he’s already had flings with a couple of the waitresses,” Paige said.

“He’s wrong about that. Kevin saw a waitress leaving Oliver’s office in tears like two months ago, but she wasn’t crying because they broke up, she was crying because she was quitting,” I said, relieved that it was the same misunderstanding that had already been cleared up.

“It was something else. Although I don’t know if you want to hear this.”

“Tell me.”

“Are you sure? Maybe this should wait until we get home.”

“No! You can’t say that and then not tell me!”

“Well . . . Kevin told me that he walked in on Oliver having sex with another one of the waitresses. In the kitchen. Apparently, he had her up on the kitchen counter and was . . . um . . . going down on her,” Paige said.

I felt light-headed. He’d done the same thing with me our first time. Was it some sort of a compulsion for him? Diddling waitresses on countertops?

“Did he say who it was?” I asked. I stared at the magazine rack, trying to ignore the sickly sour feeling spreading through me.

“Yeah, I think he said her name was Sarah. Does that sound right? Do you work with someone named Sarah?”

“Wait, that can’t be right. Sarah really likes Oliver, but I know they never got together. She told me so, and I don’t think she was lying,” I said.

“Mick . . . Kevin said it was just a few nights ago,” Paige said.

“But that’s impossible,” I said. The relief was like fresh air being sucked into my lungs. Kevin had to be wrong. Oliver and I spent nearly every night together.

And then I remembered. Three nights ago, Oliver told me he wasn’t going to be able to see me after work. He said the owner, Mr. Kramer, was coming in to meet with him to go over the receipts. Oliver had acted nervous about it, said he was worried that business had been slowing down lately. I’d gotten a ride home with Caitlin that night, and Sarah . . . Sarah was still there when we left. Normally she’s the first one out the door, but she’d definitely been there, looking at Oliver with those narrow eyes, and I’d felt a childish pleasure that he’d picked me over her.

Me over her. Her over me.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, I know that must be hard for you to hear,” Paige said, putting her arm around me and patting me on the back. “And, God, I should have waited to tell you, instead of dropping it on you in the middle of the grocery store. What was I thinking?”

I began to lean forward and move the food onto the conveyer belt, marveling at how numb I felt.

“You know, Mick, I have tons of candles at home, feel free to use whatever you want,” Paige said when she saw me holding up the candle and staring at it.

“It’s a present for someone,” I mumbled.

Paige sighed. “You’re giving him presents?”

And then I crumpled, lifting my hands to my face.

“Oh no. Mickey, don’t, he’s not worth getting upset over,” Paige said, grabbing my arm and pulling one of my hands down so she could clasp it in her own. “And maybe Kevin’s wrong. Because for some strange reason, he thought you’d changed your mind on going to medical school, so maybe he was wrong about Oliver, too.”

I shook my head and looked at my big sister, the person I’d always looked up to. She’d always been so cool and capable, able to handle anything. Just look at her now—she’d broken up with her live-in boyfriend and the father of her child, and she was dealing with that better than I was handling finding out that my married lover was screwing around on me.

“He wasn’t wrong. I’m not going to medical school,” I heard myself say.

Chapter Forty

Although I’d already hatched and discarded several revenge plans, I still had no idea how I was going to handle the Oliver situation the next night when I went into work. Should I just quit without explanation? Confront him? Try to embarrass him in front of the staff? None of it seemed to capture the level of vengeance I was going for.

“Whatever you do, just keep it dignified. He’s not worth making a scene over,” Paige had advised as she dropped me off at Versa the next evening.

I nodded, but wasn’t convinced. Oliver hadn’t even bothered to call me the night before. Was he with Sarah then, too? Anger choked in my throat, and when I got inside, I headed straight for Oliver’s office.

“He’s not there,” Adam said, appearing behind me while I rapped on the door.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“What do you want to see him about?”

“Something that’s none of your fucking business,” I said sweetly, and stepped around him.

“Someone’s PMS-ing,” I heard Adam say behind me.

“No, but if I was, you’d really regret saying something like that. Trust me,” I called back over my shoulder, and then went to find busywork that would keep me in the kitchen so I could intercept Oliver when he arrived.

He still hadn’t shown up at five-thirty, the time Oliver always held the servers’ pre-shift meeting, and everyone was milling around, restlessly waiting. Normally this was the calm before the storm, and we’d be joking around with the kitchen staff, but tonight there was so much tension in the room, even Ansel commented on it.

“Why does everyone look so pissed off?” he asked me.

I shrugged and pulled out some lemons and limes to slice for the water glasses, ignoring Adam when he told me to recheck the tables in my section. Adam stomped off, glowering and mumbling under his breath that he was going to have to have a word with the owner about bad attitudes among the waitstaff, as if that would scare me.

Screwing the boss does have some benefits, I thought.

“Give him my best when you talk to him,” I snapped at Adam’s departing back.

“What crawled up your butt?” Opal asked me.

“Just leave me alone,” I muttered.

“What-
ever,
” she said, turning on her heel and walking away.

Sarah also didn’t join the other servers in the dining room, I noticed. She was also finding reasons to hang around in the kitchen, folding enough napkins to last us a week. She kept glancing at the back door and at Oliver’s office. I tried not to care.

At six o’clock, Adam ran back into the kitchen. “Oliver’s finally here, thank God,” he said out loud to no one in particular. He just wanted all of us to know that he was on the case, self-important prick that he was. “When people started to come in, I freaked, but it turned out it was Oliver with some friends of his.”

“What friends?” Sarah asked.

“His wife and some other woman,” Adam said.

At the word “wife,” I froze in the middle of slicing a lime. His wife. Here. The one he was supposedly separated from.

“Shit,” I said under my breath. “Shit, shit, shit.”

I put the last of the lime slices in a rectangular metal container, carefully covered it with plastic wrap, and then plunked it in the refrigerator.

His wife was here. His
wife
.

Adam rounded up the rest of the waitstaff for the meeting, and when I turned to join them, I noticed that Adam, Ansel, and a few of the line cooks were watching me.

Oh my God, I realized numbly. They all knew. They knew that I was sleeping with Oliver, although I’m sure they thought of it in cruder terms than that. They probably made vile jokes about it when I was around, snickering to one another over Oliver’s latest conquest.

I could just hear Ansel now, pointing his chin at me as I walked into the dining room, a heavy tray lifted up on my shoulder:
Oliver’s banging that one. It’s crazy, man, he does her right on his desk.

Just when I thought this couldn’t be any more mortifying, I thought. And who had told them? Oliver, bragging about his exploits? Kevin, maybe, unable to keep such a juicy tidbit to himself? Or had someone else seen us leaving together, or going into Oliver’s office and shutting the door behind us?

The door to the kitchen swung open, and Oliver came striding in. Before, when everything about Oliver was colored with a gauzy romance, I’d mused that whenever he entered a room, the space always seemed a little smaller, as though he filled it beyond his physical dimensions. Now I saw him for what he was—a ridiculous rooster of a man, so cocky and egotistical that every self-important affectation, every temper tantrum made him that much more unlikable.

“Come on, everyone, we have customers here. We need to go over the specials quickly,” he said. “The starter is a carmelized-onion-and-goat-cheese torte. The salad’s a warm wilted spinach with a mini blue cheese soufflé and bacon vinaigrette. The entrée, roasted rack of lamb with white-truffle mashed potatoes, but push the salmon, we need to move it. For dessert, Kevin’s made a chocolate-glazed pecan caramel pie. And that should do it. Any questions? Good, get out of here.”

And then without looking at me, or Sarah, Oliver walked back to the prep area, pulled on his white chef’s jacket, and began grilling Ansel about whether all of the dinner prep had been completed. As much as I wanted to stalk after him, I knew that Paige was right—I couldn’t do it now, not in front of all of these people. I’d just end up looking like an even bigger fool.

Instead, I forced a neutral expression onto my face and headed out toward the dining room.

“Mickey, I told Calla to seat Oliver’s wife in your section, you’d better get out there,” Adam said, catching me just before I pushed through the swinging door.

“What? No. Adam. No,” I said. “Give her to someone else.”

“Why?”

So this was what he wanted: a confession.

“You know why,” I said.

“It’s too late, they’re already seated. You’d better get out there,” Adam said, and a mean, Grinch-like smile threaded across his face. And then I realized what he was really after: humiliation. A punishment for my unforgivable crime of rejecting him. In a way, it was truly pathetic. This was all he had to lord over—the dining room of a small restaurant.

“You are such an asshole,” I said.

“Just do your job,” Adam said quietly.

True to his word, there were two women sitting at a table in my section, an open bottle of wine in front of them. I wondered which one was the wife. Certainly not the woman facing me, I thought. She was older than Oliver, a redhead in her late forties, and was pretty in a soft, out-of-focus way. The other had her back to me, and all I could see was long, shiny brown hair that curled out slightly at the ends.

I took a deep, shaky breath and walked to the table.

“Hello, welcome to Versa. My name is Mickey, and I’ll be your server tonight,” I said.

“Hi, Mickey. I’m Oliver’s wife, Laura,” the brunette said.

I turned to her, my chest pounding, praying that she wouldn’t be able to sense that I was the whore sleeping with her husband—because that’s certainly how she’d think of me, as a slut, a tramp, not just a silly girl who’d fooled herself into thinking that the man who was obviously using her actually cared about her as a person. But Laura just smiled at me benignly and said, “It’s so nice to meet you. This is my stepmother, Faith.”