Deacon stared at me as if I had lost my mind and shook his head.
“Dude, it’s written all over your face.”
As he walked away, I tried to protest and realized it would do no good. Deacon wouldn’t jump to a conclusion like that unless he was sure, and I knew in my heart anyway that he was right. My impromptu evening with Lauren had distracted me to the point where I almost got killed. I needed to get it together. Fast.
The rest of the afternoon was rather uneventful. After the near accident, I only stayed out there for another hour or so and then came back to the office. There were things to do there, and I probably didn’t need to be out in everyone’s way. Too many opportunities for disaster.
I made it into the office and saw the phone was blinking.
I checked the messages, having to try a couple of times before I remembered the passcode, and then deleted the two that were there. They were both wrong numbers anyway. Then I made my way over to the desk calendar and wrote in the notes section to find a receptionist. I underlined it three times. Deacon had said he would take over making sure we hired enough crew, but apparently that hadn’t extended to finding someone to run the office itself. I was going to have to do it or keep leaving passive-aggressive notes.
Stopping to grab a soda out of the refrigerator, I made my way back to my office and shut the door. It wasn’t much, but it was a space where I could relax a little bit and focus. I had brought a few things to decorate the room in, adding a television and a video game system as well. I barely ever played video games, but I thought it might be nice if we have one of those long nights where I got stuck there, I had something to do other than work to break up the night.
Of course, if we had a person to run the office, the likelihood of one of us needing to stay and catch up on paperwork and other stuff was much reduced.
I opened the laptop and navigated over to the email for the company. No one had messaged about the receptionist job yet, though there were a few straggler applications for crew members. I marked those as unread so Deacon could get to them and then sat back in my chair.
An idea was floating around in my head, and I was debating the merits of it. Lauren clearly needed to get out of the situation she was in with her ex and finding a new job might be part of that. We were looking for a receptionist, and I knew Lauren could handle the responsibility and pressure of the job having been a manager at Dina’s. All of this was besides the fact that I really enjoyed spending time with her, and the boys seemed to get along with her too.
Mulling it over for a few minutes, I decided to go ahead and make a pitch. The worst she could say was she wasn’t interested, and then at least I could say I tried. I opened up my phone, found her number, and pressed the call button.
The excitement in my stomach at the idea of calling her was something I was going to have to file away to think about some other time.
She answered just after the first ring, taking me a bit by surprise.
“Hello?” she asked. “Carter?”
“Hey, Lauren, how are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just got off the morning shift. How are you?”
She was clearly confused, and I knew I couldn’t just keep the chitchat going, no matter how much I just wanted to extend the conversation by any means necessary.
“Well, I actually had a question for you,” I said. “I guess I should preface it by asking if you were serious about looking for a new job?”
“Not really,” she said. “I used to love working at Dina’s, and I probably will again, I’m just going through a rough patch. I figure once Ashton leaves me alone, I’ll probably get back into the swing of things.”
“I see,” I said, suddenly doubting myself.
“It’s waitressing, you know?” she said. “It’s not exactly fulfilling. The managerial stuff is just added pressure, but it’s not much. But I wouldn’t know what I would do other than this, so what’s the point? Why would I leave and just go waitress somewhere else?”
“What if you got an offer to do something other than waitressing?”
“Like what?”
“Like being our receptionist,” I said. “We really need someone to run the office when we aren’t in it and answer the phones and stuff. Do the paperwork. That kind of thing.”
“Oh, you still haven’t found anyone?” she asked, and my hopes started to build.