offer the more grateful she became. Over the past week things had changed. She was seeing more and
more reasons to trust that he wasn’t going to abandon her. A very romantic part of her believed,
wholeheartedly, he’d always be there. She could figure something out. She was a survivor.
As she thought of possible solutions, she realized her manager was still talking. “. . . Now, I’m sure
we could come to some agreement. What do you say we discuss this more over lunch? It is completely
your choice however.”
As she caught his suggestion, a frown pinched her face. That slimy feeling returned, the one she
usually got in Mr. Gerhard’s office. Why was she back here more than anyone else? His smile was
patronizing beneath the mop of his mustache, and his eyes were hooded and magnified behind those
thick lenses.
Deep down, she knew he was crossing a line, and she knew if Lucian found out he’d kill her
manager. More complications she didn’t want to deal with.
The scent of peppermint and coffee was suddenly suffocating. Her gaze slipped over the washed-out
grease stain on the breast pocket of his pink Clemons shirt just beneath the narcissistic name tag
proclaiming he was something better than the rest of them.
“I’m trying to be your friend here, Evelyn.”
Her gaze flashed to his and something inside of her snapped. “No, you’re not. You’re trying to
manipulate me. You’ve asked me to lunch over and over again and I’ve continually made it clear that
I’m not interested. Have you ever asked Nick or Gary or Todd to lunch? No. And I imagine it has a lot
more to do with their lack of breasts than their job performance.”
She was really doing this. Her fingers went to her name tag and snatched it off her shirt. “That
woman violated my privacy. Rather than sympathize with your employee, you used the opportunity to
further your creepy advances. I’m. Not. Interested. I quit.”
She tossed the name tag on his desk and exited the office. When she reached her register, she was
trembling. Her fingers clumsily collected her papers and books and shoved them into her bag.
“Hey, you all right?”
“Do me a favor,” she said as she slung her bag over her shoulder. “Make sure they get my address to
mail me my check. I quit.”
“What? Why?”
“Because that waxy motherfucker asks me out nearly every day, and he just tried to change my
shift. He’s always leering at me and brushing up against me and I can’t take it anymore.”
“You need to tell someone if he’s harassing you.”
“I’ll be sure to write a letter to management,” she snarled, needing to take a jab at herself in that moment for some unknown reason. “I am so sick and tired of being treated like a piece of flesh.
Goddamn it! What does a girl have to do, not to be some sort of object in this world? People are
writing about my personal business! Taking pictures of me at work! I just want to blend in! That’s all
I’ve ever wanted! To blend the fuck in.”
Nick was suddenly at her side, ushering her away from the registers and into a quiet corner behind a
juice display. “Hey, hey. Calm down.”
Her breath quaked and to her horror, drops of tears fell from her cheeks, blooming into dark, rosy
puddles on her pink shirt. She only wanted a normal job with a normal boss and a normal life. Why
could nothing ever be normal?
She’d gone from the gutters to an ivory tower to what she finally hoped was average, and now,
because of her stubborn temper, she had nothing.
The heel of her palm scrubbed away her stupid tears and she shrugged off Nick’s touch. It was only
meant to comfort, but at the moment she didn’t want the weight on her skin.
“Gerhard’s a jerk. I see the way he watches you. Seriously, Ev, you can complain to management.”
More attention she didn’t want.
Pulling herself together, she shifted and sniffled in a deep breath. “No. This isn’t where I want to be anyway. No offense. I just . . . I’ll figure it out.”
“But I like you working here,” he admitted. “We have fun.”
They did have fun. It was nothing tangible, but Nick made her laugh and helped speed along the
hours. Something inside her told her this might be the end of their . . . friendship. The word settled in her head like a battleship trying to parallel park in a shoebox. He was her friend.
He didn’t want anything from her. Theirs was a mutual respect for silly jokes and meaningless
chatter. She never had that before. With Parker, there had always been an underlying sense of struggle, a weight that siphoned away all those free opportunities to simply be.
Her relationship with Pearl was work. When had it become so much work to have a mother?
Perhaps it had always been that way. No, there was a time when Evelyn was merely a child expected to