Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
“Sorry.” She loosened her grip, her expression tinged with desperation. “I heard you say you were here to help and got carried away.”
“I’m fine. Everything’s fine,” I told the people who were still staring at us, my face hot again. Then I looked at Bernie as I shook out my hand and flexed my fingers. “I had no idea yoga turned people into deadly weapons.”
“You’d be surprised.” She let out a loud breath. “Look, I know we’re not supposed to bother you with things like this, and if you’re having a bad day physically, I won’t push. But if I could borrow you for a couple of hours, I promise to give you free yoga lessons for a year.”
“Borrow me?” And what did she mean, she wasn’t supposed to bother me?
“Half the employees are stuck in one part of town or another until the water levels go down, and I am not patient enough to wait on all these people,” she continued rapidly. “A few friendly randos volunteered to grill and man the food tables, and I bribed two members of my band into waking up before the sun went down to run the bar and bus tables, but that’s it. There could be riots if I don’t have an extra pair of hands for an hour or four. If you can handle the till and pitch in with service, you can keep whatever tips you make. You’d really be helping me out.”
Bernie hadn’t asked me for much since Phoebe was born.
If anything, the last thirty years had been about the things we’d stopped asking each other for. She’d stopped asking if I was coming to visit. I’d stopped calling for a pep talk every time we moved to a new location. We’d stopped checking in with each other for updates. We’d stopped sending each other Christmas cards after getting busy and forgetting for a year or two.
It was normal for people to drift apart when they lived halfway across the country from each other, though not when your families were so intrinsically connected. It made me feel like the distance between us was something I’d done wrong instead of a natural side effect of living separate lives.
Maybe it was. Maybe I needed to try to do something about it for once instead of running like hell in the opposite direction.
“Sure,” I said, social anxiety be damned. “Where do you need me?”
Three hours later, I was actually having a pretty good time, if lamenting the decision to wear a skirt. (Hello thigh friction, my old friend).
No one could be more surprised than I was.
The last time I’d worked as a server, I’d been in my twenties and customers did not appreciate my tendency to trip over my own feet or forget which table had asked for what. Today, everyone was so relieved they’d survived a hurricane that they were surprisingly forgiving and kind when I gave them the wrong beer or cleared their table when they’d just gone back to the buffet for seconds. Some of them even saved me from myself—a woman wearing a camo cap caught a beer that was sliding off my tray like she was Neo from The Matrix.
Or maybe it’s always like this here. How would you know?
If you hid in your house skimming social media like I had, you could be forgiven for thinking the world was nothing but a trash fire. It was good to be reminded that genuinely decent people were still around, just waiting for their chance to help out. The kind of people who brought pies and casserole dishes by without fanfare, dropping them off on a buffet table for no other reason than that they cared about their community. The kind of people who, despite looking like they’d had a rougher week than mine, had slipped dollar bills into my apron and glared when I tried to demur.
When Bernie started singing with her guitar player in the corner and everyone joined in, I found myself humming along as I washed a few glasses in the bar sink. She had the kind of voice that could have sent her on tour and climbing the charts on a regular basis by now if she hadn’t decided to raise her daughter and start a business here instead.
I’d missed hearing it.
And it was nice to know that I could be out in the world again, slow moving though I was, and feel something besides sorry for myself.
“If you keep saying no to everything, you’ll miss…everything.”
Right again, Mom. As usual.
I was wiping down the bar top when Bernie appeared beside me with a sharp-eyed expression and two takeout bags.
“I didn’t break it,” I said instantly, holding up my hands as if I were under arrest.
She huffed out a laugh and set the bags down. “You’re fine and so far everybody likes you, which is more than I can say for their usual daytime bartender.”