“Are you okay?” she asks softly.
Virginia’s not ordinarily soft-spoken. She used to be, back when she started working here, but no one ever listened to her and it started pissing her off. I used to rag on her for being too meek, and boy did that light a fire under her ass. She wasn’t meek, people just thought that because she was quiet. Eventually, she learned to dress for the job she wanted—in this case, the job of making people do whatever the fuck you tell them to do. Started carrying herself with authority. No one fucks with her now, not even that little bastard Trent, even though he’s technically her manager.
It’s different for me, though. She kept a soft spot for me.
I try to nod my head, but it fucks me up, so I stop. I probably should have stopped before that last drink. “Yep. I’m good.”
“You don’t look good,” she tells me.
“Thanks,” I say, dryly.
Rolling her eyes at me, she says, “You know that’s not what I meant. You don’t need me to tell you that you look good. You’re too well aware of that already.”
My head feels heavy, so I rest it back against the cushioned seat of the booth. “How crazy is it that they went from 0 to family like that? From nothing. Just… cobbled together a fucking family out of pieces and parts. I had all the parts, they were actually mine, and I couldn’t do that. It’s like I had the flour and the water, and I couldn’t make bread if my life depended on it. Sin had fucking sawdust, and he made a basket full of dinner rolls.”
“Yeast.”
I look over at her. “What?”
“You don’t make bread out of just flour and water, you need yeast—never mind, that wasn’t the point.” She pauses. “Using your bread analogy, Sin and Laurel may not have had the right ingredients, but they knew what they wanted to make. They knew they wanted bread, so they found a way. You had a counter full of ingredients and no idea what to do with them. Or maybe no desire to do anything with them. You didn’t want to make bread, so all the ingredients and recipes in the world wouldn’t have helped you.”
“It didn’t work because I didn’t want it to work.”
She nods. “Exactly. Sin wanted it. You didn’t. You just like playing with other people’s toys.”
I grin, turning my head to look at her. “That’s true, I do.”
Instead of being annoyed at me, her eyes shine with indulgent fondness. “You’re such a rogue.”
“That’s a nice word for what I am,” I tell her.
“Yeah, well, I’m a nice girl,” she says dryly.
“You are a nice girl,” I agree, with much less irony. “Too nice. You should have kicked me out of here an hour ago.”
Amusement twinkles in her brown eyes. “I should kick you out? You own the restaurant. I’m a waitress. I don’t have the authority to kick you out.”
“You never know. I might listen to you if you tried.”
“Well, I didn’t, and here we are. You wanna go home? It’s late and I’m tired. I worked a double.”
“A double? That doesn’t sound fun.”
“It’s not,” she agrees, poking me in the arm playfully. “Some of us actually have to work for a living.”
“You don’t have to. You could hook yourself an old millionaire and be a trophy wife if you set your mind to it.”
She snorts, and it’s fucking adorable. “Yeah, right. Let me get right on that.”
Trent comes storming back on the floor, mean-mugging the shit out of me. “Back’s closed up. I open in the morning, so it’d be really nice if we could leave.”
“See yourself out then, pal,” I tell him. “I have a key.”
Turning to look back at Trent, Virginia shoos him. “Go on. I’ll make sure the place is locked up before I leave.”
Since that is not his motive at all, he tries to stall. “It’s dark. I don’t want you to go outside alone. I’ll wait and walk you out so I know you’re safe.”
“I’m going to give him a ride home,” she tells Trent. “I won’t be alone. Unless you want to make the argument that someone is going to fuck with me on my way to the car with Rafe Morelli walking next to me?” she suggests, making no attempt whatsoever to mask the ridicule in her question.