Was 8 lousy bucks an hour really worth the humiliation?
When she got out of the shower, she saw that she had a missed call, and it was a number she didn't recognize, but they left a voicemail, so she dialed it and listened to the message.
"Julie, it's Leigh! Hey, can you come in? We're supposed to be busy tonight, my four to eight girl called off last minute and I can't get a hold of anybody—it's just me and Aaron, and we would love the help. Please call me back—this is my cell, by the way. Save me in your phone if you want to."
Looking at the clock as she dialed, Julie saw it was already 6:04—they probably wouldn't need her.
"Hello?" answered a gruff voice.
Whoa, hadn't she called Leigh's cell phone?
"Um, is this Leigh's phone?" Julie asked uncertainly.
"Yep," he said. "We don't need you to come in, never mind."
"Okay," she said. "No problem, I was just making sure."
Then the phone was disconnected, no goodbye, nothing.
He was such a friendly guy, she thought sarcastically.
But he hadn't kicked her out of his bed when she fell asleep there last night, so she had to give him that.
Still, he was rude, she decided stubbornly. It would not have killed him to say “thanks anyway,” or even goodbye.
With that last defiant thought, she went in and grabbed her earrings from Matt, putting them in her ears. Why shouldn't she wear them? Why should she hide them? After all, she had earned them, she thought a little spitefully. It wasn't like anything she did was good enough to not piss Aaron off anyway—he had decided she was a whore, and she was branded from then on, never to be redeemed.
Suddenly, she knew which book to read.
With an ironic little smile on her face, she went to her books and dug out the one she was looking for, then she went back in to her stupid little air mattress to read, just in case she fell asleep like she had the night before.
---
Much later that night when Aaron quietly crept in, he put his keys down on the counter and kicked off his shoes, sighing and hoping his housemate would be asleep so he wouldn't have to deal with her. He knew he had been a total prick to her when he had answered Leigh's phone earlier—he knew because Leigh had reamed his ass, especially since nobody else had answered, so it was the two of them waiting every table on a busy Saturday night.
The good news was that they had both made extra tips.
The bad news was that Leigh was becoming suspicious of why he was so completely opposed to having Julie around when he was the one who hired her.
"What did she ever do to you?" Leigh had asked him as she tossed him a glare, not even having a chance to get a drink of water. "I know she's a rookie, but she's not half bad—you could have let her come in for two hours."
He had evaded the question, telling her with one of his winning smiles that they could handle it together, and even though she was annoyed, she had cracked a smile, sighing and rolling her eyes as she walked away, adding a head-shake in case he didn't get that she was exasperated.
But Aaron hadn't really explained the whole Julie situation to Leigh, and he really didn't want to. Leigh would be entirely too understanding, and that was one area of his life that he didn't want Leigh invading with all her kindness and compassion.
Aaron was jarred from his thoughts when he spotted Julie asleep on the "boat-bed" as she called it, with a book open and lying across her chest. Walking closer, a frown marred his brow as he read the title.
The Scarlet Letter.
Fitting, he thought ironically. He had his very own in-house Hester Prynne, and she was reading The Scarlet Letter as she lay nestled in his living room, his brother's bastard child in her womb.
"Beautiful," he murmured to himself sarcastically.
Then he sighed, because she moved just a little, curling up slightly and knocking the book off her chest and causing it to slide down her side, propped up.
Aaron bent down and picked up the book, reaching into his pocket to grab some piece of paper—possibly a receipt—to mark her spot, then he closed the book and sat it down on the floor beside her bed.
Just like the night before, she didn't seem to understand that it was winter, and she was lying on top of the blanket he had put on her bed.