The Marriage Contract (Anderson Brothers)

“I can imagine,” I said. “Well, you’ve got the whole evening shift to work it off with us tonight, right?”

“Right,” Hannah said. “So, bombs away.”

Hannah took a big swig of her coffee and shuddered.

“Good?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s the good stuff.”

I laughed and shook my head.

“You alright, man?” Jordan asked, catching me by surprise.

“What, me?” I asked. “Yeah, I’m good. Why?”

“I don’t know. Something looked off,” he said, shrugging. “I know having Mom at your place for a few days had to be a bit stressful.”

“It was fine actually. Nice to have some home-cooked food for a couple days.”

“Well if you got yourself a –”

“Don’t even say it,” I cut him off with a raised palm. With that, Jordan held up his hands in mock surrender and walked away, sipping his coffee.

I went into the kitchen, hoping to be inspired. Humming a song I’d heard on the radio earlier, I pulled out my knives, grabbed the cutting board and a bowl, and began chopping up onions. I was going to figure out Mom’s pesto if it killed me, and one of these days it was going on the menu.

The bar was pretty chill that evening, leaving me to do more thinking about Lauren and the random meeting with her than I wanted to. I disappeared for most of the evening into the kitchen, working on dishes and sending them out in record time, but coming no closer to figuring out the secret to the pesto. It was almost quiet enough that I could hear the cocktail waitresses take the orders from my service window and get started on the dish before I even got the ticket.

I put another ticket up and waited for Hannah to come back and give me a new one when I saw her make her way back empty-handed. She walked into the kitchen, exchanging her tray for a new one, and sat down for a moment in one of the chairs I kept back there.

“Bit slow out there tonight,” she said.

“Yeah.” I leaned against the wall.

“Oh, I wanted to tell you thank you for what you did for Chloe. She really appreciated it and wanted me to tell you how thankful she was.”

“Tell her it was nothing,” I said, wondering if that was the truth or not. “I’ve been there before. I’ve had those nights where all I wanted was to forget and destress and I went a bit too far. If it hadn’t been for Jordan, I don’t know if I would have made it.”

“Well, she was very thankful anyway,” she said.

“Good. Glad I could help.”

Jordan walked over from behind the bar and put his elbows on the serving window. I glanced behind him and saw Cris easily handling the group there.

“Speaking of Chloe, you won’t believe this,” she said.

“What happened?” Jordan asked.

“Her parents cut her off.”

“What?” Jordan said, elongating the vowel sound in a funny way.

“Yeah, she had one of the credit cards with her name on it but on their account. She was paying for her car with it, and she got a call this morning saying it didn’t go through.”

“Wow,” Jordan said.

“Is she okay?” I asked, suddenly realizing that I was genuinely concerned. “Does she have a way to get around?”

“She’s okay for right now,” Hannah said, pausing only for a second before she said it. “Chloe was pretty smart about finding ways to have her own independence. She created an account for herself years ago and would do cash advances and just deposit them into the bank so they couldn’t trace the money. It was how she ended up paying for her journalism classes in school.”

“That’s pretty resourceful,” I said.

“She said she has enough to pay off the rest of the car and keep the hotel for a little bit, but she’s going to need income sometime soon.”

“Perfect,” Jordan said, surprising me. I turned to him, and he shrugged. “Remember Sarah? The girl we hired a month ago to waitress? She just quit.”

“No way. She seemed like she enjoyed being here,” I said.

“She did. Or at least she said she did. But she decided she was going to go back home to Toronto,” Jordan said.

“That’s where that accent was. It was Canadian,” Hannah said. “I never really talked to her long enough to find out anything about her.”

“She was nice,” Jordan said. “A little ditzy, but nice. If Chloe can waitress, she can come work here.”

“That would be perfect,” Hannah said. Suddenly, Jordan turned to me and hit me lightly on the arm.

“That is if you’re okay with it,” he said. “I know you like to discuss new hires and stay in the loop. Is hiring Chloe alright with you?”

I didn’t even flinch.

“Yeah. That’s good with me. Besides, this helps Hannah take care of family. That’s too important to pass up.”