“Oh, is it?” I grumble. “Thanks for the warning.”
“I just did.”
I glare at him, but he still doesn’t even look up from his grill of burgers and all-day breakfast food. Jerry’s like one of those grumpy characters from the movies—you know, the older, sullen prick with the secret heart of gold? Except Jerry doesn’t have the second part, he’s just a dick.
I whirl and stride out into the dining area with my tray full of food. I scan the diner, full of the usual crowd of truckers and miscreants and head to the table of three guys.
“Pancakes and extra crispy bacon?”
“Thanks, darlin’,” Martin grunts through a mouthful of chewing tobacco. His habits are disgusting, and the man can barely string four words together during a conversation. But Martin’s been coming to the Rosebud Diner for years now and is a pretty nice guy once you get past the mint Skoal scent and the monosyllabic grunts. I mean, a guy in his sixties that gets pancakes and bacon for any meal of the day can’t be all that bad, right?
“Burger, medium with swiss…” I put the plate down in front of Lester, one of Martin’s AA friends. Martin usually rotates through about five other men his age from the program who come out to eat with him after meetings in downtown Dark Water Falls.
Lester rubs his hands together. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
The “sweetheart” and “darlin’” shit would normally warrant a big fuck you from me if it came from any other patron. But, Martin and Lester and the rest of the guys from their AA group are harmless old guys just looking to make it through another day. So, I’m usually fine letting it slide with them.
“And last but not least, Cobb salad, dressing on the side, extra spinach, no cheese.”
Martin and Lester snicker when I put the food down in front of Tom, their other friend.
“Hey, fuck you too, pricks,” the grizzled retired factory worker grunts, making me grin. “I’m tryin’ not to have another fuckin’ bypass over here.”
“Hey, die young, leave a pretty corpse,” Lester snickers.
“Yeah, well, the ship has sailed on ‘young,’” Tom chuckles. He turns to wink at me. “Good thing I’m still easily mistaken for Brad Pitt, huh sweetheart?”
I roll my eyes and laugh. “You charmers need anything else?”
“Nah, we’re good. Thanks, Delphine,” Martin grins.
I leave them to their food and head back to the kitchen. The Rosebud Diner usually does okay on Friday nights, but tonight seems even busier than usual. Plus, it’s just me and Scarlett since Val called out. I dart through the saloon doors to the kitchen, and instantly gasp as I go crashing into Scarlett.
“Oh, fuck!” we both say at almost the same time. She’s manages to stop her tray full of burgers and fries from toppling over to the floor, but one of the little ramekins of ketchup has splattered down the side of my uniform.
“Motherfucker,” I grumble.
“Shit! I’m so sorry, girl,” she groans. “I didn’t hear you say ‘in!’”
It’s because I didn’t, because I’m distracted today. Well, more distracted than usual, I guess. It happens when you lead a life of partial captivity—“owned” by a man you loathe who seems to hate you just as much.
…I lead a strange, strange life, believe me.
“I’ve got an extra apron in my locker!” Scarlett says quickly. “Hang on, hold this.”
She shoves the tray into my hand and darts through the kitchen for the employee area, returning a second later with a crisp white apron.
“Oh, perfect, thanks.”
She pouts. “Fuck, I’m so sorry.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” I say, waving her off as I change into the new apron. The dress still has a red ketchup stain on it next to the new apron, but at least I look somewhat more presentable.
“My fault, I didn’t say I was coming in.”
“Busy tonight, huh?”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, a little too busy.”
“Hey, I like money, don’t you?”
I giggle. “Sure. Thanks for calling out, Val.”
My friend laughs. “For real. Alright, I gotta jet.”
She grabs the tray of burgers and dashes out into the dining room. And then, I’m right back into the cycle—pick up food, deliver food to customers, take order from new table, put the order in, listen to Jerry bitch about how much he hates his job and how he’s going to quit in “five fucking seconds, I swear!,” grab more food to deliver, and then rinse and repeat.
The tips are paltry, but constant on a night like this, and at least that’s something. I can tell myself I’m saving to “get away from this place”—something Scarlett and Valerie say too, but in their case, they mean it. Me? I’m not going anywhere. Not when my father is who he is, not when I’m “owned” by the man I’m owned by. Not when I’m in the situation I’m in.
No, believe me—I’m never getting out of Dark Water Falls.
Time goes by in a blur of ketchup stains and Diet Coke refills, until finally the diner door swings open a little extra forcefully, and I look up and cringe.
Fuck.
I hate it when he comes in here. It’s awful enough that I have to live with him and endure his constant barrage of insults and thinly veiled threats. It’s bad enough that I’ve still got the bruises from his temper tantrum last week. But as crazy as work is sometimes, and as shitty as it pays, it’s at least space away from him.
From Bryce Barnes, the man who my father sold me to. And yes, you heard that right.
Barnes is a local thug with delusions of grandeur who thinks of himself as a regular Al Capone or Scarface. Except, this is Dark Water Falls—shitty, crumbling, tumble-weed town Dark Water Falls. Barnes’s “criminal enterprise” is basically slinging shitty cocaine and Oxy to out of work factory workers, working a few scams and “protection” rackets, and running the gambling at the bike races he hosts now and again down at the old race track from when the town thought NASCAR was going to set up shop here thirty years ago.
Now, how is it that a girl like me ends up being “owned” by a fuck-wad like Barnes? Easy, because my father was and is the exact same caliber of fuck-wad.
Before Barnes, it was my dad, Ben, who “ran” this town. Except Ben Armory got lazy, or got bored of running the show, and eventually new blood, i.e. Barnes, set up shop and started to muscle him out. I got lured back home from college by my dad’s pleas that he needed help with his bad knee. But it turns out, it was a lot more than that.
Dad’s “bad knee” was courtesy of Bryce Barnes and a baseball bat, and my coming home wasn’t to take care of him.
…It was to settle a debt.
See, Barnes moved fast, and before my dad could blink, he’d taken over the drug trade for the whole town. Dad and some of his people hit back and stole a shipment from one of Barnes’s warehouses, and that’s when a little territory feud went nuclear. Barnes hit back hard, burned down my father’s crappy little headquarters, scared off his remaining guys, and knee-capped him. And to settle the debt for the missing drugs? Well, Ben didn’t feel like getting murdered in a back alley for his thievery, so he offered payment in the only thing he had left…