I quickly finished up the side work I’d been doing, removed my small waitressing apron and clocked out, calling a goodnight to the kitchen workers.
Fifteen minutes later I was pulling my small beater car up in front of Brady’s, a local dive bar, and hopping out. I’d stay for an hour tops and then head home. It’d been a long shift, and I was tired and smelled like syrup and bacon. It had been a pleasant, comforting smell once, but after four years, I was over it.
It was unseasonably hot, even for June, and though the sun had already set, the air was stuffy and still.
The state had officially declared a drought just two months earlier, but the local farmers had been worried about their crops far longer than that. We were a farming town and what happened at the farms affected every business in the area. So everyone was worried, living and breathing the weather forecast and glancing constantly at the sky for the most scant sign of rain even the experts may have missed.
I couldn’t help wondering about Sawyer Farm and how they were dealing with the drought. I’d spoken to Cole occasionally over the years, and I’d even seen him a couple of times when he’d come home for one break or another. He’d pulled me to him both times, smiling and kissing me, but we’d ended up talking more than making out. I wondered vaguely if Cole was seeing other girls in college but didn’t ask him. I sort of figured he was—and really, he should—but it didn’t weigh on my mind, so what was the point in potentially creating an uncomfortable situation or causing him to believe I was suggesting he shouldn’t be dating?
I’d attempted skating around the topic of Preston, but in the end, even though it still hurt that he’d never said goodbye, I’d been too desperate to hear any news of him, so I’d asked Cole how he was. Cole had told me he was enjoying college and finally letting loose a little bit, that the girls couldn’t get enough of him. A stab of jealousy had sliced into a tender spot inside me, and I’d barely stopped myself from wincing with the pain. I’d cried later, and then felt angry at myself for my tears. Preston was doing exactly as he should be doing—he was living his life. As far as I knew, he stayed on the East Coast during the summers, working, and taking classes even during breaks.
I’d become accustomed to not seeing the Sawyer boys for long stretches of time—even when they’d been living in the same town—so I continued as I had for most of my life: I loved them from afar.
And I was busy enough that my own life distracted me. I graduated high school, started working full time as a waitress at IHOP, and began making enough money that I moved Mama to an apartment in town. A studio was all I could afford and so my mama and I still slept in the same room, but it was bigger, with new carpeting on the floor, a small but clean kitchen, and a bathroom with an actual door. I wondered if other people smiled every time they clicked a lock behind themselves and figured they didn’t. It was a pitiful sort of joy, I supposed, but it was a joy nonetheless, and I would take what I could get in that arena. I always had.
My mama quit working at the motel and although I couldn’t do anything about her back—we didn’t have health insurance or enough money to go to a doctor, much less consider surgery—I felt pride in the fact that she no longer endured the physical labor that had caused her injury in the first place.
Though money was still very, very tight, I’d saved up over four years and finally had eight hundred dollars to buy my very first car: a silver Hyundai with almost two hundred thousand miles on its engine and rust on its fender. I had the interior detailed, hung a vanilla air freshener on the rearview mirror, and smiled every time I turned the key in the ignition. It was mine and I had earned it with hour after hour of hard, honest work.
The interior of Brady’s was dim and smelled like old beer and something lemony—maybe some type of polish used on the ornate wooden bar in the center of the room. I squinted until my eyes adjusted and I was able to spot my coworkers already at a table near the window. I smiled as I approached, and they called out a greeting, pulling a chair out for me so I could sink down into it.
My coworkers were young like me and went out for drinks after almost every evening shift. IHOP was open twenty-four hours and when I’d first become a waitress, I’d worked graveyard shift, which had been hard when I had to get up early for classes. But the money was good and it’d improved our situation so I made do, sleeping when I could and studying during my breaks. Recently, I’d gained enough seniority to work days, but I usually picked up a few evening shifts, too, if someone needed a fill-in.
Because there was a uniform, my clothing wasn’t noticed or compared as it had been at school, and the fact that I felt on more of an even playing field in that regard, had helped me come out of my shell a little and make some friends—friends who I thought liked me for me, and didn’t alienate me, judging my low social status.
Even so, I rarely joined those going out, so they teased me after I’d ordered a Coke, asking who I was and what I’d done with the hermit known as Annalia. I joked back, turning the conversation. Even though none of my coworkers came from rich families, they wouldn’t understand my situation, wouldn’t understand the pressure of doing well at my job, of making every penny in tip money I could. They rolled into work hung over most days, ignored customers to sit at the break table in the back if they were tired, and didn’t have a dependent parent at home with no safety net whatsoever.
Sometimes I felt like I was the most ancient person on earth in the body of a nineteen-year-old.