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I looked to where he was pointing, to the full tables lined up in the Oktoberfest tent. My gaze landed on Beth where she stood at a table full of rowdy frat boys. She had her hands folded over her dirndl uniform and her chin tucked close to her chest. It appeared that several of the boys had gotten sloppy drunk. And belligerent.
I threw my pen down on the counter. “I got this.”
Dylan’s expression shifted into gleeful anticipation. “Fuck yeah. Here she goes.”
I skirted around the order counter, breezing past patrons with frothy glass mugs and raucous groups of tourists. The pungent odor of beer mingled sourly with a shocking amount of BO given that customers had to be over the age of twenty-one to enter our tent and weren’t pubescent middle schoolers. I straightened my green apron over my uniform, pulling it down over my breasts a little and making sure to hike up my fluffy dress to show more thigh than was technically appropriate.
I sauntered past long tables stuffed full of increasingly inebriated partiers and came to a stop next to Beth’s table.
“… cost eighty dollars, sweetie. You got that stuffed down your bra?” One of the frat boys—short, stocky, entitled—gestured to his “Oktoberfest is the Best” T-shirt that had been fashioned to look like cheap lederhosen. From what I could tell, it looked like twenty-one-year-old Beth had spilled a beer on him. It happened—the mugs were fucking heavy.
Beth tucked a frizzy curl behind her ear, her face red and every inch of her vibrating with obvious discomfort. “I’m really sorry, sir.”
“Sorry doesn’t fix my shirt, bitch,” he threw back loudly.
A few people around them went silent in shock, but his buddies seemed to think this was the best thing since beer bongs. They guffawed loudly, some of them bent over and snickering, and the others making “ooh” sounds like he’d just handed out Leavenworth’s hottest burn.
I cleared my throat, leaning my hip against the paper-covered table so my skirt hiked up a little higher. “Something wrong here, boys?”
Mr. Fancy Shirt settled his eyes on my thigh. Then my face. I was pretty sure I saw drool pool along his lower lip. “You in charge?”
“Always,” I smiled coyly.
The snickering around the table turned suggestive, and the idiot with the beer-stained shirt brought his eyebrows straight to his sandy-blond hairline. “Well, what are you going to do about it? Your waitress spilled beer everywhere, and I just bought this shirt.”
I glanced down at his cheesy event shirt, lingering over his body until he drew back uncomfortably. Then I met his dull, hazel eyes. “We apologize for the unfortunate incident, sir. The beer steins are quite heavy. Accidents happen.”
“Oh, right,” the frat boy rolled his eyes and leaned back. “The girls can’t carry the beer steins.” He gave me an unforgiving glare. “Maybe you should have the men do the hard work, then. And have your bitch pay me for my shirt.”
“Ooh,” the party boys chorused, filling the rapidly quieting space with their soft jeers.
My answering, tight smile had the potential to snap in half with an errant breeze. “I’ll tell you what. If you can carry more steins than I can, then I’ll pay for your shirt.”
He snorted softly, folding his arms over his wet shirt. “Is that some kind of joke?”
“No joke,” I smiled again, this time toothy and predatory. “I’ll even let you use a tray.”
His unremarkable eyes zigzagged down my body, taking in my tall, thin build and stick arms. “A shirt and free beers for my table.”
His “bros” erupted into hoots, slamming the table and starting a chant. “Beer girl, beer girl, beer girl!”
I held out my hand for him to shake. “It’s a deal, hot stuff.”
The answering cacophony of excited cheers seemed to pick up additional onlookers from around us as I shook the idiot’s hand. It was just as fleshy and moist as I had expected it to be. Like palming warm bologna. I gestured for him to follow me to the counter just as our manager met me on the way, her middle-aged features a caricature of worry.
With gritted teeth, she hissed, “What are you doing now?”
Oh, yeah. I was on the verge of being fired… for exactly what I was doing now. But what was I supposed to do? Let people be assholes?
“You can’t change assholes,” she whispered harshly, keeping pace with me. She didn’t have to wear our degrading, fluffy uniform, and her squeaky white tennis shoes worked overtime as she pumped her short legs to keep up with me. Her wiry, black hair had little tendrils of unruly gray that shot out from her messy bun, and the fine lines around her eyes had crinkled in disapproval.
“I’m not changing him,” I answered with a sniff. “I’m teaching him a lesson.”
“Oh my God,” she moaned.
“I’ll win, don’t worry,” I assured her seriously.
“I’m not worried about you winning, Matt,” she snapped back. “I’m worried about you pissing off our customers.”
