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“Julie,” I respond, taking his hand.
“Delfina,” she says with an overly friendly smile.
“My cousins,” T adds in firmly.
“Nice to meet you,” Gavin nods, then turns to T and lifts up extra bottles. “Where do these go?”
“In the storage closet,” she responds curtly, and he walks away, leaving the three of us in a strange silence.
“Hm.” Delfi breaks it.
“Don’t,” T says quickly.
“He is …good-looking.”
“Christ. Pretty sure Samantha already dropped her panties somewhere, and Manny has a sudden desire to upsell drinks to all his tables.”
Delfi snorts a laugh while I hide a smile behind my own drink.
“He’s also trying to steal my job,” she hisses under her breath.
“Okay, I need some snacks for this show. Let’s get the calamari,” Delfi says. She holds up the menu, looking through it as if we’re not here all the time. “Want to try the burrata? Or maybe a flatbread?”
“That sounds good,” I say.
T takes our order and continues with her night, chatting with her regulars, making drinks for the tables as she goes. Trevor works alongside her, and Gavin watches everything, getting acclimated to T and her own brand of chaos.
I turn to Delfi. “How was your week?”
“Oh, it was fine.” She waves it away. “How are you? How have things been?”
While I’ve been feeling so mentally drained and unhappy at my job, it’s only been accentuated by the fact that I now have something fun in my life. Something that allows me to feel excitement instead of indifference, or stagnation, or irritability.
“Oh, you know. Same shit.” I shrug. Doesn’t mean I’m comfortable telling them about it, though.
“How’s Babs?” T asks me, using the nickname she’s given Barbara.
“One of these days I’m going to slip and call her Babs and she’s going to key my car and fire me.”
“I don’t think she has it in her to key your car.”
“I’ve seen her do worse for less. Just last week she screamed at Jim in front of the whole office and told him he would be uninvited from the holiday party.”
“She’s so miserable.” T scowls.
“I had a boss like that. It’s never good to be in that environment,” Gavin chimes in. I didn’t realize he was listening, but now I feel concerned that he might have heard something he shouldn’t have.
Agostina just gives him a very hard look, one that screams,nobody fucking asked you.
But Gavin just shrugs, unbothered. “I’m just giving my two cents.”
"You can keep them," she retorts.
Trevor laughs in the background. “He’s not afraid of you, T.”
“I know,” she mumbles under her breath, giving him a look from the corner of her eye. “It’s bad for business.”
The bar is starting to really fill up now. Stragglers from a large party in the party room, couples and friends ordering drinks and bar bites. T moves effortlessly through the bar as she always has, efficient and quick and damn good at her job. Trevor and Gavinmove quietly in the background with her. Gavin is focused, learning, the perfect complement to her organized chaos.
