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I shook my head. “Let’s just say alcoholism runs in my family. I don’t care to flirt with it. Am I remembering right that the slices here are bigger than your head?” I asked.
“You’re remembering exactly right,” Magnolia said.
We each ordered one slice. Jewel set our drinks down, then made her way toward the other end of the bar while we turned to business talk.
I asked Magnolia typical questions, like why she’d be good at the job, why she wanted to work at the inn, and then inquired about her employment history.
Magnolia pressed her lips together and sat up straighter, leaning her forearms on the bar. “The Lily Pad is my first job.” She blew out a breath. “I’m going to level with you, because you’ll hear everything about me anyway. Might as well get it straight from me.”
“Okay…” Intrigued, I straightened too, then glanced to the other side of me, noting the older woman there was completely absorbed in a story her friend was telling her. I couldn’t hear a word of their conversation, so I was sure they wouldn’t hear ours. “Might as well get it straight from you.” I smiled, sensing what she was going to say wasn’t all roses and unicorns.
“I grew up in a wealthy family. I didn’t have to work.” She shook her head. “There’s no way to sugarcoat it. I was a spoiled rich girl, and unfortunately I acted like it. I had my problems, but money wasn’t one of them. My dad didn’t like how it would look for his daughter to ‘stoop’ to a part-time job, so he made sure I had whatever I wanted and then some. I let him. I’m not proud of it, not proud of a lot of things, but that’s why I never worked before.”
“But now you do,” I said, curious as hell. The rich girl thing made sense in a way. She had a way about her that spoke of a privileged upbringing.
Magnolia took another deep breath. “I should’ve ordered a bourbon sour for this. I’m only half kidding,” she said as an aside. “So I was engaged until a couple of months ago. To the guy my dad wanted me to marry. For business reasons.”
My brows shot up my forehead.
“I know. How could I agree to that?” she continued. “My dad threatened to cut me off if I didn’t. And I liked Rick well enough at first. We weren’t a love match, but I told myself I could live with him, literally and figuratively.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Sounds like a but coming…”
“Big but. Rick turned out to be a cheating asshole. He knew all about my dad’s threat and thought I’d ignore his indiscretions. That’s where he went wrong.”
“You dumped him?”
“Like the garbage he is.”
“Good for you.” I raised my tea and we clinked our glasses. Now the BMW and the retail job made more sense.
“Good for me in the end, but I’m not going to lie. It hasn’t been easy to go from spoiled rich girl to destitute. My dad took everything but my car.” She let out a self-deprecating laugh.
“At least you can still laugh.”
“It’s taken me a while to get there, but really, if I didn’t laugh, I’d do nothing but cry.”
While she and I had very little in common so far, I could so relate to that emotion.
“I know, cry me a river, right? Anyway, my revenge is to make it on my own. I’m sure my dad thinks I can’t do it, that I’ll come back begging.”
“Sounds like he’s wrong,” I said.
“So one-hundred-percent wrong.” She frowned then took a sip of her tea. “I functioned on pure anger for the first couple of weeks. I’m so blessed that Dotty has a good heart—and that she’d been thinking of hiring someone to help for a while. She never thought much of my parents—most of the people in town don’t, and my reputation is no better than theirs. But Dotty saw I was in need, saw my determination to change my life, and gave me a place to live and an opportunity to change.”
“Dotty’s good people,” I said.
Magnolia’s honesty was refreshing. Yes, I could’ve easily heard her story from anyone else if I asked, but I respected her for putting it out there, because I could tell it wasn’t easy. But she seemed to genuinely want to change.
“So you want a second job?” I asked.
“I don’t want to take advantage of Dotty’s generous apartment offer forever. She takes my rent out of my paycheck, but it’s ridiculously low. I know she could make more from anyone else.”
“I get that,” I said, thinking about my own goal of living independently, without using my ex’s support each month. That was something we sort of had in common. Because yes, my ex was wealthy.
As we ate our slices, we wandered into more usual interview questions, likewhat would you do if Xandhow would you handle Y?
When Jewel came by to see if we needed another slice or a refill, we both shook our heads and held a hand to our stomachs in anI’m fullmotion, then laughed. Jewel cleared our plates, left us the bill, and went on to help another customer.
