52 Reasons to Hate My Father (18 page)

I struggle angrily back to a seated position. “What’s your problem?” I yell. “Do you know how many guys in this club—in this
city
—would kill to be in your position right now?”

“Lexi,” he cautions calmly, “you’ve had a lot to drink. You’re not thinking clearly.”

“Oh, Jesus!” I swear. “All you ever do is think clearly! It’s so boring I’m going to fall asleep!” I quickly collect my emotions and replace my irritation with a flirtatious smile. I inch my way back toward him. “C’mon,” I urge seductively. “Don’t you ever just wanna do something without thinking?”

I lean in closer, pressing my palm against his chest. I can feel his heart racing. I can smell his faded aftershave. I start to slide his suit jacket over his shoulders and lean down to kiss his neck. His Adam’s apple expands and contracts as he swallows.

“Lex,” he says, his voice distressed. He gently pushes back against my shoulders. “Why are you doing this? You don’t even
like
me.”

“So?” I say, squirming away from the pressure of his hands. “I don’t have to like you to do things to you.” I run a fingertip slowly down the front of his shirt, fingering the tip of his tie and then finally gripping it and pulling him toward me. I can feel his body yielding. His defenses crashing. His inherent male instincts kicking in once again.

I stop with my lips inches away from his. “Besides, in the end love is just a business negotiation between two people.”

His hands are suddenly back on my shoulders, forcing me to arms’ length. “What?” he spits out.

“You heard me.”

He fixes his gaze on me. “Do you really believe that?”

I shrug and look away. “Yes.”

I can feel his eyes focusing intensely on my face, burning a hole into my cheek. After a long moment, he breathes out a disbelieving chuckle and shakes his head. “You’re drunk,” he concludes, sliding out of the booth and holding out his hand for me to take. “C’mon. I’ll drive you home.”

OFF WITH HIS HEAD!

I’m beyond humiliated. And surprisingly, it has nothing to do with the huge straw sombrero strapped to my head. I’m trying to block out the splintered memories from last night but they keep burrowing their way back into my mind.

Luke Carver.

I kissed Luke Carver!

What the heck was I thinking?

And I’m sorry but being drunk is not a good enough excuse this time. I mean, I’ve done some pretty embarrassing, front-page-worthy things under the influence of alcohol before but this is something else. This is in an entirely new category of shame.

Fortunately, when I get into the car on Tuesday morning, he seems just as averse to talking about it as I am. So when I plop down in the passenger seat, I mumble something that sounds like
Good morning
, then stick headphones in my ears and blast my music. Luke fumbles to get a CD into the car stereo and then peels out of the driveway.

For the first time in the three months that we’ve been doing this same routine, he doesn’t take five minutes to check all his knobs and buttons. He just goes. I imagine we’re both equally eager to get this car ride over with.

And I’d be willing to go out on a limb here and say that we’re also probably equally eager to get this
year
over with.

I guess we
do
have something in common.

Well, how do you like that?

There seems to be a universal sentiment of surprise when I walk back through the doors of Don Juan’s Tacos. Everyone gives me the same bewildered look, like they’ve never seen me before.

“Hey.” Jenna approaches cautiously as I hang my bag on a hook near the door. “You’re back.”

I glance down at my god-awful uniform. “Unfortunately.”

She peers back over her shoulder at the room full of inquisitive faces looking in our direction. “Some people thought you might have quit after yesterday.” Then softer, in a whisper, she hastily adds, “Or gotten fired.”

I wish
.

I paint on a bright smile and announce to the rest of the kitchen, “Nope. I’m still here!”

I see one of the employees sourly slip a twenty-dollar bill to the guy named Rolando, who grins and pockets it.

“Good!” Jenna sounds like she’s trying to be bright and upbeat about it. “I hate being the only girl here.”

“Where should I go?”

She glances around the kitchen. “Why don’t you help with the prep work?”

I reluctantly trudge over to the counter where Rolando is dicing tomatoes with a large metal contraption. He’s tall and slender with a boyish charm about him. His hair has been sheared short. Like a marine’s.

“Hey,” I mumble, sidling up next to him. “I’m supposed to help you.”

He offers me a kind, genuine smile and pushes the carton of tomatoes toward me. “Okay, why don’t you finish dicing and I’ll start on filling the lettuce bins.”

“So you bet I would make it past the first day, huh?” I ask as I grab a tomato and place it under the blade.

He blushes, evidently realizing that I witnessed his little cash exchange. “Oh, yeah. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be,” I tell him. “You’re the only one who seems to have any faith in me around here.” Then under my breath I add, “Or anywhere, for that matter.”

I lower the lever of the dicing machine and press my weight onto it. Instead of dicing the tomato, it ends up splattering, sending seeds and juice everywhere, including all down the front of my uniform.

“Fantastic,” I gripe, grabbing a towel and wiping myself down.

Rolando laughs and scurries over to help me. “Here,” he says, taking another tomato and positioning it in the dicer. “Let me show you. You’ve got to be hard and quick. You know, like a guillotine.”

I laugh at his analogy. “A guillotine?”

“Yeah,” he replies, grinning from ear to ear. “You know, what they used to use to chop off heads.”

“I know what a guillotine is. I was just surprised to hear it used in that way.”

“It works really well, actually,” he tells me. “I think of someone I dislike and pretend that the tomato is their head.” He yanks the lever down firmly and swiftly. The tomato chops into a hundred smoothly cut pieces and falls into the bucket below. “See?”

I laugh again. “Looks violent.”

He waves away my concern. “Not really. But it
does
make it more fun.”

I grab another tomato and secure it under the blade.

“Now,” Rolando prompts, “who are you going to imagine as the tomato?”

A sly smile creeps its way across my lips. “Don’t worry, I have a few people in mind.”

My fingers curl tightly around the black rubber handle of the lever and I use all my strength and emotion to yank the blade down fast and furiously. A small, martial-arts-style grunt even comes out involuntarily in the process. And to my surprise, the blade cuts through the tomato with ease and several more pieces tumble into the bin.

“There you go!” Rolando cheers. “Well done, girl.”

I stare at my handiwork in amazement. Rolando was right. That
was
fun. I eagerly move on to my next victim and the one after that, until I’m annihilating tomatoes at record speeds.

It’s amazing how good I feel. How much anger is released. How even the tension in my neck and shoulders starts to fade. When I reach the bottom of the carton and there aren’t any tomatoes left, I feel better than I normally do after a five-hundred-dollar-an-hour therapy session with my shrink. I feel strong. Powerful. Almost
reformed
.

“Wow, girl,” Rolando says as he gazes into the bin which is now nearly overflowing with the fruits of my wrath. “You must
really
hate someone.”

I let out a weak giggle. “You have
no
idea.”

LET THE GAMES BEGIN

Rolando is hilarious. He has a way of turning every single task in the restaurant into a game. In addition to Tomato Guillotine there’s Prime-Time Food Line where you get points based on this complicated calculation that combines how fast you can assemble a food item with how much it weighs on the scale compared to the suggested weight printed in the Don Juan’s employee handbook. Rolando is the reigning champion for the Deluxe Taco, the Grande Burrito, and the Grande Nachos.

Then there’s a game called Drive-Thru Guess Who where you get points for correctly identifying character traits of people in the drive-thru line based solely on their voices. Like red hair, big boobs, or wearing a baseball hat. And since the drive-thru cameras only show the car’s exterior, you get extra points if you can predict specific details about the interior. Like manual transmission or empty Starbucks cup in the cup holder. I happen to
rock
at this game. And I blew the competition right out of the water and soared to the top of the scoreboard when I correctly predicted that the woman with the sex-phone-operator voice, driving the giant black Range Rover, would be wearing a Juicy Couture sweat suit with a Tiffany heart-charm bracelet and would pay for her kids’ meals out of a last-season Fendi bag. No one was able to confirm that the bag was actually last season except me but I still got like a thousand points for that one.

I don’t know where Rolando comes up with some of this stuff but it’s brilliant. And it makes the time go by so much faster. Normally I’m watching the clock like a hawk throughout my entire shift but today Javier actually has to tap me on the shoulder and tell me it’s time to go home. Then, get this, honest to God, he says to me, “Good work today.”

For a second, I think he must be joking (or talking to someone else) and so I wait for his face to give him away. But after a few moments of staring at his blank expression, I try to verify, “Really?”

And he replies earnestly, “Really. Keep it up.”

I’m so shocked, I nearly faint. I thank him profusely and then prance into the employee dressing room. I grab my bag, bid the crew of the late shift a bubbly and cheerful farewell, and then float out the door.

But my good mood vanishes as soon as I remember what’s waiting for me outside.

Luke.

I’m going to have to face him again. I’m going to have to share a confined space with him for the entire drive home. And then suddenly all the horrifying memories of last night start flooding back.

Mendi showing up with that reality-show tramp. Me running from the dance floor. Throwing myself on top of Luke. Sticking my tongue in his mouth.

Yuck! Stop!

If I’m ever going to survive the next eight and a half months, I’m going to have to learn how to block out nauseating thoughts like that.

I hesitantly step out into the parking lot and cringe in anticipation of seeing his car, his face, and all the humiliation that comes along with it, but there’s no sign of him. I breathe out a sigh of relief until I realize how odd it is that he’s not here yet. Normally he’s waiting for me at the end of every shift, like the good little brownnosing babysitter that he is.

I check my phone and find a text message saying that he’s running late because my father’s in the middle of some huge merger and he had some extra work for him at the office. This infuriates me. That he honestly expects me to wait around for him to show up like the last kid left at day care.

My father always says the only reason people are late is to assert a position of power. It used to annoy me when he said that. Mostly because I had no idea what he was talking about. And because he was almost always talking about me when he said it. But now I’m starting to understand what he meant.

Irritated that Luke seems to have the upper hand in every aspect of this stupid arrangement, I decide to busy myself by reading e-mails. There’s one from Jia and T gushing about how they found this marvelous villa in the south of France that they’re going to rent for a few months after the yachting adventure is over. Unless, of course, I need them back in LA. Then obviously they’ll come running home.

Of course I need them back here. What kind of stupid question is that?

But it’s not like I can actually answer it truthfully.

I sigh, swallow down a lump forming in my throat, and move on to the next e-mail. It’s from Caroline. She’s been trying to set up some stupid maid-of-honor brunch with Rêve and the Los Angeles press corps for weeks. I don’t bother reading it. I just mark it as spam and move on.

“Great job today, girl!” A voice interrupts my e-mail scrolling and I look up to see Rolando sauntering out the back door. He slips a ragged black hoodie over his head and a red backpack onto his shoulder. His light and friendly tone immediately refreshes my smile.

“Thanks to you,” I commend.

He reddens and waves away the compliment. “Nah. You did it on your own.”

“Nuh-uh,” I insist with an adamant shake of my head. “I never could have done that on my own. In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m pretty useless when it comes to”—I wheel my hand around—“well, everything.”

“I don’t believe that,” he says, walking over to me and bumping playfully against my shoulder. “You’re just out of your element, that’s all.”

“You can say that again.”

“Pretty different from life in Bel Air, huh?”

It takes me a moment to realize what he’s said and once I do, my head reels and I gape at him, openmouthed. “What did you say?”

But he just laughs at my reaction and pulls the hood of his sweatshirt over his head. “I know your name is not Alicia,” he says matter-of-factly, as if it’s no big deal. As if he’s simply talking about knowing how to get to the supermarket around the corner.

“W-w-wha—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stammer.

He chuckles again. “Lexington Larrabee. The infamous daughter of Richard Larrabee. I know who you are. I’m just a little confused at what you’re doing
here
. Some kind of social experiment?”

When I can finally form words, I stutter, “H-h-how did you know?”

He chuckles at my dumbfounded expression. “I figured it out as soon as you got here. My girlfriend is a huge fan. She has posters of you on every wall of her bedroom. I was pretty sure I knew who you were right away but then when you broke out with the French, that’s when I was sure. My girlfriend is taking French next semester so she can be more like you.” He nods at my hair. “It’s a wig, right?”