Page 61 of Driftwood Daffodil

Was that a vote kind of question? And if so, could I throw mine in the pot? I’d like to see Atlee get punched.

“Come on,” Atlee sang with a twinkle in his eye. “You know you like cookies.”

“I swear to God, Atlee…”

If cookies could make Gio grit his teeth like that, then the world wasn’t in any danger. I’d like to say that this was the strangest conversation I’d heard, but it didn’t even make the top ten.

“Anyway…” I rolled my eyes, “what can I get you? And we don’t have cookies.”

I could wrangle up some arsenic with a side of laxative though.

“Hmm,” Atlee tapped his finger off his chin, “what’s good?”

“Nothing.”

I may not like them, but that didn’t warrant making them suffer through the taste of the food in this place. No one deserved that.

“What do you mean nothing?”

What was so confusing about that? “I mean nothing.”

With a little luck, they might decide to go somewhere else.

“There has to be something good.”

Okay, maybe there was something. “The gumbo isn’t bad.”

“Perfect,” Atlee nodded. “I’ll have that then.”

Well, that made my job easier, “great, so the food truck is two blocks down. You can’t miss it. Just look for the red polka dots.”

His brow rose. “You’re sending me to a food truck?”

“You wanted to know what was good.” He shouldn’t ask questions if he didn’t want the answer.

“Do you work for the food truck?”

“Pfft no.” I wish.

If Atlee wasn’t confused before then that shit took hold and pulled his brows together when he picked up the menu. “What the fuck is BBQ rib jambalaya?”

That one was easy. “It’s crap in a bowl.”

It literally looked like crap.

“Aren’t waitresses supposed to pimp the food?

“I’m not your food whore.” Mandy had that job, but she wouldn’t be out on her corner for another couple of hours. She had a thing for whipped cream.

That’s when Gio blurted out, “then why are you here?”

There were so many ways to answer that. “Do you mean, why am I working at a dinner with inedible food? Or why am I here in general?”

“Are you always this smart?”

“Well, I can spell the word whore, so…” That still bothered me.

Gio’s brow arched, “why are you working here?”

---