Page 14 of A Fool's Game

I turn to look at the guy addressing me and cringe when I turn my head too quickly and pain shoots through my neck and shoulder. “Yeah, sorry. I had a rough night.”

“Looks like it but we don’t take excuses around here. You just show up and do your job, no matter how hungover you are. Got it?” His dark brown hair falls over one eye as he watches me, arms folded over his chest.

“I’m not hung—” I try to defend myself, but the guy exits through the swinging door he came in without another word.

I tuck my bag into a locker and close it, unable to secure the latch since I didn’t know to bring a lock. Not that I have much to steal anyway.

I was able to cancel my credit cards and text my dad from my laptop last night. I had some cash stashed in the house, but my new phone won’t be delivered until this afternoon which is why I was unable to call and let my new “job” know I was going to be a few minutes late. I woke up with a splitting headacheand had to stop by the pharmacy for something to get me through the day.

“First day?” someone asks.

I turn and find a young guy at a locker behind me, buttoning a white work shirt up to his collar. “Yeah.”

“Do you have a jacket already?”

I shake my head, and he walks over to a rack and pulls one off, holding it out to me. “You look like a medium.”

Taking the offered white jacket, I shed one more layer and then pull it on over my T-shirt, buttoning the front. I’m grateful there doesn’t seem to be a mirror in this locker room. I’m sure I look like a total fool.

The Fool.

Maybe the card was telling my fortune after all.

“Come on. I’ll show you the coffee station.”

This is the best thing I’ve heard since setting foot in this giant industrial kitchen complex, so I follow him gratefully. We’re just securing plastic lids to our paper cups when the asshole from before storms out of the kitchen doors, arms folded.

“Ah, rich boy got his coffee so now he’s ready to work?”

I glance beside me but the kid disappeared. Looking back to the asshole, I cock my head to the side. “You mean me? Sorry, I thought my nickname was ‘pretty boy’. Unless I have two nicknames now. Not bad for my first day.”

I can see the tension in the guy’s jaw as he grinds his teeth.

One point for me, I guess.

“Follow me,” he barks and disappears back through the doors without waiting.

When I join him on the other side, he’s addressing a small army of people wearing white jackets just like mine. I try to join the group without being noticed, but everyone looks my way.

“We’ve got a new guy joining us this morning. This rich kid,” he spits the words pointedly in my direction, his eye contact sharp and intentional, “is here to do community service and work off some trouble he got into. Isn’t that right, pretty boy?”

“I’m fairly certain that’s confidential information, but yeah. That’s right.” I’m not backing down. If this small-time cafeteria manager thinks he’s going to get the best of me, he’s dead wrong.

“You’re in the dish pit,” he replies, cold, ice-blue eyes locked on mine.

“Thanks, Taylor. I’ll take all the help I can get.”

The voice comes from behind the manager, Taylor I guess, and we both look in that direction. It’s the kid from earlier, probably a freshman, swimming comically in his too-big chef coat and dark blue rubber apron.

“Show him the ropes, Seth,” Taylor replies to the kid before turning back to me. “And if he slacks off, just come let me know.” He addresses Seth while giving me the death glare once more.

I just smile. “Dish pit it is. Do you have any more of those snazzy rubber aprons?” I force my tone to sound far more perky than I feel.

I’m walking death. Between the split lip I’m trying hard not to reopen and the pounding headache the painkillers have yet to silence, I could really use a three-hour nap right now.

Instead, I’m faced with a mountain of dirty dishes piled so high I have to tilt my head up, painfully, to see the top.

“The prep guys start early. This is all their stuff,” Seth informs me as he starts getting the sinks filled.

---