Page 26 of Sing For Me

Rufus’s knuckles go white around the spatula. Then he comes around beside us. “He said what?” His voice barely contains his sudden fury, and pinkness spreads from his beard across his freckled cheeks.

“Not to her face,” Erica says quickly. “But she asked me to get you, Reese.”

He looks like he’s about to snap the spatula in two, so I raise an eyebrow, then point my chin at the onion that’s beginning to stick to his pan.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he hisses.

But he scrapes at the onion and turns down the heat, then wipes his hand on his apron. “I’m coming with you.”

“No,” I say. “Rufus, I’ve got this. I mean it. I don’t need you decking a customer.”

I see his jaw clench under his beard as I lead Erica away.

“Did he say anything to you?” I ask, taking her toward the kitchen door.

“Not beyond the normal bullshit—I swear, I know what I’m doing. There’s just a certain type of asshole…”

“I know,” I say. I know all too well. “Show me.”

She points to a weaselly-looking guy over by the far plate glass window, sitting with a pretty woman in a purple sweater, who’s got her face tilted down to her plate.

My stomach twists at the sight of her. Her whole comportment is so familiar it stings.

At the table next to them, closer to the window, a dignified older woman in a pantsuit sits, tapping her fingers on the table, looking irked.

Sophie, who’d been at the bar with George, our elderly daytime bartender, explains the man was trying to insist they switch spots, with the woman. “He said she had ‘the view he’d paid for.’”

“He’s just treating everyone like shit,” Erica says, her voice close to tears. “He told Sophie if she came over and talked to them again he’d have her job.”

“Then he demanded to speak to you,” Sophie says, sighing.

I nod at Sophie, then pat Erica on the hand. “I’ll take care of it, okay? You just look after your other tables.”

Erica smiles gratefully, trying to apologize again, but I just shake my head.

I don’t normally take over for my servers when they’re dealing with difficult customers—Sophie handles that if they need the help. But I don’t want Sophie near this asshole again. I don’t want any of my staff near him.

“George,” I ask my bartender after I come out of the kitchen door, which opens behind the bar. George is an older man with ebony skin and hair going silver at the temples. He’s filling drinks for one of my servers, staring at the man with thinly disguised anger.

“A mimosa please?”

“You taking care of that piece of work?” George asks.

“Absolutely.”

He nods and pours the drink. George has been tending bar for a millennium and has seen it all.

The jerk is talking to his girlfriend as I pass by his table to the woman next to the window.

“I’m telling you, Sherry, the blue top would have been better. I can see all the… you know.” He gestures to her upper arms.

My hand tightens over the champagne flute so hard I think it’s going to explode. This kind of talk—this intense criticism veiled as helpfulness—feels like a knife in my side.

I remember what that was like.

“On the house,” I say to the woman next to them as I lower the mimosa on her table. “For the inconvenience of the seating arrangements.” I don’t even try to lower my voice, but the guy behind me keeps blathering, unbothered.

The woman is sophisticated-looking, with porcelain skin and a sweep of silver-blonde hair in a tight chignon. “Thank you,” she says sharply, but I know her tone is not directed at me.

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