Page 53 of Don't Bet On It
I’d been my true self with Ronan, though. Sure, he gave it back to me as hard as I dished it out. Still, he didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t likable. Sharon always said you had to be likable to get through life. I was determined to prove her wrong. I was pleasant for work. I did what had to be done for tips, but I was not going to bend myself to fit somebody else’s idea of what I should be.
And yet Ronan seemed fine with all of it. He’d been fine enough to kiss me. Okay, I kissed him. Wait, we kissed each other. Yes, that was what had happened.
Why had it happened, though? Was I sending out signals? I didn’t think so. He wasn’t the type to manufacture signals,though. Maybe he’d been drunk. That must be it. He’d been drunk, and sometimes when you’re drunk, bad ideas seemed like the best ideas ever.
“How’s it going?”
I was brutally ripped out of my feedback loop—this was how it had been for three days—when Candy appeared next to me. She wore a bright smile, but something in her eyes gave me pause.
“I’m fine,” I answered automatically.
“Yeah?” Candy cocked her head. “It looked to me as if you were daydreaming.”
“Nope.” I shook my head firmly. Daydreaming on the job was frowned upon. “I was racking my brain to see if we had a specific group coming in today.”
“And what did you come up with?”
“Nothing. It’s just a normal day.” I really hoped that was true.
“Good. That will allow us a chance to talk.”
My smile remained in place, but my insides clutched. I’d learned the hard way that therapists—psychologists, psychiatrists; I’d seen them all—were trained to look beyond the facade. It was possible, since she worked for a casino, that she wasn’t as weathered as the individuals I’d come across over the course of my childhood. The hefty paycheck she was likely receiving could also mean that she was a better therapist than all of them.
Crap.
“Sure,” I said. “That sounds great.” I walked away from her, hoping she wouldn’t follow, and headed toward the bar.
She, of course, trailed behind me. “So, you haven’t been with Stone very long,” she said. “Where did you work before you landed here?”
Where hadn’t I worked? I had a certain reputation in Vegas. I was a good worker but temperamental. That was the wordthat most often played prominently when I was dismissed.Temperamental.
I shrugged. “I’ve worked everywhere, really. I like to hop around.” Did that sound nonchalant? I was going for nonchalant.
“That’s interesting.” Candy rested her elbows on the bar as I grabbed a tray and began organizing it. “Is it that you don’t want to stick at one place for too long?”
“I don’t know. It seems to work out that way.”
“Maybe it’s that you like to quit things—or force your employer to quit you—before you get too comfortable in a place. Is that possible?”
Oh, great. She was one ofthosetherapists. “No, I just seem to hop around.” I was going for breezy, but I had no idea if I was pulling it off.
“I pulled your file with the state,” she said.
I froze. “You pulled my file.” My temper ratcheted up a notch. Who gave her the right to pull my file? “Aren’t juvenile records sealed?”
“Sometimes. Yours weren’t. My guess is it’s because your mother never filed the paperwork to seal them.”
Well, chalk another one up for Sharon. “Great.”
“It seems you had a fraught childhood.”
That was an interesting word choice. “Fraught?” I wanted to laugh. I didn’t.
“Yes, fraught.” She wasn’t smiling at me now. “It’s okay to have feelings about what happened to you when you were a child.”
“I don’t have any feelings about that,” I lied. “It has no bearing on my current life.”
She didn’t look convinced. “Okay, well, if you ever want to talk about it, you might find that I’m a good person to talk to.”
