Page 13 of The Unlucky Waitress

The thought of Ethan pinning me to my locker flashes in my mind often. I tremble through my shift every time I hear his voice, trying to ignore the warm, damp spot in my underwear as I feel myself grow hot. Picking my outfit for our second date becomes a chore with these plaguing thoughts of him and what he does to my body.

I keep things casual with a pair of shorts, a t-shirt and sandals, doubting myself, second guessing my choices, and wondering how I got myself into this situation in the first place.

I expected one thing from Ethan before our first date, but now I’m questioning how a man who didn’t believe in love could inspire so much passion. How can he know what I like, what makes me giddy, and what could make me drench myself in a matter of seconds?

I have no answers, even as I walk out of the apartment building to meet him in the street below. He’s dressed down and leaning against a black truck with tinted windows. This is a different Ethan, an Ethan I hadn’t met yet and was eager to know all about.

He opens the door and helps me climb up into the truck before following me. He starts the car and Christina Aguilera croons from the speakers.

“You’re playing my favorite album, taking me to one of my favorite places and if I didn’t know better Mr Knight, I would think you’re trying to seduce me,” I say, batting my eyelids at him.

Ethan takes his eyes off the road just for a moment and looks at me, smiling, “I’m just getting to know you.”

I blush and sink into my seat. The warm glow of his adoration enrobes me and I feel more comfortable and happy than I imagined possible.

“And you? Are you going to let me get to know you in return?” I ask.

Ethan shrugs and shakes his head. “What do you want to know? Everything you could ever want to know about me is online.”

I look at him and try to decide if he’s bragging or just stating a fact. I decide it’s the latter. There really is so much about Ethan online. I’ve searched his name and read countless articles on his success as a businessman, his marketing genius and how he can practically sell fresh air.

“I want to hear it from you,” I say sincerely.

A boyish smile spreads across Ethan’s face. “So, you’ve been reading about me?” he teases.

I blush again, embarrassed that I had exposed myself. “Just to make sure you weren’t a serial killer,” I joke, trying to draw the attention back to him.

He already knew so much about me, most things I haven’t even realized I had told him and I know basically nothing. I spent our first date enjoying all the pleasures his lifestyle had to offer, things I couldn’t even dream about right now and refused to think of it as an actual date even though I had gone through the motions.

“There isn’t much to tell really. I’m all work, no play and right now. At this moment, the most interesting thing about me is the woman sitting next to me,” he smiles.

We drive into the busy car park of a huge nursery and I realize no one would even recognise Ethan here, aside from his casual outfit, no one could ever imagine him at a nursery picking out his own flowers.

“You don’t really need plants do you?” I ask him suspiciously.

“No,” he laughs. “I don’t need any plants and if I actually did, I’d probably get someone else to get them for me. Flowers are the only things I know you like so until you give me something else it’s all I’ve got going for me,” he admits.

He holds my hand and we swing our arms as we walk, looking through the rows and rows of plants and flowers. I tell him everything I know about each plant, and he starts making up facts and plant names he would insist were true.

“This is the Cyrus star,” he says seriously.

“No it’s not,” I laugh, linking our arms and leading him toward the board that reads ‘hypoxis / star lilu’.

“It’s one of very few plant species that have survived the Jurassic period and continue to thrive today,” he continues, putting on a snooty accent as he explains the plant's nonsensical history.

“How did you come to know so much about just about everything?” he asks, leading me across the nursery to a secluded corner with a bench.

I sigh, the memory of my bakery is now coated in bitterness and sadness, even my happiest memories of my business made me just a little bit sad.

“Before I worked at the club, I ran my own bakery. It was small, I served coffee and made all types of cakes, but the most interesting people always came in,” I tell him.

“Generous people who taught me things, let me take a peek into their lives and learn so much about everything.”

Ethan nods, he understands without me needing to explain just what happened to my bakery. It’s the same thing that happened to so many small businesses.

We walked in a mournful silence paying our silent respects to my dead and forgotten little bakery. It had become a make-up shop, a convenience store and now it was boarded up waiting to become something else.

“What was your favorite thing to bake?” Ethan asks cautiously.

---