Page 39 of Best Friend Burden

“I can see the cogs spinning in your head. When I first showed up, it was a definite no, but now you're considering it.”

“Don't get ahead of yourself,” I told her, even though she was exactly right.

“Minimum wage is $18 in California,” she told me. “What is that, like three tacos an hour? That's three tacos so that you don't have all the work weighing you down every day. Three tacos to sleep in on the weekend because you've got a kid coming in to do all the grunt work for you.”

“Minimum wage is $15.50 in California,” I told her, and that's when a genuine smile broke out on her face.

“Yeah, you got me,” she said. “So it's even less than three tacos an hour.”

“You make a good case for yourself,” I told her. “Let's start you at an even $20 an hour, plus tips. How's that sound?”

I extended my hand and she wasted no time in taking it.

“You won't regret it, Ms. Cruz,” she said.

“Melody,” I told her. “If we're going to be business partners one day, you better start calling me Melody.”

“You've got it,” she said and then forced my name out. “Melody.”

It would seem that it wasn't even past ten in the morning, and I'd already made two friends. The day was off to a good start.

CHAPTER16

***KIEFER***

Ihad to keep reminding myself that Natasha was not my enemy. For one thing, she was dating my brother and, who knows, if things continued down this road, she could end up being my sister-in-law. For another, she was never anything but thankful and kind to me. Deep down, though, I was jealous of her innate and natural talent.

I could go on a rant about how hard I worked to get where I was, but, in reality, I didn't work that hard. Sure, I put in the hours, but it almost always felt like play to me. Like I was goofing around. Until a year or two earlier, it even felt like that when I went into the studio. I'd come in, goof off with some cool people and give Ernie what he wanted, even when he wasn't sure what that might be.

That New Year's was a real turning point in my life, and I'll never know for sure which had the bigger impact: losing Wendy or stopping the drugs. But that was when my job stopped being fun. Everything stopped being fun. And it all became more difficult, too.

Maybe part of it was her youth. Natasha was still in her 20s, which wasn't a lot younger than I was, but it was enough. She was still on the up and up instead of leveling off like I had. She could risk being more creative and playful.

It had been a couple of weeks now, and we were on break when she started talking to me.

“What do you think about me and Jackson?” she asked. It was almost out of the blue, as if she had gotten bored of small talk and niceties and wanted to actually get to something interesting.

“How do you mean?”

“Like, I don't know,” she said. “Seems like we have a good thing going. Pretty chill.”

I could read between the lines. Maybe she wasn't exactly sure what she was asking, but I knew. And I didn't know how to tell her the truth without making my brother look bad. The fact was he was a player and always had been. Though I hoped he’d outgrow that phase, there hadn’t been any signs that he was going to. Not on his own, anyway.

Someone might have said the same thing about me a couple of years ago. I only hoped that it wouldn’t take Jackson the same kind of jarring change to turn things around.

“Why do you ask?” I said, deflecting the question back to her. “Do you want something more?”

“Maybe this'll sound ridiculous to you,” she said, “but I'm not, like, a kid anymore. This isn't college or high school, you know. I'm starting here, I have the beginnings of a stable job with a chance of advancement. I like him, but at the same time, I feel like I don’t want to put a label on anything.”

“Well,” I said, “the thing about Jackson is that he's got layers. He’s always kind of just done his own thing. But, if he didn’t like you, I know for a fact that he wouldn’t be sticking around.”

I paused and hoped she would ask another question, change the subject, or do anything to fill the silence, but all she did was stare back at me with a blank expression that was impossible to read.

It made me think about what was going on between me and Melody. After all, things hadn’t started with us too long after it had with Jackson and Natasha. Should I have been wondering the same thing? Was this getting serious between the two of us?

Not that it was a problem. It’s just sometimes time passes by quicker than you realize, and suddenly something you’d worried might be a one night fling turned into something serious without anybody putting any work in to make it happen.

But we weren’t talking about Melody and me. We were talking about her and Jackson. Except we weren’t talking. It was just silent, and I could tell she was thinking about her own relationship as well.

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