Page 161 of Blue Collar Babes

“Fucking crazy night, huh?”

He shrugged. “Normal Friday night. Thanks for not waiting until the last minute on these.” He nodded towards the dishes and pulled them towards him.

“Sure.” I turned, making my way back to the bar. Nico still wasn’t there, and I was half worried he’d bailed on me, leaving me to close by myself now. This was anything but a normal Friday night for me.

FOUR

My frustrations weren’t going anywhere. Nico had been gone for nearly ten minutes and I was almost done with cleaning. The restaurant was finally closed, and I was ready to get out of there as fast as I could. All the other servers had left, and I just needed Nico to say I could go.

I waited a few more minutes, double checking everything before pulling out my phone, scrolling mindlessly through Instagram.

“It looks great, Della.” Nico’s voice startled me.

I shoved my phone in my back pocket, double checked my shirt, and turned to him.

As if he couldn’t resist, his eyes darted to my chest and when I caught his eye, he looked disappointed. And suddenly, he wasn’t ignoring me anymore. I watched as he hesitated, like he was fighting some battle I couldn’t see.

I waited for him to say anything. He was the one who had to break this silence. Not me.

And he finally did, with a sigh. “Why can’t anything be easy anymore?”

It felt like a rhetorical question, so I didn’t even bother responding.

He shook his head and switched gears. “How was tonight? It got really intense there for a bit.”

“It was fine.” I’d crossed my arms, trying to stay firm, but my voice betrayed me.

“You did great.”

“Thanks.”

How could he know? He’d ignored me all night.

“For a minute there, I didn’t think you’d talk to me all night.”

“You weren’t exactly keeping conversation with me.”

“Well, we were busy.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Was my comment earlier crossing a line? Because I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I was trying to joke but…” He trailed off.

“No, it was fine.” I blurted but didn’t want to elaborate. In fact, I wanted this conversation to end. I was damn near sick to my stomach in trying to figure out what the hell was going on while needing to get away from him—and that smile of his. And his eyes. And those hands…

He cleared his throat. “Let’s see how we did.” He began entering all of the tips into the system while I counted down the drawer. Once we calculated everything, Nico held out a wad of cash, causing my eyes to go wide.

“How much is this?” I started to take it but paused.

“Over six-hundred dollars.” He grinned.

“You can’t be serious. This is to split, right?”

“Nope.” He shook his head and rubbed his thumb over mine so gently that it didn’t even register until he pulled away. “We each got that.”

“Holy fuck!” I screamed, letting my excitement take over. “I’ve never made this much in one night.”

“Welcome to anywhere but the south, Babe.”

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