Chapter 16
“I’m not taking advantage,” Andy felt obliged to say. “At least, I’m not trying to. I just want…I wish things could be simpler.”
“Things are always simple, Andrushka,” Kat said, finishing off her drink. “What they are not is easy. But worth it, I think, most of the time.” She chuckled. “You’ll find I philosophize when I drink. It’s in your best interest to keep me away from vodka.”
“Probably yours, too,” Andy said. “In that all I can afford right now is really cheap and terrible vodka.”
Kat picked through the empty shells, in case she’d missed any of the little mussels. “Ah well. Off to work. There is no rest for the sinners, am I right?” She tossed cash on the bar for the bill—Andy had been right about the cash-rich environment in a tourist town—and offered Andy her arm. 7
By the time Andy had been at the Dockside for a week, he’d settled into something like a routine. He took Trick for a walk down the beach first thing in the morning, then came back to share a cup of coffee with Scooter on the deck. After that, he’d help out around the place—Scooter really hadn’t been kidding about not being much of a handyman—or work on Scooter’s or D’ante’s trucks, which were old but in pretty decent shape considering all the salt in the air, give or take a few parts. Some days, they drove into town to run errands before the restaurant opened.
Working at the restaurant was tiring, but not difficult. Busboys were unremarkable, part of the background, which Andy liked. Being invisible was reassuring, like floating in a pool and letting the water muffle all the sound. Scooter and Ekaterina were kind, and Jason’s suspicion seemed to be slowly fading.
Harry-Rex and his wife, June, had stopped by on the fourth day. Scooter had gotten catfish and fried it up, and they’d all sat at the staff table in the back to eat. Miss June, as she insisted on being called despite being over fifty and married, had brought Andy a large assortment of Tupperware containers full of food, including something she called strawberry hoe cakes, which were actually a cornmeal sort of pancake. Andy thanked her carefully and exchanged an amused glance with Scooter—he was living and working in a restaurant; food was actually one of the least of his worries.
Not terribly subtle, Harry-Rex had started asking Andy questions. Where had he come from, how long was he planning on staying, did he have a trade? That last one, Andy had figured, was the equivalent of his father’s business colleagues asking about school. And then things had gotten even more personal and invasive: who were Andy’s people, why had he come south, did he have a girl back home?
Andy fumbled through explanations that were half evasion with bits of the truth mingled in, because outright lying was bound to trip him up eventually. But both Scooter and Kat seemed to recognize his discomfort, and they cleverly diverted Harry-Rex’s attention, giving Harry-Rex the spotlight. “Oh, you should tell Andy about that Pennsylvania fella, that time, remember?”
He couldn’t stop thinking about what Kat had said about making a home here. Nick hadn’t been unwelcoming, not at first, and Andy wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell what a real family was like. He didn’t exactly have experience with that. And sooner or later, they were going to find out who Andy was and what he’d left behind, and he wasn’t sure he could face their reactions. Disgust that he’d essentially sold himself to Nick to get away from his father; disdain that he hadn’t figured out sooner what an ass Nick was; pity for the abuse…Each possibility made Andy’s stomach churn.
But God, it was tempting to drop his guard, let himself trust these people. He’d never known anyone so good, so caring. It wasn’t the sort of saccharine caring while probing for gossip fodder that Harry-Rex and his wife had displayed. In fact, Scooter and Jason and Kat were downright mean to each other when they weren’t in front of the customers, trading pointed insults that were somehow rarely belittling and despite the snide tones, full of affection and love. They were all very handsy, quick with hugs or to mess up each other’s hair, and as Andy got a little more comfortable with them, they included him in both the banter and the casual contact.
Two days after Andy had finished fixing D’ante’s transmission, he turned up at the Dockside during the lunch prep with tickets in his hand. “You wouldn’t let me pay you,” D’ante said, “but you can at least go have some fun. G’wan, I’ll cover your shift for the afternoon.”
Kat, helping Jason slice tomatoes, peered over Andy’s shoulder at the tickets. “Ooh, fun!” she said. “You should take Scooter with you, he’s great at a game.”
Jason looked mildly offended. “I’mgreat at a game,” he said. “Scooter’s just obnoxious.”
Kat stretched up on her toes to kiss Jason’s cheek. “I know, but you are too intense for a first-timer,” she teased.