Chapter 25

brOCCOLI IS GOING TO be the death of me.

Hailey carried the bowl of white wine pasta and its overpowering vegetable scent to its table, noticing the odor was killing her just a little bit more than usual. It was her first night back at work at the restaurant and she noticed everything was just a little bit harder. Zane sent her home when she showed up for her shift the morning after. She puked shortly after walking in so he wouldn’t let her stay. Thank goodness.

Tonight, the room felt warmer, despite a few patrons asking to turn the air conditioning down, the bowls and plates felt heavier, the things that usually just annoyed her felt like knives to her eyes, and she was getting a splitting headache from it all.

She was filling a glass with cola and zoned out for a bit, wondering why tonight especially sucked. The side effects from the drugs in her system were pretty much gone except for maybe a bit of fatigue, but that was hard to distinguish from her usual depression fatigue. However, Hailey also noticed that any time she had to approach the salad station—his usual spot—her heart would start to race and she’d feel a sheen of sweat gather on the back of her neck.

It was another moment before Hailey realized the cola was flowing over the side of the glass and her hand was now covered in the sticky, sugary liquid.

“Shit,” she muttered while hitting the tap for the water and running her hand under it to rinse off.

“Hey, you okay tonight?” Hailey glanced up to see Anne giving her a concerned look. It was starting to slow down for the night, finally, so she took a deep breath before responding.

“No, I don’t think I am. Let me deliver this refill and I’ll tell you about it.”

Anne nodded and busied herself with folding a stack of pizza boxes to await Hailey’s return.

When she got back, she grabbed a stack of cardboard to help and told Anne everything that happened the other night at the party. Anne’s jaw somehow managed to drop farther as Hailey revealed each secret from that night.

After she finished the story, Anne seemed to tense and then she took one of the freshly folded boxes and spiked it onto the ground before stomping it back into a flat piece of cardboard. All Hailey could do was watch and admire the rage Anne easily released onto the poor material that would now never fulfill its destiny of holding cheesy goodness.

Once she exhausted herself, Anne looked around the kitchen and noticed a few other servers and cooks glancing her way so she grabbed Hailey by the wrist and pulled them both into the staff bathroom.

“Anne, what are you—oomph!”

Hailey didn’t have the chance to get anything else out before Anne was barreling into her arms and squeezing her tight.

Eventually, Anne let go but kept her hands around Hailey’s shoulders, backing up enough to look her in the eyes with such intensity and concern that Hailey almost broke.

“Wh-what do you need? How can I help?” Anne asked while moving her thumbs in tight circles across Hailey’s shoulders.

“I don’t really know. I didn’t think about what it would be like to come back here. Even though he’s not here anymore, it kind of feels like he’s lingering, or like he’s even watching me somehow. It’s just kind of creeping me out, I guess. Maybe I should take a few days off.”

“Want me to talk to Mike with you about it? You look a little pale. Do you need a drink or something to eat?”

Anne and Hailey weren’t super close, only really hanging out during work, but the care she was giving Hailey had a lump forming in her throat that she couldn’t seem to swallow past. She took a moment before trying to speak again and cleared her throat.

“You can come with me to talk to him, yeah. My table was almost done eating. Let me just get rid of them and then we can talk to him. I don’t know what else to do.”

Her arms were full of Anne yet again and then they were walking back out into the kitchen, nobody paying them any attention, somehow sensing that they both needed a minute.

It was another ten minutes before Hailey’s table paid their bill and she wished them a good night. Anne had moved on to rolling silverware when she got back to the kitchen and with just a nod she abandoned her pile and joined Hailey to walk back to the office where their boss, Mike, would be.

It was a tiny office and it wouldn’t fit more than the three of them, but luckily that was all they needed. Hailey realized she was nervous because she wasn’t sure how much she should tell Mike. Would he react like Gage did? Or would he actually be supportive and understanding? At this point, Hailey didn’t care as long as she could take the next few days away from this place.

Hailey knocked softly on the doorjamb outside the office and waited for Mike to turn toward the doorway to see her and Anne standing there with worried looks. An easy smile was on his face but it dropped when he saw the two of them standing there so serious.

“What’s wrong?” he asked right away.

“Is it okay if we talk to you for a few minutes? In private?” Hailey asked reluctantly.

“Yeah, of course, come on in,” Mike said while he cleared a pile of papers off one of the two empty chairs across from his desk. Hailey sat while Anne shut the door and then took the other chair. “So, what’s going on?”

Hailey looked at Anne for some strength and got a resolute nod in return that helped steel herself for this conversation. Since she had been working with Mike for a while, she felt at least a little comfortable with him. She couldn’t imagine having this conversation with a stranger, like a detective investigating her so-called “claims.” This was plenty hard enough.

“I think I need to take a break from working here for a little while. Not a long time, maybe a few days. Um…” Hailey wasn’t sure where to go from here but Mike didn’t appear to be angry or annoyed that she had to take off, just worried. “Something happened at the going away party the staff had the other night and I’m, um, having trouble being back here thinking about it.”

Mike furrowed his brow and looked at Hailey with concern. He then looked between Anne and Hailey and looked like he was performing some calculus in his head. “Okay, we can work with that. Is it … for both of you?”

“No. No, just Hailey. I’m just here for support in case she needs it,” Anne answered.

Mike nodded and brought his gaze back to Hailey. He seemed to collect himself before continuing, like he was just as nervous as her.

“Is this related to someone else at work? I could make the schedule so you wouldn’t have to work during the same shifts anymore.”

Hailey relaxed a bit at that offer because she knew how much trouble it was organizing the schedule for so many people. That offer would absolutely make Mike’s life harder and he made it without even a thought.

“That means a lot, thanks. But, he’s already gone so nothing to worry about.”

Mike closed his eyes and dropped his head for a moment.

“Scott did something, didn’t he? Son of a bitch. I’m so sorry, Hailey.” He started shaking his head as if he was pissed at himself. “I heard a couple of the cooks talking yesterday morning about him and wondering if they should say something but not having any proof. Apparently, they didn’t know it was you but they had a feeling he did something because they saw him pull out something that looked like drugs but he was cagey about it. They didn’t know what kind they were or if they were even prescription meds, but things make sense now.”

Hailey was a bit lightheaded and wasn’t sure what to say, and she was pretty sure that if she did know she would be incapable of expressing any words at the moment anyway. Anne did not have the same problem.

“Well, fuck this. What are we going to do?” she demanded.

Mike leaned back in his chair and started stroking his chin like he was pondering the latest crossword clue and not the huge elephant in the room. Then, he seemed to think out loud.

“Okay, well I can’t fire him since he doesn’t work here anymore. We have no proof to get cops involved and it sounds like that wasn’t something you wanted to do anyway. So how else can we absolutely destroy this man’s life?”

At that, Hailey gasped and then started choking on her own spit. Anne thrusted a glass of ice water with a straw at her and she drank until it was under control. When the fuck did she get a glass of water?

“We could call his new boss and tell him who is working for him? Could that do anything?” Anne asked.

“Maybe. But, they have no reason to believe me. They might think I’m making it up to try to get him to come back here or something,” Mike argued. It seems these two were ready to launch a plan of attack and all Hailey could do was watch slack-jawed as her gaze ping-ponged between the two of them. She couldn’t keep up with their ideas.

“Poison?”

“Illegal. We don’t want to stoop to his level. Bad reviews about his food online?”

“That could just get other cooks in trouble and may not effect him enough. Message his wife?”

“We could, but she may not believe us either. Hire a private investigator to go after him?”

“We’re poor. How about we get him fired?”

“Yes! But how?”

Something niggled at the back of Hailey’s brain as she remembered her conversation with Danny or Chris from the gym. The ghost of a smile crossed her lips as she cleared her throat and drew the attention of both Mike and Anne.

“Have you guys ever heard of a glitter bomb?”

———————————

It turns out, Anne and Mike are evil masterminds and Hailey made a vow to never get on either of their bad sides.

Mike helped Hailey organize the glitter bomb and Anne used her social media sleuthing skills to find someone who worked at the same restaurant as him to get in on the plan. It turned out, when she revealed the reason behind the prank, the new female coworker of his jumped at the chance to avenge Hailey. The package was delivered to the restaurant and the employee they befriended pushed him to open it in the middle of the kitchen. She got the whole thing on film with her cellphone.

He read the card aloud to the camera, “For everything you’ve done, from your friends back home.”

“Aww, looks like they miss you in New Jersey!” she added sweetly, her excitement building audibly.

When he cracked open the top of the package, there was a loud pop and red glitter exploded over everything in a ten-foot radius. The employee in on it stepped back enough to evade the glitter herself.

Scott’s new boss also witnessed the whole thing and was livid, firing him on the spot and making him clean up every speck of glitter he could. Of course, he couldn’t, because glitter was the herpes of arts and crafts.

Anne also managed to find his wife on social media and contacted her using an anonymous account. It turned out the wife was already suspicious about some of the things he’d done over the years and was in the middle of building a case against him for divorce. Eventually, she found the drugs he was hiding in their house and she said her lawyer practically salivated at the discovery. He also made it possible for Hailey to submit her medical results of the same drugs in her system in some kind of anonymous way that Scott could never discover. The man was fucked.

Mike told Hailey to take as much time as she needed away from the restaurant, but the revenge plot made everything a little easier. She only took off her next shift and by the time her next scheduled work day came around it had been five days anyway, so Hailey went back in with the prerequisite that she could leave early if it was too much.

She wished everyone had that kind of support at their work. The stress of it all was the toughest and Hailey found herself struggling to get out of bed some days. Bridget and Rick gave her time off from the gym, too, and she let herself wallow a bit while burying herself in reading, writing and sleeping. Avery texted her every day with memes to make her smile or songs he knew would put her in a good mood. He even stopped by with something called a “home-cooked meal” that Hailey had briefly forgotten existed. She had been living on cereal and delivery pizza.

They watched a funny movie together while eating the fettuccine alfredo with shrimp Avery cooked for her. Hailey missed hanging out with him like they used to. Gage had been against it when they started dating and she pulled away out of respect for the relationship, but things were getting back to normal and she had her best friend back.

She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she woke up in her bed fully dressed with a text from Avery on her phone.

AVERY:You fell asleep during the sequel so I carried you to bed. Figured you would get uncomfortable on the couch. There are leftovers in the fridge for you. See you soon :)

Hailey put her phone back on the nightstand before falling back asleep, unable to wipe the smile from her face and having absolutely no desire to ever let it go.