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  DeeDee hoists the glass of beer I just poured up in the air like it’s a trophy, tapping the side with one of her electric blue fingernails. They should clash with her bubblegum pink hair, but somehow she pulls off the nails—which compliment the blue gemstone in her belly button ring—perfectly.

  It’s my second training shift with DeeDee, and I can’t help feeling like the frumpy caterpillar next to a Technicolor butterfly. DeeDee’s body makes crop tops look like they were invented for her use alone, and she seems to wear them no matter how cold it is outside. She has a throaty, slightly raspy voice that makes everything she says sound like an invitation to a wild party, and I swear the customers are physically incapable of saying no when she asks them if they want another round.

  “You’re going to be giving me a run for my money if you keep this up.” She sets the glass down and winks before lifting her hand for a high five.

  Dylan wasn’t wrong about her heart of gold. She may periodically stop working to booty pop when a song she likes comes on, and her ability to string French swear words together is as impressive as it is workplace inappropriate, but she’s been the most patient and encouraging teacher I’ve ever had. It might just be a glass of beer, but I can’t help swelling with pride like a first grader having their finger painting held up in front of the class.

  “Thanks.” I tuck a few flyaway hairs behind my ear only to feel them spring back out of place a second later. “Although I doubt I’ll be competing with you anytime soon. I did break that beer bottle the other night.”

  “Oh, chérie.” She pats me on the head. “It’s not a proper night at the bar until at least one beer bottle gets broken.”

  We both turn around at the sound of someone clearing their throat and find Zach standing in the hall that leads to the back of house.

  “You’ve been summoned to the kitchen,” he announces. “Dylan wants to do his...thing before everyone’s shift starts.”

  I look between him and DeeDee. “His...thing?”

  They both grin like they’re about to push me into a frigid swimming pool.

  “We’ve learned to just go with it,” Zach explains as he leads the way down the hall. “Sometimes you have to indulge him.”

  The rest of tonight’s crew are all bustling around the kitchen, dropping their stuff off on the hooks where we keep our bags and punching in for the night. DeeDee and I got in early again for my training, and now our backup has arrived for the after work rush, which will flow into the dinner rush, and ultimately the Friday night rush. I only have another couple of hours scheduled this evening, but DeeDee told me to brace myself for a busy shift, and I can feel the nerves starting to swirl around in my stomach.

  We find ourselves a place to stand against one of the prep tables, where DeeDee and Zach start conversing in so many inside jokes it almost sounds like a secret code. I’m grateful when a server I haven’t met yet comes over and introduces herself. It’s not that the two of them try to exclude other people; they just seem to be tuned into the same wavelength. I thought DeeDee was kidding when I asked how long they’ve been dating and she burst out laughing before telling me that’s never going to happen. She’s twenty-five to his twenty-two, but I have a feeling that’s more of an excuse than an issue for her.

  “Bon dieu du ciel.”

  Lisanne, the server I’ve been talking, gets everyone’s attention by rolling her eyes to the ceiling and calling out ‘Dear god in heaven’ just as the office door flies open and Dylan walks out with his hands cupped over his mouth.

  Walk isn’t the right word; he sort of...grooves out, making these weird hissing and clucking sounds as he twists his torso from side to side and shuffles to the middle of the room.

  “Is he...beat boxing?” one of the nearby cooks whispers.

  “He’s trying to,” Zach answers.

  “He’s failing to,” Lisanne clarifies.

  Dylan gives her the evil eye as he continues to make his car-with-a-broken-radiator noises before ending on one very long and dramatic hiss.

  “L-l-l-ladies and gentlemen!” he calls out.

  “Oh no.” Zach groans. “He’s remixing his own voice.”

  Dylan pretends to karate chop him in the stomach before grabbing the nearest spatula and holding it up like a microphone.

  “I apologize for the disruption. Pay no mind to the irritating background noise. It will soon be dealt with. For those of you tuning in for the first time, welcome to the Friday Night Fiesta on Toulouse FM.”

  He points the spatula at each new member of staff. My pulse picks up when our eyes lock.

  This is the Dylan I remember—the one who always stole the show and kept every eye locked on him. This is the man who made my seventeen-year-old heart race the way only a teenage girl’s heart can.

  Which is the only reason it’s racing now. You’re just remembering how things were.

  I force myself to believe that’s true even as my body accepts that I’m lying. There’s more here than just memories. I’m not a kid anymore. I know what it means to want someone, to feel that want spike until it becomes a need.

  He might be dancing around a kitchen with a spatula, but somehow, that just makes me even more aware of how tuned in to his movements I am, to his voice, the flex of the tendons in his forearms, the size and shape of his hands.

  I want to know what his palms feel like running over my skin.

  And that right there is a prime violation of the rarely referenced but extremely important eleventh commandment: thou shalt not indulge in impure thoughts about thy manager.

  I’m only on shift number two, and it’s already becoming a serious problem. Here I am pitying poor Zach for his inability to hide how madly in love with DeeDee he is, and meanwhile the whole room can probably tell I can’t rip my eyes off Dylan.

  He’s in the middle of making a rap song about tonight’s special deal on free French fries. It shouldn’t be sexy. To be honest, it’s not the routine itself that’s so attractive; it’s how he works the room, how he gets everyone cheering and clapping and genuinely excited about fries. He takes the dregs of life and turns them into something worth drinking. He cuts through the boredom and the bullshit and brings people face to face with the best parts of who they are. When he gets going like this, he might as well be inspiration itself.

  My next thought comes unbidden, cutting through the noise in the kitchen until it’s all I hear, all I see and smell.

  He was the kind of gravity

  That pushes

  Even as it pulls.

  My hand curls around the edge of the table as my breath gets lodged in my throat.

  Words.

  I tasted them. I felt them on my tongue. They disappeared as fast as snowflakes melting on hot skin, but they were there.

  They lasted just long enough to make me crave the storm that used to follow their arrival. I want to close my eyes and wait for the avalanche, for the blizzard that would chill me to the bone until something deep inside me caught on fire. That’s what it felt like to write. It felt like burning in the middle of a snowstorm, like each element crashing against its enemy within me, demanding more, more, more until I found out who would win.

  In some poems, it was the ice. In others, it was the fire.

  Now there’s only darkness—darkness and silence, except for the briefest flash just seconds ago when I swear I saw a light.

  Saw the light? You really are crazy. You’re as crazy as everyone at school said. And Dylan is not your fucking gravity. He’s your boss.

  My left brain keeps punching my right brain in the face as Dylan wraps his routine up. I do my best to plaster a semi-convincing smile on, to keep my breathing steady enough that no one else can see my chest rise and fall far too fast.

  “All right, listeners, we’re going to start things off on a slightly more...romantic note than usual tonight.”

  Goddamit.

  His beat boxing might have been terrible, but his radio announcer voice is all honey and
chocolate and smooth whiskey slipping down my throat.

  “So slow it down, turn it up, and head on over to Avenue Mont Royal as fast as your fine asses can get here because we are about to work.” He does a full-on mic drop—although maybe ‘spatula drop’ is the proper term—and turns to the stereo before adding, “And because I know you’re going to ask, Lisanne, yes I plan on washing that spatula.”

  He presses play, and a hip hop beat starts pumping through the speakers. I wait a few bars before the vaguely familiar sounds turn into a song I recognize.

  It’s Lil’ Wayne’s ‘You Song.’ Without even realizing it, I start grooving along beside DeeDee. Chance the Rapper features on this track—also known as one of my favourite artists of all time.

  “Woo!” DeeDee shouts. “On y va!”

  She sashays her way down the hall with me, and the servers following in her wake like mice after the pied piper. Chance the Rapper is singing about buying broccoli for his girlfriend as I pass by Dylan at the stereo. We’re not even looking at each other, but my whole body is aware of him. He’s a heat lamp, and I’m the desperate reptile stretching out toward his warmth.

  What a sexy look.

  I make it behind the bar without totally embarrassing myself and stand waiting for DeeDee’s instructions. She’s in the middle of explaining some filler tasks she saves for dead nights when a group of six guys shuffles in. They’ve only just gotten seated when another big group arrives.

  Then a couple.

  Then a third group.

  After that I stop counting.

  DeeDee is a whirlwind, slamming shot glasses down on the bar and topping them up with liquor only to spin around and start pulling a pint with one hand while she pops a bottle cap with the other. All the while, she manages to sway her hips in time with the music just barely audible over the rumble of the crowd, never spilling a drop.

  If I’m half as good as her one day, I’m sure I’ll be guaranteed a job at any bar in the city.

  “Ma belle, could you go to the walk-in and fill up this petite chose with limes?”

  I try not to let my jaw hit the floor as she holds up the nearly empty insert of limes from the garnish station while still pouring shots with her other hand.

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” I stammer, grabbing the insert and heading to the back as I wonder whether DeeDee is human or some sort of sparkly space fairy from the Planet of Tequila.

  I have to dodge a few harried cooks to get to the walk-in fridge; the kitchen is just as busy as the bar. I pull on the huge metal handle and step inside, goose bumps rising on my bare arms as the chilled air meets my skin. The thick door thuds to a close behind me, cutting off all sound but the humming of the fluorescent light above.

  It’s creepy being in here, surrounded by crates of vegetables and bags of cheese arranged in claustrophobia-inducing stacks on the shelves. I hunt around for the large insert of lemons and limes DeeDee had me slice earlier tonight.

  Despite the frigid, morgue-like stillness of the room, I pause for a moment before I let myself leave.

  How are you feeling, Renee? How are you really feeling?

  I’ve learned the best way to deal with an episode is to stop it before it starts. I don’t always get advance warning, but I know the signs by now. It’s sort of like having the stomach flu for so long you know exactly when to run to the bathroom to avoid puking mid-conversation.

  I search myself for the signs: the dry mouth, the lump in my throat, the sensation of a fist squeezing itself far too tight around my heart. I wait for the voices in my head to fill the silence.

  I wait, and I wait. All I hear is the hum of the light above me. My heart pounds, but it’s not with nerves; it’s beating out its impatience.

  I want to get back out there. I want to see what happens next. I want to grow and learn and discover. I might only be discovering how to layer cocktails or read an order chit, but it’s the first time in a long time that the thought of trying something new hasn’t sent me spinning.

  I reach for the handle and shout “Door!” after I’ve cracked it open an inch—a necessary kitchen precaution. Apparently I wasn’t loud enough to announce my presence because I walk out and slam right into someone’s back.

  It’s a very wide back—wide enough that one might even call the person who owns it a beefcake.

  “What the—Oh, Renee, what are you doing back here?” Dylan turns around, looking far more irritated than I expected.

  I hold my insert up in explanation. “Uh, limes.”

  He looks from my face to the fruit and back again, a distracted haze in his eyes, before nodding. “Cool.”

  Limes.

  Cool.

  If I needed yet another reason to squash whatever it is I feel around Dylan, all I have to do is remember that this is about as good as I get with flirting.

  You are not flirting.

  I step past him just as he turns away and see that he’s leaned up against the wall next to Zach, both of them sharing the same agitated expression.

  “I checked everywhere,” Zach mutters, just loud enough for me to catch. “We’re out. We have like, five left, and they’re not even chopped yet.”

  “How is that possible?” I glance back to watch Dylan rake a hand through his hair and fight to ignore how sexy that is.

  You do not get to find pissed off Dylan attractive. You do not get to find any Dylan attractive.

  My moral compass continues to put in a valiant effort to keep me on track, but I still slow to a stop as I round the corner of the hall, staying out of sight as I listen to their conversation.

  “The order just came in yesterday. We should be set. We should have more than enough,” Dylan hisses.

  “I checked the sheet. Someone ordered the small bags instead of the large ones.”

  I hear Dylan huff out a heavy breath. “By someone you mean me, right?”

  Zach hesitates. “I didn’t want to say it like that...”

  “There’s no point dancing around the truth. We’re not ballerinas. I fucked up. I’m the reason we’re out of potatoes on fucking free French fry night.”

  “Nice alliteration there, man.”

  “You’ve picked a great time to critique my poetic devices, Zachy Zach.”

  I can’t tell if they’re actually as mad as they sound before they both snort out a laugh.

  “Shit.” Dylan sighs, the tension returning to his tone. “What the hell are we going to do?”

  “The only thing we can do?” Zach hazards. “Tell everybody we’re out?”

  “You really want to deal with the customer service side of that? Plus we’ve got I don’t even know how many orders of fries on the board. It’s going to take the servers forever to get them all properly cancelled. Monroe literally stood on the sidewalk herself handing out fliers all week. This is a huge deal. If we end up with negative reviews because we couldn’t give people what we said they’d be getting, we’re fucked.”

  “I’m sure there was a ‘while supplies last’ clause.”

  “Supplies are supposed to last longer than an hour into the night!” The words come out on a growl, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who overhears them. There’s another pause before Dylan continues in a quieter voice. “I’m sorry, man. It’s my fault, not yours. I just—Fuck, I’m the leader here now, and I keep screwing it up.”

  I feel a pull towards him so strong my feet might as well be magnets on the floor. This is different than the way he makes my skin heat or my breath catch in my throat. This isn’t attraction; this is recognition. I know that panic in his voice. I know those notes of doubt, of loathing, of despair. It’s the sound I was listening for in the fridge, only it’s coming from him now, not from me.

  Looking in from the outside, I can tell Zach is right; if you give them away for free, you’re bound to run out of fries. It’s not the end of the world. I’m sure the customers are even expecting it, but I know what it’s like to be on the inside too, where Dylan is now.

  H
e’s sinking. This fearless, charismatic beefcake of a man is sinking beneath an ocean whose tides have tangled around my own limbs so many times before.

  I have to help him.

  It’s not a want; it’s a need.

  “There’s a grocery store two blocks up.” I ignore their looks of surprise as I step around the corner. “DeeDee doesn’t seem to need me, and my shift is over in ten minutes anyway. I could go with someone and grab as much as we can. It would save you a few orders at least.”

  They blink at me.

  “I don’t really know, uh, how this all works,” I backtrack. “I’m sure grocery store potatoes are way more expensive. It’s just, um, when I worked at the pizza place and we’d run out of something, I’d always jump on my bike and go to the store so we could make it to the end of the day. Not that I have a bike to jump on, but...well anyway, I just thought, um...”

  They’re still gawking at me.

  “I sort of overheard your conversation,” I explain.

  Yes, Dylan and Zach, I have been creepily standing in the hallway the whole time.

  “Yo! Can someone check if Renee is locked in the walk-in?” DeeDee’s shout from up front echoes back to us.

  “I should go.” I hold the container in my hands up. “Limes.”

  The smooth talker strikes again.

  I hurry to the bar, dropping the limes into their slot in the garnish station and thanking genetics for giving me dark enough skin to hide most of my blush.

  “I thought you would need a scarf after being in there so long, ma belle.” DeeDee points at me with one of the soda guns before filling a glass of Sprite. “But you look like you’ve got a fever.”

  Okay, some of my blush.

  “Sorry I took so long.” I hurry to change the subject from the current state of my face. “The kitchen was crazy.”

  “They’re always complètement fou back there. It’s a lot more chill in the front.”

  I glance around to see all three sides of the bar packed two rows deep with customers eager to for alcohol. Clearly the definition of chill.

  “You’re good to go now,” DeeDee informs me. “Merci for all your help. You remember how to punch out?”