“Whoa there, easy,” she said, laughing. “You still have that stick up your ass, I see.” My sister rolled her eyes. “Dude, you’ve got to come to terms with the fact that things aren’t going to get any easier. You’ve got to suck life’s dick if you want to get something out of it.”
“Who are you, right now?” I couldn’t deal with it. I got up and walked to the window to avoid looking at her. “Just go away, Kara.”
“No, I’m serious. I’ve been working super hard for years at being an actress and nothing was ever easy, you know? Until I met Paul and started working with him. Super easy. Super fun too. That’s what life should be like.”
“So, what, when things get too hard, just give up and try something easier?” I asked. “Do you hear yourself?”
“You’re so, like, caught up in society’s expectations of what a woman should be that—”
“This has nothing to do with what a woman should be or what she can or can’t do. This is about you changing everything about yourself in the span of a few months. This is about you deciding to give up on everything you worked for because porn is easy and fun apparently.”
“You’re just angry because your fake fiancé dumped you,” Kara said.
I froze. “What? What did you say?”
“You heard me.” Kara twirled her finger at me. “You’re just mad that I was right and you got your heartbroken again.”
“No, not that. The fake fiancé thing?”
“Whatever. I’ve got places to be. Dicks to deepthroat. See ya!” Kara flounced toward the door.
I caught up with her and grabbed her arm. “What do you know about Damien? About… the contract?”
“Nothing. What contract?” Kara refused to meet my eye. “Can you let me go? I have to get to work. Paul wants to do a double feature.”
“How did you find out about that?”
“No idea what you’re talking about.”
“Kara!” I was tempted to shake her. “Kara, look at me. How did you find out about that?”
But my sister wrenched her arm free and practically ran for it. She clopped out into the hall, and the front door slammed a minute later, the noise echoing through the tiny house.
My breathing came in ragged gasps.
She was involved in it somehow. My sister had found out about the contract and… what? It couldn’t be a coincidence that Damien had found out about the porn. It couldn’t be that he’d just searched it up online.
His father had told him. Could Mortimer reach that far? Had he gotten to my sister?
The questions swirled, and I leaned against my door, horror and upset overwhelming me. It didn’t matter who had told Damien what, whether it was a lie or not. He had made the decision to kick me out of his life and end the deal, and there was no going back on that now.
It was over.
Whether I liked it or not, I couldn’t afford to dwell on what had happened this past week.
My father needed help, the cost of his care had sent us back into the red, and I had to find a way to pay it off, even if that meant getting a personal loan. Or borrowing money from some comically shady character in a back alley somewhere.
But first, getting my job back.
Like an idiot, I hadn’t anticipated that I’d have to come back to work at the Pieslice. I’d been optimistic about getting McCutcheon’s Café back, believed that Damien would help me and that I’d have it to run rather than people to serve in the pizzeria.
I took a breath outside the place, steeled myself against the humiliation of being back here, then pushed the door open and entered.
A server I didn’t recognize was behind the counter. She didn’t acknowledge me as I walked to the closed door that led to the manager’s office. Ricky was five years younger than me and the owner’s son, and he’d always hated me. Or maybe he just hated women.
I knocked.
His answering grunt came from within, and I entered.
Ricky’s desk was pushed into one corner, a desk fan blowing cool air on his face, no matter the time of day. He was round as a beach ball, pink in the face, and wore his hair in a faux-hawk, his massive Pieslice shirt catching sweat in half-moons under his pits.
The office stank. It always stank.
“Well, well, well,” Ricky said and gestured to the plastic chair in front of his desk. “Look who’s back.”
“How are you, Ricky?” I asked and shut the door. I waded through the sweat smell and took my seat.
“Oh, just fine. Just fine, though I imagine you’re not doing too well there, are you, Hazel?” He laughed, jiggling like a bowl of jelly, as the cliché went. “You know, the last time you marched in here to quit, I had this feeling that your bad attitude would come back to bite you in the ass. Give me one good reason why I should take you back.”
I didn’t need this. There were plenty of other pizzerias in town. But none were as close to home, and I knew the people here, at least. I’d hoped it would be easier to get a job here than to apply for a new one and go through an interview process that might take weeks I didn’t have.
“My father is dying, and I can’t afford to pay his hospital bills,” I said.
“That sounds like a ‘you’ problem.”
“Please, Ricky. I’ve got to come up with some money soon. Have a heart.” Even if that heart did pump more cholesterol than blood.
“You’re going to beg for your job back?” He smirked. “Well, that I’m OK with. Women like you, Hazel, they’re a dime a dozen.”
I didn’t care what he meant by it. “Please, can I have my job back,” I said.
“Yeah, OK. You can have it back. But you’ll be working weekends and late-night shifts. And you’ll cover for any of the others and
