I just blinked at him, stunned into speechlessness. “I… I don’t understand.”

“You’re fired,” he stated simply. “What’s there not to understand?”

“I’ve worked here for over two years.”

“And is it a coincidence that in those two years my profit has declined tremendously?”

“But you’ve been open for only that time.”

“Exactly.”

I shot him another look. “Do you hear yourself?”

Pretending to appear busy, he began to fiddle with some loose papers on his desk, as if already dismissing me. “I’m sorry for the short notice –”

“That’s not even short notice! That’s like immediate out of nowhere notice –”

“I understand your anger, Emma, but what’s done is done. Now if you’ll excuse yourself, I have some very important matters to attend to.”

“Like what? You do fuck all around here.”

He tensed and glanced up at me. “Excuse me? I own this business.”

“Yeah, and you sit behind your desk and jack off all day long while we’ve been busting our asses off out there!” I stood up, my body shaking with adrenaline, and I knew at once what was really going on. “You’re the worst boss I ever worked for, Denny, and you’re a fucking liar too, because I’ve done nothing to deserve this. You’re spineless, so it’s no surprise you’re following Borden’s orders to get rid of me.”

“I’m not taking anybody’s orders –”

“Are you seriously going to play the denial card?”

“It’s not denial if it isn’t true. Borden has no strings on me.”

Too angry to respond, I flipped him off and stormed out of there, seething on my way to the back room, past the girls and the kitchen. Blythe followed after me, not asking what had happened. They probably all heard our conversation. I felt so humiliated, like maybe they believed in his rubbish. I probably looked like a senile-hungry hussy that thieved muffins out of the kitchen.

“Are you alright, Emma?” Pat asked me from behind the kitchen counter as he began setting up his station. “I could hear yelling coming from the office.”

I looked at him. “Did you tell the dick that I’ve been ordering you to give me muffins on my break?”

He shot me a perplexed look. “Hell no, I didn’t.”

“Well, that’s what he’s saying.” I turned to Blythe. “And apparently I’m trying to pick up the customers, particularly John, whom I’m pretty much sexually harassing.”

Blythe’s mouth dropped. “What the fuck?”

“Exactly!”

They watched me as I gathered my things again, fighting hard to keep intact my pride by not crumbling and crying on the floor about being jobless all over again.

“What are you doing?” Blythe asked me.

“I’m fired,” I answered, my voice breaking. “Which is fine, whatever. I’ll get another job.” In a city where jobs are difficult as fuck to find.

Pat cursed and Blythe gasped. They told me how unfair that was, how little it made sense. I bit my tongue, refusing to let them know it made perfect sense to me. I opened my wallet to pull out my bus money, shaking in my rage. If Denny was a man, he’d have at least acknowledged the truth, that it was all Borden. He’d never have fired me over these things, anyway. He’d have waited until the damn restaurant burned down before thinking of firing someone. We’d all been together for the two years he’d began operating the business, taking our shit every single day.

Leaving the diner was like doing the walk of shame. Everyone stopped to stare at me, even the first customers that had just come through the door, like they knew already. I kept my eyes drawn to the ground, blinking back the ache behind my eyes.

Must not cry. Must not cry.

I stepped out into the cold air and took in a deep breath.

For the first time in ever, I didn’t know what to do, where to go, how to salvage my life. So much of me was in this place. It had been my safety net. I barely made it by, sure, but it was better than this: completely jobless, completely broke, with no more than fifteen dollars in my wallet – no, no, it was eleven dollars actually.

“Fuck!” I cussed.

I was going to have a complete panic attack, and it didn’t help that in this particular moment the skies decided, “hey, time to shit on your parade some more, Emma” and empty its guts out on me. Great, so now I was jobless, sitting on the curb of the road outside of the diner, getting drenched in rain while I fought back the tears brimming behind my eyes.

Desperation is a very cruel thing, I realized, as I got all philosophical just then. It made you dangerously aware of the precipice you were hanging off of. Dangling over the edge, staring down into a black hole, while everything inside of you was struggling against the inevitable.

That’s how it felt like for me.

Nah, to be more specific, I felt exactly like a failure. Here, I was supposed to be a big girl. I left my grandmother’s house, ready to chase a good job, feeling like an independent little thing, strong-willed against the world, like I was going to take it on with a stormy passion that was unrivalled.

Ha.

Hahaha.

Yeah, right.

People don’t realize that they’re not always the ones holding themselves back from achieving their dreams, it’s everybody else standing in the way.

I sighed.

Time to stop whining about my shortfalls. I had to get up, get moving, and find another job. A job that wasn’t under Borden’s command. That would be disastrous, especially with how out of control I felt around him. That man would enjoy chewing me up and spitting me out.

I’d be a janitor, if I had to. Hell, I’d strip if I could. Anything to get me out of having to crawl back to my grandmother and beg for money. Not that I’d have to beg, mind you, she’d give me the shirt off her back. But that was the problem. I didn’t want her to.

And Borden knew it too.

Shaking off my sadness, I gathered my bag and stood up. I dragged my ass to the nearest bus stop and went home. It was as I neared my apartment building that I noticed a man standing out front. My steps slowed when he looked up at me and acknowledged me with a smile. The man was middle-aged, thick and short, and had the bushiest grey-black moustache I’d ever seen.