The Promise of Lace Read Online Free Page B

friends I saw Hailey
whispering to Noah, who winked at me then stuck out his tongue.
    I followed Dieter back to the bar.
    “So… what’s up?” I asked.
    Very
smooth, Roxanne. ‘What’s up’. You are a conversational wizard.
    But he grinned. “I wanted to apologize for the other day.
Some bigwig who plays golf with the president of the company was bitching about
how his wife was really pissed because the sales people were really pushy with
her at a store somewhere in like… I don’t know. Tennessee or
something. So now because some rich bitch who could afford to shop in an
actual nice place wasn’t perfectly happy
everyone’s on red alert. Corporate’s got secret
shopper and all kinds of stuff going on. We were all told to be careful. Especially me. You know. A guy in this job?”
    “Nice,” I scoffed. “Paying people to spy
on retail workers. You guys don’t put up with nearly enough crap.”
    “Right?” He chuckled. “It’s a bummer. The only
thing I like about this job is making people feel better when they come in and
now, apparently, I can’t.” He shrugged, the movement
just a little awkward. “Anyway. I’ve felt bad about
being so rude to you all week. Let me make it up to you. What’s your drink?”
    Normally I would have just blown it off. Told him it was
fine, that he didn’t have to apologize for protecting his job. But this was a
signal that even I could read, incompetent and out of practice as I was.
    “Rum and coke, please.”
    He waved at the bartender. “Jerry? Rum and
Coke for the lady?”
    “Thank you,” I told him.
    “Absolutely. So… I bemoaned my job, what do you do?”
    I smiled and chuckled to give myself a little time before I
answered. I was very conscious of how I talked about my job. I was finally at a
point in my life where I really loved what I did, and it was easy to let myself
get swept away and just keep talking about the differences between types of software
and brushes and printers forever and ever until the people around me actually
dropped dead of boredom.
    So I started with just my basic spiel. Mentioned my new
project and how I was getting pretty excited about it.
    But Dieter asked questions and seemed genuinely interested
in what I had to say. He made cute jokes back and forth with me. By the time I
was talking about my first terrible job I had managed to give Hailey a discreet
signal that I was doing just fine. It consisted of turning my body so my back
was to my friends, waving energetically to get their attention, and then giving
them a thumbs-up. They seemed to get the message. Hailey came over, invented an
imaginary appointment that she and Noah had to get to in the morning, and they
hugged me goodbye.
    I let Dieter buy me another drink.   “So. What about
you?” I asked. “How did you wind up where you are?”
    “Selling overpriced underwear?” He scoffed. I shrugged. I
wasn’t totally sure how to reply to that. I didn’t want to insult him.
    “I needed a job as quickly as possible, so I went to the
mall, picked up an application from every store that would give me one, went to
the coffee place, spent three hours filling them all out and handed them back
in. Got a couple interviews, but the lingerie place was the only one offering
enough money to make it worth it because they needed a guy to haul around boxes
in the back, and someone had just quit. I was there for maybe a week, when the
guy who used to do that job came back. There were some politics going on. Long
story short—he got his job back, but they couldn’t fire me, so they offered me
a sales floor position, but let me keep my backroom wage. It’s a thrilling tale
of how a straight guy got what can, with very little contention, be called a
girl’s job,” he smirked.
    I nodded, figuring that was a safe enough move. It was the
best way of 1) not seeming like I was judging his job and 2) not letting on
that I was excited that we had official word that he was straight.   “What